[AnimalMuppet]

When IBM went to the PS/2 architecture, and the OS/2 software, to try to kill the PC clone market and lock up the PC hardware and OS market for themselves, Microsoft was the champion of freedom and openness. Really.

Windows 95 and 98 were when the GUI became cool. Well, cool and available - it was cool on the Mac, but nobody had Macs.

[Finnucane]

Yeah, I could see how finally getting their GUI system more or less working a decade after everyone else could be seen as cool. And yes, keeping the corporate drone market away from a technically better product, also cool.

[AnimalMuppet]

"After everyone else"? Well, there was the Mac. And there was TopView. And there was... who, exactly, is "everyone else"? There were workstations like Silicon Graphics, but they didn't even pretend to be available (affordable) for the average user. They weren't competition for the PC. On commodity hardware, it was Windows and TopView, and TopView was... not very useful, to put it charitably.

The PS/2 was a technically better product. It was also IBM's attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, so that it could sell hardware at prices considerably above the commodity level. Technically better? Cool. Not having to pay several hundred dollars more for your hardware? The market thought that was even more cool.

[ConceptJunkie]

Despite what people around here (including me) might think, when you have the Rolling Stones advertising for you and people are lining up to buy your product at midnight, you're pretty cool.

[erik_seaberg]

OS/2 was a partnership in which Microsoft betrayed IBM when they realized they could frighten OEMs into refusing to sell any competing OS.