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The idea of the 'reverse Trojan horse' reminds me of the later fate of OS/2, which shipped with such good Win 3.1 compatibility that nobody felt the need to bui

by npunt 5y ago

The idea of the 'reverse Trojan horse' reminds me of the later fate of OS/2, which shipped with such good Win 3.1 compatibility that nobody felt the need to build native OS/2 apps. The Jonathan is probably my favorite Apple concept but I agree that the business case for it would have been pretty terrible for several reasons.

rbanffy 5y ago
The Windows 3 compatibility was licensed from Microsoft. That way, in order to offer Windows 3.1 compatibility, IBM needed to pay Microsoft per OS/2 seat. IBM also refused to bundle OS/2 with their own computers at a lower price point than the ones with Windows bundled. All things being the same, OS/2 was more expensive to run, while Windows 3.1 was crappy but got the job done. In Apple's case, they could just not make the MS-DOS compatible module. If someone else made it, Apple would still make money out of licensing. Since all Mac software relied on the Toolbox, it wouldn't be that hard to offer some form of multi-processing more or less the way we used X in the early days - by having a puny workstation (!) on our desks and running the heavy lifting on a big machine (that didn't even need to run the same flavor of Unix, or Unix for that matter). The difference would be that any "network" between the boxes would be on the backplane bus and VERY fast.
- glhaynes 5y ago
  >IBM also refused to bundle OS/2 with their own computers at a lower price point than the ones with Windows bundled. Not only that, but, IIRC, they charged more for a PC bundled with OS/2. This was a result of all the groups within IBM having been moved toward being run like individual businesses. So, the OS/2 business charged the PC business (whom they treated like any other customer) more than Microsoft charged for a copy of Windows. At least that's what I heard at the time.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Besides being more expensive, Windows 3 apps were (in my memory, at least) every bit as unreliable under OS/2 as they were on Windows (because the compatibility was an almost full Windows runtime), further negating any advantage OS/2 could have. As you point out, even the version of OS/2 that didn't have the Windows compatibility malware was more expensive than Windows. It's really hard to believe IBM would be so short sighted, but Microsoft is incredibly lucky in that regard - every company that tried to compete head-on with them, with the possible exception of Apple, made similar boneheaded moves.

by npunt 5y ago

rbanffy 5y ago

The Windows 3 compatibility was licensed from Microsoft. That way, in order to offer Windows 3.1 compatibility, IBM needed to pay Microsoft per OS/2 seat. IBM also refused to bundle OS/2 with their own computers at a lower price point than the ones with Windows bundled. All things being the same, OS/2 was more expensive to run, while Windows 3.1 was crappy but got the job done. In Apple's case, they could just not make the MS-DOS compatible module. If someone else made it, Apple would still make money out of licensing. Since all Mac software relied on the Toolbox, it wouldn't be that hard to offer some form of multi-processing more or less the way we used X in the early days - by having a puny workstation (!) on our desks and running the heavy lifting on a big machine (that didn't even need to run the same flavor of Unix, or Unix for that matter). The difference would be that any "network" between the boxes would be on the backplane bus and VERY fast.

glhaynes 5y ago
>IBM also refused to bundle OS/2 with their own computers at a lower price point than the ones with Windows bundled. Not only that, but, IIRC, they charged more for a PC bundled with OS/2. This was a result of all the groups within IBM having been moved toward being run like individual businesses. So, the OS/2 business charged the PC business (whom they treated like any other customer) more than Microsoft charged for a copy of Windows. At least that's what I heard at the time.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  Besides being more expensive, Windows 3 apps were (in my memory, at least) every bit as unreliable under OS/2 as they were on Windows (because the compatibility was an almost full Windows runtime), further negating any advantage OS/2 could have. As you point out, even the version of OS/2 that didn't have the Windows compatibility malware was more expensive than Windows. It's really hard to believe IBM would be so short sighted, but Microsoft is incredibly lucky in that regard - every company that tried to compete head-on with them, with the possible exception of Apple, made similar boneheaded moves.