4 ms·

OS/2 was a massive leap in the right direction. It was well ahead of its contemporaries of the time. Of course it wasn't all roses, like the contemporaries of

OS/2 was a massive leap in the right direction. It was well ahead of its contemporaries of the time. Of course it wasn't all roses, like the contemporaries of the era it had issues, which would be more prominent if more people had used it. It's worth remembering that, by todays standards, in the late 80s, computers were rare. Most businesses didn't have one at all, most homes certainly didn't (and a significant portion of those that did were not-Dos machines.) My Computer Science class of 1990 mostly consisted of folk who'd never touched a computer before. No-one I knew had an Apple Mac, they were expensive. Windows 95 wasn't as good as OS/2 3.0 (aka Warp), but it marketed the idea of computers to the general public. Only once the 486 shipped did you start to see computers as "normal". But even by the end of the 90s we'd sell hardware when selling software. I'd argue that we're absolutely in the future that OS/2 envisaged. Ultimately all paths converged and (probably starting with XP) we've been living that future.

tadfisher 3y ago
What's interesting to me is that we ended up with NT's Win32 personality as the default and only userland. I always wondered what an "NT-native" userland would look like, and if that would have been closer to the OS/2 personality that shipped through NT 4.0.
- bruce511 3y ago
  Perhaps it would look different, in the way that say MacOS and Windows are different, but I doubt it would be "better". I mean, lots of choices are arbitrary. They're typically "invisible", like the pedals in a car, until you come across a different layout. [1] visually, OSs like to reinvent themselves (Windows XP, 7, 8, 10, 11) but functionally they behave the same (maximise, minimise, close buttons in top right corner of window). OS/2 today would look very different to OS/2 then, but probably a lot like Windows 11. [1] I drove a truck for a bit that forced my left foot to use the brake because of the design. It took a long while to get used to pressing gently with the left foot, as I was used to trucks with a very heavy clutch pedal.
  - pooper 3y ago
    > [1] I drove a truck for a bit that forced my left foot to use the brake because of the design. It took a long while to get used to pressing gently with the left foot, as I was used to trucks with a very heavy clutch pedal. I have never driven a "real" truck so I'm confused by this. I drive automatic so my left foot never does anything. Can you tell me a bit more about the arrangement that forces you to use your left foot for brakes?
    - bruce511 3y ago
      The steering column was big, and went all the way to the floor. So basically one foot was on the left, one on the right. Think two footwells instead of 1. You couldn't cross the right-foot over to the left pedal. Being a driver was tricky, being a passenger was worse - while learning the braking tended to be "very unsubtle".
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
But... are we in the future that BeOS envisioned? If we're in the future of OS/2, it is still pretty meh. Windows is inarguably getting worse. OSX treads water out of managerial apathy. Linux treads water by rebuilding things that don't need rebuilding. BeOS was the world we wanted.
- sircastor 3y ago
  I've poked around a little at Haiku wondering if it's truly the spiritual successor to BeOS. I don't know, because I only ever saw Be at a friends house running on a PowerMac. I like the idea that there's still room for more OS', and that there might be reason for them.
  - flenserboy 3y ago
    Action Retro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW2V034859k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW2V034859k) suggests that Haiku can be a daily driver, & does pretty well. Considering giving it a flight on my occasionally-used lappie.
- lproven 3y ago
  BeOS was wonderful and I loved it, as I said in print 24 years ago: https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorldMagazine/PCW%20200007%20July%20Created%20From%20PCW%20Cover%20CD%20%28No%20Cover%29/page/n50/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorldMagazine/PC... But it was just the same sort of OS as the mainstream, without all the legacy baggage -- much of which, sadly, the Haiku folks are putting back in. The world we wanted? I don't know about that. I played with a Remarkable slate thing a couple of years ago and it nearly made me weep. It is so much less than the Apple Newton was 30 years earlier. I want the original planned Newton in the Remarkable form factor. I want a thin, light, pocket Dylan workstation that runs for a week on a charge and can wirelessly connect to anything. I don't just want a BeBox. I wanted that in 1999, sure, but a quarter century later, I want something MUCH more ambitious than that.
  - bombcar 3y ago
VagabundoP 3y ago
Late 80s computers were fairly common in Ireland, 386's and Mac's, although as you say mostly non-Dos, Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari and some other exotics. We had a computer lab in my very run down school that has Macs and Apple IIs. My family were working class, if you had an interest there was a network of computer enthusiasts who would happy swap stuff, get you hardware etc. We bought a second hand 386 from somewhere, then fucked it up trying to add more memory I think. I was only a kid, but my dad saw me self learning BASIC and would encourage that sort of thing. If this was happening in 80s Ireland I'd be surprised to learn they were rare in other countries, we weren't exactly doing well at that point.
- coldtea 3y ago
  It was probably rare in 80s Ireland as well. If it was anything like the rest of Europe, what you remember sounds like a tiny percentage of the population (enthusiasts) as opposed to almost everybody, as it came to be later.
  - farrelle25 3y ago
    Home computers were definitely common-ish in Ireland in late 80s. (Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga). I'm from a small town in the West of Ireland and about 6 or 7 families got the new "Spectrum 48k" in 1985... By 1988-90 they were all over the place.. It was 1992 before we got an IBM PC 386 and that was a bit rarer alright... but Commodore and Amiga ruled for years..
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Depends on the definition of common-ish. In the UK there were about 2.5m Amstrad's (of various models) sold, similar for Spectrum, Comomodore 64 less. Amiga's and Atari's weren't for sale until the tail end of the 80s (and even then, Amiga had sold just ~ 400K between 1988-1990). All together around looks like in in 5 households had a computer, and the distribution favored higher income ones - in working class areas much fewer would. Before 1987 even less.
lproven 3y ago
> OS/2 was a massive leap in the right direction. It was well ahead of its contemporaries of the time. Agreed. But... > in the late 80s, computers were rare I'd dispute that. At the time, I was British. PCs were rare, as in, IBM PC-compatibles. Computers were everywhere. One view of OS/2 2 in the context of the time was that it made a 386 PC into what the Amiga, Atari ST and Acorn Archimedes already were: full-GUI multitasking computers with sound and decent full-colour graphics, and a fairly rich desktop. Because Windows 3.x was none of those. > No-one I knew had an Apple Mac, they were expensive. Agreed. Businesses only. I met one (1) private owner in that time. > Windows 95 wasn't as good as OS/2 3.0 (aka Warp) "Good" is much to narrow a word here. As an OS design, better? Yes. Better multitasking, better memory management, better filesystem. As a desktop? No way. Win95 had a much better desktop. Note how every Linux desktop except GNOME 3 and Pantheon is an inferior knock-off of Win95. Better for ordinary users? No. Win95 was much more compatible, with more hardware and more software. Better for networking? No. Win95 had a full network stack as stock, dialup and LAN. OS/2 made that an expensive optional extra. Better for developers? No. MS had lots of cheap dev tools. Sadly, mostly, OS/2 2.x was only "better" in academic, almost theoretical terms. In the real world for real people, Win95 was better in every way that counted. It banes me to say it, because I paid for OS/2 2 with my own money, something I've almost never done for software, as I work in the industry.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  A few things it had better was Smalltalk already doing the ".NET" role of OS/2, great CSet++, and SOM was and still is, much better than COM. Not that much of that mattered to the general public.
  - lproven 3y ago
    Good points!
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  I used OS/2 Warp which was admittedly very late to the party. I don't remember the desktop being at all worse than Win95. It had TCP/IP, a dial-up stack, Ethernet drivers etc. Silky smooth multi-tasking and didn't crash. OS/2 had no new games though, no DirectX, only older DOS games worked, and eventually most Windows programs wouldn't run anymore on OS/2 and then I switched to Linux. But during the Doom era it was pretty standard to boot DOS on a floppy before starting Doom, so what OS you had on the HDD didn't matter too much.
AlbertCory 3y ago
> Most businesses didn't have one at all, most homes certainly didn't I think this is wrong. The PC industry had been through a massive stock market boom in the early 80's, and "desktop publishing" was a real thing, not just for early adopters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_publishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_publishing There was also a TV show on public television: https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles why would they do that if it was such a niche? As for OS/2, Gates stabbed IBM in the back by pushing Windows, as is well documented. He continued to give lip service to OS/2, but anyone with eyes could see that Microsoft's heart was with Windows. > I'd argue that we're absolutely in the future that OS/2 envisaged Everyone had the same "vision" back then. Actually bringing it to market is something else again.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Computers had made large inroads in many different businesses. Newspapers all were done on computers because desktop publishing was so obviously better than the manual processes. Finance and the like were also computers. Scheduling was done on computers (thus the doctor's office had them for the staff but the doctor had not clue how to run them). Most word processing was on a computer, so low level staff had them - but the executives worked with hard copies and never touched the computer. Nothing was on the internet. So even though airlines did scheduling on a computer you needed to call a travel agent to get tickets as you didn't have access to schedule flights yourself. Even if you got access, there was no usability so you couldn't figure out how to do this without a week training. You might have had email, but the messages from the CEO was sent out via hard copy as not everyone in the company had it. When I started as an intern in the mid 1990s everyone was excited that we had a new system and now you could schedule your own meetings instead of asking a secretary to do this. This was at a computer company where the people wanting a meeting spent hours every day staring at a terminal, and had access to the scheduling system - but the system was so complex they couldn't figure out how to use it. The above is office jobs. There are a lot of non-office jobs that now have computers. When I had my garage door fixed the tech pulled out a tablet to sign off and pay for the work when done. Even 10 years ago this would have been handled by paper. In conclusion: computers had a lumpy start. I think that it is fair to say most businesses didn't have one. However many of them did. They were expensive, but affordable.

tadfisher 3y ago

What's interesting to me is that we ended up with NT's Win32 personality as the default and only userland. I always wondered what an "NT-native" userland would look like, and if that would have been closer to the OS/2 personality that shipped through NT 4.0.

bruce511 3y ago
Perhaps it would look different, in the way that say MacOS and Windows are different, but I doubt it would be "better". I mean, lots of choices are arbitrary. They're typically "invisible", like the pedals in a car, until you come across a different layout. [1] visually, OSs like to reinvent themselves (Windows XP, 7, 8, 10, 11) but functionally they behave the same (maximise, minimise, close buttons in top right corner of window). OS/2 today would look very different to OS/2 then, but probably a lot like Windows 11. [1] I drove a truck for a bit that forced my left foot to use the brake because of the design. It took a long while to get used to pressing gently with the left foot, as I was used to trucks with a very heavy clutch pedal.
- pooper 3y ago
  > [1] I drove a truck for a bit that forced my left foot to use the brake because of the design. It took a long while to get used to pressing gently with the left foot, as I was used to trucks with a very heavy clutch pedal. I have never driven a "real" truck so I'm confused by this. I drive automatic so my left foot never does anything. Can you tell me a bit more about the arrangement that forces you to use your left foot for brakes?
  - bruce511 3y ago
    The steering column was big, and went all the way to the floor. So basically one foot was on the left, one on the right. Think two footwells instead of 1. You couldn't cross the right-foot over to the left pedal. Being a driver was tricky, being a passenger was worse - while learning the braking tended to be "very unsubtle".

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

But... are we in the future that BeOS envisioned? If we're in the future of OS/2, it is still pretty meh. Windows is inarguably getting worse. OSX treads water out of managerial apathy. Linux treads water by rebuilding things that don't need rebuilding. BeOS was the world we wanted.

sircastor 3y ago
I've poked around a little at Haiku wondering if it's truly the spiritual successor to BeOS. I don't know, because I only ever saw Be at a friends house running on a PowerMac. I like the idea that there's still room for more OS', and that there might be reason for them.
- flenserboy 3y ago
  Action Retro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW2V034859k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW2V034859k) suggests that Haiku can be a daily driver, & does pretty well. Considering giving it a flight on my occasionally-used lappie.
lproven 3y ago
BeOS was wonderful and I loved it, as I said in print 24 years ago: https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorldMagazine/PCW%20200007%20July%20Created%20From%20PCW%20Cover%20CD%20%28No%20Cover%29/page/n50/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorldMagazine/PC... But it was just the same sort of OS as the mainstream, without all the legacy baggage -- much of which, sadly, the Haiku folks are putting back in. The world we wanted? I don't know about that. I played with a Remarkable slate thing a couple of years ago and it nearly made me weep. It is so much less than the Apple Newton was 30 years earlier. I want the original planned Newton in the Remarkable form factor. I want a thin, light, pocket Dylan workstation that runs for a week on a charge and can wirelessly connect to anything. I don't just want a BeBox. I wanted that in 1999, sure, but a quarter century later, I want something MUCH more ambitious than that.
- bombcar 3y ago

VagabundoP 3y ago

Late 80s computers were fairly common in Ireland, 386's and Mac's, although as you say mostly non-Dos, Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari and some other exotics. We had a computer lab in my very run down school that has Macs and Apple IIs. My family were working class, if you had an interest there was a network of computer enthusiasts who would happy swap stuff, get you hardware etc. We bought a second hand 386 from somewhere, then fucked it up trying to add more memory I think. I was only a kid, but my dad saw me self learning BASIC and would encourage that sort of thing. If this was happening in 80s Ireland I'd be surprised to learn they were rare in other countries, we weren't exactly doing well at that point.

coldtea 3y ago
It was probably rare in 80s Ireland as well. If it was anything like the rest of Europe, what you remember sounds like a tiny percentage of the population (enthusiasts) as opposed to almost everybody, as it came to be later.
- farrelle25 3y ago
  Home computers were definitely common-ish in Ireland in late 80s. (Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga). I'm from a small town in the West of Ireland and about 6 or 7 families got the new "Spectrum 48k" in 1985... By 1988-90 they were all over the place.. It was 1992 before we got an IBM PC 386 and that was a bit rarer alright... but Commodore and Amiga ruled for years..
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Depends on the definition of common-ish. In the UK there were about 2.5m Amstrad's (of various models) sold, similar for Spectrum, Comomodore 64 less. Amiga's and Atari's weren't for sale until the tail end of the 80s (and even then, Amiga had sold just ~ 400K between 1988-1990). All together around looks like in in 5 households had a computer, and the distribution favored higher income ones - in working class areas much fewer would. Before 1987 even less.

lproven 3y ago

> OS/2 was a massive leap in the right direction. It was well ahead of its contemporaries of the time. Agreed. But... > in the late 80s, computers were rare I'd dispute that. At the time, I was British. PCs were rare, as in, IBM PC-compatibles. Computers were everywhere. One view of OS/2 2 in the context of the time was that it made a 386 PC into what the Amiga, Atari ST and Acorn Archimedes already were: full-GUI multitasking computers with sound and decent full-colour graphics, and a fairly rich desktop. Because Windows 3.x was none of those. > No-one I knew had an Apple Mac, they were expensive. Agreed. Businesses only. I met one (1) private owner in that time. > Windows 95 wasn't as good as OS/2 3.0 (aka Warp) "Good" is much to narrow a word here. As an OS design, better? Yes. Better multitasking, better memory management, better filesystem. As a desktop? No way. Win95 had a much better desktop. Note how every Linux desktop except GNOME 3 and Pantheon is an inferior knock-off of Win95. Better for ordinary users? No. Win95 was much more compatible, with more hardware and more software. Better for networking? No. Win95 had a full network stack as stock, dialup and LAN. OS/2 made that an expensive optional extra. Better for developers? No. MS had lots of cheap dev tools. Sadly, mostly, OS/2 2.x was only "better" in academic, almost theoretical terms. In the real world for real people, Win95 was better in every way that counted. It banes me to say it, because I paid for OS/2 2 with my own money, something I've almost never done for software, as I work in the industry.

pjmlp 3y ago
A few things it had better was Smalltalk already doing the ".NET" role of OS/2, great CSet++, and SOM was and still is, much better than COM. Not that much of that mattered to the general public.
- lproven 3y ago
  Good points!
actionfromafar 3y ago
I used OS/2 Warp which was admittedly very late to the party. I don't remember the desktop being at all worse than Win95. It had TCP/IP, a dial-up stack, Ethernet drivers etc. Silky smooth multi-tasking and didn't crash. OS/2 had no new games though, no DirectX, only older DOS games worked, and eventually most Windows programs wouldn't run anymore on OS/2 and then I switched to Linux. But during the Doom era it was pretty standard to boot DOS on a floppy before starting Doom, so what OS you had on the HDD didn't matter too much.

AlbertCory 3y ago

> Most businesses didn't have one at all, most homes certainly didn't I think this is wrong. The PC industry had been through a massive stock market boom in the early 80's, and "desktop publishing" was a real thing, not just for early adopters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_publishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_publishing There was also a TV show on public television: https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles why would they do that if it was such a niche? As for OS/2, Gates stabbed IBM in the back by pushing Windows, as is well documented. He continued to give lip service to OS/2, but anyone with eyes could see that Microsoft's heart was with Windows. > I'd argue that we're absolutely in the future that OS/2 envisaged Everyone had the same "vision" back then. Actually bringing it to market is something else again.

bluGill 3y ago
Computers had made large inroads in many different businesses. Newspapers all were done on computers because desktop publishing was so obviously better than the manual processes. Finance and the like were also computers. Scheduling was done on computers (thus the doctor's office had them for the staff but the doctor had not clue how to run them). Most word processing was on a computer, so low level staff had them - but the executives worked with hard copies and never touched the computer. Nothing was on the internet. So even though airlines did scheduling on a computer you needed to call a travel agent to get tickets as you didn't have access to schedule flights yourself. Even if you got access, there was no usability so you couldn't figure out how to do this without a week training. You might have had email, but the messages from the CEO was sent out via hard copy as not everyone in the company had it. When I started as an intern in the mid 1990s everyone was excited that we had a new system and now you could schedule your own meetings instead of asking a secretary to do this. This was at a computer company where the people wanting a meeting spent hours every day staring at a terminal, and had access to the scheduling system - but the system was so complex they couldn't figure out how to use it. The above is office jobs. There are a lot of non-office jobs that now have computers. When I had my garage door fixed the tech pulled out a tablet to sign off and pay for the work when done. Even 10 years ago this would have been handled by paper. In conclusion: computers had a lumpy start. I think that it is fair to say most businesses didn't have one. However many of them did. They were expensive, but affordable.