Essentially yes.
Bill Gates introduced the fly and then fix mentality that produced so many Air Force budget overruns to software development. They took the money saved on not writing tight code and dumped it into advertising. Thus demonstrating yet again that success goes not to the best of the best but to those best able to sell themselves.
Something Americans are reminded of every two years. Especially in Blue districts / States....
Now, someone would have done it eventually, it is just that Microsoft actually did it.
They also launched the OS/2 development tools at what was not an unreasonable price for the day (GEOS charged more for development tools IIRC and was at one time the most common GUI on earth ... running on the C64 etc as it did) but then turned around and released Windows development for relatively dirt cheap ... insuring their lipstick on a pig would dominate ... but that’s another story.
Bill Gates is a myth. Not the man so much as the myths about the man.
Don't forget the role played by the media, especially the PC media. They were totally befuddled by the "whizkid" versus the "old fuddy" image of the IBM developers and OS/2 users.
Does anyone remember the "Steve Barkto" incident?
I was one of those OS/2 users. Still am, although the system is now supported by Arca Noae, out of Europe.
OS/2 was and still is, infinitely superior to all versions of Windows.