Sidebar on platforms

By Donald Jenner

Naturally, when a person documents work being done, it makes sense to use the same system for both.  Ideally, it is possible to be running a design program with the object being documented and at the same time have the text-processing program going.  The new operating systems available for all the common platforms make this fairly simple.  Unix users have one or another of the "blessed" Unix graphical user interfaces (GUI, pronounced "gooey" -- suitable for such an unattractive acronym).  Macintosh users can run the standard operating system or A/UX with the same interface.  But for folks with PC-family machines, life is -- inevitably... -- more complex.

The choice is DOS by itself (whether the real Microsoft version, or Digital Research's hot competitor), or with Windows on top of it, or with IBM's strategic OS/2.  Read the standard trade publications, and it is clear they are no help on the matter; the pundits blow hot and cold on the subject, in fact.  [There is also a Unix option, but this complicates matters, and it is not really pertinent to the present discussion.]

DOS by itself is no longer interesting.  Serious work is done on AT-class machines or better.  All such machines of recent vintage (older ones have BIOS problems) will run DOS/Windows very nicely.  A commodity-price 12- or 16mHz 286 box with a decent display and two megabytes of RAM is a small-is-better approach to computing (and that describes the Sharp notebook I am using as I write this).  Make the machine a 386 -- SX or DX -- and give it about four to seven megabytes of RAM (one-half to two-thirds for applications, the rest for hard disk caching) and Windows is absolutely happy.  Spend money on a generous hard disk, though; the new applications -- Windows or otherwise -- demand much more disk space than older DOS-only applications.

Note well:  That same 386/4-plus megabyte machine is also a perfect OS/2 platform.  [For that matter, it is also a good Unix platform.]  And OS/2 will not go away -- it is too important to IBM's vision of where computing should be heading.  Moreover, OS/2 is tuned to the realities of the new processors in ways DOS-as-we-know-it can never be.  It is intended to manage memory and hard disk space and advanced processors and the applications written for such environments in ways that DOS (even as some sort of modest input/output layer for Windows) cannot.  It is, in short, a ground-up reassessment of microcomputer operating systems.  The only issue is, will Microsoft return to the OS/2 bandwagon, or will the company further muddy the waters by introducing still another Intel-targeted operating system concept, based on its "new technology kernel?"  Microsoft has announced the latter course, and the word is that the design talent includes the brains behind Digital Equipment Corp.'s VMS minicomputer operating system.

In the end, it won't make much difference.  IBM has already indicated that it will accommodate users who like Windows applications by building into its OS/2 "DOS box" the requisite Windows code to run Windows applications transparently.  Simply choose the Windows app's icon and it launches in the DOS box, behaving more or less as it would running on a DOS machine.  Reports from beta-test sites suggest that this works fairly well.  And while much can be said about IBM that is not altogether flattering, the company has a very good track record when it comes to delivering quality craftsmanship -- both in hardware and in software.

Equally, Microsoft can be expected to refine its foundation for Windows and Windows applications.  Those refinements will come in a fairly steady stream (which leads to the hope that Microsoft will keep the buy-in and upgrade costs for Windows modest -- again, the track record is pretty good).

There is one more question to address -- frequently asked by folks planning a hardware purchase:  What about the Apple/Microsoft lawsuit and the FTC investigation?  Despite the recent, rather stupid ruling (after all, judges are merely jumped-up lawyers, and lawyers are people who took two undergraduate degrees to become literate), Apple's case is really rather silly.  Microsoft DOS/Windows is not Finder or any other part of the Macintosh operating system; the two have common antecedents, and surely there is some "cross-fertilization."  They do >not< look alike, and they "feel" very different (to start with, Windows and Windows apps don't >require< a mouse, while without a mouse, a Mac is not functional).  

Nor is Microsoft particularly guilty of restriction competition.  Naturally, the company wants to keep its strong hold on the Intel-based desktop, but operating system competition is alive and well (Digital Research even quotes Bill Gates's praise of its product).  Microsoft pushes a suite of mainline applications, but other firms' products are commonly promoted cooperatively by Microsoft.  Indeed, Microsoft even "OEM'd" one such product; according to press releases from the companies involved, it was Precision's SuperBase 4 that Microsoft used to fulfill a contractual obligation with the Government.

###