IBM Corp’s PowerPC-based Power Personal Systems are being branded as failures before they even appear on the market: Operating system delays hamper IBM plans for first PowerPC desktop line, says a headline in this week’s Infoworld; OS/2 for PowerPC test releases delayed, echoes US PC Week. IBM intends to stick to the October 18 launch date, but, as reported (CI No 2,491), the only operating systems to be available this year are AIX 4.1 – AIX is not seen as a desktop operating system, and Windows NT 3.5 – and NT is now widely regarded as a failure. OS/2 for PowerPC is not now expected to ship until mid-1995: IBM has been steadfast in saying its desktop operating system would be ready by year’s end, a target date that Inforworld sources said IBM is privately acknowledging it can’t make. IBM declined to comment on the systems or any change in IBM’s strategy, but told the paper the PowerPC computers would be positioned somewhere between a high-end personal computer and a low-end workstation.IBM may not release an early test version of OS/2 for the PowerPC until the end of the year, sources close to the project told PC Week. It now plans to begin an early beta programme for OS/2 for the PowerPC by the end of the year, a high-ranking IBM source said, with the fully-fledged beta release entering testing some time in early 1995. A lot of architectural issues weren’t nailed down until last May, said one source close to IBM, so third-party developers have not received even early test code for developing and testing device drivers and development tools. According to PC Week, the delay is because of the huge task of converting 16-bit OS/2 code to 32-bit code for the PowerPC: every command-line utility, such as directory or disk copy, is 16-bit code, as are some of the dynamic link libraries, the source told the paper. And some virtual device drivers are written in assembler, which is an even more difficult conversion exercise – and IBM has to reinvent the wheel, the source said, because it has chosen not to use a Windows emulator such as Wabi from SunSoft Inc or SoftWindows from Insignia Solutions Ltd.
