Windows' Importance Increases

May 1993

While Windows shipments indicate that Windows has penetrated perhaps 25% of the DOS market (but a much higher percentage of active buyers and a stunning percentage, certainly more than 50% of new PC users), the effect of Windows’ success is even more startling. Almost all creation of new DOS software has stopped (although existing DOS packages continue to have enhancement releases, many of them with interfaces that mimic Windows, such as the brilliant new WordPerfect 6.0).

When developers create a new software package for the desktop market, it is almost always done for Windows first and then only later (if at all) for such other platforms as the Macintosh and Unix. This is a sharp departure from the past when, for instance, almost all graphics products arrived on the Macintosh platform before they came to DOS.

This means that vendors of other platforms are hobbled by a lack of new software. Reaction was certain and some have occurred:

Sun provides Windows on Unix

Sun has announced their own approach to enabling customers to run shrink-wrapped Windows applications on Sun (and other) Unix hardware. Never mind what else Sun says, this is their admission that you can’t sell systems that don’t speak Windows. Sun’s software will be provided with their version of the Unix operating system and licensed to other Unix hardware vendors, as well. Many Unix vendors like the idea of a Microsoft-free Windows-compatible solution, but issues remain:

• Often, these "in the box" environments suffer considerable performance degradation over native mode versions of the operating system/environment. In this case, Sun claims their version of Windows offers performance "as good or better than Windows." You’ll want to see.

• Sun will have to see each release of Windows first and then reverse engineer code to provide identical functionality, compatible with shrink-wrapped Windows applications software. This will put them perpetually behind a vendor who implements Windows under Unix by licensing code from Microsoft.

• Microsoft, of course, will no doubt feel that the Sun emulation of the Windows environment might infringe on Microsoft’s intellectual property. Bill Gates has already stated that they will want to look at the Sun product, when it’s available, to be certain that this has not occurred.

For all of these reasons, Sun’s claims that NT is now unnecessary, since users can now have a Windows interface, run Windows software, and still have the robust multi-user environment of Unix for complex applications, seems unlikely to be received unquestioningly.

Microsoft Offers Windows Support on Unix and Macintosh Systems

At the same time as Sun was acknowledging Windows’ primacy and importance by supporting Windows on its Unix systems, Microsoft was announcing some plans of its own.

Microsoft will be making the Windows applications programming interfaces (APIs) available on other platforms, specifically Unix and the Apple Macintosh. Microsoft will work with Insignia Software, a well-known cross-platform vendor, in some of these efforts, but will also provide tools and test suites of its own. The intention here is quite different than Sun’s. Microsoft wants to encourage developers to do their primary applications development work for Windows and then use these facilities to easily port the applications to other platforms, without the need to extensively rewrite to other graphical user interfaces.

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Entire contents © 1993 by Amy D. Wohl. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden.