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I'm Larry Seltzer, Editorial Director of BYTE. BYTE survived in print well into the 90's and was then bought by CMP, who stopped the print edition in 98. It existed online for a while, mostly as a subscription-based site which folded in 2009. BYTE is now owned by UBM Tech, and part of the InformationWeek Business Network. Our focus is consumerization of IT, which I define as the use in business and other managed networks of products designed for consumer use. This mostly about mobile devices, and I hope the connection to in-flight Wi-Fi is clear. Incidentally, my earliest memory of BYTE was reading it in high school in the late 70's in relation to the TRS-80 Model I Level I we had. I think there was an article about Z-80 assembler.

hint, an old 150MHz Pentium outperformed a 150MHz PentiumPro when running Windows 95.

A frequently-repeated and commonly exagerated urban myth, but one that isn't supported by evidence.

Yes, in a worst case scenario (16 bit applications, hardware requiring legacy DOS thunking drivers, etc) you might see the sort of numbers you refer to, but on a properly configured Windows 95 system (32 bit applications, 32 bit drivers) the Pentium Pro performed measurably better than the Pentium (albeit not as relatively better as it did on NT).

Real 32bit OSs like *nix, OS/2, and Windows NT showed vast performance increases running on the 32bit PentiumPro.

OS/2 still had 16-bit components well past the mid-90s. Most notably, the HPFS driver.

Not surprised, the last issue was very thin, but still. First Byte (I still miss Byte, see this 10 year old issue for why.), then PC Mag, now DDJ. Ah well, another subscription to not renew.

At least Linux Journal is still a Real Magazine.

part of that is due to the MS/IBM colaboration on OS/2 before MS came out with Win3 and NT. From the colaboration MS got NT and IBM got OS/2 1.3. Balmer even called OS/2 "Windows PLUS" and MS insisted the future belonged to OS/2.

Writing in assembly doesn't mean somehow automatically the performance is going to be awesome. All it means is you have more control. Control != Performance. Go read Michael Abrash's GPBB.

http://www.byte.com/abrash/

That may well be so, but there have been specific requirements in the GPL/LGPL that restrict usage of GPL/LGPL'd software that in no way relate to copyright; these requirements so broadly degrade the scope of the "freedom" that is the main talking point for the GPL that the license is of no interest to me except as an example of how not to distribute software.

Yea that's why I think BSD style licenses are freer and I prefer them. For instance a person can take BSD code and close the source they add to it. If I'm right all that's required is proper attribution of those who contributed code. The original code is still available but you can close your own code.

After reading on and on in the GPL about what you have to do, what you can't do, what you have to accept, etc., I am left completely without any feeling that I've been given something "free", or, were I to adopt it for my own work, that I would be creating something "free."

The way I look at it is the GPL's freedom is for users not programmers, there are just too many restrictions on programmers in it.

I'm 100% guilty of carrying forward the attitude I started with back in the 1960's, where software was a fabulously interesting thing that we shared with each other without any thought whatsoever for moderating that behavior because the other party might actually make use of it.

Ah, it was in part because of the hackers and their culture in the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT as well as the hardware hackers on the West Coast in the 1970s that in high school I wanted go into computer research. I wanted to be a hardware and a software hacker.

On that basis, entire magazines existed that shared code, talked about various design issues, laid out hardware designs, etc.

I recall a few magazines from the '70s but not many. "Creative Computing", "Interface Age", and my fav "Byte" I recall but that's it. I especially loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" columns. The one computer magazine I wish were still in print is "Byte".

Yeah, I'm an old hippie. :-)

Same here except smoking marijuana.

When a PC crashes, even the system administrator might not hear about it, much less the vendors who made the system, the OS, and the application software. The user shrugs, reboots, and keeps right on working. When a mainframe crashes, however, it's a major catastrophe. It's General Motors calling up IBM to demand answers.

Ten years gone, and still relevant.

Damn I miss Byte.

I believe it was in its first edition when I read it (in '93?), so it's been a while.

Yea, I read it when it first came out in '84. Back then I loved reading the magazine "Byte". My fav columns were Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" who now has his own magazine "Circuit Cellar" and Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor".

I might not quite remember the details like the name of Tech Model Railroad Club.

Because of an injury my memory is weird, I recall some things easy while other things I can't recall. A few years ago this proved to be a difficulty I had when I was taking Java classes. I'd do alright in the first class but then I could only recall a little bit for the second class so I'd start behind. I reread the book last year though, from where I am now all I have to do to get it is stand up and grab it from my book shelf.

military grade GPS have higher precision, although it seems unlikely that this is the reason they are bulkier, probably just the usual shock-resistant packaging for military use I guess. however, civilian GPS signal is apparently less accurate because noise is intentionally added, see graph here: http://www.byte.com/art/9602/img/511022c2.htm

My understanding is that the military GPS have a more limited battery life, heavier spare batteries, and that for normal navigation the civilian units are more than adequate. Some military GPS integrate with targetting devices and that may account for additional weight and size, plus it may just be using older technology.

military grade GPS have higher precision, although it seems unlikely that this is the reason they are bulkier, probably just the usual shock-resistant packaging for military use I guess.

however, civilian GPS signal is apparently less accurate because noise is intentionally added, see graph here: http://www.byte.com/art/9602/img/511022c2.htm

http://www.byte.com/art/9511/sec13/art32.htm - ShowCase Vista, not in use anymore, but first used in the early 90s.

The parent post very nicely explains things, and contributes to more sleepless nights for me. As described by the parent post, software patents are indeed a hopeless situation.

The parent notes that prior art may be irrelevant, but here are some possibilities anyway.
ARINC Specification 661-2 Cockpit Display System Interfaces to User Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARINC_661
NeXT/Apple Web Objects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebObjects
http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.13/13. 05/WebObjectsOverview/index.html
http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-05-199 6/swol-05-cs.html
http://www.byte.com/art/9609/sec9/art1.htm
NexT/Apple Interface Builder

The term "hacker" is overloaded, whether we like it or not.

True enough, actually news reporters were called hackers, er hacks. Heck though I'm not sure I thing "hacks" was used for reporters in Orson Welles' 1941 movie "Citizen Kane". I just get so pissed when I see people use "hackers" to mean criminals or those who use computer to do bad things. I grew up in the '70s and saw the homebrew computers coming out. In magazines like Byte I read about these hardware and software hackers designing new systems and programs and I wanted to be one of them. It was either Computer Engineering/Science or Marine Biology. Too late but now I sometimes think I should of went into Marine Biology instead.

The 840AV had a fully functional software phone and answering machine. It worked great and was to market in 1993. Read about it in Byte: http://www.byte.com/art/9401/sec9/art5.htm The Quadra 840AV's DSP uses a real-time operating system that can perform several signal-processing tasks simultaneously. One such task is the sound preprocessing for PlainTalk. Other programmed functions that the DSP can handle are telephony, modem, and fax operations. A bundled Telephone application lets the Quadra act as a phone, and, with the Apple AudioVision monitor, you can actually use the system as a speakerphone. Telephone can also answer the phone, play a recorded message, and then record a message from the caller--but you'll need lots of hard disk space to record digitized messages.

Chaos Corner is still alive. Go here: http://www.byte.com/chaosmanor/ (at least I think it's still alive, last article from Jerry was from June 2006, but he's taken breaks in the past as well.)

I remember in the "old days" magazines used to have courses on programming, and really much more thorough reviews.

Like the print edition of Byte magazine ?

Its a shame, because I do appreciate having something physical to read in my hands, but the peak of content has passed.

Same here. If I'm going to read something more than a page I'd rather it be hard copy not on my monitor. Admittedly my monitor is a CRT and LCDs may be better but I don't know if they are. I'm hoping to get one by the end of the year so I may find out then, I've been looking around at what's available in stores but I haven't seen many that are bigger than 19" or 20" and I want to get one at least 23". I also want to buy it from a brick and mortor store so if there's a problem it will be simple to take back, either for servicing, replacement, or return.

I remember PCW when it had a section devoted to assembler subroutines, proper programming tutorials, a column about numbers/problem solving etc

I remember when Byte magazine was a printed magazine and would subscribe in a heart beat if it in print again.

even fiction. Not it's just glossy photographs of Dell keyboards and mobile phones.

I especially loved the columns in "Byte", Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor and Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar , which now is his own magazine.

Oh, and don't forget the CD full of shareware. That's something you can't get very easily elsewhere.

I see many magazines that include cds, and now dvds. Most don't but many still include disks.

I remember PCW when it had a section devoted to assembler subroutines, proper programming tutorials, a column about numbers/problem solving etc

I remember when Byte magazine was a printed magazine and would subscribe in a heart beat if it in print again.

even fiction. Not it's just glossy photographs of Dell keyboards and mobile phones.

I especially loved the columns in "Byte", Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor and Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar , which now is his own magazine.

Oh, and don't forget the CD full of shareware. That's something you can't get very easily elsewhere.

I see many magazines that include cds, and now dvds. Most don't but many still include disks.

"I bet 85% of the people responding haven't even read the article"

I stopped taking notice of Gartner and the like a long time ago ..

"Linux is still not ready for widescale deployment on the desktop, according to analyst firm Gartner"

"Would their respect for Gartner's advice change if they knew the firm is indirectly owned by dozens of big-money investors who control some of the same companies Gartner evaluates?"

".. the Gartner Group (Framingham, MA) estimates that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a networked Windows 95 PC is $9784 a year .."

"Gartner believes that most of the Linux shipments will eventually have illegal copies of Windows installed--a fact that makes Linux's seeming dominance of this market somewhat misleading,"

was Re:Feeling threatened?

Bingo. It was called the Micro 2000. A quick Google search dug up a BYTE article from 1991.

According to the article, the processor was to have four CPUs (which today would be refered to as "cores"), a couple of vector processing units, a graphics unit, and 2MB cache.

From what I remember, Intel was advertising the Micro 2000 as the one chip which would take care of all the multimedia (ah, that word reminds me of the 90's) functions, more or less an system-on-a-chip.

True, general purpose processors have always won out, but it seems like we are entering a world with a lot of surplus processing power which may be able to be utlilized for graphics, sound, etc.

Either that, or we'll start having centralized computers with multicore processor(s) to which other computers connecting to do heavy processing on. Something like thin clients...

I remember that, too. It was 1994 and they said it would be out in a couple years: http://www.byte.com/art/9403/sec6/art1.htm

Yes, matrox.com - their niche market is video post-production, so they were never affected by the 3D wars. A good number of the 25+ original 3D chip vendors are still around - most have abandoned the high-performance workstation/desktop market if not chip manufacture and went into either board manufacturing only and/or embedded systems - 3DLabs recently announced they were concentrating on embedded systems and laid off 100 people.

For a while, I tried maintaining a timeline of all the different 3D chip vendors starting from around 1995 (the days of GLint)with buyouts, mergers, lawsuits, but the DDR/SDRAM/RDRAM Samsung/Infineon/Mciron/Hynix patent lawsuit kept things boiling. The latest news article is RAMBUS settles lawsuit.

Hmmm it seems Pournelle is still around. I haven't seen a web site like that since 1999!

Even though Byte is dead, their web site continues with Pournelle's column - he even wrote one recently about Boot Camp. Warning, visionary pearls of wisdom inside!

• object oriented desktop
  
• object based file system
  
• true pre-emptive OS
  
• true SMP OS
  
• TCP Multi-cast capabilities
  

Close--that would actually be a significantly upgraded mid- to late-90's machine. I bought my first computer in 1995, when the P100 was considered blazing fast. I actually ended up buying a machine with a 90MHz NexGen Nx586 chip based on the RISC86 architecture. NexGen was later bought by AMD and I think their Nx686 actually became the AMD K6. Back then 8 MB of FPM RAM (two 4 MB SIMMs) cost something like $275. Does anyone know how much the four 32 MB SIMMs would have cost? (...or even if you could have purchased such a gargantuan memory module for a PC in the first place?) Ahh, those were the days....

...late '80s/very early '90s there was something called the ACE Consortium.

This was formed by the likes of DEC, Compaq and SCO at the time when IBM had not long brought out the dreadfully underpowered, expensive and proprietary PS/2 line of personal computers running the pathetic MS-DOS and mediocre OS/2.

Most people were running PeeCees which were essentially 16-bit with a single user, single tasking operating system running on dreadfully slow CISC (8086, 80286, 80386) processors will pitifully small amounts of RAM (512k-1MB) and nary a GUI.

The ACE consortium was designing a MIPS-based (32-bit RISC) open specification for a replacement to the IBM-PC and PS/2 architectured which would run a UNIX SYSVR4 derivative and a nice GUI (was it with X?).

The project died a death. I can't remember why.

When I was 15 I longed for a RISC UNIX workstation in the house instead of the 12MHz Compaq SLT/286 we had (for business use).

MIPS lived on in post-VAX pre-Alpha workstations at DEC and then at SGI. itanic Kool Aid all but killed off MIPS. The only two major RISC architectures from the era which survive are SPARC and POWER/PowerPC, and for a couple of years it looked like SPARC was dead too.

The spirit of Alpha lives on in Athlon and Opteron.

Wow, I thought it was a lot less than that ( funny I don't know since I worked at NeXT at the time ), but it appears you are correct. gee, I wonder why that didn't catch on. All this time I've been blaming MSFT anti-compete OEM licenses.

CMP aquired BYTE some years ago. And promptly shut it down, leaving it to be a web-only publication. They have a history of acquiring other publications and killing them off. God only knows what their business model is.

According to them, owed billions by IBM,

Owed money by Red Hat,

"We are using objective third parties to do comparisons of our UNIX System V source code and Red Hat as an example. We are coming across many instances where our proprietary software has simply been copied and pasted or changed in order to hide the origin of our System V code in Red Hat. This is the kind of thing that we will need to address with many Linux distribution companies at some point."
www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-10_Story02. html

And owner of UNIX... ...the best bits of Linux, AIX and IRIX

"Specifically, Sontag believes the "SCO technologies" which were misappropriated into AIX, IRIX, and the derivative UNIX-alikes (including Linux) are JFS (Journalling File System). NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access), a SGI/Stanford collaboration. RCU (Read-Copy-Update). SMP (Symmetrical Multi-Processing). "
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7801/byt1055784622 054/0616_marshall.html ...and in fact all modern operating systems

"So you want royalties from FreeBSD as well?" I asked. Sontag responded that "there may or may not be issues. We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO's intellectual property)."
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7801/byt1055784622 054/0616_marshall.html ...shouldn't they be on the list!

According to them, owed billions by IBM,

Owed money by Red Hat,

"We are using objective third parties to do comparisons of our UNIX System V source code and Red Hat as an example. We are coming across many instances where our proprietary software has simply been copied and pasted or changed in order to hide the origin of our System V code in Red Hat. This is the kind of thing that we will need to address with many Linux distribution companies at some point."
www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-10_Story02. html

And owner of UNIX... ...the best bits of Linux, AIX and IRIX

"Specifically, Sontag believes the "SCO technologies" which were misappropriated into AIX, IRIX, and the derivative UNIX-alikes (including Linux) are JFS (Journalling File System). NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access), a SGI/Stanford collaboration. RCU (Read-Copy-Update). SMP (Symmetrical Multi-Processing). "
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7801/byt1055784622 054/0616_marshall.html ...and in fact all modern operating systems

"So you want royalties from FreeBSD as well?" I asked. Sontag responded that "there may or may not be issues. We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO's intellectual property)."
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7801/byt1055784622 054/0616_marshall.html ...shouldn't they be on the list!

pretty sure you can't run tabletpc on it as it's not an x86 chip. It's much nicer than that, hence the 3hr battery life with a dinky mobile phone bettery. Acorn came up with a prototype similar to this nearly 7 years ago (http://www.byte.com/art/9702/img/027ibtb1.htm). Once again they were too far ahead of they're time, too small and too british.

True, the Plus did not have an internal hard drive... originally. It came with 1MB RAM and one internal 800k floppy. But... I installed an INTERNAL 20MB 5.25" ST-225N Seagate hard drive into it, by mounting it diagonally to the CRT, and soldering the SCSI connections directly to the motherboard. It was great!

Performance-wise it was OK (my previous machine was an Atari ST), but the thing had a great GUI for its OS, and with Lightspeed Pascal graphics was easily accessible.

When I think about those years, I stop even considering complaining about my PBG4 not being fast enough :-)

Gutting programmer effectiveness and routing new programmers into BASIC by a factor of at least 10 while maintaining, and even slightly improving the GUI is a great example of "not getting it". You can say OOP would become important in a few years and I can say the windowing GUI would become important in a few years with or without Jobs. But the revolution had already occured at PARC (and if you're focused on the mouse environment -- even a decade earlier at SRI which is where PARC, and indeed PLATO with its touch panel, got their inspiration -- I remember sitting in meetings at CERL/PLATO viewing the films of SRI's research in 1974 as part of PLATO's computer-based conferencing project).

DOS applications were starting to pick up on it despite the horrid CGA they had to work with initially -- and it wasn't because Jobs did the Mac. The Windowing GUI was inevitable and obvious to people with money as well as most personal computer programmers, especially once Tesler had already popularized it with his 1981 Byte magazine article.

Dynamic, late-binding programming environments that highly leverage the sparse nerd matrix out there -- like Smalltalk, Python, etc. -- are, however _still_ struggling to make it past the concrete barriers Jobs poured into the OO culture with the Mac.

When Jobs passed up Smalltalk for Object Pascal, and then again, with Next, passed up Smalltalk for Objective C, he set a pattern that continues to this day when Sun passed up that sun-of-Smalltalk, Self and went with that son-of-Objective-C, Java.

Gutting the superstructure of technology while maintaining appearances isn't leadership.

I used to love reading Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar". I first started reading his article in the print edition of "Byte magazine" before he started his own magazine. Along the same lines I also liked to read Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" in the same magazine.

These days, it's online only at BYTE Online. The hardware stuff seems to have mainly moved to Circuit Cellar. As one of the few generalist mag's out there, BYTE got clobbered in the PC-biased publishing boom a few years back; of course now *all* the technical mag's are hurting with the market contraction.

I'd never owned an Apple, so I can't speak to what it was like to use one back then (were they using, what, system 6 at the time? I don't remember...)

Apple at the time was on System 7.5, and TFA has it wrong... True preemptive multitasking, protected memory, etc., didn't really arrive until OS X in the late '90s. (Anyone remember the failed promises for Copland, of which only the interface facelift survived into the eventually released System 8?)

Byte Magazine, writing on the release of System 7 in 1990, chided Apple for not releasing an OS with protected memory and preemptive multitasking. (That article doesn't seem to be online; I have it at home, though home is 2000 miles away...)

I was a Mac user at the time, on 68040 and eventually PowerPC 603 machines. But Apple lost their step there in the mid-90s, and were turning out crap computers (exploding and cracking PowerBook 5300s anyone?) and couldn't get out a next-gen O/S to save their life -- literally! I was hoping for BeOS, but what became OS X was enough to grab me back from dual-booting Windows 95/98/2000 and Linux on VAIO laptops and hand-built grey-box PIIIs... Haven't looked back since!

I'd never owned an Apple, so I can't speak to what it was like to use one back then (were they using, what, system 6 at the time? I don't remember...)

Apple at the time was on System 7.5, and TFA has it wrong... True preemptive multitasking, protected memory, etc., didn't really arrive until OS X in the late '90s. (Anyone remember the failed promises for Copland, of which only the interface facelift survived into the eventually released System 8?)

Byte Magazine, writing on the release of System 7 in 1990, chided Apple for not releasing an OS with protected memory and preemptive multitasking. (That article doesn't seem to be online; I have it at home, though home is 2000 miles away...)

I was a Mac user at the time, on 68040 and eventually PowerPC 603 machines. But Apple lost their step there in the mid-90s, and were turning out crap computers (exploding and cracking PowerBook 5300s anyone?) and couldn't get out a next-gen O/S to save their life -- literally! I was hoping for BeOS, but what became OS X was enough to grab me back from dual-booting Windows 95/98/2000 and Linux on VAIO laptops and hand-built grey-box PIIIs... Haven't looked back since!

Here is a true story: My dad bought a Dell. My mom said, "I don't want that thing in here, it's big and black and ugly, and it doesn't go with the furniture. Why didn't you get one of those nice white Apple ones? You know, the 'where's the computer?' one." Dad said, "I wanted to, but none of my software works on it."

Someone should of straightened him out, Windows and Windows software will run on a Mac using Virtual PC , now owned by Microsoft .

To an operating system with TCP/IP, DECNET, IPX and SNA support -

OS/2

In the early 90's, if you wanted, you could get OS/2 to load a whole pile of transport protocols - which was pretty much necessary for the alphabet soup that ran client-server apps back then. In fact, Doom ran on IPX/SPX before it ran in TCP/IP.

You talk like its long since gone > http://www.byte.com/

Interviewer: Will LongHorn have WinFS ?
Steve of Ballmer: Mu

I: Will MS have the balls to include monad with it ?
SoB: Mu

I: Will it have cheap anti-gravity ?.
SoB: Cairo will have it . Uhmm... I mean Longhorn will have it.

A good example of annoying ads in print is the Readers Digest. The first thing I do when it arrives in the mail is rip out all the mail-in-cards and throw them away because they interfere with my reading.

Reminds me of the print edition of "Wired" magazine. I let my subscription to it lapse a few years ago because I was sink and tired of leafing through a couple of dozen pages of ads to get to the table of contents, then having to find munbered pages for an article I wanted to read. On the other hand, if "Byte magazine" still issued a print version I'd be more than happy to subscribe. I was sad to see they stopped printing it, I started reading it shortly after it came out back in 1976-7.

Maybe not WinXP, but Apple has certainly dabbled with Intel chips before.

Actually Virtual PC has been out for years, however Microsoft bought it out I think it was last year. Here'an article from "Byte Magazine" dated November 1997:

Building the Virtual PC
A software emulator shows that the PowerPC can emulate another computer, down to its very hardware.

Because either way, you are going to have to define new process structures to represent each auxiliary processor units as well as the PowerPC CPU and recompile the kernel. For such real-time processing you want to keep the data structures to the absolute minimum and not have any 'fluff' left over from previous CPU architectures. Writing a kernel from scratch is the best way to achieve this.

Much like theTAOS OS did.

The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.

Cairo, Microsoft's object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.

At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we've seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft's sly way of promising the world. "Will we see Plug and Play in NT?" "Oh yes, of course, in Cairo." "Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?" "You bet -- in Cairo."

The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.

Cairo, Microsoft's object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.

At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we've seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft's sly way of promising the world. "Will we see Plug and Play in NT?" "Oh yes, of course, in Cairo." "Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?" "You bet -- in Cairo."

The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.

Cairo, Microsoft's object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.

At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we've seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft's sly way of promising the world. "Will we see Plug and Play in NT?" "Oh yes, of course, in Cairo." "Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?" "You bet -- in Cairo."

...like any language that has had its time in the limelight. There are millions upon millions of lines of code written in it, and a lot of that isn't just going to be rewritten from one day to the next, no matter how much buzz and hype Sun and MS spew forth about their new languages.

I wrote an article about the economics of programming languages that talks about this and other issues that concern the adoption and lifecycle of languages, although be forewarned that the login system is a bit fiddly:

http://www.byte.com/documents/s=9553/byt1113845246 791/0418_welton.html

"15. Dialogs themselves are not modal: they let you continue to use the parent window. This allows such nonsensical situations as a "Save as JPEG" dialog for a Gimp image that no longer exists, and a Print dialog for a Web page that is no longer open or even still in Firefox's cache."

Fair enough, but sometimes dialog boxes should be modeless (a find/replace dialog box in a text editor for instance). Remember Larry Tessler (from Apple and PARC) used to wear a t-shirt saying "DON'T MODE ME IN" - in general, modal interfaces (including dialog boxes) suck. They have their place but noone who knows anything about user interfaces should make such a blanket statement.

"16. The mouse pointer does not hide itself when it is stationary and I start using the keyboard. As a result, it frequently gets in the way of what I am typing or reading."

Hiding the mouse pointer completely is usually a pretty stupid idea. It's quicker for the user to move the pointer out of the way than it is to find a hidden pointer when they need to use the mouse again...