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Revolutionary PC Technology

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Neil Waldhauer:
If you look at Mac OS 9, in System, at the components loaded, you will see a lot of familiar libraries. These are SOM and DSOM libraries from OS/2 to make it inter-operate. The Apple clones would have run OS/2, Windows, MacOS, Taligent, Workplace all on the Power architecture's common reference platform.

But Apple was having big business problems. Microsoft bailed them out, and Apple's board got Steve Jobs back. Jobs killed MacOS 9 and replaced it with NeXt, renaming it Mac OS X. The clones were not included in these plans. OS/2 was out. IBM didn't want it, Apple didn't want it.

I could speculate that OS/2 might have competed against Mac OS X had IBM got behind it. I doubt IBM would have gotten any return on their investment, though. I doubt Microsoft really saw that they were going to lose control of consumers to Google and Apple. IBM at least had the vision to get out.

Microsoft showed some real intelligence putting Windows on life-support and moving their attention to consumers and their cloud platforms. Now LinkedIN is nearly as profitable as Windows.

Martin Iturbide:
Hi

Just wondering over the discussion, my opinion was that IBM at that time (mid 90's) was too big, and had also too many products. Microsoft was lean and focused exclusively on Windows and Office...and MS used the "art of war" to sell software  ;D

While IBM had  a good position on the business market selling technology to other companies, when the PC showed up, it started to became a consumer good. Bill Gate's dream of "one PC per home" indeed was right at that time, the PC was going to became a home device instead of a corporate tool.  IBM's PC market suddenly became a customer electronic circus, while they internal structure was focused on selling to corporate customer.

I think that OS/2 was a casualty of that. The owner of OS/2 didn't understand the "customer electronic circus market" while Microsoft took a dive into it. When Lou Gerstner arrived as IBM CEO (1993) he focused on corporate solutions. When IBM sold the PC unit to Lenovo (May 2005), so the can focus on that "circus", OS/2 was cancelled a long time.

Regards.

Martin Iturbide:

--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on January 08, 2021, 03:50:31 pm ---But Apple was having big business problems. Microsoft bailed them out, and Apple's board got Steve Jobs back. Jobs killed MacOS 9 and replaced it with NeXt, renaming it Mac OS X. The clones were not included in these plans. OS/2 was out. IBM didn't want it, Apple didn't want it.

--- End quote ---

I remember those days from college.  The Apple iMac became the best selling PC of 1998. In my college we used Mac OS 7, 8 and 9 for some graphics design and even office courses. I personally think that MacOS 8 had a nice GUI, but it was not as stable as OS/2 Warp 3 or 4. MacOS 7,8,9 has the same internals and I remember the icon of the "bomb", that was like our "trap", showing from time to time while working on that computers.

Mac OS X (2001) was a different thing based on FreeBSD ("independent implementation" they call it) and I think with some time and patches MacOS X became more stable than MacOS 9 was.  Steve Jobs (and his team) now had a new line of iMacs selling good to the youngsters, a new OS (based in "unix") and market presence. He did save Apple at that time. In 2007 with the iPhone he took Apple where it is today.  On 1997 Apple was a niche dog for graphic design that investor thought  the only path for it was "going down", now it is monopoly

Very nice memories.

Regards

David Kiley:

--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on January 08, 2021, 03:50:31 pm ---But Apple was having big business problems. Microsoft bailed them out, and Apple's board got Steve Jobs back. Jobs killed MacOS 9 and replaced it with NeXt, renaming it Mac OS X. The clones were not included in these plans. OS/2 was out. IBM didn't want it, Apple didn't want it.

I could speculate that OS/2 might have competed against Mac OS X had IBM got behind it. I doubt IBM would have gotten any return on their investment, though. I doubt Microsoft really saw that they were going to lose control of consumers to Google and Apple. IBM at least had the vision to get out.

Microsoft showed some real intelligence putting Windows on life-support and moving their attention to consumers and their cloud platforms. Now LinkedIN is nearly as profitable as Windows.

--- End quote ---

Yeah true I wasn't thinking about the fact the Apple nearly died during that time and it wasn't until later that Steve Jobs saved them.
I think IBM should have stayed in the fray, evolving, could they have been able to focus on consumers. But it doesn't seem to be in their DNA since they are always focused on enterprise. Like IBM really didn't focus on third party software for os/2 like Microsoft did with Windows... they were more concerned with OS/2 running on servers with custom enterprise software instead. But ignoring the third party software market meant they couldn't compete in the consumer realm.

You have a good point about Microsoft - but somehow I feel Microsoft is taking the same direction as IBM. They have been shuttering their consumer brands and moving to just business focus, with a few exceptions.
Enterprise seems to be were the easy money is - but you lose technological relevance.

David Kiley:

--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on January 08, 2021, 03:50:31 pm ---Microsoft showed some real intelligence putting Windows on life-support and moving their attention to consumers and their cloud platforms. Now LinkedIN is nearly as profitable as Windows.

--- End quote ---

I'm not sure it took too much intelligence - they were sitting on a molehill of money from their windows/office monopolies but they were losing every consumer battle since except for the Xbox.
Literally everyone is now selling the "cloud", they didn't have to come up with the idea - they just used their money to buy up a bunch of cloud services and funnel into that.
I suppose you could say knowing were to spend your money is intelligence though. 8)

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