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Return of the '70s Microsoft Weirdos

Posted by kdawson on from the kodachrome-moments dept.

theodp writes "On the eve of the company's move from Albuquerque to Seattle in 1978, a famous photo was taken (in a shopping mall no less) of the original Microsoft team, looking mighty sharp in their '70s outfits. Almost 30 years later, as Bill Gates prepares to depart from Microsoft, the group (looking older, but better) reconvened for a retake."

6 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So... by Brain_Recall · · Score: 4, Informative
    I had to take a second look for that. A little reading does the trick:

    Present for the reunion was office manager Miriam Lubow (center of new picture), who missed the original sitting due to a snowstorm. (When Lubow, now retired, first met Gates, she couldn't believe that disheveled kid was the president.) Absent for the reshoot was Bob Wallace (top center), who died in 2002; after leaving Microsoft in 1983, he pioneered the idea of shareware.
  2. Re:Epitome by Ucklak · · Score: 5, Informative

    FTA:

    Present for the reunion was office manager Miriam Lubow (center of new picture), who missed the original sitting due to a snowstorm. (When Lubow, now retired, first met Gates, she couldn't believe that disheveled kid was the president.) Absent for the reshoot was Bob Wallace (top center), who died in 2002; after leaving Microsoft in 1983, he pioneered the idea of shareware.

    --
    if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
  3. Re:Thank you by billcopc · · Score: 4, Informative

    Microsoft does charge less, to OEMs that is.

    The license that is sold for $250 in-store, costs $80 (or less) to the OEM - even mom & pop shops. That's one hell of an insult to the loyal customers who actually buy the new OS to update their existing PCs, and to the businesses that buy hundreds or thousands of licenses. They can negotiate a "preferred partner" deal, but it's still nowhere near the OEM pricing.

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com
  4. Re:Thank you by flnca · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, the XEROX Parc was the first with a GUI. Then came Apple with the Lisa, and finally the first Mac. And after that, the Atari ST and the Amiga. AFAIK, AmigaOS was the first OS like we know it today, with 32-bit, pre-emptive multitasking and GUI. A Mac was much too expensive for the general public. Until Mac OS X and the advent of cheap Macs, Macs were not for the general public.

  5. Re:Thank you by multisync · · Score: 5, Informative

    Although your post is obviously a joke, Windows did a fantastic job of getting the PC into the lives of average people.

    No, that was the Internet.

    The spreadsheet was the "killer ap" that got PCs on to the desktops of accountants and managers. The Internet was the "killer ap" that finally got the PC in to the homes of people like our parents. Email, the web and now digital photos of grandchildren on Facebook and Flickr have pretty much made even a dial-up account a necessity for pretty much everyone. Homeless people use the Internet.

    And Bill Gates famously missed the potential of a free & open Internet until quite late in the game (I don't think Windows shipped with built-in support for TCP/IP until Windows 98, but correct me if I'm wrong).

    --
    I don't care why you're posting AC
  6. Re:Thank you by Skrapion · · Score: 4, Informative

    I installed Ubuntu late last year, and setting up multiple monitors still requires editing text files.

    Linux is friendly for people with a lot of skill, who need a lot from their computer and aren't afraid of the command line; or people with very little skill, who don't need to do anything but browse the web, check their email, and do some word processing.

    For everybody in-between, Windows is still a clear win.

    --
    The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.