Easy’s other mark of distinction was its much-heralded TopView compatibility. TopView was IBM’s first attempt to steer an independent course from Microsoft, and its introduction in 1985 had given Bill Gates a severe case of heartburn. TopView was a “shell” that added rudimentary cut-and-paste capabilities between programs as well as multitasking to DOS. Multitasking would allow a user to, for instance, call up WordStar while recalculating a spreadsheet in Lotus. Unfortunately, this capability was somewhat theoretical. TopView sucked up most of the resources of any PC it ran on, making multitasking any but the smallest applications difficult, if not impossible. TopView was also character based, unlike the Mac OS and Windows. It was therefore unable to integrate graphics and text within a document or display different fonts and type sizes.
For products written specifically to the TopView API, the integration between products became more robust and memory management somewhat more effective. MicroPro had spent a considerable amount of time and internal development resources learning how to integrate TopView into their software. The company expected this investment would pay off in big dividends in increased functionality in future MicroPro products and stronger sales.
Despite these expectations, TopView compatibility hadn’t gone over well at the conference. For one thing, a bunch of Macophiles from the press had for some reason shown up and taken a great deal of pleasure in torturing me during demos of Easy. “Show us again how you cut and paste text,” they’d say. “You call that easy?! Bwwwaaaaahhhhhaaaahhhhhaaaa!” they brayed as I banged on a keyboard instead of brandishing a mouse. “Now, how do you display a font onscreen? You can’t?! Wow! We can see why TopView is so fabulous!” they howled as they held their sides and laughed hysterically.
By the end of the show I hated Mac users and Macs.
On the other hand, PC types had hardly been more complimentary. At one point, John Dvorak, the long-time columnist at InfoWorld who was now working at PC Magazine, strolled by.
“Hi, John!” I called out brightly. “Care to see a demonstration of Easy, the TopView-compatible word processor, in action?”
He stared at me with distaste. “I have no desire to see, hear, or do anything that has anything to do with TopDog,” he stated with emphasis. “When is the next update of WordStar shipping?”
“Uh, real soon now! In the meantime, would you care to see a demonstration of WordStar 2000?”
He walked away without saying a word. Great.
A few minutes later, up walked a pleasant-looking gentleman whose show badge indicated he worked for the IT department of a major New York bank.
“Hi! Care to see a demonstration of Easy, the TopView-compatible word processor from MicroPro, publisher of WordStar?” I chirped.
He looked sad. “I don’t think so. We’re a major IBM customer, but when we brought in some copies of TopView and showed them to our PCs, they began to whine and howl and tried to crawl off their desks and hide under the chairs. By the way, could you let me know when the next version of WordStar is shipping?” He gave me his card and walked away.
Another fellow stepped up briskly to my demo station, stopped abruptly, and peered intently at the monitor. His greasy hair and slight but redolent tang of BO told me before I glanced at his badge that he was programmer.
“Hello!” I caroled. “Care to see a demonstration of Easy, the TopView-com—”
“TopView? TopView?!” he interrupted hoarsely. “I want to know when the next version of WordStar is shipping!” Gobbling sounds began to issue from the back of his throat. He made the sign of the cross at me and hurried away.
It was a long, long day.
The memory of my humiliation fresh in mind, I decided to do something about it. After all, I was the field sales engineer of the year, damn it. I stalked over to the table where MicroPro’s vice president of development was peaceably minding his own business, sat down, and announced in what I hoped were my richest, most persuasive tones that “We need to forget about TopView and support Windows.”
He blinked at me. “Rick, we’re talking about IBM. TopView is endorsed by IBM. Bill Lowe has personally told me that TopView is the future of IBM operating systems on the PC. And IBM is the company that sets the standards.”
“No,” I countered. “The wisdom of the field says that TopView is doomed. Customers don’t like it. They’ve seen the Mac; that’s what they want on their PCs. The press hates TopView; they think the Mac is where it’s at. Developers hate TopView; they want to make cool Mac-like things for PCs. Everyone hates TopView! On the PC side of things, the only viable thing close to the Mac is Windows. If we write for Windows, we can do a cool Mac-like word processor for the PC and be the only one! By default, we’ll lead the PC market in our ability to do things like display graphics and text within a document.”
“Besides,” I said, my enthusiasm reaching a fevered pitch, “Why spend so much time supporting IBM? They’re notorious for working with companies, then stealing their good ideas and driving them out of business. We need to work with Microsoft! They’re much smaller and will be far easier to deal with!”
Rarely is one privileged to be so right for so wrong a reason.
As I’d predicted, the market, enthralled by the Mac and discouraged by TopView’s sluggish performance, rejected IBM’s first attempt at breaking free from Microsoft’s yoke. TopView was out of sight by the end of 1985; the company literally could not give the thing away.
Chastened by its failure, IBM paused to consider its options. It had two basics tracks down which it could go. It could simply cut the cord with Microsoft at some point and develop its own desktop OSs. Or it could decide to remain in partnership with Microsoft and ship new versions of DOS on its PC and eventually Windows, the GUI extension to DOS that Gates had been pushing since 1983 and had finally shipped in 1985.
After pondering the situation a bit, IBM decided to do both. It would stay in partnership with Gates but make the little geek jump through hoops building a new OS that did all the things IBM thought it needed to do, up to and including supporting old TopView applications, all two or three of them, despite the fact that no one cared about this. Oh, and IBM programmers would develop significant parts of the new OS. Oh, and the new OS would come in two versions, one that Microsoft could license to third parties à la DOS and another, higher-end version that would have additional capabilities and only run on IBM PCs (in theory—this turned out not to be true). And oh, by the way, everyone agreed that Windows could stick around for a while. The first edition had gotten bad reviews and the product was clearly harmless.
Gates, in a display of manly fortitude (well, perhaps not that manly. Gates would have supported Commodore DOS if that’s what it took to keep IBM’s business) that paid off handsomely, agreed to everything IBM wanted. Work on the next generation of PC OSs commenced.