Quote:
Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan
OS/2 was not originally intended to be an end-user OS. It was only after an unfortunate series of interactions with Microsoft that caused us to shift the focus, but by that time too much valuable time was lost. But OS/2 was extremely successful for it's primary target... mission critical business.
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Exactly.
OS/2 was conceived as the cornerstone of SAA to pull desktop computing back into glass house control. It was a mistake to use it for a market IBM had no understanding of.
And whatever the marketing guys thought they were selling, given the paucity of end user apps, what their users were *really* buying was a system integration tool. The marketers aimed at Windows and killed Desqview.
It succeeded at mission-critical systems because that is where the market saw it shine. Because it lacked ISV apps and an end-user grade ecosystem it failed to sell to people interested in end user productivity which just happened to be 95% of the PC business.