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You're Right. I recently purchased a MicroSolutions 'backpack' CD-ROM drive, so that I could install OS2 WARP 4 on my cheap Toshiba 2130cs notebook. Everything worked out fine, and I upgraded from OS2 WARP 3 with little trouble.
I addressed a post card to the 'OS2 TEAM' care of MicroSolutions, telling them everything worked fine and thanked them for supporting OS2.
About a week later I received an enthusiastic E-Mail from their engineering department. They told me how much they appreciated hearing from a satisfied user, and that they usually only hear complaints from the Windows 95 crowd.
Now I'll have to get a card off to 'Chips and Technology'. They made the SVGA driver that I use.
I think we should thank PowerQuest the makers of PartitionMagic for their hard work and being able to repartition our hard drives without destroying the data!
I think you should give early consideration to listing Sundial Systems as a subject for the "thanks" corner. Sundial has been in the OS/2 business since version 1.0, and "Relish" may be the most stable OS/2 product available. Certainly, it is one of the most venerable.
What about Sundial? They are the only company presently developing not PC utilities or Internet apps, but true OPTs. They had also the guts to take over Mesa, Clearlook and DB-Expert while IBM was losing time and money financing the development of Smartsuite for Windows.
I have personally thanked Tony Pereira, creator of Clear & Simple, for his great program and the *clear and simple* user's manual that it comes with. And I intend to thank him again for his continued support of OS/2.
I don't think I ever learned as much about OS/2's internal structure and the means to get peak performance out of one's computer system, as I've learned from Mr. Pereira's program and explanations of *what* to do and *why* it works. Other books just struck me as so much technobabble.
I think you should include Tony Pereira on your list of OS/2 vendors to thank!
Cross platform development, in particular between OS/2 and Windows, is certainly not just a matter of recompiling. For real complicated projects it can be costly and time consuming.
Of course, if one uses tools like Visual Age C (which is available on both platforms) the cost and time is reduced somewhat -- though not entirely.
I recently ported a small program of my own (12,000 lines of C code) to Windows 95. I used Borland's C Builder and surprisingly enough the process was fairly simple and straight forward -- especially since I did not use any WPS API's in my OS/2 version and didn't want to use any Active X or (whatever they call it this week) in my Windows 95 version.
Even porting from C to C, to a different compiler, to a different platform, and with no real time pressures I managed it in about 3 sessions totaling about 12 hours. This was done at a leasurely pace.
The OS/2 version, by the way, was done with CSet and VisPro C.
Both sets of tools were equal to the task, though, VisPro C is (in my opinion) a slightly better environment.
So, I find it amusing why some people would be irritated when OS/2 ISV's want to port their programs to Windows or do any Windows programmming at all.
Is it that surprising to people that OS/2 ISV's would like to make money too? I can't remember any OS/2 ISV taking a vow of poverty or declaring themselves a non-profit organization. Sure, IBM likes to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars developing products and then not selling them but we all know they are brain dead.
This truly is NOT about religion. It's about money -- and it always has been.
Since OS/2 many users are starting to sound like Linux Wannabe's with their "I want everything free" attitude it is surprising that there are ANY OS/2 ISV's left.
So it's not a question of whether you like the idea of OS/2 ISV's porting their stuff to Windows. It's a question of what are you willing to do to make it profitable for them to stay with OS/2.
There are only about 3 options.
Option 1 : Round up all the OS/2 ISV's and hold them in a prison and force them to code for free (favorite choice of the Linux crowd)
Option 2 : Forget about it and give up
Option 3 : Actually spend money to buy and use OS/2 applications
Gary L. Robinson
I gotta say I'm in favor of cross platform. That includes the Mac, Oracle, Sun OS, whatever. Java has a chance if the JVM can be speeded up. Maybe the answer lies not in the ISV but in the tools, truely cross platform development environments.
I think both Chris and Dirk make good points about cross platform development. There are so many issues here, I'm not sure where to start!
I think that OS/2 users should quit longing for ports of Windows software, and look at what is available for OS/2. I used to wish for some Windows products to be ported to OS/2, but that just didn't happen. For the past few years I have just concentrated on looking for high quality OS/2 applications, no matter who wrote them. What I have found, is that applications that I had been ignoring were quite good, and were more than adequate.
For example, there is a tax preparation program for OS/2 called Tax Dollars. It is simple, doesn't cost much, and works quite well for the average tax payer. The developers last year had to turn the product into shareware, because sales were too low.
The sales problem was not for lack of effort or marketing on the part of the developers, but was due to the attitude of many OS/2 users. This attitude is one where if it's not as good as the current Windows software that I have, then I'm not going to buy it! This attitude hurts all OS/2 ISV's, because it takes years of development, funded by sales of the product to have all the latest whiz bang features that are in some of the top Windows products of today.
Cross platform development would be much less of an issue for many OS/2 ISV's if OS/2 users would help them through testing, purchasing, and giving feedback on features. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying OS/2 user should buy software that doesn't meet their needs. What I am saying is that if it does, give it a try. It's the only way that OS/2 ISV's will have the money to continue to invest in development.
The truth of the matter is that as an OS/2 company grows, it eventually bangs up against the limits of the OS/2 market. Stardock already has, for example, greater than 95% of the OS/2 game market is by far the largest share of commercial shrink wrapped business software for OS/2. Where does a company like Stardock go to expand? And this is in the case where the OS/2 market is growing or remaining steady which it is not -- it is shrinking steadily.
A cross platform product ensures that companies are able to support their traditional support base while being able to expand their revenue base. Moreover, because of this, the quality of the OS/2 version can actually increase.
Look at Stardock's upcoming Entrepreneur product. This product IS just a recompile between versions (an application would be tougher to do this since the temptation to use API calls becomes much greater). Entrepreneur is lightning fast on both OS/2 and Windows 95 and Windows NT, has a larger budget than every OS/2-only game ever made combined. So OS/2 users get a state of the art product thanks to cross platform development.
Another issue not brought up is that attitude many OS/2 users have towards OS/2-only ISVs. The vocal portion of the OS/2 community treats OS/2 only ISVs as second-class citizens. Many OS/2 users are quick to dismiss the native OS/2 vendor as soon as soon as some Windows vendor gives OS/2 any attention. Many OS/2 users will praise OS/2 ISVs until they try to do cross platform and then smugly dismiss that ISV as a company that won't be able to "cut it" in the WIndows market as if OS/2-only ISVs are in the OS/2 market just because they can't make it in the "real world".
And finally, you also have the issue of where OS/2 users expect a 1.0 release of an OS/2 prodcut to be as good or better than a third or fourth generation Windows product. Take Trials of Battle, OS/2 users quickly dismissed it -- despite it being a terrific game -- once a pirated port of Quake made it to OS/2. The general opinion was that Trials of Battle didn't cut the mustard because it didn't have good Internet performance on low-speed modems. Of course, neither did Quake when it first came out but after 500,000 unit sales, they could afford to address that. If OS/2 users had shown the same sort of loyalty to OS/2-only products that they seem to expect from OS/2-only ISVs, good products like Trials of Battle woudl have done well and indeed, it would have incredible internet performance today I'm sure. In other words, the demand for "OS/2-only" seems to be a one-way street with many OS/2 users. They want OS/2-ISVs to ONLY develop for OS/2 even if that means the product will have a smaller budget but they have no problem making 1st generation OS/2 products compete for their buying dollars with the latest generation of Windows products.
I don't have a problem with that view by the way. But at the same time OS/2 users have to realize the consequences -- cross platform development.
Brad Wardell
Stardock Systems, Inc.
It appears that you may have omitted perhaps the most critical factor in your discussion: profit. Any OS/2 developer will gladly continue to support the OS as long as he can afford the losses or maintain a decent profit.
Cross-platform development allows a good independent developer with more positive cash flow options, thus allowing him/her to continue to support ANY OS that is not as financially lucrative as another.
Personally, as new systems continue to leapfrog their predecessors in speed, RAM and hard drive capacity, the bloat of cross-platform applications is less noticeable to the end-users of the products. Particular emphasis by some companies on Java looks most promising, even though Corel has just backed out of the full suite development that they have been working on.
The cross-platform development of applications may actually increase the demand for higher quality operating systems, so that the applications run with greater robustness, and there are fewer (if any) system crashes.
WORE (Write Once, Run Everwhere) is the primary emphasis behind Java and truly appears to be working in many areas. Even as you have pointed out, Windows itself is a splintered market, and to develop for Windows requires the use of specific API's, DLL's and almost making any product unique to one of the Windows platforms. True WORE development even aids the developers for that environement, and if the cross-platform developers want to sell to the broadest spectrum of users, they will develop in as open an environment as possible (as 100 ure Java, or Open Doc).
Hopefully, this will mean an even greater selection of applications for the OS/2 users that run 'natively' on their systems in the long run.
For several years I have admired and continued to buy, and thus support software vendors such as IBM, with Anti-Virus, and "PQ", with Partition Magic, for their support of DOS, Windows, and OS/2. I wish that all who promise such cross-platform versions, such as WordPerfect, Lotus (in a timely manner), and other business app suppliers, would live up to their word.
If Java, or other similar code, can provide the means to allow the basic business procedures to be accomplished on any platform, real competition based on the strengths of the programs will prevail. Applications can be judged on their merits. Likewise, operating systems will be judged on their strengths, not the strength of the applications which are available. True competitive market forces will prevail. While Java, currently seems to offer this opportunity, it will require further strong standardization and improvements.
I agree with Dirk. I think the cross-platform development ends up frustating OS/2 users. A good example is Lotus Notes, it was born in OS/2 and now the Windows version goes by 4.6 and we [OS/2 users] are still waiting.
I just finished taking your survey on JAVA, and I have to say that the phrasing used in the answers leaves a bit to be desired, in my opinion.
Your question about JAVA being beneficial to OS/2 home users completely lacked a "somewhat" type answer. These sorts of options are necessary to get a true idea of what users are thinking. For example, in my opinion, JAVA in any form is not going to be either totally useless or solidly beneficial to the home user. Corel has backed off of their Office for JAVA, and for home users, this means that JAVA is going to be nothing but flashy web pages for quite a while.
I've read your recent article in the OS/2-eZine about CD-recording with large interest. In Addition to the two Software-packages you mentioned there is a little enterprise called RSJ Software GmbH near Munich which also offers a CD-Writer software. For a long time this software was only offered for OS/2. In the meantime they also offer a Win-version (unfortunately less expensive than the OS/2-version :-( (about $300/$100)).
If you are interested in completing your test here's there address:
RSJ Software GmbH
Industriestraáe 10
D-82110 Germering
Tel +49 - 89 - 8941420
Fax +49 - 89 - 89414280
http://www.rsj.de/d/cd_os2.htm
Thanks for writing! I'll be sure to check it out right away. It would be nice to see some good competition in OS/2 CD-R software.
Wow, I just have to write a letter to inform people how pleased I am with APC's customer/technical support. They have toll-free technical support 24 hours a day avaliable to ALL their customers, compared to, say, IBM. It gets better -- their UPS come with Windoze software in the box, and some other OSes but no OS/2 software. Wednesday around 18:00 I called them and asked where I could get OS/2 software, they said since I only wanted one copy they would ship it to me free(it normally costs a pretty penny). Great! Friday 10:45 dorbell rings FED-EX has a package for me the OS/2 software for my UPS. That is what I call support! So if anybody is debating which UPS to get I definately recommend APC.
In your Answers from e-Zine! column, you write:
Unfortunately, there is currently no support for ATAPI Zip drives, so they're to be avoided if you need one that functions under OS/2. There will be ATAPI support in the future, but how near that future is is not certain.
Wait a minute, the ATAPI Zip drive works great in OS/2, just install the new NEWDASD driver. It will see everything perfectly.
While CandyBarZ works, leaving it on for extended periods of time causes the title bars to become white.
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