25 Years of IBM’s OS/2: The Strange Days and Surprising Afterlife of a Legendary Operating System
Big Blue's next-generation operating system was supposed to change everything. It didn't. But it's also never quite gone away
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And the new hardware was accompanied by a next-generation operating system, OS/2. Co-developed by IBM and Microsoft, it was intended to replace DOS, the aging software that then powered most of the planet’s microcomputers.
(PHOTOS: A Brief History of the Computer)
It never did. Instead, Microsoft’s Windows reinvigorated DOS, helping end IBM’s control of the PC standard it had created. By the mid-1990s, IBM had given up on OS/2 — a major step in the company’s slow-motion retreat from the PC industry, which it completed in 2005 by agreeing to sell its PC division to China’s Lenovo.
But while OS/2 never truly caught on, it’s also never gone away. Even if you believe that you never saw it in action, there’s a decent chance that you unwittingly encounter it occasionally. More on that later.
Back in 1987, the possibility that the world might politely refuse to do as IBM instructed would have seemed implausible. Apple’s iconic “1984″ TV commercial, which showed IBM customers as an army of unquestioning drones, was fantasy — but fantasy based on a certain degree of truth. Nobody, it was famously said, was ever fired for buying IBM. Yet OS/2 was an IBM product that the market, in general, chose not to buy.
When it was announced, however, the need seemed obvious, and its potential appeared to be huge. Tech writer Esther Schindler remembers:
I happened to be working at [leading software developer] Lotus as a contractor 25 years ago, on the day OS/2 1.0 was announced. A couple of guys had been locked in a room in the basement with several PS/2s and OS/2 1.0 … and emerged to show up the marvelous capabilities of the new hardware.OS/2 felt so important at first because DOS was still a gussied-up version of the rickety 16-bit software that Microsoft had licensed in 1980 for $10,000 from a tiny company called Seattle Computer Products. Windows, which first appeared in 1985, sat atop DOS and inherited its many flaws, such as the inability to utilize large amounts of memory and an eight-character limit on file names. The whole mess couldn’t utilize memory properly and was prone to frequent crashes. It was begging to be replaced.
OS/2 promised multitasking, not just task switching. It knew how to handle memory … It did a heck of a lot of cool things … I don’t think it’s easy for young whippersnappers to grasp how big a deal the PS/2 and OS/2 were at the time. We were certain, absolutely certain, that nothing would be the same again. The closest I can come to it was the reaction after the first iPhone was released: the sense that It’s all different now.
As it turns out, the PS/2 and OS/2 1.0 didn’t have the impact everyone expected … but we thought they would.
Vaporous Beginnings
Of course, OS/2 couldn’t begin to replace anything until it shipped. And like many a technology product before and after, it remained vaporware for months after being announced. At the April 1987 launch, IBM said it intended to release the software in 1988, so when it finished the first version in December 1987, it got to say that OS/2 1.0 had shipped ahead of schedule.
By November 1989, fewer than 200,000 copies of OS/2 had been sold, in part because it was far too resource-hungry to run on most existing computers. It needed a bare minimum of 4 megabytes of memory to run adequately in an era when it wasn’t a given that PCs had even 1 megabyte. PC World magazine later referred to the software’s “gargantuan size” and “lethargy.”
“[E]ven the recent 1.2 release is too buggy for general use,” carped PC World‘s Robert Lauriston in the February 1990 issue. “Consequently, it’s little used except by software developers, and large corporations with on-staff programmers.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft was two-timing the operating system it had co-created. In May 1990, it released Windows 3.0, the first version that was sort of decent. In terms of technical underpinnings, it remained creaky, but it gave garden-variety PCs the same sort of Mac-like pretty front end that OS/2 aspired to deliver. Consumers and businesses embraced Windows by the millions, instantly turning it from an apparent dud into a blockbuster. Every PC maker in the industry except IBM soon standardized on it.
With Windows suddenly flourishing, Microsoft decided it didn’t have to share the future of operating systems with anyone else. It not only began to sever ties with IBM but also argued that OS/2 was, in senior vice president of systems software Steve Ballmer’s cheery words, “a dead end.” The software that was originally supposed to be OS/2 3.0 morphed into Windows NT, the modernized version of Windows that both Windows XP and Windows 7 eventually descended from.
Unlike Microsoft’s Windows 3.1, OS/2 2.0 was a (mostly) 32-bit piece of software, capable of harnessing the full computing power of PCs that used 386 and 486 processors. It could effortlessly and safely multitask OS/2 programs, Windows programs and DOS programs; IBM marketed it heavily as “a better Windows than Windows,” a claim that had some merit. More than 250 companies declared their intention to deliver OS/2 apps, including biggies such as Lotus, WordPerfect, Borland and Novell.
“Back from the dead?” wrote PC World‘s Anita Amirrezvani in the July 1992 issue. “Not quite, but OS/2 has made an unexpected comeback.” She said that business types were giving version 2.0 consideration. But she also pointed out Windows’ advantages and noted that OS/2 needed a fast 386 computer with 6 MB of memory and 15 MB to 30 MB of hard-disk space — daunting hardware requirements at the time.
In May 1993, IBM released OS/2 2.1; like 2.0 before it, it was greeted as the version of OS/2 that might end the operating system’s underdog status. IBM’s John Patrick told PC World that even Windows devotees would switch to OS/2, since it multitasked better and crashed less.
A 1993 episode of public TV series The Computer Chronicles had a skeptical-sounding title — “Whatever Happened to OS/2?” — but provided a largely upbeat update on 2.1′s prospects:
Still, any evidence that OS/2 was succeeding tended to look puny in the shadow of the overwhelming success of Windows. Most of the software companies that had pledged their support to IBM redeployed their energies to the vastly larger Windows market. In a move that was both symbolic and practical, a magazine that had started out with the name OS/2 changed its name to OS/2 and Windows. And then to Windows and OS/2. And then, inevitably, to Windows.
Getting Warped
OS/2 3.0, released in November 1994, was dubbed OS/2 Warp — part of a concerted effort on IBM’s part to make the operating system seem less nerdy and more hip and consumer-friendly.It even advertised the product on TV. Here’s a commercial that tries to explain OS/2 to non-nerds (it seems like the spot gives up halfway through). At the end, it simply says OS/2 is “a totally cool way to run your computer,” which is both vague and patronizing.
Warp included features, like the ability to tweak any object’s settings by right-clicking it, that would show up in Windows years later. Microsoft’s big Windows upgrade — code-named “Chicago” and eventually released as Windows 95 — was still vaporware, and IBM and OS/2 fans hoped that its continued absence might lead Windows to look elsewhere. One OS/2 aficionado, Charles Forsythe, composed a widely circulated satirical press release that had Microsoft offering to put Windows users into cryogenic suspension until Windows 95 was released. (He happens to be a high school buddy with whom I spent countless hours futzing around with computers, before either Windows or OS/2 existed.)
“Like anything that was in some ways ahead of its time,” Forsythe remembers, OS/2 “missed some features that seem obvious now. Probably its biggest weakness was one no one really noticed at the time: it was a single-user operating system at a time when networking was about to make it really important to know who or what is doing this? Today even consumer OSes such as OS X and Windows 7 make a clear distinction between regular and administrative users — even in cases where a PC only has one actual person who uses it.”
Once again, OS/2 seemed to have an opportunity to go mainstream; once again, it didn’t happen. Windows users, by and large, were content to wait for Windows 95, and OS/2′s market share remained in the single digits.
After conducting exit interviews with our test subjects, we converted their comments into numerical scores. The article gave OS/2 a rating of 2.8 — the worst of the bunch. ”In almost every case,” we lamented, “the testers complained about how difficult it was to accomplish everyday tasks.” One of them, we noted, managed to accidentally destroy OS/2 by dragging vital system files to the “Shredder.”
(MORE: Bill Gates: The Wizard Inside the Machine)
Another of our guinea pigs, already an OS/2 fan, neatly summed up the software when he told us that it “thinks the way I think. [But] it’s not an end-user operating system; it’s a nerd operating system.”
Increasingly, evidence suggested that IBM was preparing to acknowledge that OS/2 was a lost cause. In August 1995, CEO Lou Gerstner was quoted by Laurence Zuckerman of the New York Times, who argued that operating systems were “the last war” and that it was “too late to go after the desktop.” The same month, IBM employee Dave Barnes, responsible for evangelizing OS/2, admitted to Peter Lewis of the Times that he was installing Windows 95 on his own home PCs. Barnes also compared OS/2 to Sony’s ill-fated Betamax.
As Lewis recalls:
I had received a review copy of OS/2 from IBM, but repeated attempts failed to get it to install properly. IBM’s PR people said they had no idea what the problem might be, as they had not heard of any other people having problems with it. I was living in Austin, so IBM dispatched its chief OS/2 evangelist to my home office to go through the installation with me.At the time, OS/2 fans were outraged by press coverage such as the Zuckerman and Lewis stories and believed IBM when it said it was committed to the software’s future. Later, in his 2002 memoirs, CEO Gerstner revealed that the company was already plotting to wind down the OS/2 business when it released Warp.
Dave arrived. Very nice guy. But after a half-hour of futzing with my system, he said, “I just can’t do this any more.” Even John Akers (former chairman of IBM) was unable to get the new version of OS/2 installed properly on his home PC and had to have someone sent over to install it for him, he said. It wasn’t ready for prime time, he said.
I reminded him the session was on the record. He kept going.
The day my column ran in the NYT, IBM’s CEO blasted me publicly for an assortment of reporting sins and for taking Dave’s comments out of context. I expected that. But then IBM released a statement by Dave saying his comments were taken out of context, which I can only assume he was compelled to say after IBM took him to the woodshed.
I called IBM PR and told them I had tape-recorded the entire conversation with their evangelist, and that if they persisted in accusing me of making things up and taking quotes out of context, I would be happy to print the exact transcript.
They immediately stopped blasting me and the NYT.
The Fans Go Wild
OS/2 may have stubbornly refused to become a breakout hit, but it would be grossly misleading to suggest that nobody liked it. Actually, the people who did appreciate OS/2 loved it with an intensity that was unknown in the Windows world.Much of that love was channeled into an organization called Team OS/2, originally instigated by IBM but mostly made up of thousands of smitten users who were paid only in tchotchkes like T-shirts. As its FAQ explained:
Team OS/2 is a highly informal organisation dedicated to telling the world about the advantages of Operating System/2 (OS/2), an advanced operating system for personal computers. Faced with a large amount of ignorance and misinformation about OS/2, Teamers respond by demonstrating the operating system to others, and educating them about its strengths and weaknesses. Teamers are all volunteers with a genuine enthusiasm for OS/2 that translates into a wish to spread that enthusiasm to others.“[T]he community was so wonderful,” remembers Esther Schindler, an alumna who was also involved in the Phoenix OS/2 Society, a user group with members in 28 countries. “We felt as though we were making a difference. We were keeping people from automatically moving to the always late, overpromised and underdelivered Windows 95.” She calls the grassroots efforts of teamers such as Vicci Conway and Janet Gobeille “social media 15 years before it had a name.”
Team OS/2 members and other admirers of the software descended on trade shows, corresponded with publications that covered OS/2 (pro or con) and generally spread the word. As the FAQ’s cranky reference to a “large amount of ignorance and misinformation” suggests, they often behaved like they were on a crusade, leading to a zealousness that was occasionally scary if you were an unbeliever. Tech journalists discovered that it was difficult to write about the software without incurring wrath: one of my bosses told me that only Amiga owners rivaled OS/2 users for their maniacal missionary zeal.
I learned that for myself after I wrote what I thought was a mostly sympathetic story on OS/2. One user wrote a letter of complaint that compared me to Norman Bates hitting OS/2 in the back of the head with a shovel — a missive that stands as the finest attack on my professionalism that I’ve ever received. (On some level, I’ll be disappointed if this article doesn’t get any comments accusing it of being insufficiently appreciative of OS/2.)
The Long Goodbye
“John W. Thompson, the I.B.M. general manager in charge of the software, implied in an interview last week that the company had little choice but to continue supporting OS/2 because I.B.M.’s most important business customers still use it,” reported Zuckerman of the Times. “But the company has all but conceded that OS/2 will not compete for users in the consumer market.”
“By the time OS/2 Warp 4 came along, the company was no longer behind it,” agrees Esther Schindler. “They had publicly said they were going to do such-and-so, but at the top levels their hearts weren’t in it. And one by one, they dismantled what they had spent at least a decade building … Team OS/2 fell apart too, because how could we believe in their product if they didn’t?”
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