IBM Corp promised it would have OS/2 for PowerPC finished off by the end of 1995 and appears to have done it – in both senses of the phrase. OS/2 Warp PowerPC Edition is indeed available, but only as a PRPQ: a Program Request Price Quotation item. This limbo state is reserved for the nichiest of IBM niche products; not on general sale, but available through the customer’s usual IBM representative as a special order. The magic product reference you will need to quote is ‘5799.QTZ’ – who knows, it may well be a real collector’s item very soon. The product doesn’t include any of the Warp Connect parts, and it only runs on the 604-based PowerSeries 830 and 850 models – anyone misguided enough to buy a PowerPC-based laptop from IBM can forget it. Neither does it appear that the company intends to do much to enhance the product: We are shifting our focus back to Intel for 1996, an Austin flack acknowledged late last month. IBM is committed to getting the next iAPX-86-based release – codenamed Merlin – out this summer, together with server extensions which go to make up its Eagle offering. Why PRPQ? We know that we can reach the people who want it with this system, said the IBMer, referring to the 150 customers worldwide who were on the beta programme last year. The approach has the disadvantage that anyone with a non-IBM PowerPC machine will not be able to order OS/2 using this method, but since the operating system will run only on IBM’s own 830s and 850s, that is not problematic. No PowerPC manufacturers have licensed OS/2 and none that we have spoken to have evinced any enthusiasm for the product. While we are somewhat loath to pronounce OS/2 for PowerPC dead – IBM insists that further development is only on hold this year – there is precious little evidence that the product has a future. The Power Personal Systems division – charged with taking PowerPC onto the desktop – has been disbanded and it was only this division that had much to gain from OS/2 for PowerPC. The PowerSeries machines’ new home – the AIX division – is having a hard enough time adjusting to sell Windows NT, let alone OS/2. At the same time, the originally much-vaunted plans for a common code-base for iAPX-86 and PowerPC versions have also disappeared over the horizon. None of IBM’s current work on the iAPX-86 version includes producing a microkernel-based version. In summary, the future of PowerPC now depends on Windows NT, AIX, Mac OS and Solaris. OS/2 can safely be ignored for the time being.
