Worlds without Windows

Haven't done any decent rantage for a while so here goes...
Firstly, be forewarned, the following is opinion and not even remotely backed up by facts...

While browsing through the letters column of The Inquirer, I noticed someone suggesting that without Microsoft and Windows, we wouldn't have cheap PCs and OSs. It got me wondering about alternative courses for the paths of computers. I started thinking about alternative worlds where small changes make big differences.

I'll cover the second alternative in a few days (IBM adopting the IBM-801 instead of the i8088)

So where does this history diverge? Well, lets let OS/2 succeed. At just the wrong time in company history, Bill Gates dies in a tragic bouncyball accident and the company, as a result, misses the boat with Windows 3.0.
A handful of years later, OS/2 v 3.0 is released. It has a relatively robust 32 bit system, networking, a scripting language and a relatively neat GUI. Suprisingly it is also remarkably stable. With no alternative, users flock to it. The price is reasonable, as IBM subsidise it as an excuse to sell more computers. Microsoft makes a mint out of a customised office suite for OS/2, however, without low level "helper" code to boost performance, Microsoft never grind the competition under as much as they could have.

So what else would we see? Well IBM have always been big on interoperability. They are also good at robustness. I'd suspect we'd have seen a port to the Power architecture, meaning there would have been interesting traction on Apple and their Macs. We also may have seen a delay in the rise of Linux. Alternatively we may have seen it sooner, rather than later, with OS/2 as a layer on top of a robust Linux core.

What I DON'T see, however, is the dominance of just one OS that we see now. IBM wouldn't have been interested in vertical leveraging their OS as much, as that would clash/compete with their AIX and S series hardware. This may have also kept Netware competitive for longer.

I also suspect IBM would have been less enthusiastic about "bundling" compared to MS. We may still be using Netscape. Whether it'd be as good as Firebird I doubt (Having not been outsourced in this world).

I think we could have been looking at more common, cheaper pricing on most of the components of the average computer, as well as a more robust overall system. I don't think open source would have been quite the player it is now. Alternatively IBM could be selling an OS/2 layer for Linux and living hansomly off it. Who knows?

A strange world indeed!