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Check out Rhapsody...

The bottom line is, Valve is a company with many ex-Microsoft employees

Does Contiki support pre-emptive multitasking?

No, Contiki does cooperative multitasking. The reason for not supporting pre-emptive multitasking is that it would unnecessarily increase the complexity not only of the operating system, but also of the applications that would run under it. Pre-emptive multitasking is primarily useful in general purpose multiuser operating systems such as *nix, or in real-time systems where response time is critial. Contiki does not fit in either of those categories.

Are you sure? I guess it was Chinese only, but technically Windows 3.2.

No, OS/2 up to version 2.0 was jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM. It was released under both the IBM and Microsoft brands, so you had MS OS/2 and IBM OS/2 which were essentially the same product. Google, or look at a boot screen or some promotional material.

http://toastytech.com/guis/bob2.html

Glad it failed...

Yep, they missed Bob. Looks like all you Windows zealots are stuck with a big yellow smiley face for an operating system.

I'm pretty sure the form controls in IE are not native Windows form controls.

Apple brought us those fruity iMac's, why not have the "Yellow Screen `O Death" or "Green Screen `O Death" for once?

Want a green screen of death? Have it!

And from this n00b's perspective (I come from Windows by way of GS/OS, so I've seen a few GUIs - I like GS/OS the best), RH8 with FVWM2 is quite nice. A little clumsy compared to Windoze, KDE and GNOME, but perfectly usable for *my* needs.

And Linux is more secure than Windows OF COURSE!!

*braces for a r00t attack*

-uso.

The first digital computer was a berry: Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)

Not to forget the The Banana Computer.

Oh, so you mean that this was correct?

Wait a sec here. It said "Preview Windows 2001 TODAY!" Windows 2001 was Windows ME. Windows ME WAS that buggy.

Absolute baloney from a computer newbie using his first XP box. Windows 9x had many blue screens of death, and they were more commonly seen there than on NT. The quote in grandparent's sig is actually one that appeared in many blue screens of death.

I'm sure it's purely coincidental that Apple already had a product named Rhapsody...

Help, I'm a consumer, confused about who's selling this product (or so it'll go).

Of course, Microsoft already had a product called Bob .

A quick look at a Mac OS 7 screenshot [emuunlim.com], convinces me more than the dissimilarity between Nextstep and windows 95 that you are full of shit. It's obvious that windoze 95 borrowed heavily from MacOS. Well, perphaps not from 7 as it came out in 1996, durring the deep darkness under the former Pepsi Lord. The tiny application bar at the bottom of the screen, combined with the tinny horizontal pannel at the top of the screen and bad taste make up the Windoze 95 GUI. That horizontal pannel has been a feature of the apple GUI at least since 1984 and the first Macs but is not found in Nextstep which simply puts the icons at the bottm of the screen, or wherever you want. Nextstep has a verticle docking station, which can be thought of as a pannel with much more flexibilty than Microsoft or Apple's

Twitter, you seem to be a bit confused.

Among other things:

System 7 was released in 1991. The current version of MacOS when Windows95 was released was 7.5.1.

This isn't a screenshot of MacOS. It's a screenshot of a PC running WindowBlinds to emulate MacOS 7, that's why all the screen elements are terribly confused. Notice how the open window is "C:" and has it's own menu bar? Here is an actual screenshot, though it's for 7.5.5 it's close enough.

I'm not sure what you mean by "tinny horizontal pannel at the top of the screen", presumably what you're talking about is the menu bar, a feature that can be reliably traced back to GUIs as early as 1968. MacOS 7.x and Win9x implemented this feature differently, with MacOS keeping the menu bar on the top of the screen wheras Win98 has a menu bar for each window. There is general consensous that the Win9x approach is better on larger desktops.

The "tiny application bar" in Win9x is called the Taskbar, and also includes the Start Menu and System Tray. While the Start Menu is very similar to the Apple Menu (an idea almost certainly taken from MacOS) the Taskbar, which is basically an "icon panel" of the currently running programs, and the System Tray, which was originally intended for system alerts and such. The Taskbar was a real innovation, AFAIK. Nothing similar was present in either NextSTEP or MacOS (the NextSTEP toolbar was just that, a more primitive version of the Apple/Start Menu).

The major GUI innovation of Win95 was context-senstive popup menus you could get through right-clicking. For example, you could rename a file by right-clicking on it and selecting "Rename". In MacOS this required highlighting the file then moving the cursor to the menu bar to rename, the Win985 was was easier. (Yes, there were hotkeys on MacOS, but Win95 has them too).

Asthetically, I think Win95 is closer to NextSTEP due to the similarity of the 'Close' and 'Full Screen' icons, the Recycle bin, the overall grey tone and appearance. In any event, it's simply not possible that Microsoft's design team was not aware of both MacOS AND NextSTEP. If nothing else, the "Close" and "Full Screen" icons are direct ripoffs of the NextSTEP icons.

What MacOS 7.5.1 GUI had over Win95 at the time were generally better asthetics (a soft grey and blue combo rather than the harsh grey of Win95), the Finder, and many OS features were represented by files and folders (which was more consistent than the Win95 approach). That's about it.

And Apple can hardly claim the moral high ground in GUI design. They tried to sue MS and failed, largely because Apple stole most of their "innovations" from Xerox PARC.

Are you sure about that? It will run some pretty big stuff. Think OPENSTEP. You might want to see this guy's whole GUI site, and you don't get his frames by going to my first link, so click here.

Are you sure about that? It will run some pretty big stuff. Think OPENSTEP. You might want to see this guy's whole GUI site, and you don't get his frames by going to my first link, so click here.

Well, if M$ has its way...

Try this.

Social Software? Isn't that what "Microsoft Bob" was supposed to be?

'Nuff said....

Here goes - I'm not listing Windows 3.2 (it's a Chinese thing) and service packs (unless they are also released as a major version):

Windows 1.01-1.04 - 1985
Windows 2.03 - 1987
OS/2 1.1 - 1988
Windows 2.10-2.11 - 1988
OS/2 1.2 - 1989
Windows 3.0 - 1990
Windows 3.00a - 1990
OS/2 1.3 - 1990 (OS/2 timeline doesn't end here - just the part that matters to Windows does)
Windows 3.10 - 1992
Windows For Workgroups 3.10 - 1992 (Don't believe it? Try Nathan's Toasty Technology Page: GUI Gallery in the Windows section)
Windows 3.11 - 1993
Windows For Workgroups 3.11 - 1993
Windows NT 3.10 - 1993
Windows NT 3.50 - 1995
Windows 95 Retail (Win95) - 1995
Windows NT 3.51 - 1995
Windows 95 OSR1 (Win95a) - 1995
Windows 95 OSR2.0 (Win95b) - 1996
Windows NT 4.0 (Server & Workstation) - 1996
Windows 95 OSR2.1 (Win95b) - 1996
Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Win95c) - 1997
Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server - 1997
Windows 98 - 1998
Windows 98 Second Edition - 1999
Windows 2000 (Server, Advanced Server, Datacenter, Professional) - 1999
Windows ME - 2000
Windows XP (Home & Professional) - 2001
Windows Server 2003 (There are other editions) - 2003
Windows Longhorn 4008 (Illegal leak, older releases available) - 2003

I know I missed a version of NT4 for server appliances, but I don't know the year. All I know about it was that it was installed on a $1500 Intel plug-and-play server that had IIS, and could only be administrated via remote admin.

Red on white. :) I like configurability

-uso.

Blue screen of birth

Blue screen of death

For those people who don't know Bob: Klick HERE.
Especially compare Bob to WinXP. :-)

For those people who don't know Bob: Klick HERE.
Especially compare Bob to WinXP. :-)

For those people who don't know Bob: Klick HERE.
Especially compare Bob to WinXP. :-)

Yes, many these were taken from my site http://toastytech.com/guis/ Some of them look like they were taken from elsewhere. You can even see my name in the NT 3.51 user manager screen shot. I can't get to all of their site right now since it is mostly slashdotted. I normally don't mind if people use my images or graphics, but I generally ask that they provide reference or a link back to my site.

Didn't see your comment, so I posted below.

The screens are from The GUI Gallery, and the author even says he "picked them up" from the net.

First, many of the screens from the article appear to have been taken from The GUI Gallery, which is kinda lame since it's basically just a copy of that site anyway. The author even says that he "picked them up" from the internet. :P

And second, wasn't this posted here like a week ago?

Pictures and commentary on GEOS and many other old and new GUI's

Whoops- sorry aobut the screwed up link. If you would like to see screenshots of NewDeal Office, check out this. NDO even comes with its own free VB-like IDE... everything your kid needs in one package. Programming, games, and more, with a very minimal time setting up and little HD space needed.

Microsoft Bob?

It sounded really nice in the description, but when I RTFA (or at least looked at the pretty pictures) I had horrible flashbacks of MS Bob.

The interface of this "OS" (It's not really an Operating System, it's more of a graphical environment) can only be kludgy. Imagine actually trying to navigate in this 3d environment. In order to get to different things you have navigate through "portals" and such like that.

I'm sorry, but this will never be practical for anything. Everyone's just going to just keep the current gui system because navigating it is a lot easier than trying to navigate a 3d environment. (I can already see the thousands of geeks frantically running about crying, "now where did I put my pr0n again?")

Download the pdf, look at the pretty pictures (saying "ooooo" and "ahhh" where appropriate) and move on.

You mean something like this?

NTLM easily explained

Well, versions of Windows from when SOVIET RUSSIA existed weren't much more than poorly designed, seizure-inducing, EGA hacks. I guess you could say "In SOVIET RUSSIA, seizures induce Windows 1.01!" I feel sorry for the epileptics. :P

As another poster mentioned, ATMs are still a killer app for OS/2, e.g. HSBC uses NCR machines in India that run OS/2. More disconcertingly, these NCR machines use very *old* versions of OS/2, in fact, they are (c) Microsoft, and have a boot screen like this. Wonder why they haven't upgraded yet...

He is really smart, but that is what makes it FUNNY

He is really smart, but that is what makes it FUNNY

He is really smart, but that is what makes it FUNNY

Nathan isn't going to like this, it might make him anti mac, as you can see here, Nathan of the infamous toasty tech HATES brower intergration, and it said it will be FULLY INTERGRATED INTO OSX.

Nathan isn't going to like this, it might make him anti mac, as you can see here, Nathan of the infamous toasty tech HATES brower intergration, and it said it will be FULLY INTERGRATED INTO OSX.

I think you've just asked for the return of Bob.

Microsoft actually tried something innovative with Bob and it failed miserably. People can't handle new paradigms (god I hate that word!) very well. Most people are lazy and once they learn one thing, you can't teach them otherwise. How many people do you honestly know that have problems when an icon gets moved around on the desktop?

Its eerie!

(I wonder what a desktop that actually looked like a desktop would do for ease of use? Hmmm. Have to give that some thought.)

It's been tried a number of times. Two of the most successful attempts are Microsoft Bob and MagicCap OS (which was targeted for PDAs).

While it might be done in a more useful way, both Bob and MagicCap weren't terribly user-friendly. They're both very cumbersome.

The best OS ever was the Apple-made OS for the Apple IIGS, called GS/OS.

I use both OS X and Win2K in my home systems, and my perspective as a casual user is that they are far more similar than they are different. It's not like it's System 6 vs. Win3.1. As a tech geek, I know that OS X and Win2k/XP are very different, just like I know that gas and diesel engines are very different, but you still put your foot down on the pedal to make the car go. If you can follow simple instructions, you can easily use either OS for consumer-level digital media, office-type applications, and internet browsing.

Unfortunately, the various free OSes are right now more like hybrid cars. They're great if you want basic functionality, or single-purpose function like web servers, but forget about anything fancy (for example, digital video editing, or seamless device synchronization with mp3 players or PDAs). That said, for anyone who seriously cares about security, or privacy, or the right to control their own computers, etc., it's obvious that you have to use one of the free OSes. (And I mean free, not just semi-open source, so OS X doesn't count.)

subgenius

Or this?

Microsoft

Microsoft OS/2

Who says he found them? Maybe he actually purchased them, way back when, and kept the floppies, reverently, until such time as he might use them again.

"Squadron leader, we have pigs at 11 o'clock high" :-)

Incidentally, you can get yourself some OS/2 bits here They used to have Windows 1.01, and 2.0, but I suppose the Beast got to them. I mean, MS have got to try their best to protect their large sales volume of these products, as we enter the 21st century.

And if you're feeling really trippy, you can see some old Windows screenshots here.

I found a page with google that looks to have windows 1.01 and QNX links.