Here is what Tommy Usher had mentioned about the failing of 
GeoWorks, which I totally agree with and he says it much better than 
I could of.
 Area:    DR_DEBUG
 Date:    12 Oct 96  08:18:00
 From:    Tommy Usher
 To:      Mack Barss
 Subject: MS WINDOWS
... As to GEOS, that's an interesting case study. Someone who had 
been a contract programmer at Microsoft told me how scared they were 
when it came out. Then, in short order, their fears turned to 
laughter. Geoworks blew it. First off, they created a system that 
was all but impossible to program for. Worse, there was virtually no 
documentation available for advanced users. Then, they ran roughshod 
over their installed base. When you produce a system like that, make 
promises about the availability of software, and then announce that, 
yes, software will now be available.....but, you had better be 
prepared to spend big bucks upgrading to the new version, which is 
pretty much incompatible with the previous version, you tend to 
anger some people. And there was the nasty stunt of buying off some 
German hackers, who had found ways to write programs for the earlier 
version. They finally released an SDK that required, for that time, 
extremely expensive hardware and software, thus making it difficult 
for shareware programmers to enter that market. In fact, unless they 
have changed, development costs would still be unreasonable. The sad 
thing is, they had a superior product, but lousy marketing skills.
 Area:    DR_DEBUG
 Date:    25 Oct 96  09:38:00
 From:    Tommy Usher
 To:      Bill Wolff
 Subject: MS WINDOWS
GEOS had the potential to be a good PC GUI, but the company was too 
busy shooting itself in the foot. (It sort of reminds me of an old 
joke about the Viking telling his men, "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO 
TELL YOU! IT'S PILLAGE *THEN* BURN!!!!!") They tried to shaft the 
customers BEFORE they were as big as Microsoft. They weren't ready 
for that kind of behavior, and they paid the cost. Granted, they 
have now found their niche, in the PDA market. Their approach is 
perfect for that market, where most are not interested in any 
details. Just as long as it works as advertised, the customer is 
probably happy.
 Area:    DR_DEBUG
 Date:    09 Nov 96  13:22:00
 From:    Tommy Usher
 To:      Bill Wolff
 Subject: DR-DOS died!
Actually, for its time, GEM was quite functional. GEOS wasn't that bad 
either, but GeoWorks just plain blew it. They were rather arrogant in 
how they dealt with people, and were determined to control more than 
they should have.
 Area:    DR_DEBUG
 Date:    29 Dec 96  12:47:00
 From:    Tommy Usher
 To:      James Stein
 Subject: Windows 95 Deficienci
... Remember, OS/2 started out with extremely high hardware 
requirements. Since GEOS would run on anything from an XT up, it was 
a good alternative. One of the forgotten features of GEOS, was the 
ability to run different GUIs. While it came with Motif, it is 
supposed to be easy to make it look like any other GUI. 
Unfortunately, that is yet another forgotten, and pretty much 
undocumented feature.
 Area:    DR_DEBUG
 Date:    07 Jan 97  14:56:00
 From:    Tommy Usher
 To:      Jack Stein
 Subject: Windows 95 Defici 1/2
... I will admit, GEOS was, at one time, far worse. For a long time, 
development required a Sun UNIX Workstation (or some pretty 
heavy-duty hacking.....as demonstrated by a couple of guys in 
Germany). Then, when tools did become available, they had what was, 
at the time, totally unreasonable hardware and software 
requirements. Especially for an GUI that was supposed to run in 
almost no RAM, and on just about any Intel processor...
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