The real reason that OS/2 flopped went on to shape modern software
- Reference: 1736083685
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/01/05/os2_flopped_reason/
- Source link:
A [1]1995 Usenet post from Gordon Letwin, Microsoft's lead architect on the OS/2 project, has [2]been rediscovered . To modern eyes, it looks like an email, but it wasn't. Usenet was [3]the original social network and this was a public post. In case you don't recognize Letwin's name, he was one of the founding staff members of Microsoft – he's in the famous [4]1978 Albuquerque photo . He literally wrote the book on OS/2, [5]that book being Inside OS/2 .
Letwin's 1995 post says:
Originally I'd planned on posting this on Aug 24, but real life events are foreshadowing things so I'll post a bit early.
Why not the August 24? Because August 24, 1995, was the [6]day that Microsoft launched Windows 95 . What's interesting about the post is that it seems to show that even by 1995 – just before what would prove to be Microsoft's most successful OS launch ever – Microsoft's OS/2 head honcho still hadn't put his finger on precisely why it flopped.
Arguably the most important changes in software and hardware that shaped the modern computing gathered force in the 1980s. Industry-standard desktop computers went from eight-bit machines to 16-bit, and then to 32-bit, all over the space of just ten years. This set the stage for the developments of the 1990s that put us where we are today, in a world of multicore 64-bit machines running just two families of operating systems – Windows NT and Unix – which take tens of gigabytes and are still growing.
[7]
Windows 95 was a big launch, but its success wasn't a huge surprise. [8]Beta versions had been circulating for over a year. It's fair to say that by 1995, OS/2 was dead software walking. That's not a big revelation; it is the central theme of Letwin's post. Almost exactly a year later, on September 25, 1996, the last ever major version of OS/2, Warp 4, [9]was released .
[10]
[11]
For context, by 1995 everyone knew that Windows 95 was going to be a big deal, and that it was all over for OS/2 bar the shouting. A keen user of OS/2 2.0, this vulture moved his home PC to Windows 95 while it was still in beta. The UI was far superior, more hardware worked, and Doom ran much better.
But does Letwin's post miss the real point?
[12]
No, he says:
What was OS/2's problem? Why was it doomed? Because it's
sic
main attraction was as an engine to run MS-Windows applications.That, we submit, is wrong on multiple levels (not just the grocer's apostrophe). Only 32-bit OS/2 – that's OS/2 2.0 and its successors – could run Windows apps. That isn't why it was doomed. It's a red herring. It's true, but it was a symptom of the decline, not a cause of it. The lack of native apps was a sure sign that OS/2 had already flopped.
(As an aside, OS/2 1.x did have big-name native apps. For instance, the market leaders, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, both appeared on OS/2 before Windows. [13]Lotus 1-2-3/G on OS/2 predated [14]1-2-3/W for Windows. There was a [15]Wordperfect for OS/2 before [16]the first Windows version .)
You don't need a deep knowledge of the history to work out why this was an effect, not a cause. The logic is inexorable. Let's step back through the reasoning, chronologically.
Not many high-profile native applications were developed for 32-bit OS/2, because it could run Windows 3.x apps.
[17]
This means all the commercially important apps were already Windows apps.
Why? Because Windows was already dominant.
When OS/2 2.0 [18]launched in April 1992 , a good enough and commercially successful version of Windows already dominated the market. That was Windows 3.0, [19]launched in May 1990 .
In other words, OS/2 2.0 trailed Windows 3.0 by nearly two years. When OS/2 finally went 32-bit, as a platform it had already lost the battle. The lack of native apps was not the reason it lost; the lack of native apps was proof that Windows 3 had already won.
How did Windows 3 win? Because OS/2 1.x had already flopped.
That's the real crux, but Letwin buries it and almost dismisses it. The really important bit is not about Windows applications. The real question is how and why Windows 3 was able to gain that dominance, why it's the platform that other companies wrote the apps for.
Letwin mentions this, but he misses the significance. It's this part:
The miscalculation came about with the 386 coming out sooner than we expected ... When the 386 did come out earlier than expected and we saw what was happening, Microsoft wanted to abandon OS/2 1.0 before it was released and work on a 386-only version, one that would be able to emulate more than one DOS box and do a better job at that.
That's absolutely right. But Letwin still misses the key element of the story.
An 80386-specific OS/2 1 would have been the right thing to do. Microsoft jointly [20]announced OS/2 1.0 in April 1987, a year and a half after [21]Intel launched the 80386 in October 1985. [22]OS/2 1.0 was so unfinished it didn't even have a graphical desktop yet. It was a text-mode, command-line-only OS, [23]it cost $325 and required 2 MB of RAM .
If that text-only OS/2 1.0 had been able to multitask DOS apps, it would have been an attractive option. DOS multitasking is all that [24]Quarterdeck's DESQview could do, for instance – and it cost $399.
But no, as Letwin spells out, OS/2 1.x was limited to the 16-bit 80286:
But, as you'll remember, Compaq was the first to have a 386 box; IBM was slow to follow suit. IBM was strong in 286's and weak in 386's, so it was strongly opposed to dropping the 286 in favor of leapfrogging to the 386 and they insisted that we stay the course for the 286.
What he wrote was true, but we think it was not the core reason for IBM's intransigence.
Yes, Compaq shipped a 386 first, the [25]Compaq Deskpro 386 , whose importance [26]we've looked at before . Even so, IBM was in the market early and strongly with 386 machines.
The [27]IBM PS/2 Model 80 was a best-seller. As a callow 20-year-old, this vulture set up quite a few SCO Xenix systems on Model 80 machines. Suffice to say, the author still owns one today.
Compaq was first. The Deskpro 386 launched in September 1986, but it was crippled by a 16-bit ISA expansion bus – only its proprietary memory card slot was 32-bit, and $6,499 ($18,718 today) is a lot of money for a very limited machine.
IBM launched the [28]PS/2 lineup in April 1987, with the Model 80 (386) following in July. Unlike the Compaq, IBM's 386 machines had a full 32-bit expansion bus and could drive 32-bit peripherals.
Nobody could design and build a superior machine in less than a year; it would take more than 11 months to design, implement, and manufacture the first fully 32-bit PC with a wholly new expansion architecture.
Yes, IBM was slower to market and that hurt it, but the Model 80 (and the [29]desktop Model 70 , the fastest x86 PC in the world, bar none) was a stunning kit for the time, and they sold well despite being the cost of a good sports car.
IBM was slow to market, but it wasn't that slow. By comparison, Compaq rushed the Deskpro 386 out, and it showed.
The key point was not the timing, as Letwin alleges. Yes, one of [30]the original clone vendors rushed out an impressive but flawed product; Compaq got there first, and that was embarrassing.
[31]Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0
[32]Preview edition of Microsoft OS/2 2.0 surfaces on eBay
[33]Compared to other distros, Vanilla OS 2 'Orchid' is rewriting how Linux works
[34]Arca Noae is modernizing OS/2 Warp for 21st century PCs
But it was just a minor embarrassment. The real deal was this.
IBM made a promise, and IBM kept its promises. It shipped the PS/2 range with 286s front and center, promising OS/2 compatibility to its customers – a promise IBM wouldn't break. So it vetoed Microsoft's plan of pivoting the new OS to the 386, even if that plan was solid and motivated by the correct reasoning.
If OS/2 1.0 had been an 80386 OS, and had been able to multitask DOS apps, we think it would have been a big hit. On the back of that hypothetical success, IBM could have individually couriered a replacement 80386 "planar" ("motherboard" to lesser vendors) to every customer who bought an 80286 PS/2 and wanted OS/2. IBM would still have made more money in the long run.
In his early 20s, this reporter worked on lots of 286 PS/2s and the bulk of owners had never heard of OS/2 and didn't care. IBM sold the machines as high-quality DOS computers, and that's all most customers wanted.
But backtracking on its promise that all PS/2 machines would run OS/2 would mean IBM admitted that it had made a mistake. That could not be. IBM did not make mistakes.
As an example, the PS/2 computers did not have reset buttons, because a reset button is how you reboot a computer that's locked up so hard that Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work. A reset button would mean acknowledging IBM computers crashed, and that was unacceptable. Instead, you had to waste a minute or two power-cycling the things. We did that a lot.
Even nearly a decade after OS/2 flopped, its lead architect, Gordon Letwin, could not admit when and why it flopped. He did know. As he says, OS/2's initial 1980s versions were 16-bit products, at IBM's insistence.
That is when the war was lost. That is when OS/2 flopped. Because its initial versions were even more crippled than the Deskpro 386. The Deskpro worked; it was just slow. OS/2's fate was already sealed long before in the 1980s, because the 16-bit versions were no better at running DOS apps than DOS itself.
Because OS/2 1.x flopped, Microsoft launched a product that fixed the key weakness of OS/2 1.x. That product was Windows 3, which worked perfectly acceptably on 286 machines, but if you ran the same installed copy on a 32-bit 386 PC, it worked better. Windows 3.0 could use the more sophisticated hardware of a 386 to give better multitasking of the market-dominating DOS apps.
OS/2 1.x ran fine on a 386, but it ran exactly the same as it did on a 286. You got no additional benefit from your 32-bit hardware. But Windows 3.0 did. You got memory protection and virtual memory, as well as a usable GUI.
Windows 3 beat OS/2 because IBM insisted that OS/2 ran on the 80286, which crippled the new OS. IBM's determination to serve its customers with 80286 PS/2s, and keep a promise, resulted in OS/2 being a failure. That is what allowed Windows to gain the upper hand.
In other words, the really important bit of Letwin's post isn't what its author thought it was. IBM's poor planning shaped the PC industry of the 1990s more than Microsoft's successes.
Windows 3.0 wasn't great, but it was good enough. It reversed people's perception of Windows after the failures of Windows 1 and Windows 2. Windows 3 achieved what OS/2 had intended to do. It transformed IBM PC compatibles from single-tasking text-only computers into graphical computers, with poor but just about usable multitasking.
IBM and Microsoft divorced to go separate ways. IBM kept the planned future 32-bit OS/2 for 386 chips, which was [35]surprisingly close to ready by 1990 . Microsoft kept the planned CPU-independent, portable OS/2, [36]known as OS/2 3 but internally [37]nicknamed OS/2 NT after the N-Ten chip, which became the [38]Intel i860 RISC processor .
Soon after Windows 3.0 turned out to be a hit, [39]OS/2 NT was rebranded as Windows NT . Even the most ardent Linux enthusiast must concede that Windows NT [40]did quite well over three decades .
OS/2 flopped because the company paying for the work, IBM, designed it for machines that it had already sold. It did not want to let existing customers down.
Even at the time, by its own admission, Microsoft realized that aiming its new OS at emerging CPU technology made more sense.
So with Microsoft's next OS, Windows NT, that's what it did. It ended up eventually dominating the industry because it aimed at future hardware: it was designed to run on the i860, specifically the [41]Dazzle motherboard , then the MIPS R3000, as well as x86 machines.
OS/2 2.0 was relatively tiny. In 1992, it needed just [42]4 MB RAM and 60 MB disk . A year later, at release in 1993, Windows NT 3.1 [43]needed four times as much memory as well as more disk space. As someone who deployed it in production, it wanted considerably more to run well.
The result? Decades of [44]growth in program size , because the dogma is focus on the future, designing for ever-more-powerful hardware and higher-spec computers. Even now, [45]Windows 11 won't run on a perfectly serviceable kit .
In the mid-1980s, Microsoft plotted a course. By 1995, the signs were there that it had forgotten exactly why. ®
Get our [46]Tech Resources
[1] https://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42336440
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/30/usenet_revival/
[4] https://news.microsoft.com/2008/06/25/iconic-albuquerque-photo-re-created/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2001/05/15/could_bill_gates_write_code/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/windows_95_25_years/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z3q6r4p0bT2mC0zlRIfyjwAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[8] https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_95
[9] https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php?title=IBM_OS/2_Warp_4
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z3q6r4p0bT2mC0zlRIfyjwAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z3q6r4p0bT2mC0zlRIfyjwAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z3q6r4p0bT2mC0zlRIfyjwAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://winworldpc.com/product/lotus-1-2-3/1x-os-2
[14] https://web.archive.org/web/20170927092154/http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2002/cmsc434-0101/MUIseum/applications/lotus123.html
[15] https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/50-os2
[16] https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=jiim
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z3q6r4p0bT2mC0zlRIfyjwAAAEo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php?title=IBM_OS/2_2.0
[19] https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_3.0
[20] https://web.archive.org/web/20100410013835/http://pages.prodigy.net/michaln/history/pr/87apr_m3592.html
[21] https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/6192/Intel-introduces-the-80386-microprocessor/
[22] https://www.os2museum.com/wp/os2-history/os2-1-0/
[23] http://dosdays.co.uk/topics/os2.php
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2012/11/23/early_days_of_pcs/?page=6
[25] https://dfarq.homeip.net/compaq-deskpro-386/
[26] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/04/where_computing_went_wrong_feature_part_3/
[27] https://www.userlandia.com/home/ibm-ps2-model-80
[28] https://www.theregister.com/2017/04/04/30_years_ago_ibms_final_battle_with_reality/
[29] https://www.ardent-tool.com/qtechinfo/GJAN-43WK6N.html
[30] https://www.theregister.com/Print/2011/08/12/ibm_pc_30_anniversary/
[31] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/11/trying_ms_prerelease_os2_2/
[32] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/microsoft_os2_2_0_beta/
[33] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/vanilla_os_friendly_radical/
[34] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/19/retro_tech_week_arca_os/
[35] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/11/trying_ms_prerelease_os2_2/
[36] http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/4C5CEE4A-94F7-4DA2-A518-B29372AA0839.html
[37] https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-server/windows-server-2003-the-road-to-gold-part-one-the-early-years
[38] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/30/arm_intel_comment/
[39] https://www.itprotoday.com/server-virtualization/windows-nt-and-vms-the-rest-of-the-story
[40] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/19/windows_nt_30_years_on/
[41] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181224-00/?p=100545
[42] https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/OS/2_2.0_Technical_Questions_and_Answers
[43] https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1
[44] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/drowning_in_code/
[45] https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/04/microsoft_windows_11_tpm/
[46] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Summary....from way back then......
MCA -- minimal cards available?
I remember a colleague
having a PS/2 which he was excited about at the time as the rest of us plebs just had DOS / early Windows computers. I remember him having compatibility issues of varying sorts though and the PS/2 was allowed to quietly die.
I remember reading Letwin's post
I also remember agreeing with most of it.
When looking at the corpse of OS/2, everyone sees the bullet holes in the body. IBM points to the bullets in the head that Microsoft put there, like a sniper. They ignore the many, many more bullets in the feet that were put there by IBM. There are so many it looks like IBM used a Gatling gun.
I worked at IBM (on contract) doing OS/2 applications from 1990-1992. I didn't work on OS/2 itself, although I had friends that did. I did get to see, from within IBM, the breakdown of the JDA with Microsoft. The JDA was the IBM/Microsoft Joint Development Agreement. It basically stated that IBM and Microsoft shared the OS/2 kernel, that Microsoft owned the GUI, and IBM owned the database and networking (what was known as the Extended Edition) features.
When the JDA broke down, IBM's internal attitude was that OS/2's new goal was to be "not Microsoft". I saw numerous instances of OS/2 being changed, usually needlessly, and far too frequently to its' detriment, simply to be different than Windows. Working functionality would be scrapped when a necessary component was changed, solely for the purpose of making it different from Windows.
The belief from upper management seemed to be that the corporate market drove the personal market (I disagreed), and since corporations trusted IBM more than Microsoft (I agreed with that), they would standardize on OS/2 (which many did), leaving Windows to die. By making OS/2 incompatible with Windows (except for a WinOS2 layer) it would make migrating OS/2 applications to Windows extremely difficult. That would starve Windows of application development, and kill Microsoft.
"Kill Microsoft" was clearly a goal of many at IBM, especially the marketing and business direction types, who'd been stung by the failure of the JDA.
The problem was that the corporate market didn't dictate the market in 1992, the way it had in decades past. IBM management was told that repeatedly, but they refused to believe. The IBM internal fora (like Usenet, but internal only) was absolutely filled with rank and file employees screaming at the top of their lungs that it wasn't 1980 any more. Parents were not buying PC 5150 DOS machines and awing their children with this majestic new technology. In fact, the kids were often the ones explaining to parents what an Apple ][, or Atari, or Commodore 64 was. That may not be true in households with parents working at IBM, but for the vast majority of households, they cared less about what computers their company used, and more about what their kids' school used, and what they saw for sale at Sears, local electronics stores, and Circuit City.
Developers were not going to develop a massive application for OS/2 and then carve away functionality to make it run on Windows, the way IBM (executives) believed they would. They'd start from the bottom up, making it work for the easy case of Windows first, and then expand and extend it for OS/2. Or they would have, if IBM hadn't deliberately done everything they could to make that as difficult as possible.
I had a small DOS application that I'd written in 1988 and had sold to a number of local law firms. Many were curious and asked about Windows and OS/2 versions. When I asked Microsoft, they sent me a WIN32 Developer Kit, for free. It was a beast, and incredibly klunky to work with, but it worked. When I tried to talk to IBM about OS/2, I was sent a price list that showed C/Set2 tools, starting at $500, and that was it.
Microsoft went out of its' way to court developers. Often they went too far, to the point where they were practically bribing people to develop Windows apps. In contrast, IBM held non-corporate developers in contempt. As one magazine at the time put, " IBM would garner a lot more support for their OS/2 operating system if they stopped treating potential developers for it like child molesters ".
OS/2 was technologically far ahead of Windows, especially version 3.x. It was still technically better than Windows 95. But in real world terms, for consumers and developers, IBM was simply too difficult to deal with.
At home, I ran OS/2 1.x from 1990 to 1991, and OS/2 2.x from 1991 (beta versions) to 1996, when Windows NT 4.0 came out. I dual booted between them. Remember MOST, the Multiple Operating System Tool, that IBM included with OS/2? Long before GRUB, we had MOST. But once NT 4.0 came out, with the stability of NT and much of the application base of Windows 95, OS/2 was simply too far behind to ever catch up.
Re: I remember reading Letwin's post
You need to include the small business/everything else* market which certainly wouldn't have come over IBM's horizon as corporate but which I would have thought would have been bigger than the home PC market but, like the home market, wouldn't have been signing up for OS/2.
* e.g. laboratory instrumentation
Re: I remember reading Letwin's post
...everyone sees the bullet holes in the body. IBM points to the bullets in the head that Microsoft put there, like a sniper. They ignore the many, many more bullets in the feet that were put there by IBM. There are so many it looks like IBM used a Gatling gun
That is perfectly put! Looking at the hollow walking corpse that is IBM now, it seems nothing has been learned.
A poor start and cost
Admittedly, the first two major releases were both costly and crap but Warp was a far better piece of software than any DOS-based version of Windows. Basically, customers expected an OS that was free (or its cost was covered by the inclusive deal). OS/2 was always a costly extra and, by the time it was any good, customers had bought big time into Windows 3.x The insistence on loading the registry into already restricted RAM made Windows 95 inferior to 3.x in my opinion but Microsoft's huge marketing effort made folks want the shiny and new. Luckily for me I was able to go from 3.1 to 2000 via Warp 3 and 4. Before anybody asks, yes, I had lots of compatibility issues with 2000 but not one that couldn't be solved.
So with Microsoft's next OS, Windows NT, that's what it did. It ended up eventually dominating the industry because it aimed at future hardware: it was designed to run on the i860, specifically the Dazzle motherboard, then the MIPS R3000, as well as x86 machines.
And not forgetting the DEC Alpha
And not forgetting the DEC Alpha
Very briefly
Companies finding their feet
back in the early 80's. As I mentioned above my company at the time tried one PS/2 computer but ditched it after a short time. In the same office we were using DOS, early Windows, Commodore PETs, DEC Rainbows, an Apple II, Husky handhelds (for data capture) an ICL mainframe and the CAD dept had their own mini system. There were no real standards. Eventually Windows became dominant due to the availability of software and ease of development in house. The mantra became "is it Windows PC compatible?" Originally we used IBM hardware (20 mb hard drives and 5 1.4" floppy) then lots of cheaper Windows compatible kit mass produced in Asia.
Even now, Windows 11 won't run on a perfectly serviceable kit.
" Even now, Windows 11 won't run on a perfectly serviceable kit."
And that's a problem now, where it used to be a solution. The technology simply is not advancing at the same rate, at least from a user perception level. A 2025 PC or laptop is not really all that much better than a 2020 PC or laptop unless you are a hard core gamer/builder. The enforced added security of having TPM 2.0 may or may not be a good thing, but it's deprecating a lot of kit that, as Liam points out, is perfectly serviceable. One possible upside is a likely glut of decent, second hand laptops on the market reducing prices or at least precluding price increases.
Back in the day I had a dedicated xterm and wanted to build another using a PC. I managed to do an end run round whatever obstacles BT procurement might have put in the way by buying an xterm kit which comprised a network card, the xterm S/W and something called Windows 386 which was presumably Windows 3 before it got called that.
Someone else in BT ring me up for sourcing details, basically because he wanted the what was basically the same network card; the same card was available via BT procurement but in typical BT fashion they'd broken its leg by specifying some modification for some particular purpose which made it unsuitable for anything else.
1992 I was cranking out C++ to do CAD/CAM things. Working with Windows 3 was horrible - having to chunk stuff into 64K segments, background processing being a nightmare. Got hold of a copy of OS/2 2.0 and it was a revelation. When I went to a dev launch thing for Win95 a few years later, I recall the whole audience reacting with revulsion as it was revealed how it actually worked.
Summary....from way back then......
OS/2 -- Half an operating system...
PS/2 -- Piece of S**t number 2...