The problem for Citrix was that even DOS applications were being forced into spending more time in graphical modes. WordPerfect added page preview before creating a dedicated GUI; Lotus 2.2 and R3 improved graphing functions to compete with Excel. MS Word for DOS ran best in graphical modes and starting with Word 5 tried to match WordPerfect with page preview and then graphical editing after the panicky release of Windows Pageview to give DOS Word 4 a page preview and graphics insertion program. Even stodgy Displaywrite got a page preview mode and a graphical editing add-on by 1990. A text only multiuser solution was running into a strong headwind.

I used to think that, then I got Microsoft Word for Xenix. I never did like Wordperfect, and although Word was way easier to use, it still felt terrible. And I ran back to Word 2 for Windows.

Word 1 for OS/2 feels like a tech demo. Too bad IBM had to be IBM, but GDI on OS/2 would have had aps.

There have been plenty of times that I wished I had a dumb terminal, and it was someone else’s job to make sure my word processor was working properly, rather than them giving me some crappy version of Windows which keeps crashing. I suppose like most things the reality probably wasn’t quite as nice as you’d hope, though!

I meant to add more stuff, and re-work it before publishing it, but that’s me editing late.

I’m not sure what is with the timeline though as Citrix has Multiuser 1.0 being a 1990 product, but the disk images I have say otherwise. The manuals for 2.0 are dated 1991 although despite it being clear that they had launched after a market that basically ceased to exist overnight I don’t think they really had much choice but to push forward.

The curse of Citrix is to be chasing Microsoft from the outside. First they latch onto OS/2 1.21, then OS/2 2.0. WinView is apparently OS/2 based + Windows. The only review I could find complained that it can take upwards of 3+ minutes to start Windows on WinView. But slow disks, low memory 386’s don’t seem all that surprising. By not having their own software stack they really were along for the ride. And that ride turned upside down when Microsoft renegotiated for NT 4.0 and was able to bring their tech inhouse in the form of Terminal Server.

I would imagine that PC-MOS, VM/386 and other multi-taskers/multi-user DOS solutions flourished for a while although they got in on the ground so to speak in 1987/1988 with the introduction of the 80386. It’s funny in retrospect 2-3 years later may not seem like a long time, but in this industry it can easily be the space between entire generations.

Serial port terminals connected to a PC seems to have been a siren song that lured many a company to its fall. Citrix was fortunate that their sales goals were more modest than the competition.