Remember OS/2? Promoted as the successor to DOS in the late 1980's and
early 1990's, the product wound up losing out to Windows and then slowly fading away.
This article recounts what happened and summarizes OS/2 today.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2013-02-12
Yes. IBM was in talks with Commidore to port OS/2 to a new as unnamed project, in case bDos didnt work. It did, and the Amiga came with a b based Amiga dos. IBM lost interest, and asked Commidore to pay for the port. Commidore also lost interest, as Amiga Dos was a very good OS. ( better than OS/2 and *much* better documentation. ). Later on the AmigaDos replacement project used a good optimizer on a commercial compiler to replace all the b based commands with a c replacement. Much fun was had. The c stuff proved to be faster. The point is you were right, but didn't know the backround.
Member since:2005-07-08
What?!
The Amiga as a machine was a great piece of hardware, but the operating system was a joke if you are comparing it to OS/2.
Sure it was multitasking, but without any sort of memory protection.
Lets not forget how painful it was to do Intuition programming, which lead to the creation of MUI.
Member since:2005-09-08
Member since:2005-08-29
Not to digress, but your comment reminded me of the vague Apple and Apollo deal of the late 80s: Apollo porting System 6 GUI (QuickDraw & Finder) to Apollo's Domain/OS -- OS may have still been called AEGIS at the time. In exchange, Apple could sell Apple-branded Apollo workstations running Domain/OS.
References:
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/06/answers.htm
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/06/john-sculley-years-apple.html
Domain/OS was not based on Unix, despite the articles. I'd say it was closer to PRIMOS (also derived from Multics).
I apologize, the above is totally off subject but your comment sparked my interest, and this is an OS site and we are all OS nerds. :-)
Member since:2010-12-16
It is hard to find info about this: all sites points to this text:
http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2Warp.html
but this looks like only source of this information... pretty strange.
BTW good text about OS/2 @ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/27/the_os_wars_os2_25years_old...
FOR FUN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnLmtuA42N8
Edited 2013-02-17 21:53 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2013-02-12
I vaguely remember some common works between Commodore and IBM to create Presentation Manager...
Know something about such a link with the Amiga Workbench ?