BeOS, OS/2, DRDOS, WordStar, the G4 Cube, Zune, Palm phones, and Windows Phone were amazing products. These were amazing products that were, at the ti

Better Products Often Fail - by Bradford Morgan White

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2022-09-21 00:00:42

BeOS, OS/2, DRDOS, WordStar, the G4 Cube, Zune, Palm phones, and Windows Phone were amazing products. These were amazing products that were, at the time, superior to their competition.

BeOS was better than Macintosh’s OS, and it was better than OS X. BeOS failed because of the developer tools offered by NEXT/OS X, and the fact that Steve Jobs went back to Apple and bought NEXT.

DRDOS was better than MSDOS. DRDOS failed because of Windows 3. No one cared what DOS was under the hood once Windows 3 loaded. This is expected. Windows 3 was absolutely amazing. It is made more amazing by virtue of being useful even on an 8088. Microsoft, love them or hate them, did some amazing work. This doesn’t diminish Digital Research’s DRDOS. DRDOS was amazing. DRDOS didn’t need to die.

WordStar died for a variety of reasons not at all dissimilar to Visi-On. It was a market leader that pioneered many different technologies and usage paradigms, but ultimately was superseded by competitors who were more innovative. The sadness is that very particular features and use cases are often overlooked by the faster moving cohort of development companies.