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The Secret Origin of Windows
harrymcc writes "Windows has been so dominant for so long that it's easy to forget Windows 1.0 was vaporware, mocked both outside and inside of Microsoft — and that its immediate successors were considered stopgaps until OS/2 was everywhere. Tandy Trower, the product manager who finally got Windows 1.0 out the door a quarter century ago, has written a memoir of the experience. (He thought being assigned the much-maligned project was Microsoft's fiendish way of trying to get rid of him.) The story involves such still-significant figures as Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Nathan Myhrvold; Trower left Microsoft only in November of 2009 after 28 years with the company."
they also had Ballmer doing crazy commercials at that time. It was destined to do badly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk
...of Windows 1.02 (or was it 1.12) on 720k, 3.5" floppy. And no, I never used it - DOS was king and there were better file management programs at the time (which is all Win was at that point, iirc).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Pipe firmly in mouth and cheek.
That was a tremendous read. Thank you for writing that, Tandy.
It's just like MS. They may not succeed at first... Actually, they never succeed at first try, at anything.
And yet, they manage eventually - see how they kicked out Trevor in the end. It's no coincidence.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I remember the feeble beginnings of Windows quite well. I started purchasing Windows with 1.04, and started using it with 3.0.
I used to list "Windows 1.0 - [current version]" on the skills section of my resume, but too many interviewers thought I was joking, because they'd never heard of such a thing (and it started making me look like I might be over 30). One of them seriously thought Windows started with 95.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Windows has been around for 25 years, and the windowing GUI probably longer (I believe Bill took the concept from Steve who took the concept from Xerox). And lets face it, Compiz does not qualify as a new type of GUI. I would love to see a brand new concepts, such as Sun's Looking Glass https://lg3d.dev.java.net/ (now defunct) (or perhaps even better ideas then that, anyone knows of any?) But it would be nice to get more innovation in that department.
Tandy Trower, the product manager who finally got Windows 1.0 out the door a quarter century ago, has written a memoir of the experience. (He thought being assigned the much-maligned project was Microsoft's fiendish way of trying to get rid of him.) The story involves such still-significant figures as Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Nathan Myhrvold; Trower left Microsoft only in November of 2009 after 28 years with the company."
It's boggled my mind why Search Indexer in Vista has been killing my computer with no benefit. Stopping it has resulted in instant gratification, but I couldn't fathom what the reason could be for it to work my hard disk so hard.
The Revenge of Tandy Trower! But I can't wait for the next version of Windows so you have the last laugh, Tandy.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
1985: Windows 1.0
2010: Windows 7
1 release every 3.5 years? At that sort of rate you'd think they'd be completely bug free ;-)
PS. Article is in 3 pages that will take you about 3.5 years to read, and another 3.5 regretting.
This brings back memories for me, too. I got my start before IBM came out with their first PC. My dad owned an early PC, and I used PC-DOS and MS-DOS versions up through the whole bleeding history. I used Windows 1.0 on those lovely old monochrome monitors, and was working on a GUI for a data collection circuit in college. Then 2.0/286/etc. with the proportional fonts and an untiled desktop. I beta-tested for 3.0, and joined Microsoft in time to be a part of the Windows 3.1 development team. Those were the fun days; most of those who hated Microsoft just preferred the technologies in other products from Lotus, Borland, or various Unix providers. And that was really just fine with everyone. Everyone but Microsoft management, of course. Managers steered the ship ever more steadily to the dark side, building on their success with monopoly-abusing deals and secret contracts with the OEMs. Ship a CPU, pay for Windows whether you use it or not. I left the company (for unrelated reasons) around the time when "Windows 95" was still code-named "Chicago," and that code name had just replaced the earlier code name: "Windows 93."
By the way, if anyone has an unmodified copy of Win3.10 (not 3.11) USER.EXE, shoot me an email. I've lost some of my ancient archives and would like to snag some of the resources in that file.
[
Your Windows box is a fun playground for criminals of all stripes, from script kiddies to mafiosos. Always will be.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
vaporware it certainly was not. Did the subby not read the article? Vaporware means there is speculation or announcement of a product that is never released to the public. I have a copy of Windows 1 laying around that my father purchased for business use. We don't have Windows 2.0 or 2.1, and we do have 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11 and 3.11 for workgroups. I'm thinking 2.0 had a fallout in the business world or something like that.
You keep using that word "vaporware". I do not think it means what you think it means. ...
Guess it actually had a different destiny!
I used to say at the time that if they wanted to illustrate the difference between OS/2 and windows, they could just format a floppy on OS/2 while continuing to do other stuff. Not that OS/2 was a whole lot better about stuff like that -- not many developers actually threaded their applications, and so a single misbehaving app could lock up the OS by not processing its input queue messages. You still see symptoms of that in Windows today, although it's not as bad as it used to be.
They tried to fix that and some of the other OS/2 problems in Warp, but warp (IMO) looked like ass and didn't work as well as V2. The problem with IBM is they're used to listening to their corporate customers and wouldn't know sexy OS design if you beat them over the head with it. Fortunately Linux was just getting popular right around that time and so when IBM strangled the baby (You can tell I'm still a bit bitter about it eh? Heh heh heh) a lot of us were able to jump ship. Linux was pretty much everything I ever wanted in an operating system, anyway. I'm on OSX at the moment, but once you get past its pretty looks you realize that it just won't bend the way you want it to.
So... anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Get off my lawn, you damn kids!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html
It's a bit old by now, but the history is still interesting and meaningful.
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part2.html
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part1.html
They can really be read in any order.
Anyways, I don't think stole is the right word. Xerox gave it away. Jobs was 100% obsessed with it. Gates saw it as the wave of the future. The GUI wasn't a secret by the time it got to Gates. But it was done by Xerox who was too busy worrying about laser printing (which oddly is the main reason the Macs survived at all through the late 80's) to care.
I'm not sure I spelled that right, but anyway, Microsoft did manage to unload a boatload of V1.0 on the Navy at the least. I remember playing with it on the 286's the military had no clue what to do with. Instead of the infamous solitaire game it use to have reversie - a digital version of the othello game.
Even years late I was still happier with DOS 6.1 and Quarterdeck memory/application management. It was the only way to go to host a BBS and still have a little room to work on it while it was up.
Ah the good 'ol days when I was considered a genius simply because I did my own memory upgrades to my Tandy 1000...
Not sure when NC actually came out, but I remember using several filemanagers back when I started (Windows 2.1 and MS-DOS 3.3). I remember a very nice little filemanager called PC Valet, and eventually also one called Stereo Shell that I used to almost live in. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
You know, I never could get it to load on my Timex Sinclair, but then, nobody needs more than 640k of RAM, right?
Somewhere I have an old Win 1.0 copy, probably next to my old CP/M floppies and my Apple II+ (dual DD, 172k RAM (128k board used to load the floppy into RAM to speed up access 1000 times)).
We used to have fun figuring out which CP/M commands Bill stole when he "wrote" it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When the Mac came out, Bill said they were working on a graphical interface. Barely.
c/w the Windows install disk on 5.25" floppies.
Two thick beige Microsoft ringbinders (with the very old logo).
Says it all really
I've also got a strategy game "Guns and Butter" that was released with a Win 1 runtime environment, so you could run it on your IBM XT without having to go the whole hog and actually install the full Windows environment on top of DOS 2.11.
Windows 2, and Windows 286/386 was crap.
Windows 3 started to make sense.
Are you referring to the network effect?
Still, MS could really sock it to us consumers and they don't. Now, on the corporate level, we get into some interesting things regarding that. But my original point was regarding the retail consumer.
I was there with many of you. Win 1.0 (as was V2) was largely a failure because of lack of applications, poor hardware support, segmented memory (meaning 286 had a completely dysfunctional memory management scheme, even with tools which came later like EMM386), and a host of other problems.
It would load and run, but it was basically a demo o/s with a buggy MFC library. It just sucked as a development platform and it was worse as a commercial platform for even business apps, let alone high performance games which have become the real test of a platforms commercial viability.
Kind of reminds me of every MS Win version since then ... ;-) but in all honesty, V1 (and V2) showed what was possible. Both the hardware and software would have to improve (via flat 386 address space), speed, memory, etc. before it would have enough ROI to make it practical for anything but larger businesses. It's probably good that both V1 and V2 had the problems they did, they needed to suffer to enable what they have become... something increasingly stable, and commercially viable if not scalable and reliable.
Now if only we could have someone with a real vision to do the platform planning... we could insure MS/Intel success into the year 2015..... Oops.
Holes in the wall?
OK I will!
I failed.
Actually what I was referring to was: Sub-Optimal Solutions. Up to the '90s it was a great matter of debate in economics. Many "learned" professors denied that it existed and that a market would always find the optimal solution. With the introduction of "lock-in" as a concept it is recognized that while markets will find optimal solutions they can become "stuck" with sub-optimal ones for a while. The time-scales are what matter, a market may view a few decades as a blip while to you and I that is quite a while.
Shh.
I remember Windows. Back when I used to work for a little fly-by-night aerospace firm just down the road from Microsoft. We (engineering) were all using Macs for our 'productivity' applications. Serious work was done on VAX and various flavors of UNIX on mainframes/minis. It was the mid-90's. Windows had already been 'released' through version 3, but our IT department still considered it to be a joke. Unfortunately, someone in corporate had already drank the Microsoft Koolaide. The order was issued: We're going to become a Windows company. A cost justification was prepared, comparing a typical Mac, populated with every possible document/spreadsheet/database application to a bare bones DOS box. No Windows, no apps. Nothing but a C:> prompt. The DOS box won (go figure) and we all figured that the fix was in. The IT folks, under orders from management, started delivering empty DOS machines to our desks (Dells). So we could watch the little cursor blink, I guess. Meanwhile, the IT department was kicked into panic mode. They were tasked with running over to Redmond and sitting on Gates' head until MS delivered something that didn't stink. Meanwhile, for about 3 months, that damned machine just sat on my desk next to my Mac, taking up room, winking its stupid cursor at me.
At about this time, Linux passed the 1.0 kernel version and started to look interesting. I requested the requisite authorizations and installed it on the useless Dell. I never looked back. I could log on to any of the engineering systems through X Windows and (thanks to a Citrix app) eventually access MS Office apps hosted on remote NT servers. Until I left in 2003 (when they transferred engineering to their overseas units) I ran Linux on my desktop. So, thanks Microsoft. I you'd have had a viable GUI back then, I'd probably still be sitting in front of it reading PowerPoint presentations (the only thing the remains of our engineering group uses) innstead of running my own engineering firm.
Have gnu, will travel.
DOSSHELL
And all the Mac-tards at the time would say "I thought DOS had only one S."
I know this sounds trollish, but my gods, why would anyone have bought Windows before Win 95? I bought a Mac II and had years and years of desktop publishing joy from it and remember the Hades that was DOS/Windows in those days. Is it really all about the cost of a cheapo IBM-compatible and not at all about actually getting work done??
"This book is an exciting history of the personal computer revolution. Early personal computing, the "first" personal computer, invention of the microprocessor at Intel and the first microcomputer are detailed.
It also traces the evolution of the personal computer from the hardware and software hacker, to its use as a consumer appliance on the Internet. This is the only book that provides such comprehensive coverage. It not only describes the hardware and software, but also the companies and people who made it happened"
Citation needed.
"Left field: My operating system is Free, if everyone saw that obvious value and weren't tied to existing applications and data they'd all jump ship immediately and by doing so would also immediately raise my operating system's quality of code to amazing levels: just because of the weight of bug reports and new blood of code."
I don't particularly care to contribute to the raising of your O/S's code quality. There are a couple of companies that already have working, polished products. I'll buy one of those. Being free isn't enough. It has to be free AND desirable. It's worth it to me to pay for something I like.
Yeah you're missing a lot, like most of it. Take a gander at "In Search of Stupidity: OVER 20 YEARS OF HIGH-TECH MARKETING DISASTERS", SECOND EDITION". Much better / more accurate that that movie you watched, "Pirates of Silicon Valley". Apple stole from Xerox because Xerox failed. I enjoyed using OS/2 2.0 personally, but 1.0 had no GUI... IBM screwed themselves over so many times.
"Software should gain new features with each version. The addditional functionality of the OS should be a given over the years. I'll give you that they aren't jacking the price of the Home version given the price in 1985, but have you seen their Enterprise Server pricing model?
You're right. So we should compare the pricing to the Enterprise Server Edition of Windows in 1985. Oh, wait... that's a non-existent product.
You can only compare the pricing of the home version since that's the only version remotely comparable.
You are remembering the AARD code, but that was the 3.x series, not the 1.x series that everyone else is talking about.
NT was a solid OS. Then they let the hardware vendors back into ring 0 so that games would run faster.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It was 1987. I was in Texas, working for a bank (as a consultant, installing some mainframe software for them), when the VP dropped by and asked whether I would want to see something new. He had an old guy pounding away at a new fangled thing called a personal computer (for them). I was more than happy to indulge him.
Windows 2.0 was it! The key things that I remember doing are that the PC I used had no mouse. Since I was a mainframe type, everything was keyboard based in my prior life. I assumed that there must be special keystrokes that I needed to use to play with the new computer.
Over a period of a few days, I stumbled on the keyboard shortcuts and familiarised myself completely with all of them. The amazing thing is that most of them are still relevant today - and my kids bug me to show them how to switch between windows quickly! In fact, I am amazed at how few people know many of the short cuts and the various ways in which you can play with computer without using the mouse! But I digress.
Next week the VP dropped by again and asked whether I could install a game for him. I went ahead and installed the floppies (and they were real 5.25" floppies - not diskettes). And I started playing my first graphical game - Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards! Long story short - it was a fun few days while we indulged the old man (the Veep) and saw the various aspects of the game.
I remember wondering about the keyboard shortcuts and wishing they were not so complicated.
My next encounter with PCs was not until a couple of years later - Windows 3.1, a mouse and Quicken! And boy did I have a learning curve with the mouse! At first I thought the mouse was optional. It took me a good year or so to start using it without having to think about it.
Good times ... until the Linux revolution began.
All views my own. Anyone else with the same views needs to have his/her head examined.
> Gates saw demonstrations from Xerox and wanted to copy what they were doing
I don't believe that Gates was impressed by Xerox. He was developing Word and Excel for Apple because he was being paid to do that by them. Gates still thought that MS-DOS was all he needed and that Mac was irrelevant. (He also didn't rate the internet, the first edition of 'The Way Ahead' did not mention it at all.)
But at COMDEX in 1983 he saw a demonstration of DRI's (of CP/M and DR-DOS) GEM graphics interface running on DOS. It was alpha but Gates saw that this was the way that PCs were going to go and, as usual, he needed to run to the front of the movement and wave his 'follow me' flag. So after COMDEX he booked a hotel and announced Windows. He then started it as a project.
There are references to "Interface Manager" being a precursor and "Windows" was a renaming of this but that is misleading as this was text based.
>> "the product manager who finally got Windows 1.0 out the door"
Yeah, I'm sure Microsoft engineers had nothing to do with it. He wrote it all by himself and shipped it.
The quoted phrase pretty much sums up what's wrong with the vast majority of tech companies (including Microsoft) -- they're no longer engineer-centric.
Very very important... good information.
I think people mainly think of as % of a complete PC. PC then? $3-5000? Windows $99. Do the maths...
Now, PC=£400 (dunno in $). Windows=$200... NOW do the maths...
So, by that rational, autos are getting cheaper because gasoline is increasing in price?
PCs are a commodity, like corn and crude oil - granted Apple dodged that bullet - almost. The development costs of Windows have nothing to do with the price of PCs. If the commoditization of PCs resulted in the decrease of Windows costs, then I'd agree with you.
"We could compare to Netware, Lantastic and other solutions that were displaced by the Windows Server solutions though..."
What would that accomplish? The post was comparing Windows then to Windows now. Windows then wasn't networked at all, so why do we care about server anything?
I admit to feeling a little stupid because I'm not getting your point, but others clearly do (+4 insightful).
My stepfather gave me a Christmas present; A Mach 10 board with a copy 'Windows'.
He also gave me a game. Balance of Power.
Oh
My
God
I frittered away hours, days, weeks, trying to survive without being thrown out of office at the end of the first term. It took me two weeks to keep from blowing up the world in a half hour of play.
The game never made it to any other version of Windows, but crap, it was magnificent. In fact, I may play it again.
ps- My rig back then was an XT clone, 4.77/8MHz, 2 720k FDD, 20MB HD (ST228, I think), and CGA. Wicked decent. Getting an EGA board and monitor was a big step. The Mach board had LIM memory on it. A whopping 1MB, which cost me well over $500 and three trips back to swap bad chips. Ah, the memorys...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
All legal drugs. Well, the packaging was. Open that binder and get a whiff of vinyl that would have you dizzy for several minutes. Is it Mr. Trower that I have to thank for all my pre-teen buzzes?
That game was very seriously amazing. I too spent many hours attempting to keep the world from crumbling and avoid the advance of the Communist Peril. One of the first highly addictive PC games I can recall. I think Wolfenstein and later Doom were the next ones that got me and my wife thoroughly addicted (although she wasn't into BOP).
What I liked about it the most was that it was extremely challenging, and detailed.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I suppose then that we all are vaporware at one point in time, eh. I've got the disks and the manual for version 1.0. Course, i've also got the first 12 issues of Byte magazine too !
What is fun is to get a copy of Windows 3.0 or earlier that will run in "real mode" (if you don't know what that is, grab a copy of the long-since-out-of-print PC Intern book as a PDF on the Internet that's floating around filestube.com etc - this is an excellent book that documents all this stuff I've long since forgotten) and bring it up in Windows 95 or later that runs full 386 preemptive multi-tasking. Each MS-DOS box in Win95+ is a full real-mode MS-DOS virtual machine, so earlier Windows versions which run in "real mode" will come up.
If you think this is fun, you can graduate to running Java in the POSIX subsystem on MVS running in Hercules or some other emulator on a x86 machine. Extra credit if the x86 instance is running in a virtual machine.
That is the image I have of windows 7 delivered to the end user on floppy disks. Imagine the pain if disk 530 is bad :(
If you buy Exchange with 25 CAL's, that entitles you to run Outlook on 25 client computers. Not Office, just Outlook.
You still have to pay for the 25 seats of Windows, but if this is a business, chances are they've already bought OEM licenses of Windows from the hardware vendor (Dell/HP/IBM), which is MUCH less than $200 per seat.
Also, a small business with 25 users can just by one license of "Small Business Server" which includes AD, Exchange, SQL Server, etc, all in one package, meant to literally run on a single server, with CAL's included.
Microsoft makes their money with the Windows + Office + Active Directory + Exchange lock-in.
(Exchange requires Outlook, requires Windows, requires AD).
smattawichu
Oh puuuhhhhlease....Cathedral and Bazaar was such a complete crock.
The only reason the largest software pirate on the planet, Micro$oft, had all that time to futz around with an endless version number of windows, was because they had the greatest monopoly the world has ever seen: DOS LICENSING.
And the only reason they ever achieved OS supremecy was that they licensed, then copied (i.e., stole) into Windows OS everyone else's original technology. End of that story.
And now the World Domination Society controls everything....
"Never go up against a Sicilian when mods are on the line!"
Here in Australia at least, Windows 1.0 was bundled as a freebie if you bought a Microsoft Mouse which, from memory, csot about $AU130. That was about right too - it was a useless novelty
> I do really believe that doing a single simple division is not "doing mathematics".
I feel the same way, I regard it as arithmetic, but that's technically a branch of mathematics and most people never see the more advanced stuff. My guess is that less than a billion people even know calculus. (It may be far less; I haven't done a study.) It's a bubble effect, so best not to mock people for their conventional use of language which is, perhaps, inapplicable to the few.
It reminds me of the first time I heard someone talk about a "scientist" after college. Even the word sounded strange, because for the most part, nobody in the sciences is a scientist--they're a chemist, or a biologist, or an astrophysicist, or perhaps even a computer scientist--but there is always a degree of specificity, without which it seems as if you've stepped into a twilight world where there is no science. Because in a way, when you step outside the scientific bubble, that's what you've done.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Back during the DOS 2.0 days, Microsoft intended for Xenix to be the successor to DOS. And the worst of Xenix was still preferable to the best of Windows.
Microsoft had several opportunities to ubiquitize a quality operating system, irrespective of their horrific business practices. They could have built their next-gen OS on top of Xenix. They could have finished the OS/2 project instead of stabbing IBM in the back and doing Windows on top of DOS. They could have even completed Dave Cutler's vision for Windows NT instead of MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE and top-loading all of their crap into the Win32 layer instead of building around the NT microkernel.
They could have done any of the above, and still practiced their bullshit monopolistic business practices, and they could have still taken over the market. In fact, if they had built Presentation Manager on top of Xenix, it's entirely possible that Linux would not exist today, and the X Window System would never have evolved past the days of TWM and Athena Widgets because all the unixheads would have happily moved to the commodity operating system.
But no. Aside from being monopolistic bullies in the marketplace, they also consistently deliver really bad products. There is a reason Linux has already overtaken Windows in the enterprise computing market, and has denied them a monopoly in this area. People who run back end data center applications don't want an operating system that has a GUI intertwined with the bottom layers of
the OS. They don't want mouse clicks in the same event queue as disk and network I/O. Windows is a bullshit design and it will never be adequate.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
"...promoting good design and usability practice across the product family up to the Vista and Office 2007 releases..."
Um...yah. The ribbon. Good design and usability. Vista. Another paragon of UI simplicity.
Ray Ozzie didn't join Microsoft until 2005.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Indeed, that is exactly what Windows/386 did to Windows 2.x.
I liked the article and feel it's true to the bone.
There was nothing other than poor grammer that was not correct :-)
I have used Windows since 2.0 and i thought it was enlightening to say the least.
We all know windows was a shell back in the day but then it grew up. Let's all get over it and keep playing with LINUX ok?
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
It actually existed. My neighbor got his hands on a mobile PC (by mobile it was huge) with a very tiny TV screen on it and keyboard. Similar to the first gen Compaq portables. Worked perfectly.
He gave me the machine to ... actually see if you could install windows 95 on it. I almost cried that he would even attempt it. I offered him 100 euros for machine but he wouldn't sell it. No idea where that machine is now. I believe he sold it.
If the advantage of speed of development (and then later worrying about porting the code somewhere else) outweighs the waiting around for the robustness you've described, then it's a sensible business decision. If you produce a product you can sell very profitably, then you can invest that money in another project (or improving the current one).
Even if the OS is as buggy as hell, if the advantages of using it outweigh the costs of the issues then it is worth doing. Anything else is thinking with the heart and not the head.
Unfortunately, the right to run Outlook without a separate Office/Outlook license was dropped as of Exchange 2007 CALs. Exchange 2010 CALs do not include this either.
FTA: To me, the allegation [that Windows copied the Macintosh "look and feel"] was almost insulting. If I wanted to copy the Macintosh, I could have done a much better job.
So by NOT copying the Mac it was the half-assed travesty that it was, instead of something much better that Apple really might have had a case about? I'm not sure he really meant to say that.
I don't believe that Gates was impressed by Xerox.
Then again - FTFA:
However, I can recall that within my first year at Microsoft, Gates had acquired a Xerox Star, and encouraged employees to try it out because he thought it exemplified the future of where the PC would be headed and this was long before Microsoft even saw a Mac or even a Lisa from Apple.
The rest of your information is equally as accurate.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I loved OS/2 the only issue I had ever with it was that there were still so many windows restriction in the windows environment.
I guess I can only blame MS for writing such bad code to begin with.
Every limitation I ran into with windows applications had no such issue in OS2.
Take the simple Cut & Paste size limitation of windows (IIRC it was around 32K). I constantly bumped up against the limitation. The same couldn't be said about OS2. I used WP(Word Perfect) under OS2 and it just plain worked. Never a crash nor any other OS2 application ever crashed.
OS2 = work
windows(take you flavor) = crippled
IBM really screwed the developers by dropping it and I have not forgiven them since.
I've found back a few dozen stacks of disks; from DOS to Win v1.0 to Win3.11 wfw...
I wonder if Microsoft would accept these to upgrade to CD/DVD; since they are taking up space-by-the-dozen ;)
The memories i have found back in boxes.. GEM, PCTools, Qemm, Stacker, Sierra Games, Lucasart games like Monkey Island and Zach Mc Cracken, PC/NFS, Turbo/Borland Pascal, Netware, Lantastic, Norton Utilities (when they were still usable, like diskeditor etc..), Remote Access, PCBoard, Frontdoor, Toscan and so much more when shareware was triving hard...
Probably also the reason why I'm currently selling all my old software.. it takes up way too much space in those times where boxes and paper manuals were golden. I can still remember my DBase IV box supporting my monitor for quite some while without problems.. as monitor stand..
Windows95 was actually a platform I've denied for quite some time; skipped from Win3.0 directly towards OS/2 as betatester and had my happiest times back then where multitasking really worked! I've programmed some shareware around that time for Dos and RA/Proboard but abandoned once everything went graphical. Things used to be easier back then when 640k ought to be enough (tm)(r)(c). Oh and the tricks that could be done with a graphics card and a few lines of assembly code.. the same time debug was being used to low level format a diskdrive... what was it again? ..
After all this juggling with disks and cd's, I've finally convinced myself OS X and Linux are the real way to go in order to step out the vicious circle of Microsoft computing. I've got one Windows XP PC, a linux server and a Mac with Leopard and it really "just works" like it should be. Just like those good old OS/2 days...
Can't really figure out why I went from Borland Pascal straight towards Perl yet .. probably because I do believe in the power and simplicity of web applications.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I remember all of this quite well, including working on WLO - 'The Windows Libraries for OS/2' in Boca Raton - and seeing 'the relationship' fall apart first hand.
Interestingly, we were often able to speed-up Windows 3 apps which ran on OS/2 via the mapping layer which was WLO - if I remember rightly, the most notable part of this was in using PM's Graphics Paths - and some probability.
Oh, and I also have some shrink-wrapped copies of Windows 3 from the launch in NY somewhere - they bear the sticker, 'I witnessed the event - 22 May 1990'.
... as opossed to what else produced in that fine house of software crafstmanship?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.1x
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The only reason I know of that anybody used Windows, other than as a novelty thing, in the early days instead of MS DOS was Pagemaker. I'm pretty sure that without Pagemaker for Windows there would not have been any Windows today.
I remember, sometime before I entered the university (in '86 - yes, I'm an old fart) I was working as a programmer for a small computer shop called 'Computer Warehouse', selling primarly PCs in Cape Town, South Africa.
The boss showed me some software which had been delivered together with a sample PC: Windows 1.0. He asked my opinion, as in how useful for us, and if the customers would want it. After fiddling with it for a while (hey, the frames don't even overlap!) I decided that the ground idea is neat, but the fat frames simply eat up to much screen space - this program would never see real usage, looks more like some kind of demo, especially with that low-res text resolution. ...yeah, I've been wrong before.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Windows was made?
I just assumed it congealed somewhere in the C:\temp folder in dos.
RES PUBLICA NON DOMINETUR
You mean, accurate as compared to the anecdotal article, based on an interview with the one guy who has a personal stake at having Windows 1.0 remembered fondly as a significant contribution?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost