[Music]foreign[Music]topic today we will be finishing thestory of os2 starting from the 1990release of the final os2 version thatMicrosoft and IBM developed under the1985 joint development agreementfollowing this Microsoft and IBMacrimoniously split and IBM took oversole development of os2 IBM's thencontinued attempts to crush itserstwhile partner and drive windows fromthe marketplace or at least make os2 aviable competing standard to Windows wasin the end an effort doomed to failurethis wasn't due to any superiority thatWindows had over os2 and features butrather IBM's stubborn refusal to doanything intelligent to get os2 into thehands of consumers and indeed IBM'salmost commodore-like ability to shootitself painfully in the foot asfrequently as possible I say almostcommodore-like because IBM is stillaround today and commodore well I'm surethey're having fun romping around ametal with imsi mitts and maybe digitalresearch whereas Microsoft did almosteverything right when it came to gettingwidespread Windows adoption IBM didalmost everything wrong when it came totrying to do the same thing for os2 butbefore the end came os2 somehowsoldiered on getting progressively moremature and feature Rich and inspiring afollowing that was arguably even moredevoted than Apple's acolytes as ScottAdams referenced in a 1995 Dilbert comicstrip it has been said that whilesuccess has many fathers failure hasonly one yet os2's failure required ahost of fathers apparently assiduouslyworking towards a single goal preventingos2 from ever truly competing withWindows one might almost suspect thatMicrosoft had infiltrated a legion ofnerdy James Bonds into IBM's uppermanagement with a mission of ensuringthe complete domination of Windows sadlythere were no secret agents involvedjust a long succession of incompetencefrom both individuals as well as IBM'sincreasing corporate dysfunction andabsolutely mind-bogglingly Plexbureaucracy to illustrate this lastpoint I will simply point out that in1988 an IBM vice president one of thetop 50 positions in the entire companywas still a whopping seven layers awayfrom the chief executive so far as IBM'sreporting structure went that sort ofcorporate structure isn't exactly arecipe for a fast-moving company but itabsolutely is a recipe for enormousamounts of corporate paralysis fightingand dysfunction there is something thatI want to say though before we reallystart diving into things I'm about to bepretty hard on IBM as a company and I'mabout to be pretty hard on a couple ofIBM's leaders however I want to be veryvery clear that I do not think a singleperson or division at IBM deliberatelyand or maliciously sabotaged os2'schance of being successful in any way ofthe multitude of poor decisions thateventually wound up destroying os2 somewere immediately evident as a bad choicesome were very quickly evident as a badchoice and some were a bad choice simplydue to bad luck for IBM mixed with goodluck for Microsoft but so far as I cantell none of these choices were madewith a deliberate goal of destroying os2the fact of the matter is that IBM was amassive organization that was Rife withinfighting and red tape and there wereany number of good leaders in it whoattempted to succeed in spite of thedysfunction sometimes while alsoattempting to reduce the dysfunction andred tape themselves that's a hard battleto fight and even the best of leaderscan fail to correctly juggle those twoburdens a certain Dilbert series aboutbattling business units is very veryapplicable here as IBM's variousdivisions and power blocks squabbled andfought for their internal goals andsuccesses with IBM's success as a wholebeing a frequent victim and no victimwas more injured more often than os2 tohelp balance out the story I'm going toas I can single out a couple people whoattempted to recover repair or at leastmitigate the effects of the the poordecision making one was an IBM leaderwho brought a level of energy hard workand experience to his role that in amore fair world would have been rewardedwith more success the other man wasoutside of IBM but was passionatelydevoted to os2 and did everything hecould to promote it while also callingout its weaknesses in an attempt torectify them in a more fair World hispassion would have been better rewardedas well I hope that by doing this I canbalance out the criticism I am about toLevy with at least a hint of positivityIBM genuinely had a lot of creativehard-working genuinely interestingpeople within the company and I am doingmy best to avoid making a joke aboutnone of them apparently being in themarketing department and the os2community as a whole had a lot ofpassionate supporters in it who tookos2's ups and downs very personally onan unrelated note while I'm not aware ofany sources that state this I have to atleast point out that IBM's naming schemefor os2 was really really odd and seemedto have little Rhyme or Reason as anexample os2 1.3 was sold in competitionwith Windows 3.0 and os2 2.0 and os2 2.1competed against Windows 3.1 ifconsumers know nothing about twosoftware products there is a tendency topick the one with a higher or at leastless confusing number although again Ihave never seen a source cite this asone of os2's problems however Iguarantee os2's odd versioning didn'thelp position it in the marketplace atall in December 1990 os2 1.3 wasreleased this version was the final oneto be developed Under The Jointdevelopment agreement between Microsoftand IBM os2 1.3 was far more usable thanprevious os2 versions as it not only hada fairly High chance of actuallyprinting correctly on the printers mostpeople owned but it also had areasonably nice Suite of applicationsavailable from IBM's desktop softwareDivision and here we see IBM'sincredible ability to shoot itself inthe foot strongly manifest itself we'veseen it before with how IBM lost controlof the PC Market Hardware standard nowit's time for this tendency to startattacking whatever control IBM still hadover the software standard and thedesktop software division was about tobe the first major victim of the 1990sbased out of Milford Connecticut thisdivision had been formed in 1988 whenIBM had had the rather surprisinglybright idea of forming a new division ofpeople brought in from outside thepolished suits and ties world of bigblue the division's goal was to focus ondeveloping more applications for os2being from outside the Mainframedominated world of big blue they couldbring in fresh ideas and perspectivesand hopefully help give IBM theknowledge it needed to successfullycompete in the application Marketplacethe desktop software division threwitself into the work with enthusiasm andby the time os2 1.3 was ready forrelease in 1990 their hard work hadproduced a suite of products thatenabled a new os2 user to do wordprocessing give business presentationsand even do desktop publishing and theseproducts were all reasonably polishedsolid experiences is for some Arcanereason I have not been able to figureout these applications were also goingto be released for Windows however thewindows versions were at least scheduledto ship well after the os2 versions withthe exclusivity hopefully giving os2 aboost right out of the gate however thedesktop software division had not solelybeen tunnel focused on developing os2applications they had also been payingclose attention to the marketplace andthe rising Windows tied realizing thatos2 needed some time to build momentumand also recognizing that the PC Worldwas eagerly seeking a modern GUI theywere concerned that Windows wouldsteamroll right over os2 before it had achance to build market share and meetthe Market's desires with this in mindthey managed to get a meeting set upwith the president of IBM himself JohnAkers in the meeting the desktopsoftware division Representatives beggedacres to take the rather unusual step ofbuying a GUI from a small softwarecompany called geoworks whose Flagshipproduct carried the same name unlike thelegend fairly sluggish Windows Geo Worksapparently ran quite well even on theslow 8086 processor of the original IBMPC from 1981. this wasn't the onlyoption on IBM's table either they couldalso choose to throw Gary killed all abone and use gem running on top of Drdos cutting Microsoft and MS-DOS out ofthe picture Dr dos was an excellentoperating system that for all intentsand purposes was fully compatible withthe existing body of PC software and Gemwas an excellent GUI that ran on top ofDos whether Dr dos or MS-DOS well gemitself would eventually power the itaristadly appearing with IBM would neverhappen of course one final option thataccording to Merrill Chapman's book waswidely discussed inside of IBM was touse the presentation manager interfaceand then apparently slather it on top ofDos now I cannot seem to find anydetails about how this would have workedso I'm somewhat guessing here but theonly way this would seem to make sensewould be if presentation manager was aprogram that ran on top of of dollssimilar to how Windows functionedpresumably the eventual goal would havebeen to quietly migrate people over toos2 which would have looked the same tothe average user but had the modern os2Foundation instead of the Aging dos oneit seems like this wouldn't have been abad idea but I'm curious what you allthink about it let me know in thecomments if you think this idea wouldhave worked out better than what IBMactually did even as the 1980s came to aclose IBM still had the upper hand withMicrosoft and could even go so far as tothreaten them with the termination ofthe joint development agreement and justgo their own way if they didn't halt allwindows development at this point whichwas prior to the release of Windows 3.0and the first significant successMicrosoft would see with Windows therewas at least a good chance thatMicrosoft would have backed downpotentially allowing IBM to stranglewindows before it had a chance to firmlycement itself as the dominant GUI forPCs but it was not to be when thedesktop software divisionRepresentatives met with Acres they weretreated politely but Condes ascendinglyin search of stupidity quotes Acres ascalling them a group of good kids beforelecturing them on the realities of lifeas IBM saw it essentially IBM controlledthe PC market controlled the standardsand presumably thanks to os2 and PS2 italways would Acres referred to Gates asa nice boy who presumably was tooinnocent and naive to ever pose a threatto IBM Acres also confidently assertedthat IBM had accounting plan to solvethe problem of positioning os2 versusWindows this plan would soon be realizedin a python-esque agreement withMicrosoft in which Windows was supposedto be positioned solely for low endmachines whereas os2 was reserved forthe rarefied heights of high-endmachines or in other words Windows wasfor the computers most people owned andos2 was reserved for the computers theywished they could afford meanwhile backat the meeting with Acres the desktopsoftware reps were given a pat on thehead and a lollipop before being sentback to their cubicles the entiredesktop software division was thendisbanded in 1992 right before therelease of os2 2.0 this ensured thatfuture releases of os2 were robbed ofthe applications that they wouldotherwise have insured were availablesomething that would almost immediatelyhit hard with the next major release os22.0 and as Windows accelerated into anunbeatable Titan proving that theconcerns raised had been 100 valid itwas probably at least mild consolationto the former desktop software membersthat Acres was booted out of IBM shortlyafter disbanding them I promised that wewould try to balance out the criticismsby spotlighting a couple of interestingpeople so I think this is a good placeto introduce Jim canavino the new headof IBM's PC division as of the end of1988. canovino although comparativelyyoung was a longtime IBM veteran and wasconsidered a potential candidate for IBMchairman a hard-working hard driving mancannavino had previously headed IBM'sMainframe division responsible for halfof IBM's total revenue and a whoppingtwo-thirds of its profits and he did itall by age 40. cannavino's story is aninteresting one as he was far from thetypical IBM Employee having talked hisway into a job interview when he wasonly a teenager and when I say thatcannavino was hard working if anythingthat's an understatement he married assoon as he graduated from high schoolsupporting his young and growing familyby working three separate jobs at thesame Supermarket produce manager meatmanager and a third managerial positionthe three salaries kept him working fromsix in the morning until 10 at night butit did let him earn a reasonable livingfor his family just for extra fun on topof all this work he also started takingElectronics classes at the DeVryTechnical Institute near Chicagoeventually while still a teenagercannavino found his way to an IBM branchoffice in Oak Park and managed to Bluffhis way into an unscheduled jobinterview with the branch manager a MrThompson canovito convinced Thompson togive him the aptitude for IBM's repairtechnicians and aced it but since heonly had a high school degree he didn'treally meet IBM standards for hiringtechnicians but since it was the early1960s and IBM was in the middle of arapid expansion due to its 5 billiondollar gamble on the new s360 line ofmainframes Thompson took a chance andhired cannavino who again was still ateenager at the time I believe he was 19years old as Thompson was consideringhis decision hannavino promised him thathe would be Thompson's best repairtechnician within six months of beinghired or else he would give back all ofhis paychecks Thompson thought canovinawas joking but he eventually found outthat he was dead serious how did he findout a few months later when IBM'spayroll division reached out to him tofind out why cannavino was throwing offtheir books by never cashing his checkscanovino explained to the firstincredulous then amused Thompson that hehad been keeping all of his payrollchecks in a shoebox just in case he hadto return them since this obviouslymeant that he had no income from IBMhe'd taken a job at a pizza parlor onthe side to pay the bills from thatpoint on cannavino's rights through IBMhad been meteoric as he soon moved fromrepair work into Mainframe programmingquickly gaining a reputation as one ofIBM's best bug fixers before too muchlonger he was moved to New York thecenter for all of IBM's Mainframeprogramming at the time cannavino soonfigured out a way to make a lot ofexisting applications run much faster onthe new s360 systems and when nobodybelieved him he basically stole aMainframe to prove it okay he didn'ttechnically steal it what he did wasfirst find an IBM division that wasscheduled to have a Mainframe deliveredto it that he felt wouldn't miss it fora few months then he sneaked into theMainframe shipping area and changed theshipping label on the division's shinynew Mainframe having it sent to a vacantIBM lab instead he then spent the nextseveral months working with a coupleother programmers to prove his theoryand was able to make improvements thatled to speed increases of over doublefor many applications this and othersuccesses Plus canovino's in incredibleappetite for work rocketed him up toFirst the head of IBM's mainframes andthen to take over the PC division afterBill Lowe decided to leave for aposition at Xerox in 1988 and afterspending six months working on fixingsome of the most pressing process issuesin the division cannavino turned hisformidable attention to Microsoft andwhat exactly IBM was getting out of itsbusiness relationship and the jda and hewas not happy with what he found os2wasn't selling well at all and had a lotof bug reports stacked up and cannavinowas not happy with what he felt was theundisciplined way Microsoft wrote coderemember cannavino was not just aMainframe programmer he was the productof a programming culture that emphasizedmethodical well-organized well-commentedand painstakingly documented code Thiswas um not exactly the way Microsoftworked and the clash between cannavino'smethodical Mainframe programmingbackground and expectations and the morefreewheeling Maverick style thatMicrosoft's programmers tended to usewell it was bound to cause immediatefriction additionally a lot of key partsof os2 had been written by Microsoft notIBM and according to Big Blues theunmaking of IBM if IBM ever tried tomake a clean break it would find that ithad to start pretty much from scratch onparts of the code that were not onlyimportant but were so complicated thatit might take IBM programmers a coupleof years to get up to speed afrightfully long time in the PC businesscannavino also had to deal with the factthat IBM's accounting procedures treatedsoftware development in a way thatbasically handcuffed him to os2 nomatter his concerns essentially IBM onlycounted a quarter of the yearly cost fordeveloping a piece of software with theremaining three quarters spread over thefollowing years by 1989 IBM had beenspending about 150 million dollars ayear on os2 development and had rolledforward the bulk of that over a numberof years totaling at least 225 milliondollars of deferred costs hanging overcanovino's head if he decided to backout of os2 entirely which wasUnthinkable anyhow based on the amountof public promises IBM had made to thebusinesses that had already invested inos2 but if he decided to do it anyhowalong with all the other problems almosta quarter billion dollars of deferredexpenses would come crashing down ontohis head it was Unthinkable and socanovino decided he had no choice but tocontinue with os2 and with Microsoft asa partner at least until he could figureout what to do to break the deadlockthroughout 1989 and 1990 canovino workedat this problem well he also did hisbest to court some major software makerslike Lotus software publishing andmetaphor to invest into applications foros2 while also promising them that hewould bring gates to heal and ensurethat Windows would not take over themarket and he had a series of intensemeetings with Gates starting in summerof 1989 trying to hammer out acompromise that would solve his problemsor at least reduce them but it was allfor naught in spite of canovino's bestefforts to figure out a solution thatwould enable him to crush the threatWindows represented and position os2 forsuccess in the end Microsoft and IBMwhen their are separate ways in 1990 andIBM had to take over full responsibilityfor os2's continued development inmarketing for better or worse but thisactually almost didn't happen accordingto One Source according to the book bigBlues the unmaking of IBM in early 1991cannavino was actually seriouslyconsidering just throwing in the towelon os2 admitting Gates and windows hadwon and saving the 125 million dollars ayear that he was spending on anoperating system that very few peopleseemed interested in even with all theproblems that this would cause and thethen chairman of IBM John Akers wasapparently thinking the same thing in ameeting with acres and other IBM SeniorManagement in early 1991 Acres basicallyasked why IBM should continue to investin os2 when it seemed the market justwanted Windows canovino responded byadmitting that maybe IBM should justgive up on os2 however he thought thatthere was a 60 chance that it was worthcontinuing according to Big Bluescanovino said that he thought that IBMshould continue with os2 partly becauseit could make real money in and personalcomputer operating systems even thoughthe market was a relatively small 600million dollars a year and IBM throughos2 had almost no market share cannavinoalso raised the whole issue of settingstandards if Microsoft controlled themarket then it not IBM would decide whento build capabilities into the operatingsystem that would let softwaredevelopers build video for example intotheir applications canovino clearly hada pretty good idea of what was at stakeand he succeeded in persuading acres tocontinue os2 development os2 wouldsurvive another day and in spite of hisreservations canovino was determined todo whatever he could to make it asuccess one additional ratherentertaining nugget that I found lies inos2 reported sales numbers specificallyits claimed by early 1991 that around600 000 copies of os2 had been soldsince its 1987 launch IBM arrived atthis figure by taking the 300 000 copiesof os2 that were actually sold and thenadding another 300 000 copies of os2that were given away to a number ofIBM's largest accounts when theypurchased sufficient amounts of IBM'smemory boards according to Big Blues asfar as anyone could tell those threehundred thousand copies of os2 had neverbeen used the uh interesting part comesin when Bill Gates started publiclypointing out that only 300 000 copieshad been sold something he would knowbecause Microsoft had only receivedroyalties for 300 000 copies of os2 IBMquickly sent him a royalty check tocover the other 300 000 copies providedGates agreed to start publicly using the600 000 sales figure instead which Gatesdid while also telling multiplereporters exactly what had happened andthen smilingly insisting that they usedthe 600 000 figure in spite of thecollapse of the jda IBM's developers gotto work fairly quickly on getting thenext version of os2 ready to go all ontheir own and after a mildlysurprisingly short two years ofdevelopment os2 2.0 was released inApril of 1992. largely thanks to thepreviously mentioned disbandment of thedesktop software division it didn'texactly launched with a host of killerapps or even one killer app this failurewas again entirely on IBM's shoulders asos2 2.0 was the first release that IBMwas solely responsible for marketing andselling and they were badly strugglingto figure out a coherent strategy bythis point it was clear that os2 wasbadly trailing windows and sales whichwas racking up large numbers thankslargely to the success of Windows 3.0and had sold around 30 million copiesacross all versions by this point thisnumber does not include the large numberof pirated copies either as contemporaryversions of windows were almostludicrously easy to Pirate somethingthat undoubtedly helped Drive greateradoption and to add insult to injuryguess what else was released in April of1992. but really Microsoft Windows justmakes your everyday work easier isn'tthat the point of personal ComputinganywayMicrosoft Windowsyeah you guessed it on April 6 1992Microsoft released Windows 3.1 so os22.0 was launched directly into strongheadwinds as the successor to the mostpopular Windows version to date Godzillais stomped onto the scene the exact samemonth even before its release Windows3.1 was already clearly going to be amassive success and I doubt it's acoincidence that it was released just intime to Stomp all over os2 2.0's launchGates always plays to win and he alwaysgoes for the throw whenever possiblefrom a feature's perspective os2 2.0 wasa genuinely Powerful release withfunctionality and stability that wereyears ahead of Windows 3.1 it was alargely 32-bit operating system capableof exploiting the full power of 46 inthe new Pentium processors whereasWindows 3.1 was still trapped by its16-bit Legacy os2 2.0 had also embracedobject-oriented programming which wasextremely forward-looking and alsosomething that Steve Jobs next computercompany had been pushing for years withtheir Advanced Next Step operatingsystem I mostly bring this up todemonstrate that IBM was genuinelyinnovating and trying to push the stateof the art forward and bringing a modernmultitasking 32-bit object-orientedoperating system to the broader consumerMarket os2 2.0 also ditched the oldpresentation manager graphical interfacethat had been developed in partnershipwith Microsoft and contained manyelements in common with Windows in favorof a new and original graphicalinterface called workplace shell os2 wasmoving firmly away from its confusingWindows Microsoft Heritage and wasbecoming a solidly IBM product andhonestly this was a very good thing andos2 2.0 really does a good job ofshowing that IBM had learned a thing ortwo over the previous years about how todevelop good software unfortunatelyeverything apart from os2 developmentwas still pretty much die roll as towhether it was going to be a smart moveor not to help Drive the broader os2Community IBM had founded the IBMindependent vendor League or ivl thisorganization was formed to help Marketos2 through books magazinescertifications and similar marketingstrategies in addition there were alsoseveral forums set up most prominentlybeing will zachman's cannabis Forumwhich was hosted on CompuServe IBM alsomade a smart decision in appointingDavid Barnes as os2's lead evangelist aposition that according to his LinkedInhe began in January of 1990. Barnes wasprobably the closest thing IBM had toguy Kawasaki Apple's Chief evangelistfor the Macintosh back in the 1980sBarnes was an enthusiastic speaker whowas not only passionate about os2 butwas personable and extremely good atcommunicating os2's strengths and wellevangelizing for the platform he wasalso extremely good at taking complexfeatures such as multi-threading and 16vs 32 bits breaking them down andexplaining them in an easy to understandfashion you couldn't get a good feel forhow good a speaker he was from thefollowing clip taken from a 1993 eventwhere he presented os2 2.1 versus aMicrosoft rep who presented NT and thena lively q a ensued yes we sell Hardwareas the IBM Corporation but my objectiveis to get os2 to run on as many machinesas possible and that's what we plan ondoing other things that are in here thatare new PCM CIA support for the pcmciaand the portable machines as well asadvanced power management okaynow the the biggest thing out of all ofthis is that now I can have my os2devices and they can be non-iv devicesand and that's terrific oh by the wayI'll let you know I got a 46 33 hereI've got 16 megabyte of memory because IGet It Free and uhI'll tell you that I could do this demoin eight and you would be duly impressedyou really would it is very impressivein eight OS 2's minimum on the side ofthe box that says four David Barnes sayssix is the minimum I like eight it's anice sweet spot and everybody's prettyhappy at eight megabyte okay now in hisrole as lead evangelist Barnes traveledto 41 different countries gave up to adozen presentations a week and evenstarred in a series of commercials forIBM called the Warped world of DavidBarnes he was a huge asset to IBM andos2 and appointing him to his positionwas something you can definitively saythat IBM did right IBM's setting up ofthe ivl and various related marketingefforts somewhat balanced out itsdecision to close down the desktopsoftware division but did not make upfor losing the applications that wouldhave otherwise launched with os2 2.0 andhelped it gain traction IBM was helpedout however by the fact that Microsoftand its legendarily Cutthroat tacticswas starting to lose large and menacingin the eyes of a number of softwaredevelopers who were beginning to thinkthat maybe IBM was the lesser of twoevil IBM also diverted a lot of wastedeffort into an abortive partnership witha directionless apple with bothcompanies working on a project calledtalent talent was supposed to be a nextGeneration operating system one thatApple badly needed but seemed a bit of ahead scratcher for IBM to be involved inthis description actually doesn't dojustice to just how odd intelligent wasas in search of stupidity puts itintelligent started out as an attempt tobuild yet another Next Generation OSwhich then morphed into a half-wittedeffort to build an OS that would runother os's when this proved unfeasibleTalent decided to waste more time andmoney creating a series of middlewaretools that no one understood or boughtbefore someone woke up and pulled theplug on the entire Fiasco before itfinally imploded intelligent burnedthrough about half a billion dollarsalthough I am unsure if that was itstotal cost or just what IBM spent on itregardless IBM definitely spent a lot ofmoney and wasted a lot of effort thatos2 badly needed and spent on it insteadthanks to talent and the Applepartnership there were even rumors thatapple and IBM were going to merge andos2 was going to replace its existingGUI with the Macintosh one fortunatelyfor IBM most os2 developers seem toignore this rumor and kept their effortsfocused on selling and developing theiros2 applications of course IBM was busymaking their job much harder than itneeded to be since IBM still refused toset up direct marketing efforts ordistribution Channel programs aimed atincreasing the visibility of os2applications from third-party developersas Chapman puts it several attempts weremade to convince the powers that were tocreate software promotional bundles withos2 or at the very least includetrialware versions of applications andRetail units of the product all suchattempts foundered something like thiscould have not only helped to directlyincrease the sales of the third partyapplications that os2 desperately neededbut also encouraged third-partydevelopers to keep working on os2applications instead of feeling likethey were completely alone and withoutany support in selling their productsabout all you could say about IBM'sattitude its third-party os2 developerswas that it was basically benign neglectnot active hatred I guess if you putIBM's Behavior next to the hostilityAtari had originally had towards anythird-party developer that dared todevelop games for the Atari 2600 IBMlooks fairly good but absent such afavorable comparison IBM's Behaviormakes it quite hard to feel sorry forwhat eventually happened to them andIBM's complete lack of intelligence inhandling their third-party developerspales in comparison to themind-numbingly foolish decision toincorporate Windows 3.0 into os2 2.0 andWindows 3.1 into the following releaseOS to 2.1 keep in mind at this pointWindows was rapidly gaining Traction inmarket share but was still very much inthe minority when it came to its installbase not because of os2 or any otheralternative operating system but becausemost PCS still solely ran MS-DOS withoutany sort of graphical user operatingsystem and with that in mind let's alsotalk about MS-DOS compatibility you know2 before tackling its Windowscompatibility after all windows might beshiny and finally selling really wellbut MS-DOS applications were still ahuge part of the market and os2 hadexcellent MS-DOS compatibility with theos2 2x line seriously beefing up what itcould do well the os2 1X line could onlyrun a single dos session in a singlewindow at a time the 2x line enabled theuser to run multiple dos sessionssimultaneously each in their own windowand virtual machine and if I again if Ipoint and click of this an existing dosapplication lotus123 now is reallytaking advantage of the object-orientedcharacteristics I pointed there was noneed for IBM to include a full versionof Windows with os2 it served no usefullong-term strategic purpose and in factwould serve as a sort of Trojan horsethat would contribute to os2's failurehowever thanks to the remnants of theagreement with Microsoft IBM was free toinclude a full version of Windows withos2 where it ran inside of a virtualmachine and by free to do so I mean thatIBM had the right to do it but also hadto pay Microsoft for each copy of os2sold bite magazine in 1994 stated thatthe license deal required IBM to pay 20per copy of os2 something thatcontributed at least 50 million dollarsto Microsoft's warchest from os2 2.0sales alone and helped contribute toos2's high price of over 200 although a20 royalty fee definitely does notexcuse charging os2's far higher pricethan Windows 3 and 3.1 did but poorpricing for os2 is a bit of a recurringtheme for big blue and it's going tocome up again another word on os2 2.0and 2.1's windows compatibility while itwas quite good there were still issuesthat could arise due to memorymanagement conflicts basically Windows 3and 3.1 have their own memory manager asdoes os2 in order for the os2 2x seriesto run Windows 3 and 3.1 the twoclashing memory management systems hadto be forced to work together somehow itseems that this was never fullysatisfactorily worked out as bitemagazine said in the January 1994 issuethat unable to modify the windows codeto use os2's memory management Servicesdirectly the os2 developers settled onusing the windows memory manager withinthe os2 memory manager Windowsmanipulations of memory can spill overinto the os2 swap file a quick caveat onOS 2.0 Windows compatibility as wellwhile the vast majority of Windows anddos applications did run without issueit was unable to run any Windowsapplications that ran under enhancedmode this represented a minority ofapplications but did prevent os2 frombeing able to legitimately claim fullwindows compatibility IBM's marketingpositioned os2 as able to run the vastmajority of Dos and windows applicationsas well as its own native applicationsof course and bike credited thiscompatibility with os2 2.0 sales numbersof at least two and a half million butWindows compatibility was a two-edgedsword the fact that Windows applicationsran reasonably well under os2 created asignificant positioning problem for os2because Windows was exploding inpopularity well os2 was still strugglingto gain traction a number of developerswho had committed to creating os2applications instead targeted windowsand then used the loophole of os2'sWindows compatibility to claim thattheir applications were in fact os2compatible what IBM had done wasbasically take their enemy's TrojanHorse cheerfully invited into their cityand then brag in their marketing aboutdoing so sadly IBM's marketing of os2was consistently either wrong-headedpoorly implemented or just baffling nobetter example of this can be found thanIBM's mind-numbingly pointless decisionto sponsor the Austin texas-basedcollege football Fiesta Bowl from 1993to 1995. this sponsorship which cost IBMmillions of dollars made absolutely nosense from the start who exactly werethey reaching as in search of stupidityputs it it was unclear what benefit IBMderived from slapping the name os2 on asecond tier sporting event nodemographic information seemed to existthat indicated that people who watchedthe Fiesta Bowl were also highlyinterested in 32-bit os's and therewasn't much proof that watching acollege football game would make peoplemore inclined to rush home and demandcomputer resellers stock up on OS 2.once the sponsorship went through theevent was renamed to the IBM os2 FiestaBowl at which point IBM discovered thatit was its prerogative and moreimportantly its responsibility toprovide a lineup of third parties whowould be advertising during a series oftime slots that came with thesponsorship this was news to IBM whoapparently had not read the fine printof the contract perhaps their lawyerswere off sick that day this could havebeen an opportunity for IBM to boostsome of the best os2 applications andthird-party companies specificapplications and their features alwaysbeing an easier way to grab a potentialcustomer's attention as opposed totouting the benefits of the theoperating system they run under I meanit still wouldn't have redeemed theinherent stupidity of sponsoring theFiesta Bowl in the first place but itwould have at least possessed thetalking point of quasi-coherence as amaking lemonade out of lemons marketingstrategy additionally May of 1993 wouldsee the release of the amazinglycreatively named os2 2.1 which was asignificant upgrade more so than theslight version number increase wouldindicate I'll let IBM spokesman Johnsoyring who we will be meeting againlater give a quick summary of thechanges between 2.0 and 2.1 especiallythe increased Windows compatibility andthe friendlier more approachableobject-oriented desktop well first ofall in os2 2.1 we can run someadditional applications that we wereunable to run in os2 2.0 os2 2.0 wasable to run most dos applications andwindows applications but there were afew Windows applications we couldn't runand those were called enhanced modeWindows applications there's a couple ofthem on this yeah system right now thatare installed like Wolfram Mathematicaor the omnipage professional which is ascanning application which are enhancedmode applications which under os2 2.1now are able to run okay in addition dosand windows applications run much fasterunder this release of the operatingsystem and we integrate into theoperating system multimedia featureswhich now will be standard I never getto see that a little bit later on firstof all just give us a littleintroduction to this os2 desktop andsome of the things you can do John okaywhat many people so far have found veryattractive is the ease of use and manycompare this to the Apple Macintosh andsome argue that it's easier to use thanthe Macintosh because it builds in to anobject-oriented interfacefacilities such that a user canmanipulate what are viewed to beeveryday objects just by Direction onthe screen and dragging to them so whatwe'll do isum take a look now I am not buying thisclaim that os2 was easier to use thanthe Mac OS which for all of its problemsin 1993 Remain the gold standard inapproachability and ease of use I'm suremy comments section will probably havesome differing opinions on this as wellbut this is my opinion and I'm stickingto it however the features he brings upespecially the improved dos and windowscompatibility for all the fact that Ithink it was a mistake to include itwe're definitely attention grabbing astable easy to use powerful multitaskingoperating system that could run all ofyour existing windows and dosapplications and do it on your ordinary386 or 486 consumer desktop backed bythe power and resources of IBM well thatwould seem to be a pretty good valueproposition an advertising campaign thatplayed these facts up and then gotpeople excited about a bunch of spiffynew os2 applications would seem to be atleast an effort in the right directionof building some hype the broaderconsumer Market at that point didn'treally buy an operating system just tohave have it so mentioning the new os2release and then quickly pivoting tosome exciting new os2 only applicationsto try to build some anticipation wouldhave at least made some sense and IBM aspreviously mentioned had a bunch ofnewly acquired ad space at the FiestaBowl however IBM of course made zeroeffort to make use of the ad space foros2 applications rather than quicklycalling up their best os2 applicationdevelopers giving them the opportunityto do a quick commercial for theirproduct IBM instead desperately reachedout to local Austin businesses to see ifthey wanted the time slots advertisingfrom barbecue joints garages and cardealerships would of course contributeabsolutely nothing to os2 struggles butsuch a thought apparently never occurredto IBM the end result of this exerciseinum Creative Marketing was not Successfulby any metric known to man and withinIBM the Fiesta Bowl became quietly knownas the Fiasco Bowl as previouslymentioned os2 2.1 was a significantupgrade for os2 users as a matter factit was awarded a bite award forexcellence in January of 1994 and biteMagazine's annual Roundup of the bestproducts in the article explaining thereasons for the award bite declared thatthe latest revamp of os2 has solved mostif not all of the problems plaguing thelong and coming version 2.0 and thenwent on to laud os2 as an operatingsystem that is finally winning some ofthe vital support it needs and as ofthis version truly deserves which wasall definitely good news for os2 andvoted well for its sales furthermore thearticle also contained a further quotefrom bites executive editor John Udellsaying running os2 2.1 on an 8 megabytemachine that hasn't a prayer of runningWindows NT I find that it delivers manyof the same benefits robustmulti-threading and multitasking acomprehensive 32-bit API an advancedfile system and competent support forWindows 3.1 software software developershave known for years that os2 is a farmore productive environment than dosplus windows with the Polish maturity ofversion 2.1 more and more users arediscovering the same Advantage this wasa big win for os2 especially beingfavorably compared feature wise with theshiny new Windows NT but with lowersystem specs lower required system specsfrom a Microsoft competitor is hardlynew of course but the thought of thatcoming from IBM the company thatMicrosoft programmers had long sneeredat for being stodgy not hiring the bestpeople and for having a focus on linesof code rather than efficiency well thatwas a bit of a surprise but os2 2.1 wasproving that IBM's programmers hadlearned at least a thing or two aboutcode optimization and Tighterprogramming and there was further goodnews from IBM's development efforts withthe November 1993 release of os2 forWindows the problem of paying Microsoftroyalties for including windows withevery os2 sale had been at leastpartially solved via updating os2'sWindows support to allow for a user whoalready owned Windows 3.1 to install os2on top of it and os2 would then use theusers pre-existing Windows install todrive its Windows compatibility henceos2 for Windows didn't need to include acopy of Windows in every box and I guessthe theory was that sales reps wouldPoint people in the direction of thecorrect os2 2.1 version for their needswhether with or without Windows howeverI did find an article complaining aboutthe poor service os2 received from salesreps so I suspect this may have createda significant amount of confusion IBMwould get a mild amount of Revenge thefollowing decade when Microsoft decidedthat what people really wanted was tochoose between approximately 42 versionsof Vista some of which sold better thanothers of course additionally from whatI can tell IBM still had to pay aroyalty to Microsoft for every versionof the normal os2 2.1 sold as thatincluded Windows NN it just didn't needto pay royalties for any copies of us to2.1 for Windows sold the lack of a needto pay royalty fees meant that os2 forWindows actually only cost half of whatthe normal version of os 2 2.1 cost inspite of IBM's lamentable tendency torepeatedly shoot themselves in the footand then look confused os2 somehowactually continued to grow in popularityand its user base was steadilyincreasing this was definitely more dueto its growing reputation for stabilityand ease of use and the good word ofmouth generated by contented users andthe increasingly fervent os2 fan basethan it was from IBM's continuedincompetent marketing department thegrowing concerns about Microsoft'sbehavior and business practices didn'thurt either with IBM increasinglybenefiting from its reputation as stodgyand out of touch rather than pure evilincarnate however in October of 1994 os23.0 was released to the public it wouldbe followed by an updated version os2warp with win os2 scheduled for releasein early 1995 same as the prior versionof os2 the versions were differentiatedby their support for Windows 3.1 withthe original warp release os2 redlacking built-in support for Windows 3.1application to not including windows inthe later release os2 blue coming withthe full version of 3.1 pre-installedthese names are not official names butcame about because of the two differentspine colors on the os2 retail boxesthis might come off a little confusingso let me clarify either version of os2could run Windows but os2 red didn'tinclude it so the user needed to have italready installed on their system andthen install os2 on top of it os2 bluecame with a complete copy of Windows 3.1built into it and thus could beinstalled directly without needinganything else in order to run Windows 3era applications this was undoubtedlydone for the same reason as os2 2.1 haddone it to reduce the amount ofroyalties that IBM had to pay toMicrosoft in order to license Windows ofcourse it did rely on the sales repbeing knowledgeable enough or caringenough to point the customer to thecorrect colored spine for their needsand instead of just selling them windowseither way it was done OS 2's Windowscompatibility was extremely easy to useas from the user's perspective all thathappened was a new window popped openthat was running Windows 3.1 completewith program manager any 16-bitapplication that ran under Windows 3.1would run just fine provided the systemresources were sufficient of course andthis release came with a marketingfailure so complete that it almostkilled os2 all on its own and it allstarted with Star Trek Paramount IBM'schairman Lou gerstner and someremarkably incompetent performances fromIBM's lawyers who were apparentlyseeking to prove that marketing wasn'tthe only division of big blue that couldroyally screw things up for years os2releases had been given internal nameslifted from Star Trek including Borg andKlingon to be very clear these nameswere merely internal code names notnames for the actual os2 releases inkeeping with this tradition os2 3.0 hadbeen given the internal code name ofwarp unsurprisingly this was inreference to warp speed A fitting termfor os2 3.0 as it was supposed to benoticed possibly faster than previousversions as its release date nearchairman gerstner decreed that warpwould be the official name of not justthis release but of the product as awhole with os2 being henceforth known asos2 warp in this release being os2 warp3. the Star Trek connections with thisname were cool hip trendy and many otherspiffy adjectives that IBM had neverbeen remotely associated with so itseemed like a smart marketing coup IBMwent ahead and based their entiremarketing for os2 3.0 around a fairlyobvious Star Trek based theme rentingout a big Hall in New York City for theannouncement sending out hundreds ofinvites to various movers and shakers inthe computer world to come cover theannouncement and for a special treatinvited Patrick Stewart to come headlinethe event it was going to be incrediblysplashy really giving OS to warp a boldentrance into the marketplace andhopefully associating it in people'sminds with the aforementioned cooladjectives and with os2s maturing as aproduct it was a fairly worthy Targetfor such branding os2 warp was a verystable operating system it maintainedits excellent backwards compatibilitywith Windows 3 era applications and ofcourse it could run the vast catalog ofMS-DOS applications that were still asignificant part of the software Marketit was also fully 32-bit and an era whenconsumer Windows was still struggling toawkwardly straddle that Gap Windows NTis another topic of course something wewill be dealing with in the future in aseparate video the os2 world was veryhopeful about this release and IBM'splans for handling it and marketing itto the mainstream consumer it seemedlike IBM finally had an unqualifiedwinner on its hands from both a featureand a marketing perspective the os2faithful were optimistic that this timebig blue was going to do right by theirfavorite operating system and the storyof how it all went horribly wrong andthe faithful os2 supporters gathered inNew York City didn't even get to seePatrick Stewart It's just painful aquick word on os2 specific Publicationsby the way as this will become relevantin a minute a apart from IBM's own os2developer magazine there were apparentlyat least three major outside os2Publications os2 professional os2 worldand the descriptively named os2 magazineactually there seemed to have been twodifferent Publications named os2magazine but one was apparently renamedos2 and windows magazine just a fewmonths after it launched in 1990 so I'mnot counting it all were independent ofIBM but as previously mentioned at leastthe first two were formed thanks to theefforts of IBM's independent vendorLeague from what I gathered IBM ensuredthat at least the first two of thesemagazines had access to their registereduser list gaining an immediate audienceof 70 000 recipients for the inauguralissue of os2 professional in November of1992 and presumably a similar one foros2 world I don't know very much aboutos2 world and I have not been able tofind an archive of back issues but os2professional is an excellent resourcefor tracking the ups and downs wins andlosses of os2 at any given time duringthe Magazine's run I have no idea ifpublisher and editor-in-chief Edwinblack ever heard this so on theextremely off chance that he ever seesthis video let me just say that you andyour staff at os2 professional did agreat job covering os2 warts and all andyour hard work was very helpful increating this video and Edwin black isanother individual that I will beperiodically referencing is he is agreat example of someone outside of IBMwho wanted os2 to succeed and wasextremely passionate about it hismagazine os2 professional is a greatread and clearly shows the love andpassion that motivated a lot of the os2community it also is a great way to seea number of examples of frustration thatboiled to the surface periodically whenthe fans of os2 Saw IBM once againfailing to handle os2 correctly IBM'spersonal systems programming or PSPdivision contributed a letter to os2professionals inaugural issues saying onbehalf of everyone at IBM personalsystems programming congratulations onthe the debut of os2 professional we'repleased that your publication isdedicated to serving the needs of therapidly expanding community of users ofos2 2.0 IBM's Advanced 32-bit operatingsystem while many in the industry talkabout the operating system of the futureIBM has already shipped more than 1million copies of os2 2.0 in the comingmonths we hope os2 professional willbecome an important source of news andinformation as we add new products andfunctionality to os2 and users find newways to increase their productivitythank you for joining us as we build thebridge between yesterday and tomorrowwith os2 2.0 find words if they arepretty much just Bland corporate speakbut their Source being IBM's PSPdivision is rather ironic in light ofjust how much damage this division wasapparently going to do to os2 in thecoming years damage so great that os2professional itself was going to beexplicitly calling for this division tobe closed down in a May 1995 Publisher'sMemo from Edwin black that was verybluntly called dismantle PSP but thiswas a a couple years in someconsiderable bad blood away os2professionals editorial bent was ofcourse Very Pro os2 as might be expectedbut it took a very honest andstraightforward position editoriallyeven though it obviously dependedheavily on the revenue gained from theads placed by IBM itself especially atfirst this meant that while the magazinewould get excited about os2 news andhype it would also call out IBM forshortcomings and especially its botchedmarketing and let's just say that IBM'shandling of criticism does not exactlyshow them in a good light articles thatcovered both the good and the bad of os2were apparently extremely negativelyreceived by IBM who seems to have wantednothing but praise and adulation fromextremely compliant Publications or inother words IBM wanted Nintendo powerbut instead got next Generation gaming Imean just watch the segment from a 1993episode of the computer Chroniclescalled what happened to os2 where blackand os2 professional are introduced no Ithink there was a war and I think war isover it ended last fall during comdexwhen Windows NT failed to show rightright now os2 has demonstrated that itis revolutionized personal Computing itis a system that is so revolutionary itwill actually give time back to itsusers take the frenzy out of personalComputing and I'm speaking of themultitasking I'm speaking of the factthat a simple individual can do 10things at once not through his ownenergies but through the energies of thecomputer which is why os2 is known forharnessing the computer and not theoperator does this sound like a man whois anything other than passionate aboutos2 and enthusiastic about its featuresthis is hardly the behavior of a man whowanted anything less than total victoryfor os2 yet it seems that hiswillingness to call out IBM's minifailures with os2 didn't exactly endearhimself to Big Blue well I only have theMagazine's word for it the evidenceseems fairly conclusive that IBMcontinually displayed a very very thinskin in regards to any editorialcriticism in a June 1995 article calledcaught between Microsoft and IBM blackwrote that the Magazine's previouscoverage of os2's failures had provokedIBM's ire such that in Black's words inthe past IBM has harassed me withtelephone calls to my house at 1am tocomplain about articles instructed itsCanadian ad agencies to pull csetadvertising and explicitly state it wasin retaliation for articles faxed ourconfidential business plans to competingmagazine Publishers and threatened topull our license to use os2 in our nameunless we ran a photograph of a PSPmarketing executive and each time wehave steadfastly refused to cave in andhaving read a decent amount of os2professionals warp coverage inparticular I have to say that they comeacross very even-handedly clearly peoplewho loved os2 and were big fans of itbut also weren't blind to its issues andweren't afraid to call out IBM's portdecisions especially in the area ofmarketing IBM flailing around on allsides against the consequences of itspoor decisions was apparently onlywilling to listen to unqualified Praiseof os2 rather than Tough Love by thepeople who honestly seem to love os2hate Microsoft and want os2 to succeedwith the very best product possiblebacked by smart marketing it's fairlyeasy to draw a straight line from thisattitude to os2's eventual fate so withall the aforementioned in mind let'stake a look at what os2 professional hadto say about os2 warp 3. in the October1994 Edition a Publisher's memo to thereader called warp launches appearedbefore the issues two main features onwarp both of which were drawn from usingwarps final beta this memo strikes apainfully optimistic note about IBM'sos2 War plans stating IBM worldwide ispulling out every marketing stop it hasour monk is involved as never before Lougerstner personally renamed the productos2 warp just days before launch andthis time IBM is putting its money whereits mouth is TV radio Billboards DirectMail Publications retail programs OEMefforts and it's all happeningsimultaneously around the world thePublisher's memo went on to state thatthe research that went into the issue'scoverage of os2 warp was the mostfast-paced and frustrating assignment inmy 26 years of Journalism it took threetimes as long as my investigation of theKennedy assassination that helped reopenthe Warren Commission three times aslong as an investigation of Senator Davedurenberger that led to his indictmenttwice as long as the opening article onthe largest malpractice insurance fraudin the history of the U.S resulting innumerous prosecutions and it took 12times longer than a similar story onComputer Associates and os2 professionallast year what normally takes one to twocalls for any other story took 12 to 15calls to nail down the details of os2warp version 3. the two main features onwarp in this issue are grouped under theoverall title of os2 the Next Generationthe first feature covers os2 from aninstallation and general use standpointand is so blatant about drawingconnections to Star Trek that thearticle title is working at warp speedand there is an actual image of theEnterprise on page one as a matter offact the Enterprise is part of bothfeatures on warp in the magazine andStar Trek is an implicit part of everytitle the other article which covers themarketing plans for os2 warp is calledthe warp campaign phasers on stun thissort of shall we say Star Trek adjacentmarketing was about to bite IBM ratherpainfully in their suit cladhindquarters that's getting ahead of thestory os2 Warp 3 was shaping up featurewise to be a great product and one thatIBM badly needed but the review team atos2 professional was not going to justdeclare it perfect and go home errors inthe install process are noted includingone that showed up when attempting toinstall os2 warp over a previous versionof os2 that required over half a dozenwipe and reload from backup steps beforethe correct solution was found thissolution required manually editingconfig.sys before doing the upgradealways a fun part of any operatingsystem upgrade back in the day or atleast so I've heard I was a Mac User inthe 90s so I didn't have to deal withthese things In fairness the articlepoints out that they were working off aBeta release of warp and that these bugshad most likely been resolved before thefinal release Jerry pornell contributedan article as well one that was lesslaudatory towards older versions of os2basically he took issue with howpre-warp versions of os2 could put theuser in a bind where the Windows VirtualMachine locked up so badly as a resultof a misbehaving application that theuser couldn't get back to os2 itselfforcing a whole reboot and a potentialloss of work to be fair I'm not exactlysure of the relevance of this articlegiven that warp fixed the major issuespornell was writing about however I likethe article's inclusion as it shows thatthe magazine was doing its best tobalance being a cheerleader for os2 withbeing even-handed in its coverage of itplus I am always entertained bypornell's typical article formula ofbreaking something while trying to dosomething and the detailed steps he wasforced to take to resolve the problem sofar as it was too professional wasconcerned the overall impression of os2warp was very good with their reviewpointing out among other things that os2warp will now run reasonably well on a 4megabyte system with a realistic sweetspot of 8 megabytes or more a decreasefrom 2.1s 8 16 megabyte Target you heardright IBM's fancy new version of os2actually had lower system requirementsthan the previous version this might bethe first time this ever happened and itcertainly was a worthy achievement onethat Microsoft still hasn't managed topull off os2 warp was additionallylauded in the review for its vastlyimproved multitasking making it farharder for a misbehaving application tolock up the entire computer and force arestart however warp did have a ratherserious issue with the GUI itselfaccording to an excellent article fromours Technica on OS 2 it was possiblefor a misbehaving os2 application tolock up the entire os2 GUI to be clearthe computer was still running andbackground processes were stillexecuting you just couldn't you knowinteract with anything in the words ofthe article unfortunately os2 had acrucial flaw in its design a synchronousinput cue what this meant was that allmessages to the GUI Windows server wentthrough a single toll booth if any os2native GUI app ever stopped servicingits window messages the entire GUI wouldget stuck and the system froze okaytechnically the operating system wasstill running background tasks continuedto execute just fine you just couldn'tsee them or interact with them or doanything because the entire GUI was hungthis was definitely a problem althoughIn fairness the Computing world of themid-1990s was far more tolerant ofcomputers freezing and requiringrestarts than we are today thanks to theCooperative multitasking of the classicMac OS I clearly remember needing toreboot the family performer fairlyfrequently whenever Warcraft 2 orStarcraft decided to be naughty andfreeze everything when switching betweenfull screen and windowed mode so warp'sissue with occasionally freezing wasn'tas big a deal as it would be seen todaybut it definitely was a negative on thepositive side it was too warp wasfinally shipping with what was called abonus pack in every box this was anapplication Suite that included aspreadsheet a word processor a flat filedatabase and a personal informationmanager most of these applications hadbeen available before but bundling themtogether and including them for free inevery boxed copy of os2 sold was anunusually smart move for big blue andthese applications were solid enough intheir features for most users with os2professionals saying the applicationswithin the bonus pack are robust enoughfor most users and include such Advancedfeatures as mail merge DDE links betweendata and the disparate applicationsspell checking and data Import andExport overall the os2 coverage in themagazine was thorough fair and about thefarthest thing from a corporate Snow Jobone could imagine it did rely on arather heavy dose of optimism aboutIBM's competence and some equallyoptimistic assumptions about problems inthe betas that would surely be clearedup before warp went gold and the finalpreview copies Went Out In fairness Imust note that IBM at least gave a fairimpression of doing a lot right duringthe run-up to warp's full release and Idon't see the Magazine's optimism in anyway as somebody closing their eyessticking their fingers in their ears andhoping rather it was optimism thatseemed to at least be reasonablywarranted and I also didn't quote orcover any of this for humor at anyone'sexpense rather I want to very clearlymake the point that the os2 communityloved os2 in a way that IBM Blandcorporate master of stayed BusinessMachines That filled entire rooms neverreally understood and appreciated therewas genuine fervor and Devotion to os2and os2 warp was General creating a lotof well-deserved excitement and hype inthe community warp seemed like a fitproduct to go to warp speed and to theranks of ferven os2 supporters thefuture finally seemed bright now let'sreturn to IBM's planned exciting releaseof os2 warp and the event it wasthrowing in New York City to launch itand it's Star Trek adjacent branding allseemed good to go as the date for theevent Drew near and the os2 faithful gotmore and more excited this was going tobe a memorable night maybe even asexciting as the iconic launch of theMacintosh a decade prior okay definitelynot that exciting but still the lightcoming off of os2 warp was almostblinding and then a rather significantproblem abruptly appeared on the horizonand suddenly slammed right into IBM inall of the excitement IBM had somehowneglected to reach out to Paramount theowners of the Star Trek Brandonfranchise and make sure that they werefine with IBM making such an explicitconnection with the Star Trek brand aconnection that had already been widelyembraced by the os2 community as isevidenced by the aforementioned os2professional article Paramount who hadalready gotten annoyed at the Casual wayIBM had publicly used its internal StarTrek code names for previous versions ofos2 decided to cut IBM off at the kneesofficial legal notices were sent fromParamount's lawyers to their IBMcounterparts warning them that warp wasa trademark of Paramount and could notbe used in any way that tapped into theStar Trek brand whether implicitly orexplicitly IBM could use an alternatedictionary definition of warp but againnot in any way that infringed upon orsuggested the Star Trek brand this was abit of a problem actually a huge problemespecially from a marketing perspectiveIBM had already put a lot of time intoestablishing the name os2 warp inpeople's minds and it was felt that itwas 2 too late to change to another nameregretfully nobody suggested reachingout to George Lucas to see if he couldbe persuaded to let IBM rename os2 warp2 os2 hyperspace or os2 MillenniumFalcon sadly instead of that IBM'smarketing department decided to reachfor new heights of creativity and stickwith a strict dictionary definitions ofwarp such as bent twisted and warped ohand adding insult to injury PatrickStewart did not appear at the warplaunch as originally planned instead theos2 faithful had to settle for KateMulgrew from the then upcoming Star TrekVoyager show The Desperate attempt toredo the entirety of os2 warps brandingand theme while still keeping the samename resulted in a psychedelicadvertising campaign that to an overlycritical mind may have been dreamed upfrom the center of That 70s Show cameratwirl advertising was created thatencouraged the prospective user to warptheir computers by by upgrading to os2channeling the spirit of Cheech andChong for an operating system thatalready had an uphill battle was aunique way of selling to the mass Marketof the mid-1990s as in search ofstupidity puts it everyone of course wasthrilled at the prospect of running apsychedelic warping OS that smoked dopeand had flashbacks when you asked it toretrieve a file and the full rollout ofwarp was also further marred by the factthat on top of struggling to repositionos2 warps branding away from Star Trekat the last minute IBM also had to dealwith getting its new marketing agencyOgilvy and math are up to speed and whywas this necessary because this agencyhad been brought in to replace IBM'sprevious marketing agency lintus who hadbeen fired in May of 1994. when firedApparently one of the lintus executivesrather presciently stated they'll neverbe ready for the fall meaning theOctober release date for warp so Ogilvyand Mather basically got dropped intothe thick of things at the the lastminute and had to struggle to get therevised marketing for warp sorted outand running unsurprisingly the turmoilgenerated by trying to change up adcampaigns at the last minute plus dealwith the change of marketing agenciesplus IBM's own unique brand of bad luckand poor planning well it was just toomuch as a matter of fact it seems thatIBM's advertising Executives in the PSPdivision had no idea who their Ogilvyand math or counterparts were untilabout a month before warp's Octoberrelease this obviously made the alreadydifficult challenge of marketing warpeven harder it seems that literallyeverything that could go wrong from amarketing campaign did go wrong for poorwarp before it was even out the door theresult of all this Hasty scramblingaround was an ad campaign known as os2warped and it was as previouslymentioned every bit is confusing andpoorly thought out as you would expectby this point what was too professionalwound up doing a full article postmortemon the marketing disaster and theypulled absolutely zero punches statingthat the launch itself which even thisreporter hailed as a great event wasMuch Ado About Nothing in the wake of anadvertising campaign that did not get itright a marketing strategy that got itwrong and a product that unfortunatelymade headlines for its boo-boos I willadd that it seems like the idea forgoing with the traditional meaning ofwarp apparently came from and wasimplemented by Ogilvy and Mather sowhile IBM signed off on it and thusBears its fair share of blame thefailure was definitely a team effortalthough fairness also compels me tobalance this out further by pointing outthat the decision to stay with the warpbranding but use an alternative meaningdefinitely came from IBM and thus Ogilvyand mathur were pretty Limited in whatthey could do with their limited time toplan as the os2 professional pulsemortem says in a great paragraph thatreally encapsulates the entire problemwith the whole warped campaign mostsignificantly o m used the wrong warpconcept gerstner didn't want to reinventthe well-established warp name usedthroughout the beta period but that namewarp was taken from the Star Treklexicon evoking images of fantasticspeed and physics boggling abilities o mand PSP opted for the disorded wobblycan't get straight warp the misshapenwood warp the twangy guitar warp thewacko wobbly off-key warp image o mpropagated did not have the sameintrinsic power of the faster than lightwarp voila the power of the warp nameIBM invested so heavily in the onegerstner sought to capitalize on was infact lost or Worse turned into anegative image business could not haveconfidence in os2's baffling ads forgetting warped were not exactly settingthe faithful os2 fans on fire withenthusiasm quite the opposite actuallyas the publisher of os2 professionalEdwin black wrote a steaming editorialfor the magazine in which he expressedhis extreme displeasure with an os2 adhe had seen while passing through O'HareAirport in this ad legendary basketballcoach Phil Jackson smiled dreamily atthe thought of warping his computer os2warp also had a series of ads that neveractually showed os2 at all rather it wasjust shots of people's faces reacting toos2 warps various features the adcampaign was called it's a warped worldand the ads ended with a painfully hellofellow kids phrase os2 warped a totallycool way to run your computerstill it was too warped somehowsoldiered on helped along not only byits reputation for stability but also byMicrosoft's increasingly bad reputationwith the U.S Department of Justice moredevelopers were actually creating os2applications not just rebranding theirWindows ones via using the Fig Leaf ofos2's Windows compatibility retail salesof os2 itself began to pick up stronglyand at the 1994 technical interchangetrade show and IBM run event a largenumber of software vendors hadcompletely sold out of all of the os2applications they had brought as eagerpassersby snapped them up the ability tofairly easily run the vast library of16-bit Windows software inside of a true32-bit system that also featured properpreemptive multitasking was a hugeselling point for driving sales ifproperly marketed although a caveat onthis compatibility is the fact thatrunning virtual machines on the slowconsumer Hardware of the mid-19 90s mayor may not have provided a goodexperience on demanding Windowsapplications I remember trying out softWindows 98 on our family iMac and itwasn't exactly a speed demon although ofcourse Windows was far better integratedinto os2 then soft Windows was on Mac OSclassic some possible good news for warpwas the fact that Windows 95's Beta hadshipped with a nasty bug that caused itto freeze when attempting to runmultiple 32-bit applications somethingthat warp seemed to handle quite wellthis bug was called out from the frontpage of infoworld in their March 27 1995Edition with the cover title readingoperating system freezes running 32-bitmultitasking apps and a money quoteinside that said what was publicized asthe largest beta program in historyfailed to turn up a fundamentalarchitectural flaw in Windows 95 thatcauses the operating system to freezewhen multitasking a 32-bit applicationthis could have been turned intoexcellent marketing for warp as wellhelping it to build as much market shareas possible before Windows 95's actualrelease and finally giving IBM The Firmfoothold in the operating systems Marketthat they had been groping their waytowards for years there was certainly noway to stop the oncoming Juggernaut butfavorable press around a good productgiven months of unchallenged time tobuild sales well it goes without sayingthat this was probably the bestopportunity IBM had been given since themid-1980s so some parallels may be drawnwith sega's attempt to build as big amarket share as possible for theDreamcast before the PS2 launched and ifyou know how that attempt wound upworking out well nobody watching this isdoing it from their Dreamcast 3 inbetween rounds of Modern Warfare PanzerDragoon 4. in May of 1995 a mildlyupdated version of os2 warp aimed at theEnterprise Market was released calledos2 warp connect a New York Timesarticle from that same month stated thatthis version was designed to make iteasy for thousands of computers to sharenot just Hardware such as printers butalso various applications andinformation saying the intention is toprovide a single product that letscustomers share printers softwareapplications and information with avariety of computers and operatingsystems without having to spend hourslearning how to interact with each onethat same article goes on to say thatos2 had sold 9 million total copies ofos2 in total 2 million of which werecopies of warp that had been sold sinceits introduction in Fall of 1994. thatsame article does unfavorably contrastthis number with the 60 million copiesof Windows that had officially soldwhich of course does not include therampant piracy of early versions ofWindows that Microsoft ever aware of theadvantages of Market domination washappy to turn somewhat of a blind eyetowards os2 was still in no danger ofsupplanting windows at this point notwith its existing market share plus theimminent release of the Juggernaut ofWindows 95 just around the corner butIBM was still somehow settling into adecent if distance second place asopposed to Apple's rapidly dwindlingmarket share at this point warp was onthe verge of taking os2 to sustainablesuccess and in spite of IBM's bestefforts things seem to be breaking itsway very favorably it would take aserious Act of incompetence to throwthis away something genuinelymonumentally stupid as usual IBM was upto the challenge but first let's set thestage a bit with another Monumentalpiece of poor decision making by bigblue who you might remember also had apersonal computer division a personalcomputer division that even though itwasn't the largest PC maker anymorestill was a major player in the PCmarket you would think that IBM wouldhave started pre-installing os2 on everyIBM PC that went out the metaphoricaldoor just as soon as it was possible youwould be wrong as IBM's hardware andsoftware divisions apparently enjoyedtreating each other like bitter enemiesaccording to an excellent 2002 articlecalled who killed os2 which you can readover at os2world.com the IBM PC companyand the IBM personal software productsdivision had this in common they bothsent their profits to Armonk and ifthere were no profits the firings weredecreed in Armonk there was no love lostbetween them each looked upon the otheras the enemy PSP believing that the PCcompany was trying to run them out ofbusiness by failing to preload theirsoftware and the PC company believingthat PSP was trying to put them out ofbusiness by trying to force os2 on themwhen their customers wanted Windows itwas noticed that IBM apparently didn'tthink enough of os2 to put it on its ownmachines a person wanting os2 on forinstance an aptiva would literally haveto beg and demand and threaten then whenit all did arrive it often is not wasn'tproperly installed and wouldn't run welllater IBM would install both os2 andwindows on some of its machines but madeno particular effort to persuade theuser to boot one over the other and manycustomers were unaware that they had os2at all and of course since IBM wasn'tmaking any effort internally to includeos2 as the default operating system onits own computers it sure wasn't puttingin any effort to get oems to include os2and of Windows as their defaultMicrosoft's Cutthroat willingness to dowhatever it took to get an oem to sign aWindows licensing deal versus IBM's atbest lacks a daisical attitude towardthe same ensure that Microsoft prettymuch had the feel to itself when it cameto what operating system oems bundledwith their PCS sure there were othercompanies such as digital research whowere attempting to get oems to bundletheir product but these were prettysmall companies compared to theMicrosoft Behemoth and Microsoft overthe years had had little troublesquashing such attempts by the time ofos2 warp Microsoft essentially owned theOEM pre-installed market and would havevery little trouble or competitionkeeping it although obviously BOS gaveit its Best Shot clearly IBM was its ownbest enemy and had been for pretty muchall of os2's life but the years ofself-sabotage were about to come to asudden and concussive end and it wasgoing to start from the very top veryvery publicly on July 31st 1995 IBM CEOLou gerstner gave a speech during hisyearly meeting with financial analystswhere he not only said that os2 waswaging the last war implying that thecurrent war was already lost but hefollowed this up by saying that IBM hadlost its opportunity to go after thedesktop it required very little spin forthe news media to report this as IBMadmitting that os2 had failed in themarketplace the New York Times even ranan article on August 1st under theheadline IBM Chief concedes os2 has lostdesktop War The Fallout of thisunsurprisingly was sudden and drasticos2 vendors began to publicly Expressdoubts about the continued viability ofdeveloping os2 applications a number ofcorporate installations of os2 werecanceled and major os2 columnists suchas will zachman publicly announced theirdoubts about the platform will zachmanwas a pretty big deal on the os2 worldas he he ran the largest os2 forum onCompuServe cannabis so this would beroughly equivalent to I don't know Cultof Mac or apple Insider declaring thatthey had serious doubts about Apple andwere considering Alternatives just fivedays after the first New York Timesarticle detonated a second article wasrun in their technology column sectionthis article was called os2 no longer athome at home and it had lots of shockingquotes from IBM's key os2 evangelistDavid Barnes who we met earlier some ofthe key quotes from the article were os2is a great operating system Sony'sbetamax was a better system than VHS andthe real killer quote I'm going to putWindows 95 on the machines in my housereading through the article is prettydevastating to os2 essentially TheAuthor Peter Lewis had been strugglingto get the latest version of warp toinstall on his new Pentium Tower afterseveral days without success Lewiscalled for help and David Barnes wassent over to help him out with hisinstallation I am assuming this occurreddue to the potential bad PR that wouldoccur if the New York Times published anarticle stating that it was verydifficult to install warp according tothe article after spending more than anhour trying unsuccessfully to installos2 on my machine the normallyeffervescent Mr Barnes finally gave uphe remains the world's biggest fan ofos2 as a reliable operating system forbig businesses but would he recommendos2 to a friend who did not have atechnical support team on call in theoffice let me put it this way Mr Barnessaid I'm going to put Windows 95 on themachines in my house and as previouslymentioned David Barnes was a big deal inthe os2 community having spent yearstraveling around to preach the virtuesof os2 this was bad enough but then itgot even worse as IBM's incredibleability to shoot itself in the foot yetagain manifested first of all IBM didabsolutely zilch for several weeks afterBarnes comments were made public not onesingle word even as os2 forums wereblowing up without rage and Tech writersattempted to reach out to IBM forcomments to no avail The os2 Exoduspicked up more steam as wavering usersand businesses who had had theirconfidence shaken by gerstner's commentsdecided that they had heard enougheventually IBM realized that itsstrategy of playing some Twisted versionof dead possum wasn't going to cut itand so big blue decided to eventuallyhave Barnes release a mild PR statementthat his comments had somehow been takenout of context and IBM spokes creaturespinky promised that os2 was still apriority for them unsurprisingly nobodycared at this point and os2's demise waswell and truly over and done with I willsay that os2 professor professionalvaliantly tried to apply some duct tapeto the gaping hole that had been blownin the os2 ship with a Publisher's Memofrom editor-in-chief Edwin black in theOctober 1995 issue saying was it decentor professional of Peter Lewis of theNew York Times to invite David Barnes tohis home for some personal help guide aguy and then published the offhandremarks that any professional journalistshould know would be off the Recordshame on you Peter your article wasdisgraceful and uncalled for and IBMbeing a refused to answer backI'm not here to comment on the ethics ofwhat happened one way or another but Iwould imagine that it would be hard fora reporter to avoid the temptation toreport on something like one of os2'sbiggest supporters admitting that he wasprobably going to be running Windows 95in his house when it came out now I dothink that it's very likely that therewas at worse some hyperbole or spingoing on here and at best some Nuancewas lost when a private conversationwent public I honestly cannot say forsure and I am purely running onconjecture here it's highly possiblethat what Barnes actually meant was thatWindows 95 was good enough that he wasgoing to use it for certain things inhis house that he couldn't do with os2after all os2 warp was not Windows 95compatible It could only run Windows 3.0and 3.1 applications and Windows 95 wascertainly going to have a lot ofapplications that wouldn't be availableon os2 and couldn't be run throughcompatibility mode when betamax and VHSwere battling it out there were certainmovies that were only on VHS and itwouldn't have been unreasonable for Sonyemployees to quietly have a VCR at homein order to watch these movies youwouldn't want to broadcast that if youwere Sony but it would be perfectlyunderstandable even if betamax didn'twind up eventually losing that battlebut IBM's lack of response gave rumorplenty of time to take flight and forthe whole os2 Community to get well onthe way to melting down by the time thiswhole situation started to for lack of abetter phrase calm down Windows 95 hadalready landed thanks to IBM's botchedhandling of the issue the onlycompetitor it faced was the thenimploding Apple oh and BOS of courseside note bos's open source successorHaiku OS is a neat project that I hopecontinues to grow and I am proud to saythat I was one of the people who boughtthe Alpha version on DVD like 10 yearsago in order to help support the projectback in the imploding os2 world ofOctober 1995 os2 professional did itsbest to take an optimistic view ofthings and the future saying in itsPublisher's note that os2 is alive andwell on the day when 95 shipped os2Express had its best day of the yearevery day thereafter we enjoyedrecord-setting days as our corporate andgovernmental customers made majormultiple purchases IBM products and os2apps are selling better than ever as Isaid last month os2 will only becomestronger following the backlash againstwin95 which is already happening thebottom line for all who care about os2including me is don't get angry get evenstick with os2 again os2 had a verydevoted user base one that I would saycould match the Amiga user base fordevotion and one that did its best to bepositive about os2's future no matterhow hard it got you've got to respectthat and once again the thought of suchDevotion accruing to an IBM productnever ceases to be amazing but it justwasn't going to be enough so far as thebroader consumer Market was concernedIBM itself had basically told them tonever even consider os2 and so far asdevelopers were concerned IBM had alsotold them to never bother consideringdeveloping os2 applications and thusWindows 95 continued to sell in staggerynumbers finally definitively dethroningMS-DOS and starting to actually make asignificant dent in the gaming Marketthanks to the first iteration of DirectXand the hard work of Alex Saint John andhis team yet still somehow os2miraculously continued to stagger onwith its user base resting on a core ofDie Hard users plus a number ofInstitutions that had investedsignificantly in os2 installs or reliedon os2 specific software there was alsoone more major os2 release to come plusIBM also had some rather odd stuff inthe os2 pipeline that the high points ofwhich we will Briefly summarize inDecember of 1995 a rather experimentalversion of os2 warp was released forpower PC descriptively called os2 warppowerpc although this was right aroundthe time that Apple was transitioningfrom the 68k architecture over topowerpc this version of os2 was notmeant to run on Apple Computers ratherit was aimed at a rather small line ofIBM's own line of power series desktopsand think pads os2 power PC appears tolie somewhere between beta software andan actual finished product effect withsome areas quite mature and stable andother areas completely lacking accordingto this website it had almost nonetworking abilities at all meaning noTCP and no local networking although itseemed to have included a way ofaccessing CompuServe via modem a bitmore detail on the reasons behind themissing Network support comes fromibmfiles.com article where it explainsos2 warp powerpc does not havenetworking which has been a largerproblem with the operating system thisis in part due to os2 x86's initialdesign around the 286 and Reliance of16-bit drivers that are hard-coded tothe x86 instruction set porting themwouldn't have been an easy tasks and itlooks like they ignored them for exactlythat reason however os2 warp powerpc didhave a solid dos emulator as well assupport for x86 applications included aspart of its apparently somewhat shakywin os2 compatibility for more I highlyrecommend checking out this article I'llput a link to it on the the screen onemore thing of Interest some of thetechnology developed for os2 powerpc hada significant amount of development init and even after this Edition failedIBM apparently backported some of it tothe main version of os2 warp I recommendreading this other article I'm linkingto for more information on this inSeptember of 1996 the last major versionof os2 was released into the rapidlyshrinking os2 Market probably due toParamount's reaction to the Star Trekinternal code names for previous os2versions and the whole mess around thatthis version of os2 was developed underthe codename Merlin but still retainedthe warp consumer branding when it wasreleased os2 warp 4 was arguably thebest all-around operating system to seewide release in the 1990s for ConsumerPCS and obviously I expect my commentsection to light up for saying this butlook at what the competition was by thispoint the Macintosh was a niche productCopeland was about to go down in flamesand the Clone program was about tomostly cannibalized Macintosh marketshare instead of taking share away fromWindows and speaking of Windows it wasstill on Windows 95 and when Windows 98came out it still wouldn't match warp4's features and stability Next Step OSwas still available that few people werebuying it and it was hardly in widerelease EOS was obviously a very solidstable operating system but it never gotvery far off the ground a fewapplications were written for it and fewpeople outside of techies had ever heardabout it Linux in the 1990s may havebeen getting a lot of buzz in the techworld but it was only in the tech Worldin its legendary user unfriendliness wasin full bloom at this time and I saythis as someone who up until recentlyhad been running pop OS for the pastseveral years and doing all of the videoediting and Graphics creation for thischannel on it that all changed when Igot tired of playing what will breakthis time when doing system updates butthat's a different story the point beingthat slackware and red hat were hardlyin danger of threatening Microsoft'shegemony in the 1990s also I feel like Ishould mention that the team over atsystem 76 have built a great distro inpop OS and had I been running it on oneof their thelio systems instead of mycustom built Tower I'm sure I wouldn'thave had the issues that recently forcedme to grudgingly move my video editingrig back to Windows for now the onlyoperating system that could have givenMicrosoft a run for its money by runningon the computers that the vast majorityof computer users owned and was backedby a company with deep enough Pockets togo Toe to Toe with Microsoft and was asolid stable operating system that alsoran quite a few Windows programsseamlessly and had excellent doscompatibility was os2 warp 4. for allthat I still think that includingWindows compatibility was always amistake warp 4 was an excellent releasethat fixed among other things thesynchronous input Q bug that had beenone of warp 3's more noticeable problemspots as we previously mentioned ratherthan the mildly confusing red and blueversions of Warp 3 warp 4 instead hadWindows 3.1 compatible abilityapparently built into every versionalthough I assume that this meant thatIBM was back to paying Microsoft forevery copy sold warp 4 can also beinstalled over pretty much everyprevious os2 release apart from os2 warpserver 4 os2 for SMP and weirdly enoughWindows NT I find it very odd that IBM'sofficial guide to warp 4 called up andrunning os2 warp version 4 felt the needto specify on page 17 that warp 4couldn't be installed over NT was this athing that people were trying to doearly versions of NT could run os21xapplications as according to a bytearticle from January of 1994 that wasone of five application modes that NTmade available to its users this wasundoubtedly a holdover from when NT wasoriginally being developed as os2version 3. given the confusion thatpeople tended to have with the wholebetter dos than dos and a better Windowsthan Windows tagline maybe the threeconfused NT users who had been runningthe um limited number of os2 1xApplications had for some reason assumedthey were actually running os2 insteadof NT and had thus attempted to upgradefrom NT to Warp 3 and been upset that itdidn't work warp 4 also added voiceinput although I am mildly skeptical ofhow well it worked given my ownexperiences with voice input usingApple's Plain Talk technology back onthe classic Mac OS when I was a kid itwas the sort of thing that was cool toshow off but had very little practicalapplication for daily use however IBM'ssoftware announcement of warp 4 titledIBM os2 warp 4 the easiest way to aconnected World proudly boasted that youcould navigate the internet or yourdesktop with your voice dictateresponses to email and create speechmacros to simplify repetitive tasks ifanyone watching this had any experiencewith using this feature in os2 I'd loveto hear from you in the comments but thewar was already over and os2 warp 4didn't have a chance of digging its wayout of the giant hole IBM had buried itin of course IBM was still IBM and thushad to add an additional layer ofincompetence on top of os2 warp 4'salready impossible odds specifically inpricing where IBM once again apparentlyforgot that they were not the marketleader but were in fact attempting tosuccessfully regain market share fromWindows tempt MS-DOS holdouts to makethe switch and solidify their positionas a strong runner-up in the modernoperating system Wars and so theyapparently decided to price os2 warp 4at 249 dollars for the full version or149 dollars for an upgrade from aprevious version now this wassignificantly better pricing than earlyversions of os2 had enjoyed but it wasstill higher than Windows 95's launchprice of 209.95 and of course previousversions of windows were much cheaper ontop of being easily pirated not tomention all of the oems who got DirtCheap pricing on including windows withtheir various PC compatibles what IBMshould have done is significantlyundercut wind those pricing push DirtCheap bundle deals to oems hard and goon an aggressive all-out marketingcampaign to show that os2 warp was backand better than ever but that sort ofclever positioning was enanthema to IBMand thus os2 launched with morehandicaps than were strictly speakingnecessary I mean at this point it'sbasically just beating a dead horse plusof course its greatest handicap whichwas the fact that IBM had basically toldeverybody not to consider buying it asit had no future unsurprisingly os2 warp4 had no momentum no buzz and no successIBM had finally succeeded in putting astake through os2's heart once and forall I will say though that while it'shard to know exactly what os2's marketshare was at any given time in the 1990san interesting data point can be gleanedfrom the testimony IBM's head of networkcomputing and software Services Johnsoyring gave in 1998. we have met himbefore when he introduced os2 2.1 on thecomputer Chronicles here he was thesixth witness that the federalgovernment called in their ongoingantitrust lawsuit against Microsoftaccording to sawyering's testimony os2had roughly a six percent market shareat the time by way of comparison onJanuary 6 1998 CNN had an article thatsaid Apple's market share in the UnitedStates slips to 4.0 percent in the firstquarter before recovering slightly to4.4 percent by the third quarter inother words even several years after thetotal implosion of os2 it still hadabout half again as many users as theflailing Macintosh did the final os2release was in November 2001 with afairly minor release called the os2convenience Pack 2 also known as theMerlin convenience package which wasbuilt off of os2 4.52 os2 was dead andgone the os2 specific magazines andPublications were long since defunct bythis point the remaining user base wasrapidly shrinking very little softwaredevelopment was going on apart fromthing things like internal softwaredevelopment at companies that were stillrelying on internally developed os2applications os2 was a product stuck inthe past a relic of an era beforewireless internet was ubiquitous backwhen CompuServe was still a separatething from the World Wide Web Windowshad leaped ahead to Windows XP switchingto the NT code base and continued worlddomination os2's support for Windows wasof course still limited to Windows 3.1and 16-bit applications it was a fadingoperating system that was less and lessrelevant as the world moved into the eraof smartphones and high-speed internetas legendary PC columnist John Dvorakhimself an os2 user said regarding os2'sdownfall Microsoft created a lot ofinterest a lot of pre-publicity they dida great job of promoting the Windowsproduct before it came out and IBM wasvery casual about it thinking thatpeople were going to flock to them theguys who built the better mousetrap itwas just poorly handled IBM had gotten alot of breaks earlier beforepresentation manager you read a lot ofstuff about how important os2 is goingto be and then they just never followedup on it there's a huge differencebetween the way the products werepromoted and rolled out I have nothingbut sympathy for os2 users being onemyself but on the other hand come on itwas so obvious that this was never goingto go anywhere and yet somehow os2 warpis still available for purchase todaynot from IBM but rather from athird-party company that licensed therights to os2 and took over developmentin 2015. you heard correctly os2 isstill being actively developed by acompany called ARCA Noah this version ofos2 goes under the name of ARCA OS andis currently sitting at version 5 withan upcoming version 5.1 code named BlueLion expected this year ARCA OS is basedoff of the final commercial release ofos2 warp 4 as previously mentioned thiswas released back in November of 2001and ARCA OS has benefited from somesignificant enhancements andimprovements with support forsymmetrical multi-processing new driversfrom Modern machines updated networkingsupport additional bug fixes and even anupdated kernel ARCA OS is not freerather it costs 129 dollars for personaluse or 229 dollars for a commerciallicense it is aimed at users andbusinesses who still need or want to runos2 applications and also allows for therunning of 16-bit Windows or dosapplications and this isn't the onlycompany that's been involved with os2since IBM abandoned it back in 2001 twocompanies Serenity systems and mensisbvjointly started developing and selling anew version of os2 warp 4 called Ecomstation there were issues with fundingthe rights wound up held by a sistercompany now called pay GlobalTechnologies BV and there hasn't been anew release of Ecom station in well overa decade it is however still allegedlyavailable for purchase fromecomstation.com although the website isum Bare Bones in closing I think thereis no better summary of OST 2 then theone from the final issue of os2professional in February of 1996. thisissue was a lot Slimmer than previousones coming in at only 50 pages in totalwhen previous editions had sometimesreached a hundred the rapid collapse ofos2 had indeed engulfed it in ashockingly short amount of time just sixmonths after everything fell apart andbefore warp 4 had even launched by thispoint it was very clear to even the mostArdent Optimist that os2 was done fordead but not yet buried in Edwin Black'sfinal Publisher's memo titled right nowhe said the following we will beremembered as Pioneers who had thevision and the guts to put ourselves onthe line in the face of insurmountablestupidity by IBM and insurmountablecunning by Microsoft yes someday allcorporate Microsoft users will have whatwe have today a superior OS drag anddrop crash resistant connectivity speedresource lean multi-threaded multitaskmasking and backwards compatibility yessomeday all of Microsoft's Soho andpersonal users will have these samebenefits changing their lives and theway they connect to the world from asingle powerful workstation but we inthe os2 community had it first in 1992and 1993 not at the turn of the nextCentury the memo goes on to give a greatsummary of the os2 user base the fanswho had so fervently supported anoperating system that could have been aserious player but was repeatedlyundercut and inadvertently sabotaged byits own Creator IBM no matter how bigblue fumbled and stumbled no matter whatthe setback no matter what the missedopportunity you the os2 Loyalists wouldnot relinquish the prospect that anotherHorizon would clear beyond the cloudsplease take a moment after reading thiscolumn to congratulate yourself forstanding up for an ideal and forcing therest of the world to do it right if onlyby your example it was you who wanderedthrough the desert of Market inincompetence broken promises falseprophecies and profound adversity tolead the way I don't really think I canadd much more to this os2 was aremarkable product that deserved a lotbetter than a God and somehow saw a lotmore success than one would expect froma product so relentlessly self-sabotagedthanks for watching if you enjoyed thisvideo please hit the like button andconsider subscribing