6 ms·

From the article: If IBM, and not Microsoft, had controlled MS-DOS, Windows, and so on, the computing world would now be a different environment. - iMHO prob

by msh 9y ago

From the article: If IBM, and not Microsoft, had controlled MS-DOS, Windows, and so on, the computing world would now be a different environment. - iMHO probably a much worse world. Microsoft might have been the "evil empire" but ibm was the original.

snom380 9y ago
It's also wishful thinking. If IBM had controlled that, there wouldn't have been a big enough ecosystem around the PC platform for it to become the winner. IBM also tried to grab this back with PS/2 and OS/2 which also failed. It's interesting to compare this to another article linked here about the downfall of the TI home computers. Apparently TI understood the value of software to the point where they threatened to sue unlicensed software vendors, which pretty much guaranteed that those vendors chose to write software for other platforms. Perhaps they would have had a better chance if they had opened up their platform?
GnarfGnarf 9y ago
True, if IBM's development tools were any indication. Circa 1992, IBM's OS/2 development environment was called C-Set, and, in spite of being a 32-bit compiler, was inferior to Microsoft's Programmer's Workbench (precursor to Visual Studio). For instance, after a compilation, if you double-clicked on an error message, it would open up the source code in a separate editor window, in a proportional typeface. You could not trigger a compilation from this window. You had to make your change, save & close, then go back to the compiler window. Backwards. There was no Resource Workshop for designing dialog boxes visually. You had to write all the statements in a text editor, and wouldn't see the appearance until compiling and running the program. This slowed down development. While debugging, I recall trying to step into the GUI part of the application code. This locked up the computer so bad we had to re-install OS/2, a tedious process requiring 22 diskettes. The IBM documentation was so inscrutable that even for ver. 2 of OS/2, we had to refer to Microsoft's ver. 1 manuals. IBM's support gave an interesting insight into OS/2's downfall. My client had an expensive OS/2 support contract with IBM. The client's contacts were two guys in the PC support section. When I required technical support to answer some obscure and specialized questions about OS/2, it didn't make sense to get the client guys involved, even though they were supposed to be the only official go-between with IBM. So I called IBM with the client's authorization, and impersonated one of the support techs. After a few calls I slipped and used my name. The IBM guy was livid and tore a strip of me, saying that as an independent contractor, I had no business blah blah. Here I was just trying to get a customer up & running. Authors of their own misfortune.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Although SOM was much more advanced than COM, it had even support for metaclasses. IBM also tried their luck to have a Smalltalk like IDE for C++, but it was too heavy for the typical hardware configurations on those days. It was the fourth version of Visual Age for C++ OS/2.
- yuhong 9y ago
  That OS/2 2.0 debacle is my favorite topic, and this was just the beginning of the entire fiasco. That period was not long after the MS OS/2 2.0 SDK in 1990-1991 (which used MS compilers) and before some of the really unethical tactics MS used to attack OS/2.
pjmlp 9y ago
People complain about Apple, but they are the single company left from those days, where each manufacturer controlled the whole stack. Had IBM done that, we would be in a similar position regarding PCs. On the other hand, maybe thanks to that single event, Atari ST or Amiga variants would still exist. However, the industry seems to be turning back to those days. Even FOSS won't help here, because each OEM just packages their own OS and SDK flavour and locks down the hardware.
- bluedino 9y ago
  Commodore/Amiga/Atari couldn't capture a big enough market. Apple (Mac) was never open enough. None of the UNIX companies would have ever made anything cheap enough to hit the mass-market until after Windows 95 came out. Without Microsoft we could have ended up with some weird IBM world running OS/2. They might have even switched to Motorola eventually. But Microsoft and Compaq made things open and cheap enough to get us to where we are today.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    But that was kind of my point, without Microsoft, the PC would just be yet another platform like the Commodore/Amiga/Atari/Mac. None of them would get a piece big enough of the pie. The PC only happened due to the way OEM market was created, originating a race to the bottom regarding computer components. My other point being that given the current state of computer market with iDevices, Android, Chromebooks, IoT, hybrid tablets (aka netbooks), TVs, Watches,..., those OEMs are now trying to turn the remaining of the market into that vision. So besides their proprietary OSes, we get customised versions of their own forks from open source OSes (e.g. Huawei Linux, LG BSD, put your flavour here) in locked down hardware like those computer systems with their OSes written in ROMs. Microsoft is still here, but the day they actually do loose the PC market, don't expect the "Year of Linux/BSD" to happen.
  - Zardoz84 9y ago
    What made PCs successful was the hordes of cheap IBM PC compatible machines. Without it, the world of home computers would be a lot different.

by msh 9y ago

snom380 9y ago

It's also wishful thinking. If IBM had controlled that, there wouldn't have been a big enough ecosystem around the PC platform for it to become the winner. IBM also tried to grab this back with PS/2 and OS/2 which also failed. It's interesting to compare this to another article linked here about the downfall of the TI home computers. Apparently TI understood the value of software to the point where they threatened to sue unlicensed software vendors, which pretty much guaranteed that those vendors chose to write software for other platforms. Perhaps they would have had a better chance if they had opened up their platform?

GnarfGnarf 9y ago

True, if IBM's development tools were any indication. Circa 1992, IBM's OS/2 development environment was called C-Set, and, in spite of being a 32-bit compiler, was inferior to Microsoft's Programmer's Workbench (precursor to Visual Studio). For instance, after a compilation, if you double-clicked on an error message, it would open up the source code in a separate editor window, in a proportional typeface. You could not trigger a compilation from this window. You had to make your change, save & close, then go back to the compiler window. Backwards. There was no Resource Workshop for designing dialog boxes visually. You had to write all the statements in a text editor, and wouldn't see the appearance until compiling and running the program. This slowed down development. While debugging, I recall trying to step into the GUI part of the application code. This locked up the computer so bad we had to re-install OS/2, a tedious process requiring 22 diskettes. The IBM documentation was so inscrutable that even for ver. 2 of OS/2, we had to refer to Microsoft's ver. 1 manuals. IBM's support gave an interesting insight into OS/2's downfall. My client had an expensive OS/2 support contract with IBM. The client's contacts were two guys in the PC support section. When I required technical support to answer some obscure and specialized questions about OS/2, it didn't make sense to get the client guys involved, even though they were supposed to be the only official go-between with IBM. So I called IBM with the client's authorization, and impersonated one of the support techs. After a few calls I slipped and used my name. The IBM guy was livid and tore a strip of me, saying that as an independent contractor, I had no business blah blah. Here I was just trying to get a customer up & running. Authors of their own misfortune.

pjmlp 9y ago
Although SOM was much more advanced than COM, it had even support for metaclasses. IBM also tried their luck to have a Smalltalk like IDE for C++, but it was too heavy for the typical hardware configurations on those days. It was the fourth version of Visual Age for C++ OS/2.
yuhong 9y ago
That OS/2 2.0 debacle is my favorite topic, and this was just the beginning of the entire fiasco. That period was not long after the MS OS/2 2.0 SDK in 1990-1991 (which used MS compilers) and before some of the really unethical tactics MS used to attack OS/2.

pjmlp 9y ago

People complain about Apple, but they are the single company left from those days, where each manufacturer controlled the whole stack. Had IBM done that, we would be in a similar position regarding PCs. On the other hand, maybe thanks to that single event, Atari ST or Amiga variants would still exist. However, the industry seems to be turning back to those days. Even FOSS won't help here, because each OEM just packages their own OS and SDK flavour and locks down the hardware.

bluedino 9y ago
Commodore/Amiga/Atari couldn't capture a big enough market. Apple (Mac) was never open enough. None of the UNIX companies would have ever made anything cheap enough to hit the mass-market until after Windows 95 came out. Without Microsoft we could have ended up with some weird IBM world running OS/2. They might have even switched to Motorola eventually. But Microsoft and Compaq made things open and cheap enough to get us to where we are today.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  But that was kind of my point, without Microsoft, the PC would just be yet another platform like the Commodore/Amiga/Atari/Mac. None of them would get a piece big enough of the pie. The PC only happened due to the way OEM market was created, originating a race to the bottom regarding computer components. My other point being that given the current state of computer market with iDevices, Android, Chromebooks, IoT, hybrid tablets (aka netbooks), TVs, Watches,..., those OEMs are now trying to turn the remaining of the market into that vision. So besides their proprietary OSes, we get customised versions of their own forks from open source OSes (e.g. Huawei Linux, LG BSD, put your flavour here) in locked down hardware like those computer systems with their OSes written in ROMs. Microsoft is still here, but the day they actually do loose the PC market, don't expect the "Year of Linux/BSD" to happen.
- Zardoz84 9y ago
  What made PCs successful was the hordes of cheap IBM PC compatible machines. Without it, the world of home computers would be a lot different.