3 ms·
I lived and worked through OS/2 1.1-1.3 and OS/2 1.1-Warp. The main reason of failure was that IBM still saw itself as a hardware company. OS/2 was enterprise s
by karmakaze 2y ago
I lived and worked through OS/2 1.1-1.3 and OS/2 1.1-Warp. The main reason of failure was that IBM still saw itself as a hardware company. OS/2 was enterprise software to sell PS/2 computers.
It was such a hassle to get it to run well on commodity hardware. It ran great on a $4000 PS/2 model 77, but that won't win market share like Windows 3.0 that ran on pretty much anything with a few megs ram. OS/2 was also memory hungry adding to the barrier to entry. Great OS--at least we have Win NT that kept some good parts.
> IBM's determination to serve its customers with 80286 PS/2s, and keep a promise, resulted in OS/2 being a failure. That is what allowed Windows to gain the upper hand.