IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

A tiny keyboard key has turned into full-on office soap opera material. In this retro tech tale, Microsoft and IBM were already clashing hard while working together on OS/2, an old operating system project, when a surprisingly dramatic fight broke out over one question: should the Tab key move you from one box to the next in a pop-up form? Microsoft said yes. IBM, apparently, said absolutely not. The dispute climbed so far up IBM’s management ladder that commenters are now treating it less like a design debate and more like a corporate sitcom. The line that stole the show? Microsoft’s side essentially saying, in polished form, that Bill Gates’s mom was not taking meetings about the Tab key. Brutal.

But the real fun is in the community reaction. The dominant mood is bafflement: what on earth did IBM want instead? Multiple commenters basically yelled the same thing — “Arrow keys?” and “So what did IBM want to use instead?!” Others were stunned because, as one person recalled, IBM’s own older mainframe systems supposedly already used Tab to jump between fields, which makes the whole standoff sound even messier. Over on the speculation side, readers floated theories that IBM was trying to avoid mixing a key used for typing with a key used for navigation, or maybe just being stubborn for the sake of process. Either way, the comments turned this into a hilarious pile-on about bureaucracy, old-school corporate ego, and the timeless joy of watching giant companies nearly combust over something everyone now takes for granted. For readers, that’s the delicious part: the story is history, but the comment section is pure disbelief.