4 ms·

Windows 3.0 Buzz

2 points by hacksilver 6y ago

HardwareLust 6y ago
I can still only imagine where we would be today had OS/2 won out and become the standard rather than Windows.
- JdeBP 6y ago
  Actually, we're in a world where Windows 3.0 "lost", if such a win/lose designation is meaningful. What Windows people use today isn't any form of DOS+Windows at all. It's Windows NT. Windows NT is not mentioned in the main article. But you'll find it touched upon, in somewhat erroneous fashion, in one of the pictured trade press articles. Ironically, this highlights the shaky nature of the information provided to the trade press and what the public knew, that the article alludes to. It wasn't OS/2 3.0, and it never had OS/2 2.0 support, nor even full OS/2 1.x support.
  - skissane 6y ago
    > Actually, we're in a world where Windows 3.0 "lost", if such a win/lose designation is meaningful. What Windows people use today isn't any form of DOS+Windows at all. It's Windows NT. That said, Windows NT is still a partial descendant of DOS+Windows. A lot of NT's APIs and other interfaces (filesystem path syntax, CMD.EXE, etc) come from DOS+Windows. Some people say poetically that the deceased ancestors live on in their descendants, and that's much more true of DOS+Windows than of OS/2. (There is still some fringe use of OS/2 as eComStation and ArcaOS, but there is also still some fringe use of DOS, Win 3.x/9x, and clones such as FreeDOS. There are also odd places where OS/2 has left its mark, such as the DosSetRelMaxFH [0] and DosSetFileLocks [1] APIs on IBM i that were copied from OS/2, although IBM i itself is somewhat fringe.) [0] https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/apis/dossrmfh.htm https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/api... [1] https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/apis/dossfllk.htm https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/api... > It wasn't OS/2 3.0, and it never had OS/2 2.0 support, nor even full OS/2 1.x support. NT itself only ever shipped support for OS/2 1.x console apps, but Microsoft sold a separate add-on which added support for OS/2 1.x GUI apps. I don't think many people bought it, but it existed. I wonder, how close to complete an emulation NT was of OS/2 1.x once you'd bought that add-on?
    - JdeBP 6y ago
      No, it isn't even really a partial descendant, as it was a from scratch implementation with a wholly different kernel architecture that inherited from places like VMS, and several things in Win32 originated in Windows NT and were transplanted into DOS+Windows. Moreover: CMD actually came from OS/2 not DOS+Windows, although it too had to be re-implemented over the different system API; and the Windows NT filesystem syntax is only superficially the same as that of DOS+Windows. Drive letters work quite differently, being implemented in the Object Manager, and things like alternate data streams cause the syntax to be different. Current directories are also very different. And as I said, Windows NT (to the point that the support was dropped completely) had not even full OS/2 1.x support. There was a known list of OS/2 1.x Control Program and KBD/VIO/MOU things that it (intentionally) didn't support, published by Microsoft. No doubt there was another such list for 16-bit Presentation Manager. We're in a world where despite the "buzz" discussed by the headlined article the Windows 3.0 line went dead, and the Windows NT line has instead carried on; something that was given just 1 paragraph in the "buzz" and that paragraph was even erroneous.
      - skissane 6y ago
        > No, it isn't even really a partial descendant A whole bunch of Win32 APIs were based on Win16 antecedents: KERNEL32, USER32, GDI32, Common Controls, Common Dialog, DDE, among others. Given how many Win32 APIs are descended from Win16 APIs, I don't think it is accurate to say it isn't even a partial descendant. By contrast, how many OS/2 APIs are present in Win32? Little if any. Given a Win16 application, one can generally translate it to Win32 with only some trivial changes. It is a lot more work to translate an OS/2 application to Win32, because the OS/2 APIs and the Win32 APIs have less in common.
Finnucane 6y ago
Windows 3.0 convinced me that paying the premium for a Mac was worth it.

Windows 3.0 Buzz

2 points by hacksilver 6y ago

HardwareLust 6y ago

I can still only imagine where we would be today had OS/2 won out and become the standard rather than Windows.

JdeBP 6y ago
Actually, we're in a world where Windows 3.0 "lost", if such a win/lose designation is meaningful. What Windows people use today isn't any form of DOS+Windows at all. It's Windows NT. Windows NT is not mentioned in the main article. But you'll find it touched upon, in somewhat erroneous fashion, in one of the pictured trade press articles. Ironically, this highlights the shaky nature of the information provided to the trade press and what the public knew, that the article alludes to. It wasn't OS/2 3.0, and it never had OS/2 2.0 support, nor even full OS/2 1.x support.
- skissane 6y ago
  > Actually, we're in a world where Windows 3.0 "lost", if such a win/lose designation is meaningful. What Windows people use today isn't any form of DOS+Windows at all. It's Windows NT. That said, Windows NT is still a partial descendant of DOS+Windows. A lot of NT's APIs and other interfaces (filesystem path syntax, CMD.EXE, etc) come from DOS+Windows. Some people say poetically that the deceased ancestors live on in their descendants, and that's much more true of DOS+Windows than of OS/2. (There is still some fringe use of OS/2 as eComStation and ArcaOS, but there is also still some fringe use of DOS, Win 3.x/9x, and clones such as FreeDOS. There are also odd places where OS/2 has left its mark, such as the DosSetRelMaxFH [0] and DosSetFileLocks [1] APIs on IBM i that were copied from OS/2, although IBM i itself is somewhat fringe.) [0] https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/apis/dossrmfh.htm https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/api... [1] https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/apis/dossfllk.htm https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_74/api... > It wasn't OS/2 3.0, and it never had OS/2 2.0 support, nor even full OS/2 1.x support. NT itself only ever shipped support for OS/2 1.x console apps, but Microsoft sold a separate add-on which added support for OS/2 1.x GUI apps. I don't think many people bought it, but it existed. I wonder, how close to complete an emulation NT was of OS/2 1.x once you'd bought that add-on?
  - JdeBP 6y ago
    No, it isn't even really a partial descendant, as it was a from scratch implementation with a wholly different kernel architecture that inherited from places like VMS, and several things in Win32 originated in Windows NT and were transplanted into DOS+Windows. Moreover: CMD actually came from OS/2 not DOS+Windows, although it too had to be re-implemented over the different system API; and the Windows NT filesystem syntax is only superficially the same as that of DOS+Windows. Drive letters work quite differently, being implemented in the Object Manager, and things like alternate data streams cause the syntax to be different. Current directories are also very different. And as I said, Windows NT (to the point that the support was dropped completely) had not even full OS/2 1.x support. There was a known list of OS/2 1.x Control Program and KBD/VIO/MOU things that it (intentionally) didn't support, published by Microsoft. No doubt there was another such list for 16-bit Presentation Manager. We're in a world where despite the "buzz" discussed by the headlined article the Windows 3.0 line went dead, and the Windows NT line has instead carried on; something that was given just 1 paragraph in the "buzz" and that paragraph was even erroneous.
    - skissane 6y ago
      > No, it isn't even really a partial descendant A whole bunch of Win32 APIs were based on Win16 antecedents: KERNEL32, USER32, GDI32, Common Controls, Common Dialog, DDE, among others. Given how many Win32 APIs are descended from Win16 APIs, I don't think it is accurate to say it isn't even a partial descendant. By contrast, how many OS/2 APIs are present in Win32? Little if any. Given a Win16 application, one can generally translate it to Win32 with only some trivial changes. It is a lot more work to translate an OS/2 application to Win32, because the OS/2 APIs and the Win32 APIs have less in common.

Finnucane 6y ago

Windows 3.0 convinced me that paying the premium for a Mac was worth it.