Guest post by The Register is running a very interesting article by Dominic Connor, telling the insider story about OS/2 1.0/1.1 development in the old days. From the terrible management in IBM, to the hilarious coding practices of Microsoft, there’s lots of stuff in here – and it’s only part one. “The unholy alliance of IBM and Microsoft unleashed OS/2 25 years ago with a mission to replace Windows, Unix and DOS. Back then, I was a foot-soldier in that war: a contract bug hunter at Big Blue. Here’s how I remember it.”
Ultimately, OS/2 wasn’t about the goals of its potential users and such – it was about returning to IBM the control over the PC market. So of course we didn’t go for it, and already numerous PC OEMs rebelled, Gang of Nine style – and chose a relatively friendler option of Win 3.x when it showed up.
Still, quite entertaining little read about earlier days of OS/2.
PS. Part two is already there http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/26/os2_final_fail/
Edited 2012-11-30 11:12 UTC
Ah, the wonders of Southsea Carbuncle on the arse of Portsmouth. I literally LOLed at that.
I live not 10 miles from Southsea and probably closer to the North Harbour site. I’ve driven past it a few times – grim looking. Never seen the offices in Winchester, can’t imagine they’re much better. Never knew we Brits had so much to do with OS/2’s development, makes me almost proud.
I used to buy Computer Shopper every month from 1994 to around 2000.
It used to be one of the best general purpose magazines to buy in Portugal and it was the only one having an alternate computing section (Acorn, Amiga, Atari).
Reminded me about one Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentation_Manager – perhaps you Brits had also some influence on the look & feel of pre-95 Windows (plus, apparently, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Manager of Win 3.x descends from OS/2)
Though I suppose those bits of info, if factual, wouldn’t do so well at making you almost proud…
Oh god, we are potentially in danger of getting in to a “RISCOS invented the…” discussion here.. British fantasy computer design at its best!
RISCOS invented the pointer which shows, by changing its inner colour, if “wait for 2nd click in double-click” is still active?
(I really like this one little gem; and come on, there must be more… ;> )
What I really wonder about “British fantasy computer design”: why so many computers with rubber keyboards or even – the horror – in yoghurt-style cases? (Jupiter Ace)
Edited 2012-12-03 13:06 UTC
Jupiter ACE case was almost a direct copy of the ZX80 case composition. Cheap to produce.
There are many out there who claim Brits invented the idea of “packaging” an app in to a directory and then treating that “bundle” as the app (as RISCOS did), except, Nextstep did the same and probably earlier – and that is where the Mac OS X bundles originate from.
There are some that claim that RISCOS invented the Dock, except, Next also did that at around the same time with their Dock and Shelf – and again, that is where OS X got the Dock from.
There are some that claim RISCOS improved the way file handling worked with their innovative drag and drop style functionality, except Mac OS classic did a lot of that too.
The problem with RISCOS was that it was evolving at the same time… and as we know from the old Picasso quote that Jobs popularised, nothing is so original as the aspects of a product you can “steal”, build on and make your own. This being the real sense of the quote, rather than the literal “Bible reading” most antagonists choose.
RISCOS did bring us the ARM (as I doubt the ARM would otherwise exist), so it did do something worthwhile, I guess.
It is a pitty that OS/2 is not here. Ecommstation is expensive and not very community open. IBM could keep it by replacing parts with ReactOS code.
And who will pay for that development? (NVM how it’s doubtful ReactOS code would be very useful for that)
The imaginary hordes of OS/2 users waiting for IBM to release the next OS/2 version, obviously! (do I need to put sarcasm/joke tags here, or did you already get my sense of ridicule of the OP?)
That was a good read. Thanks for linking to it.