Why did IBM's OS/2 project lose to Microsoft?

[jj2007]

An interesting look into history

Why did IBM's OS/2 project lose to Microsoft, given that IBM had much more resources than Microsoft at that time?

Dave Whittle
Great question. I'm the founder of Team OS/2 and IBM's first OS/2 Evangelist, so I lived through the answer to your question for a decade. There's just no easy answer - it's like asking what makes any given startup a success or failure - but I'm happy to share the way I see it.

First a few facts - from memory - you might find relevant that support your question.

* IBM spent more than a billion dollars developing and marketing OS/2.
* It was the most advanced small systems operating system of its time - the most secure, the best architected, and the most powerful - without question (unless perhaps you were a journalist defending your decision to give the nod to Windows, perhaps in anticipation of the legendary envelopes of cash that landed mysteriously on Microsoft-friendly reviewers' desks). One example, it had pre-emptive multi-tasking (now a staple in multi-core systems and operating systems) when Windows 3.1 was still running on top of DOS and context-switching was the norm for any other desktop OS. It would run multiple DOS, Windows, or OS/2 apps smoothly. It was reliable and almost never crashed - something DOS and Windows was prone to do regularly. Yet Microsoft slammed OS/2 in the press (and got the media to echo their whining) because it needed 4MB (MB! not GB) of RAM - "too much memory" - and could be crashed by Ballmer at trade shows using specially written code on a diskette.

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The post is much longer - I don't want to copy everything here. Stories about Gates & Ballmer & others by a real insider, it's worth reading ;-)

One answer by David Snipp (to which Whittle gives an acid answer):

IBM were retraining secretaries as programmers because they couldn't get enough programmers. IBMs mantra was to throw people at the problem and if the software didn't run fast enough or needed more memory, then boy, could they sell you a more powerful computer. Remember, IBM made money from selling hardware. The software was just a way to help it sell more hardware.

Microsoft ONLY made money from writing software. They would only hire the smartest people (the interview process is horrendous). They spent huge amounts of effort getting code smaller and faster - even down to only redrawing as few pixels as possible when a scrollbar thumb was moved. I know because I also worked on that code.