Re: MS still playing catch-up
OS/2's excellent support for subsystems was eventually part of its problem: companies didn't need to bother writing native code and thus becoming invested in its success. The APIs were better, hardware support was fantastic (including driver virtualisation) but it was hobbled for many by the WPS locking up so easily. This felt like the OS had crashed and, unless you knew that it hadn't and how to close and restart the WPS, it was to all intents. But for decades airports and banks ran on OS/2 because it never crashed and provided fantastic support for all their mainframe systems.
In the meantime Microsoft continued to make Windows more acceptable and eventually even better. Though, even today, there are things that OS/2 could do that Windows still can't without running virtual machines.
And any good IT student could do worse than take a peek at OS/2, especially the internals to understand that there are ways of making better mousetraps.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
