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The War Of The Word

Posted by michael on from the drinking-the-koolaid dept.

atari_kid writes "For who didn't know Microsoft has a internal blogging service, which is becoming popular with their employees. And even some of their high level managers have their own blog like Chris Pratley, a group program manager (GPM) for Word2002 (OfficeXP) project. Mr. Pratley just blogged on his 'personal philosophical' conversion from a Mac geek to a Microsoft devotee & his interesting perspective on the 'Word Processor' wars of the mid-90's and why Microsoft won."

3 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. A bit more history by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Informative
    Windows 3.0 came out and it wasn't a toy. It wasn't great, but it actually worked well enough that people found they could be productive using it. Windows 3.1 (and then Windows for Workgroups 3.11) came out

    What made Windows 3.1 successful was really two things, neither of which really involved the gee-whiz-bang GUI interface:

    1: Since printer drivers were now part of the standard operating system, once a printer driver existed for Win3x, it worked for every program in Win3x. This was a huge improvement over getting the proper printer driver for your particular program.

    2: At Win3.1, True Type scalable fonts were integrated into the operating system, which meant they now worked with every Win3.1 compatable program. Hard for many people to remember -- or even imagine -- days before scalable fonts were common everywhere as they are now.

    The was also better memory management for extended memory.

    But those two items alone are really the big deal of Win3.0/3.1 -- and they are a big deal.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  2. Re:Chris Pratley by fitten · · Score: 5, Informative

    How many years has Microsoft developed software for the Mac? How do you develop software on a Mac without having a Mac? You'd have to be some kind of idiot to think that he got fired for taking a picture of Macs being delivered to a company that *has been making software for Macs for 15+ years* prior!

    Policy: "Notices to employees: don't take pictures of the campus and post them for public viewing without permission from the management or you'll get fired because it's a security concern."
    Employee:
    Microsoft:
    Slashbots:

    MO-Rons.

  3. Evidence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/ms_tuncom/major/mtc-00 028565b.htm

    Excerpt:
    If competitors don't know about these hidden or undocumented calls, their applications will not work as well as Microsoft's Microsoft had long denied that it deliberately designed hidden calls into its operating systems, but in the summer of 1992, Andrew Schulman, a programming expert living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published a book Undocumented Windows, which confirmed that Microsoft had lied. Microsoft later acknowledged that Excel and Word used at least 16 APIs that had been hidden in Windows.