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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."
DOS was king and there were better file management programs at the time (which is all Win was at that point, iirc).
Xtree & Xtree Gold were premier apps during this DOS era.
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.
"...better file management programs at the time..."
including from Microsoft itself. DOSSHELL, included with DOS 4?, 5? (been too long) was a file management and task switching environment that actually was more stable than Windows at the time. YMMHV (...May Have Varied)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
4dos was what I loved back then.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
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?
Let's say you're a small business that needs 25 seats.
You pay for a server license for your domain controller, and a server license for a backup domain controller. Since you're a small shop, that is also the box you run Exchange off of. For both Windows Server and Exchange, you need CALs in addition to the server licenses.
Then each end user basically needs a SEPERATE client license from the CAL, since their individual desktop OSes need a license, and for email, they need Outlook licenses.
Shouldn't the server CAL effectively be the same thing as the client software license? They're double-dipping on what is already a very expensive license.
Home users pirate Windows en-masse, or get it pre-installed with their computer via a cheap OEM license bundled in. Microsoft makes their money on enterprise licensing, where they do jack their prices.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
Windows 1
Windows 2
Windows 3
Windows NT 3.1
Windows 3.11 for Workgroups
Windows NT 3.5
Windows 95
Windows NT 4
Windows 98
Windows 98SE
Windows ME
Windows 2000 (with Pro, Advanced, etc. etc.)
Windows XP
Windows XP x64
Windows Media Center 2005
Windows Tablet
Windows Vista
Windows Media Center 2008
Windows Media Center 2008 R2
Windows 7
I can honestly say I've used everything from Windows 3.1 on, except the Tablet edition. Windows CE, Server, and Mobile editions were left out.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
it is not the price of MS software that was raising issues of monopolization, it was the heavy handed business practices, and forcing other competitors out of business...
You are remembering the AARD code, but that was the 3.x series, not the 1.x series that everyone else is talking about.
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.
That video was made in what, 1985? And Windows sold for $99 according to the ad.
That Windows "ad" was an internally distributed Microsoft video that poked fun at Windows 1.0 for its lack of features and Ballmer for his um, Billy-Mays-ness. I guess the idea is "Look how far we've come!" or something.
IMO, Windows wasn't even usable until Windows for Workgroups, but that's besides the point.
Windows has gone down dramatically. Now, they've been labeled a monopoly in court, but they're pricing isn't that of a monopolist. Actually, they've given the consumer a really nice value.
Now, cue the MS haters who are going to accuse me of being an "apologist" and for being a "revisionist". Whatever. I just think it's an interesting micro economic case study.
The price of their product has nothing to do with whether or not they're a monopolist. In fact, Microsoft has been known to offer their product for nothing or next-to-nothing just for hegemony, which is exactly what you would expect from a monopolist. See the attempt to ruin the Mandriva/Nigeria deal a few years ago for an example...in economic terminology, such actions are called dumping.
:)
Now, one reason the price of Windows has come down is because Windows is just a platform for Microsoft to lock users into their proprietary world, most importantly to sell MS Office (see this chart). Another reason is that the software-as-a-product model is dying, and everyone knows it.
Long-term, Microsoft can't compete with free software and the corporations whose business models are built around it. Expect the price of Windows to come down as the trend continues
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
No, what was being sold in 1985 was the full Windows package. It was not a stripped down crippled version. So, the fair comparison would be with Windows 7 Ultimate at almost $300. That while everyone else in the industry has had dramatic price drops.
You don't even need those patches. 2.6 has been preemptible in the main line for ages now.
But this line of reasoning doesn't explicitly depend on the fact that Microsoft was the company selling Win 1x, and would work if any other company happened to be selling Win 1x, provided you could claim that said company wasn't a monopoly at the time and was offering Win 1x at correct (equilibrium) market prices.
Thus, take (e.g.) Netware's price at the time as correct, and compare with Microsoft's networking offerings today.
Every custom compile is essentially a fork.....dead-end forks, but forks none-the-less.
Wrong wrong wrong.
In the open-source community, a fork is what occurs when two (or more) versions of a software package's source code are being developed in parallel which once shared a common code base, and these multiple versions of the source code have irreconcilable differences between them. This should not be confused with a development branch, which may later be folded back into the original source code base. Nor should it be confused with what happens when a new distribution of Linux or some other distribution is created, because that largely assembles pieces than can and will be used in other distributions without conflict.