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"OS/2 finally came out in late 1987, priced at $340, plus $2,000 for additional memory to run it. By then, Windows had been on the market for two years and was

"OS/2 finally came out in late 1987, priced at $340, plus $2,000 for additional memory to run it. By then, Windows had been on the market for two years and was proving hugely popular." No. Windows was basically irrelevant until 3.0 came out in 1990.

midasuni 5y ago
Yes, it was dos and lotus123 and maybe word perfect that were popular in the 80s.
- anyfoo 5y ago
  Not contradicting, just adding that MS Word for DOS was also somewhat popular.
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  Yes. Personal Computers were typewriters and calculators for the first 10 years. That's not to diminish their importance - quite the opposite. The impact changed the world. That's why it took a whole decade. Consider that when the IBM PC was launched, offices the world over had typing pools populated by women whose job it was to type whatever they were given. Spreadsheets changed the world. We went from 1 or 2 types of tuna and 1 or 2 types of olive oil in the supermarket to dozens of each. Why? How? The big enabler was Lotus 1-2-3. Product managers in food companies could manage the ingredients, inventory, branding, marketing and sales performance of dozens of products at a time instead of just one or two. The spreadsheet was a fancy calculator, in the same way that a machine gun is a fancy pistol, and a combine harvester is a fancy hoe. The first decade of personal computers enabled office work to scale, and it reconfigured literacy by enabling individuals to type letters when they felt like it. The fax machine was right there alongside, like the hammer and the sickle of capitalism. The resulting boost to productivity touched every industry the world over.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
I'd go so far and say irrelevant until Windows for Workgroups 3.11. That's when Banyan Vines + Ethernet (as opposed to token ring) + Lotus (ccMail & 123) really started to take over corporate America.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Novell Netware seemed more prominent at my customers. I don't ever remember seeing Banyan Vines.
jussij 5y ago
IBM also hindered the roll out of
- bombcar 5y ago
  fried chicken
kazinator 5y ago
Seconded. In 1987, Windows was not "hugely popular". It wasn't on anyone's radar. This was still DOS-versus-Mac era, with your Amigas and Ataris and held-over 8 bit micros on the sidelines.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Yes, it didn't feel like a certainty that products like Windows or the Mac would prevail. Early versions of Windows were crude and the Mac was very expensive.

midasuni 5y ago

Yes, it was dos and lotus123 and maybe word perfect that were popular in the 80s.

anyfoo 5y ago
Not contradicting, just adding that MS Word for DOS was also somewhat popular.
wombatmobile 5y ago
Yes. Personal Computers were typewriters and calculators for the first 10 years. That's not to diminish their importance - quite the opposite. The impact changed the world. That's why it took a whole decade. Consider that when the IBM PC was launched, offices the world over had typing pools populated by women whose job it was to type whatever they were given. Spreadsheets changed the world. We went from 1 or 2 types of tuna and 1 or 2 types of olive oil in the supermarket to dozens of each. Why? How? The big enabler was Lotus 1-2-3. Product managers in food companies could manage the ingredients, inventory, branding, marketing and sales performance of dozens of products at a time instead of just one or two. The spreadsheet was a fancy calculator, in the same way that a machine gun is a fancy pistol, and a combine harvester is a fancy hoe. The first decade of personal computers enabled office work to scale, and it reconfigured literacy by enabling individuals to type letters when they felt like it. The fax machine was right there alongside, like the hammer and the sickle of capitalism. The resulting boost to productivity touched every industry the world over.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

I'd go so far and say irrelevant until Windows for Workgroups 3.11. That's when Banyan Vines + Ethernet (as opposed to token ring) + Lotus (ccMail & 123) really started to take over corporate America.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Novell Netware seemed more prominent at my customers. I don't ever remember seeing Banyan Vines.

jussij 5y ago

IBM also hindered the roll out of

bombcar 5y ago
fried chicken

kazinator 5y ago

Seconded. In 1987, Windows was not "hugely popular". It wasn't on anyone's radar. This was still DOS-versus-Mac era, with your Amigas and Ataris and held-over 8 bit micros on the sidelines.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

Yes, it didn't feel like a certainty that products like Windows or the Mac would prevail. Early versions of Windows were crude and the Mac was very expensive.