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by smacktoward 3279 days ago
That was IBM's strategy for killing Windows with OS/2 -- shipping OS/2 with extremely robust support for running Windows applications right alongside OS/2 ones. The marketing people pitched it as "a better Windows than Windows."

It didn't work; third party developers saw that a Windows app could serve both the Windows and OS/2 markets and focused all their energy on their Windows app, usually not bothering to write an OS/2 version at all. The result was that Windows' big moat -- its application library -- actually got deeper. IBM's big plan to kill Windows ended up cementing its position as a dominant platform.
3 comments
iamnotlarry 3279 days ago
This is a classic lesson. Firefox OS tried to invert it. You could run FxOS apps on Android devices. And Windows devices. And Linux devices.

MS is doing somewhat the IBM thing with their Linux for Windows. I've been curious to see if that would have the same result for them that it had for IBM.

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DavidFlint 3279 days ago
They were both growing rapidly in a brand new market. What I am proposing is a solution for low budget OS to have ANY chance against duopoly. If Mozilla would allow painless wrapping Android apps, I bet their platform would be in a different place now. I remember my non-technical friends saying they like Mozilla for price etc, but they won't get it as there is no apps.
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fabrice_d 3279 days ago
I don't think you're right. What killed FxOS was not a lack of wrapper to run Android apps (we actually got one that worked).

What makes or break a Mobile OS is the availability of the key apps for the market you're going after: whatsapp, FB, Twitter, etc. (that varies based on the region).

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detaro 3279 days ago
> What killed FxOS was not a lack of wrapper to run Android apps (we actually got one that worked).

Was that ever released? I saw it on Mozilla employees' dev phones, but nowhere else.

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fabrice_d 3279 days ago
I don't think you ever saw the one I'm talking about. It was done in collaboration with a partner and was never released. Also, lawyers were involved ;)

You likely saw the other attempt using the J2ME-in-js implementation: https://github.com/mozilla/pluotsorbet

That was too slow and never shipped in commercial devices either.

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gcb0 3279 days ago
didn't work because Microsoft noticed it and played them perfectly well. getting away with the only rewrite windows ever got (nt) for free.
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