IBM Temporarily Halts Production Of OS/2 Warp Software Because of Bug

IBM Temporarily Halts Production Of OS/2 Warp Software Because of Bug

By Bart Ziegler, Staff Reporter
The Wall Street Journal

New York -- October 27, 1994 -- International Business Machines Corp. temporarily halted production of its OS/2 Warp software because of a technical glitch, a small but embarrassing setback just two weeks after its high-profile product launch.

The software bug could cause problems for some customers when they install the OS/2 Warp operating system on their personal computers. IBM said it has fixed the flub and resumed production and will swap boxes already shipped to replace the flawed diskette. An IBM spokeswoman declined to say how many copies of the $80 product were shipped, but the total is believed to be in the thousands.

IBM said the software rollout will continue as planned and that it will be widely available in stores by Nov. 4. Though software bugs are common, the company said it didn't know how the flaw went undetected during the extensive testing done on OS/2 Warp.

The setback is another sign that OS/2 Warp, the newest version of the IBM operating system that controls a computer's internal functions, is off to a rocky start. So far, OS/2 Warp has received mixed reviews. The New York Times largely panned the product in a harsh review Tuesday, pointing out the glitch, and the trade journal PC Week called it "incomplete" and disappointing.

A report by the consulting firm WorkGroup Technologies Inc. said Warp is slower than rival Windows in performing many functions, a point IBM disputes. But the trade journal InfoWorld called Warp "superior" to an early version of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95, due next year.

OS/2 Warp is crucial to IBM's attempt to loosen Microsoft's stranglehold on the software market. Big Blue has invested as much as $2 billion in versions of OS/2 over the years and is believed to have recouped only a fraction of its investment. Next week it starts a $50 million advertising barrage as it tries to persuade Windows users to switch. IBM said it has shipped almost six million copies of versions of OS/2, while Windows has sold more than 50 million copies.

IBM's chief financial officer, Jerome York, told industry analysts last week that low-end software products such as OS/2 are among problem areas the company must fix. A delay in an additional version of OS/2 has set back IBM's effort to launch a new type of personal computer based on its PowerPC microprocessor chip. Those PCs are almost a year behind schedule.

The software glitch and temporary production halt were first reported yesterday by the Boston Globe. The problem causes OS/2 Warp, on some computers, to take a backup copy of a file from the disk-operating system and move it to an OS/2 Warp file. That causes problems in running DOS and Windows applications software. While OS/2 Warp provides an alternative to Windows as a way to run applications programs and perform other tasks, its capability to run Windows software requires that DOS and Windows be installed on the computer as well.