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20th Anniversary of Windows
UltimaGuy writes "When Windows first shipped, 20 years ago this month, it was considered nothing more than a slow operating environment that had arrived late to the party, well behind the industry leaders, Apple and Xerox PARC. Now, it's the operating system used on nearly 95 percent of all the desktops and notebooks sold worldwide. Take a look at Window's past and present, and what lies ahead in the future, including an interview with Mr. Bill Gates himself."
I bet the discussion did not go like "if you port lotus 1-2-3 to our new graphical interface and help make it popular, in a few years time we will use our position to write a competing app and wipe you off the mat."
I bet the head of lotus wished he had negotiated a non-compete clause.
You are wrong there. Lotus was very slow in getting 1-2-3 to Windows. They concentrated on
OS/2. This gave Microsoft the chance to gain a lead in the Windows spreadsheet market
with Excel.
Just look at what Apple is doing now. No guesswork there.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Everything to configure X is in xorg.conf. If X won't run, 90% of the time all you have to do is fix xorg.conf. X'll probably tell you exactly what's wrong, too. Everything in most linux distros is like this. I believe this practice coincides with the Unix Philosophy.
If Windows won't load, 90% of the time your safest choice is a clean install. It won't tell you what the problem is. Usually it won't even tell you there's a problem. It'll just die. Theres usually no way to fix it from a command prompt, and "Safe Mode" is a joke. I believe this practice coincides with the totalitarianism. (There's no problem. Use your computer as usual. Anyone who says their computer is not booting is a political dissident, and an enemy of the people!)
People who don't want to know what's going on can use Windows. People who don't want to know what's going on shouldn't actively participate in a democratic government, though. To paraphrase a political party I have the little sympathy for: "The personal [computer] is the political."
(I do of course realize that you can be very much interested in one field of interest (say, politics), while simply regarding another field from a more utilitarian perspective (say, computers). I would prefer if people took less for granted, though.)
Okay, I come off as a total loon here, so AC I go =]
I'd much rather read Wikipedia's History of Windows[Wikipedia] entry instead.
So maybe it isn't as relevant to the rest of the world, but it's also the 9th aniversary of KDE's founding today. I doubt whether Matthias Ettrich planned it so, but three cheers for the windows that are free for the masses!
And don't forget to ask if they have a "restocking" fee.
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" - Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Le Figaro, 1849.
s e_Karr
Quaint, isn't it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Alphon
I live on a street that bears his name, so I'm favored by the stars and granted authority to tell you to stfuplzokthx.
A présent, éloignez-vous avant que je ne me moque de vous une seconde fois!
We "Old Timers" remember when Bill Gates was nothing but a smelly little geek salesman peddling someone else's stuff like a BASIC on paper tape and an operating system he's conned someone out of. Now my daughter's high school computer classes are being taught from books that state if it weren't for Gates we wouldn't have PCs at all and that he alone is responsible for everything that's in them and what's running on them. She and her friends think I'm a heretic and a delusional old man when I explain the true history and explain how we had other desktop machines that ran just alright before Micro Soft became one word. I knew legions of secretaries and book keepers that ran everything from command line as well as any UNIX/Linux admin today. They just learned how and did it. I wrote a lot of business programs on CP/M and Radio Shack Models I and II in BASIC, FORTRAN, and Z80 ASM. I never used an OS that had a Gates touch until I had to use a XENIX box.
Windows wasn't an operating system 20 years ago, it was only a DOSShell, it turned into an operating system in 1995 (not really an operating system but it got bigger, but still a layer on top of DOS)
Not really that correct, Fact is Lotus did not the needed info to make 123 work on Windows in time, while Microsoft relied on internal undocumented code to have Excel ready for Windows 3.0 (which was the cornerpoint where Microsoft took over the app market as well, before they were only niche players just being the market leader in dos and basic) All that stuff is documented very well in the book undocumented windows, at least it was in its first incarnation. And to my knowledge there was a lawsuit regarding this which just ended this year with a loss by Microsoft and a payment to Lotus.
Quarterdeck's Desqview was vastly superior at that time. There's even a wikipedia entry for it! I rest my case.
Desqview got a look in only because of Quarterdeck's QEMM. Does anyone even remember that ? The good old days of really needing an expanded memory manager - never to be confused with an extended memory manager ? And that some of the key programs during that period worked with expanded memory and some worked with extended memory? And how the way you loaded your drivers and then your programs *mattered*?
Goddam you young 'uns have it easy.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Windows 1.0 to XP: Screenshots
Word started out as a DOS application.
Word for Macintosh was ported to Windows (WfW), not the DOS version.
""VISTA" an acronym for the top five Windows problems: Viruses, Intrusions, Spyware, Trojans and Adware.-- Jim Lee Jr"
""Veritable Incentive to Switch To Another operating system".-- Brian O' Connell."