THE WARPED PERSPECTIVE
March 2003
The
more things change, the more they stay the same. -- Alphonse Karr
It seems that every time a really hot new OS/2 product looks like it will make waves
in the general PC community, somebody steps in and a sudden buyout (or sellout)
occurs. I remember when Partition Magic and other PowerQuest
products were major OS/2 tools.... Just a few years ago, PQ won a major Comdex award
for Best of Show in the utility category. Now PQ scarcely admits that it works with
OS/2.
Around that same time, a small-time software vendor (who shall remain unnamed) with
a great OS/2 graphics package decided to take pre-orders for Version 3 of its product.
After raking in some serious dollars from OS/2 users and stringing them along, they
suddenly announced that Version 3 would be a Windoze-only product! That would be
as much of an upgrade as moving from "sand" to "quicksand" because
you were looking for speed, and "quick" sounded like speed.
Now the maker of Virtual PC for OS/2, Connectix
Corporation, has sold out to Microsoft. In its press release, Microsoft (actually,
its sneering mouthpiece Waggener-Edstrom) immediately declared that the OS/2 version
would be terminated after six months. Instead of competing with IBM for these high-end
OS/2 customers, Microsoft instead just sticks a spoke in the wheels of Progress
by discontinuing a great product. One online report claims that Innotek,
the German co-developer of VPC for OS/2, will continue to make the OS/2 version
"in cooperation with Microsoft." I shudder to think how similar Microsoft
is at cooperating as the leader of a certain middle-Eastern nation....
But behind the scenes, there really is a battle going on for the heart and soul
of the computer industry. Sure, these little skirmishes may go unnoticed by the
general press and even (especially?) the PC industry trade press. But these battleground
events are really where the epic struggle for control of the personal computer is
continuing even today. How do we know this?
The egos betray themselves. Was it only by coincidence that Microsoft dumped Windows95
onto humanity on August 24, 1995? Or was it because this date was precisely four
years after Linus Torvalds released the first version of Linux onto the Internet?
Then again, was it merely coincidence that OS/2 Warp version 4.0 was released for
public enjoyment on September 25, 1996 -- exactly one year, one month, and one day
after Windows95 was disgorged from the Black Hole of Redmond?
And consider this: Was it solely a coincidence that the Connectix buyout was announced
on the very day that IBM closed its deal to purchase high-end software toolmaker
Rational Systems? Surely that deal was a
Richter 8.5 on the Tantrum-o-Meter in Washington State, since Microsoft had been
on the verge of the very same transaction.
Sure, all of this could be a series of unconnected, random coincidences. But this
industry is not run by coincidence. It is fueled by egotism, by revenge, by avarice.
After a decade of monopolistic shenanigans, heroic recovery, obscure legal proceedings,
political pandering, and courtroom antics, the PC industry still boils down to one
thing: a pissing contest between Microsoft and IBM.
After all, it was not until IBM made its move toward the open standards, virtual
machines, and the Internet that Microsoft suddenly woke up and smelled the Java.
The antitrust case would never have taken place if IBM had not baited Microsoft
into attempting to illegally extend its PC monopoly to alternative platforms. Federal
antitrust statutes only come into play when a monopolist seeks to extend beyond
its home turf into different markets.
Sure, IBM can still use VMWare for its non-OS/2
platforms, but we will have to see if Innotek has the savvy and the fortitude to
successfully wrestle with the octopus in Redmond to keep VPC for OS/2 alive and
well. If managers make all
the decisions, companies make money but things break
Most recent revision: March 3, 2003
Copyright © 2003, Tom Nadeau
All Rights Reserved.
E-MAIL: os2headquarters@mindspring.com