What *truly* killed OS/2 as a desktop OS was the development team's inability to meet the deadline for the PowerPC version. After that, their funding dried up.
IBM had a grandiose plan to introduce a new platform to challenge the Wintel hegemony - PowerPC machines running OS/2.
The OS/2 project was *badly* mishandled - billions of dollars were wasted.
OS/2 PPC *was* released, technically, in late 1995 ... but large portions were missing, and what *was* there wasn't even beta-quality code.
The OS/2 Warp ad everyone remembers is the one with the Belgian nuns. I *believe* that it debuted during the 1995 Super Bowl, along with IBM's "Solutions for a small planet" campaign.
OS/2 Warp sold very well - remember that it was released in the waning days of the Win3.1x era, so it was far more advanced than Microsoft's then-current OS.. Windows 95 kept getting delayed.
Warp had a *very* high retail return rate, though - perhaps as high as 50 percent.
What *truly* killed OS/2 as a desktop OS was the development team's inability to meet the deadline for the PowerPC version. After that, their funding dried up.
IBM had a grandiose plan to introduce a new platform to challenge the Wintel hegemony - PowerPC machines running OS/2.
The OS/2 project was *badly* mishandled - billions of dollars were wasted.
OS/2 PPC *was* released, technically, in late 1995 ... but large portions were missing, and what *was* there wasn't even beta-quality code.
0814ma 1 year ago
The OS/2 Warp ad everyone remembers is the one with the Belgian nuns. I *believe* that it debuted during the 1995 Super Bowl, along with IBM's "Solutions for a small planet" campaign.
OS/2 Warp sold very well - remember that it was released in the waning days of the Win3.1x era, so it was far more advanced than Microsoft's then-current OS.. Windows 95 kept getting delayed.
Warp had a *very* high retail return rate, though - perhaps as high as 50 percent.
0814ma 1 year ago