This topic fits well with a feeling I have had for some time. However, wording it in a way that makes perfect sense may be tricky.
It comes down to what I want/need to do with that computer in front of me. As I see it, Operators fall into two major classes (ignoring oddball cases, like Manufacturer):
* Developer -- someone who wants to tinker with innards -- make the m/c "better" (faster, bigger data capacity, more physically robust &c);
* User -- someone who wants to manipulate objects such as Texts, Spreadsheets, Emails, Artwork, Designs (for various types of things -- clerical, abstract or tangible), Music, Household Appliances &c.
These days, I tend to fall into the User class but can appreciate the effort it takes to be a useful Designer. Being a creature of habit, I still try to run WordStar and other 16-bit utils. So OS/2's emulators, currently for DOS and Win-3.1 -- not to mention OS/2 itself
![Wink ;)](https://www.os2world.com/forum/Smileys/default/wink.gif)
-- are essential (but still a bit flaky in my AOS-5.1; can we expect an update or two soon(ish)?).
This leads me to wonder whether the best future for OS/2 would be as a place to run retro-software. To the emulators already mentioned, add new ones for (eg) Linux, old games, other OSes that used to host popular software. Think about it: 32 bits already provide massive resources. Since OS/2 began, there have been amazing general refinements in industry standards: I/O commonly relies on USB but could still work with archaic stuff like Centronics; storage devices can run up to (is it?) 2TB
per partition; processing speeds are insanely fast;...
And OS/2 would not be stuck-in-the-mud. We could hope for emulators allowing it to be hosted under 64-bits (and whatever higher bit-count the Secret Masters Of Computing, the SMOCs) may decree. And those Developers could carry on, improving the breed.
Need I go on?