

What should we do about [OS/2] PM vs. Windows? [1990] [pdf] - yuhong
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00307.pdf

======
tptacek
In 1990 the biggest competitive threat to what would become the most important
single business unit in all of software was... Sun/SPARC. The biggest
strategic initiative in that BU was... port to RISC.

------
zwieback
I remember those days. I was doing some development under OS/2 1.3 in college
and got my first job based on my OS/2 experience, hard to believe now.

When OS/2 fizzled out and we focussed more on Windows it was a rude awakening.
The OS/2 API was very clean if a bit bureaucratic. The Windows API had a very
disjoint and ad-hoc feel to it and of course the "OS" itself was awful. I do
remember enjoying writing VxDs, though, that was fun.

~~~
astrodust
Like DOS, Windows had one of those APIs that was written by someone who seemed
too drunk to care about details.

------
cturner
Curious quote, "When will Scott McNealy realise that OSF is the best thing
that ever happened to him and cease offering it [sic] technology?"

What was unique or interesting about OSF? There's quite limited resources
online.

Sun was an exciting company with its own vertical technology stack, and I was
always surprised that they never made a serious attempt at making Solaris the
developer workstation of choice. To do this they would have needed to (1)
maintain a first class web browser environment; (2) provide a less sucky
window manager; (3) multi-monitor support; (4) something that handled PDFs
nicely; (5) an adequate non-console email client. Something like Java but with
a better GUI layer would have been nice too. They bought the Lighthouse guys
but then didn't use them.

Solaris had a significant technology advantage over NeXT, an established base
in enterprise (a lucrative marketplace and much more forgiving than home
desktop).

Ironically, while Sun were busy burning their OpenStep stack, NeXT were
embracing Java and that kind of saved NeXT. It allowed independent NeXT
developers to ride forward on a maintained technology stack (WO/Java) while
Apple retooled.

Would be interested to know anything at all about OSF, and what distinguished
it from SVR5.

~~~
cek
NeXT was based on Objective-C. No Java there.

~~~
cturner
webobjects was a rebranding of openstep + some new tools. The last version
lived on java.

Some people started with next, branched to wo, survived on it for six or seven
years and then migrated back to cocoa/iphone. Similar API through

Not directly in response to you but a couple of others - I was rambling on a
diversion, and when doing that need to explain the new point more clearly than
I did. Sun seemed to have been well-positioned for building a good developer
desktop platform for a window of about fifteen years but seemed to never
attempt it. The fact that next bounced their ecosystem off Java while they
were building a platform partly demonstrates the strong position Sun had.

------
yuhong
Notice for one thing that the limitations of these "extender techniques" were
not even considered, such as no memory protection or separate address spaces.

------
powertower
For those scratching their heads (as I was initially), this seems to be a
random memo from the people that worked/architected/strategized/marketed OS/2
and/or Windows, within Microsoft.

They are discussing how to better compare and contrast OS/2 and Windows, to
their own (OS/2) advantage.

I'm not sure why this is an important memo, or what significance it has?

~~~
cek

        To: Bobmu, Markz, Steveb, Nathanm, Johnsa
        From: Paul Maritz
    

BobMu = Bob Muglia. Currently SVP of Software at Juniper Networks. As of last
summer was President at Microsoft for the Server & Tools Business. At the time
he led program management for what would be come Windows NT.

MarkZ = Mark Zbikowski. Key developer on Windows. The "MZ" in the Windows
portable executable format header are his initials.

SteveB = Duh.

NathanM = Nathan Myrvold.

Paul Maritz = Now CEO of VMWare.

~~~
yuhong
Mark Zbikowski was one of the devs of DOS 2.0 and 3.0.

