zlacker

IBM also made a whole bunch of strategic mistakes beyond that. Most importantly their hardware division didn't give a flying f about OS/2. Even when they had a 'better Windows' they did not actually use it themselves and didn't push it to other vendors.

Windows NT wasn't really relevant in that competition for much longer, only XP was finally for end consumers.

> where nvidia has the standard that AMD is implementing, and so no matter what if you play in the backward compatibility realm you're always going to be playing catch-up

That's not true. If AMD starts adding their own features and have their own advantages, that can flip.

It only takes a single generation of hardware, or a single feature for things to flip.

Look at Linux and Unix. Its started out with Linux implementing Unix, and now the Unix are trying to add compatibility with with Linux.

Is SGI still the driving force behind OpenGL/Vulcan? Did you think it was a bad idea for other companies to use OpenGL?

AMD was successful against Intel with x86_64.

There are lots of example of the company making something popular, not being able to take full advantage of it in the long run.

>>panick+(OP)
Slapping a price tag of over $300 on OS/2 didn’t do IBM any favors either.

>>chucka+95
That's what happens when your primary business model is selling to the military. They had to pay what IBM charged them (within a small bit of reason) and it was incredibly difficult for them to pivot away from any path they chose in the 80's once they had chosen it.

However, that same logic doesn't apply to consumers, and since they continued to fail to learn that lesson now IBM doesn't even target the consumer market given that they never learned how to be competitive and could only ever effectively function when they had a monopoly or at least a vendor lock-in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_the_IBM_PC_busi...