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From: bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A different View of the value of OS/2 - it's better than UNIX
Message-ID: <1729@rti.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 03:05:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti.1729
Posted: Mon Sep 21 03:05:05 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Sep-87 01:27:00 EDT
References: <494@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <961@looking.UUCP> <498@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <13212@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Lines: 63
Summary: OS/2, Unix, and MS-DOS

In article <13212@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, acm@bu-cs.BU.EDU (ACM) writes:
> 
> Definitely not so cheap.  IBM's price (straight from their catalogue)
> is $395/copy.  And it's still vaporware....  This brings up a
> question.  Anyone know how many people are paying for copies of OS/2
> now?  It *was* advertised in IBM's catalogue (with "To be released
> first quarter 1988" in very small print), as was the model 80 and some
> enhancements to OS/2 (including the Presentation Manager which should
> be out sometime before the turn of the century).  I'd like to know
> what the sales are for OS/2 before release.

It is not at all clear to me that _either_ OS/2 or Unix will amount to
a hill of beans in the PC marketplace outside of niche markets.  Before
you flame me, hear me out.

I define things like LAN servers, high-end CAD workstations, medical imaging
systems, high-end desktop publishing, etc. as niche markets.  For low-end
CAD, or low-end desktop publishing, or the vast majority of applications
used by PC users, it just doesn't provide any significant benefit.  Multi-
tasking is nice, but it's really most useful to support multi-user
applications (hence LANs) or specialized applications requiring lots of
horsepower and lots of user interaction *at the same time*.  The typical
spreadsheet, word processor, terminal emulation program, or what have you,
just doesn't have any _need_ for multitasking - it's not even in its domain.

The only thing about OS/2 which is at all interesting to the majority of
users will be the graphical interface - what IBM calls the Presentation
Manager.  This will not be released for who knows how long - certainly
_long_ after the base release of OS/2.  And there are plenty of graphics
interfaces now (Windows, GEM, etc) which are not exactly setting the
world on fire - there are some people who like them but there is hardly
a wholesale migration to any of them.

About the only benefit that most PC users would see from improved multi-
tasking is a better print spooler.  Period.  And better print spoolers are
available as add-on programs or as cheap print buffer hardware.  A better
printer spooler could be put on MS-DOS - the main problem with the one
there now isn't that you can't do print spooling reasonably on a system
without complete multi-tasking (see RT-11, which does have a Foreground/
Background but which are hardly a complete tasking environment), but that
the parallel interface on the IBM monochrome card is brain-damaged such
that you can't run it with interrupts - so MS-DOS doesn't even try with
other interfaces since this one is so likely.  You could fix this problem
with PS/2 or other hardware and better support from MS-DOS or with a third-
party printer driver.

Add to this the fact that OS/2 will only run on the 286 and 386 machines
and you have a real niche market for OS/2 (and Unix).  

Of course the major developers will support OS/2 - why shouldn't they???
If you are running a LAN or a CAD workstation which might sometimes use
(for example) 1-2-3, you _don't_ want to hear that the program won't run
on that OS.  But this won't change the niche market for OS/2 - since the
developers will in all likelihood not want to cross off the 88/86/186
markets - especially since the low-end PS/2 machines will still be
running the older chips.

If it were cheap, or if there were some really useful, widely-needed product
which would run on OS/2 but not on MS-DOS, OS/2 (or Unix) might become as
widely used as MS-DOS.  But I'm not holding my breath.


					Bruce C. Wright