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Put on your conspiracy hats and get ready to condemn the press. The trade mags are at it again and "OS/2 is dead" rumours are flying fast and furious. In fact two popular print magazines have recently printed disparaging and woeful editorials that, if not declaring it dead, claimed OS/2 was in critical condition. Which ones am I referring to? No, not PC Mag. Not PC/Computing. Not PCWeek, The Computer Shopper or Windows Magazine. This ominous news originates far closer to home. The magazines that seem so convinced of OS/2's problems are OS/2 Magazine and OS/2 Professional.
Users of the Internet have complained about this type of editorial from OS/2 Professional for some time now, but personally, I thought OS/2 Magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Alan Zeichick, held different opinions. I may have been wrong but it's not entirely clear as his editorial, "Road Kill", in the March issue makes both openly pessimistic comments on OS/2's fate as well as optimistic ones. Maybe he can't decide what he believes.
More worrying than his indecision (at least he is not saying that OS/2 is definitely dead) is his inaccurate reporting of the facts. Mr. Zeichick claims that 1995 ended, "like road kill," for OS/2, citing the end of development on the CompuServe Information Manager for OS/2 and the closing of Athena Design Inc. The closing of Athena Design?!? Does Athena know about this? Well, actually they do, thanks to Mr. Zeichick and they have reportedly sent an official complaint to OS/2 Magazine, which will print a retraction in their next issue. The ceasing of development work on CIMOS/2 is accurate though. Mr. Zeichick is batting .500--not bad if he were playing baseball.
In the same paragraph, he refers to the end of 1995 as a, "dismal fourth quarter." Didn't anyone at IBM send OS/2 Magazine the press release regarding the 1,000,000 licenses of Warp sold in December? Further, he states that OS/2 has an, "increasing inability to maintain a healthy base of native third party products." I disagree strongly and feel I'm backed up by the many wonderfully talented small and medium sized ISV's that have jumped on the OS/2 bandwagon in 1995. And they don't look like they're going anywhere so I'm confused about what he means by maintaining, "a healthy base."
Mr. Zeichick also cites the failure of the PowerPC as a negative reflection on OS/2. True, many of us would have loved to see OS/2 for the PPC selling in stores today, but the failure of the PowerPC chip--produced by another division of IBM, not PSP--is not the fault of OS/2 or PSP. You might argue that PSP's inability to port OS/2 successfully helped the PPC's demise but the truth is, at most, it had a small part in it. So now IBM has stated that OS/2 development in 1996 will be for the Intel platform only. So what? This is a good thing. If no-one is going to successfully sell PPC machines in 1996 then I'm glad PSP is not wasting valuable development dollars on that platform and is instead putting them into the product I use (or will use), Merlin (or Warp 4.0 or 3.1 or whatever) for the Intel 486, Pentium and Pentium Pro and various clones.
The only mitigating feature of Mr. Zeichick's editorial is his own admission that, "Maybe 'road kill' is a little strong, since not all the yearend news was bad." No, it certainly wasn't but I realize print magazines have much longer publication cycles than electronic ones so I'll assume his column went to print before Mr. Zeichick was made aware of the 1,000,000 licenses figure. Again, he certainly doesn't mention it.
Despite his negative view of the past year, at least Mr. Zeichick sees hope for OS/2's future. I'm not sure the same can be said for the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of OS/2 Professional, Edwin Black. For far too long now, that publication has been complaining about OS/2's problems and the January issue (Volume IV, Number 1) is no different. If anything it's worse. In his "Publisher's Memo", Mr. Black gives a eulogy to OS/2 and PSP and wonders if PSP will even exist at press time. I won't condemn Mr. Black too much because it seems he genuinely likes OS/2 (just not IBM) but what the heck is he talking about when he writes, "Never did a product have so much going for it and yet fail so miserably," or, "IBM... killed Warp..."?!?!? Has OS/2 somehow died and we didn't notice? Or is Mr. Black just projecting his own publication's now apparent fate onto the product it is supposed to promote?
It doesn't end there either. The "Special Report" in this same issue is on "The Future of OS/2" and immediately after the title that future is revealed for us: "OS/2 is not dead. It is alive--but only barely, and it sure ain't kickin'." This makes me sick. If the staff of OS/2 Professional believe so strongly that OS/2 is going nowhere, one would think they would make like the proverbial rats and abandon ship before their fur got wet.
And that's what it seems they've done. In a press release dated February 21, International Features, Inc., the publishers of OS/2 Professional, announced they had ceased publication. Their subscription lists were sold to Miller Freeman who promised that subscription holders would be serviced with copies of OS/2 Magazine. Officially, IFI says they wish to focus on other publications (presumably profitable ones). One industry insider told me that OS/2 Professional had been distributed free of charge to too many people for too long to make it in today's economy. Apparently he was right.
How could anyone expect to build a successful publication while they are repeatedly attacking the very product they are attempting to promote, a product that is essential to their readers' businesses?
Whether the closing of OS/2 Professional was due to poor financial management, lack of devotion on the staff's part or other reasons, one thing is clear: there is now only one major English language OS/2 print publication in the world. That doesn't bode well for OS/2. But I don't think that necessarily means OS/2 is in trouble. It just means that for various reasons some OS/2 magazines are in trouble. Probably the OS/2 market is still rather small to support many traditional mainstream publications (electronic ones are a different story though!). That is changing, but only slowly as the installed base of OS/2 users gradually increases. It may be a year or more before the number of users and advertisers is sufficient for some other adventurous soul to jump into the OS/2 print market. But it will happen. Until then, the press would do well to remember where their loyalties are. And stop printing such tripe.
OS/2 is not dead! The sheer idiocy of believing something that has been announced repeatedly for the last 3 years (or 4 or 5) despite the obvious fact of OS/2's progress boggles the mind. The sheer idiocy to print such garbage defies description.
In fact, we asked the world to change and stunningly, millions did! In fact more than five million in the last year and a bit have said OK and tried something different. That's not failure, that's amazing! It might not be enough to support a spin-off industry (for example, multiple print publications focusing on OS/2) but it is still a raging success. Mr. Black and Mr. Zeichick should note that five million is more copies than both their publications put together sold all year (and I don't mean readers, I mean the number of copies printed).
So I'm here to tell ya, this is one editor who won't be crying, "the sky is falling." I believe in OS/2 and its future and we are going to continue to expand the quantity of OS/2 e-Zine!'s content and hopefully improve its quality. I believe there are significant and sufficient OS/2 users and ISV's that OS/2 will never go away. We are here for the long term. To quote Mr. Zeichick's closing remarks, "As we begin 1996, there's still life in the OS/2 community. And hope." Too bad none of it resides in the "traditional" press.
Copyright © 1996 - Falcon Networking
