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The interesting question remains: why did they keep going? Windows 1 failed horribly (just like similar products), why make a second version? And secondly, why

The interesting question remains: why did they keep going? Windows 1 failed horribly (just like similar products), why make a second version? And secondly, why make it compatible with windows 1 if nobody was using it anyways. This is usually the perfect moment to fix old mistakes, change the architecture, etc. It was all there in windows 1... GlobalAlloc, SendMessage, etc. You can take a windows 1 binary, patch the PE header to say it's for windows 2, use Borland resource editor to recompile any embedded resources, and then it will run on 32bit windows 10.

aidenn0 8y ago
This is speculation, but anybody who was using windows 1 was either a fanboy, or used a must-have windows 1 application. Pissing of those people is a bad way to introduce your next version.
mwcampbell 8y ago
What architecture changes would you have wanted for Windows 2.0, given the constraint of running on an original 8086? (IIRC, that constraint wasn't lifted until Windows 3.0.)
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  This was more of a general comment. I mean sure, if you couldn't have designed it any better given the technical constraints this makes sense, but just from personal experience there is always something you wish you'd have done differently in retrospect. This is why I can only assume there must have been at least one critical customer they didn't want to piss off, or it was somewhat of a proof of dedication to backwards compatibility, as in "see, even if nobody is using our product we still make the next version compatible".
yuhong 8y ago
They did make a few changes, such as in window hooks. Compare http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/win10sdk/windows-1.03-sdk-prgref-1986.pdf http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/win10sdk/windows-1.03-sd... and http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/win20sdk/windows-2.0-sdk-prgref-1987.pdf http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/win20sdk/windows-2.0-sdk... for example. Actually, this makes me wonder if they never bothered with Windows 2.x and went directly to OS/2 Presentation Manager in 1987.

aidenn0 8y ago

This is speculation, but anybody who was using windows 1 was either a fanboy, or used a must-have windows 1 application. Pissing of those people is a bad way to introduce your next version.

mwcampbell 8y ago

What architecture changes would you have wanted for Windows 2.0, given the constraint of running on an original 8086? (IIRC, that constraint wasn't lifted until Windows 3.0.)

iforgotpassword 8y ago
This was more of a general comment. I mean sure, if you couldn't have designed it any better given the technical constraints this makes sense, but just from personal experience there is always something you wish you'd have done differently in retrospect. This is why I can only assume there must have been at least one critical customer they didn't want to piss off, or it was somewhat of a proof of dedication to backwards compatibility, as in "see, even if nobody is using our product we still make the next version compatible".

yuhong 8y ago

They did make a few changes, such as in window hooks. Compare http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/win10sdk/windows-1.03-sdk-prgref-1986.pdf http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/win10sdk/windows-1.03-sd... and http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/win20sdk/windows-2.0-sdk-prgref-1987.pdf http://www.os2museum.com/files/docs/win20sdk/windows-2.0-sdk... for example. Actually, this makes me wonder if they never bothered with Windows 2.x and went directly to OS/2 Presentation Manager in 1987.