Those who remember the great Operating System Wars of 1990-95 will be sad to hear that IBM is "sunsetting" OS/2 Warp V4. Operating System/2, launched in 1987, was originally developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, but sales were dismal. Users voted with their wallets for the smaller, simpler and very much cheaper Microsoft Windows 3, launched in 1990. IBM's refusal to back Windows and Microsoft's desire to abandon a product it couldn't sell led to a huge battle between the two firms, which the bigger, richer, more powerful IBM lost. The last throw was Windows 95 (launched at a cost of $100m) versus OS/2 Warp 3 (launched with a $160m marketing budget.) The battle was ended by Lou Gerstner, the new CEO who arrived to save IBM. He found himself faced with what he described as a "religious war" that IBM had already lost, even though it was determined to fight to the bitter end. His decision to abandon OS/2 "created immense emotional distress in the company", he writes in his autobiography, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? "The highest levels of IBM executives were almost obsessed with the effort to unwind the decisions of the 1980s and take back control of the operating system from Microsoft (and, to a lesser extent, gain control of the microprocessor from Intel)." IBM had had a monopoly of data processing since the 1930s, and it was a terrible blow to find that by using a Microsoft OS and an Intel processor in the IBM PC, it had handed control of part of the market to small upstarts. The failure of OS/2 marked the point at which IBM's 60 year reign of almost total dominance changed to 6 years (and counting) of Microsoft's partial dominance. Saddoes who don't have a life can send their OS/2 whinges to Gerstner c/o HarperCollins Publishers (I've already heard them all a million times, thanks). Or, more usefully, go here.
UPDATE: CNet has published a report about IBM "clarifying" its online notice. It quotes IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt saying: "As long as our customers want OS/2, we will support them. We don't have plans to withdraw OS/2." Apparently it means you will no longer be able to buy shrink-wrapped software, though the thought of IBM still selling shrink-wrapped copies of OS/2 has been unbelievable for years.
