Category: Blogs

I remember seeing a cover of Windows Magazine In late 1993: “The system we’ll be running in 1994”, showing a screen shot of Chicago, then the code name of the next generation of Windows, later to be know as Windows 95. Well Windows 95 was not called Windows 94, and the version that launched in August 1995 was seriously flawed, despite this it blew the only credible alternative out of the water. This alternative was called OS/2, and it really was a much better system.

As mentioned in the previous post, last time around, in 1994, Microsoft faced endless delays of their then next generation of Windows code-named Chicago. In 1994 an alternative, that was technologically superior to Windows, existed, it was called OS/2, and OS/2 had already conquered the corporate desktop, due to the shortcomings of Windows 2.0 and DOS.

So how did Windows manage to beat the odd, and re-conquer the desktop, despite the better technology of OS/2?

Yesterday Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows, aka Vista, aka Longhorn, will be delayed even further.

I remember attending a seminar featuring the IBM OS/2 Chief Technology Evangelist (CTE) in 1994, he demoed OS/2 running on a 16MB 486 doing amazing things, that were impossible to do using Windows 3.0, including speech recognition.

In the early 90ies Microsoft was pitching a future version of Windows NT, code named “Cairo”, that would introduce a distributed object oriented file system.

I remember the words of IBMs CTE clearly; “And it’s a long walk to Cairo”.
“Cairo” eventually became Windows NT 4.0, but we’re still walking and is Cairo in sight?

Why?…What’s that! Take a closer look at the background images shown in the Vista demos: it is indeed the Giza Pyramids – Microsoft clearly believes that they’re on final approach to Cairo.

It’s time to take back the desktop: Carpe Diem – The walk to Cairo IS over (if we want it).