[dfe]

I think if IBM had simply put in the engineering to allow Windows 95 to run as the Win-OS/2 layer, OS/2 may have survived a lot longer.

I've done a fair amount of research into this and I think it was technically within reach. IBM's marketing "a better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows" was true until Windows 95 came out, and it would have continued to be true if they had simply offered Win95-OS/2. Not being able to run the latest Windows (Win32) software meant that OS/2 was no longer a better Windows than Windows, it was just a different and increasingly dated-looking Windows.

IBM was too self-absorbed to do this. They were going to ditch both Microsoft and Intel and make PowerPC machines running OS/2. That didn't work out too well.

Imagine a world where OS/2 Warp 3 saw a BBS-distributed or Internet-distributed update to support Win95-OS/2 released within a week of Windows 95 going to retail. It was entirely possible in September of 1995 to do this, Warp Connect adding Internet support was done this way. The "Chicago" betas were widely available so this could have easily been co-developed.

The real lesson here is that building a better runtime actually can work, if you commit to maintaining feature parity. OS/2 faltered because IBM stopped developing the features their customers wanted, like the ability to run standard Win32 software, and instead developed the features IBM wanted, like the ability to run on a different CPU architecture.