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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?
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.
Actually the product's quality has declined quite a bit since the golden days of Windows 1.0 - now it's bloated vaporware. No wonder they've decided to invest in the cloud.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
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.
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.
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Guess it actually had a different destiny!
vaporware it certainly was not. Did the subby not read the article?
Did you? Per the article, Windows 1.0 was several years late. During that considerable period, Windows was a product which had been announced but not delivered. Thus it was (past tense) vaporware.
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?
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.
Vapor... cloud... HA!
ICWUDT
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
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."
You are remembering the AARD code, but that was the 3.x series, not the 1.x series that everyone else is talking about.
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.
We could compare to Netware, Lantastic and other solutions that were displaced by the Windows Server solutions though...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
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.
Fuck you, I'm not going to fix someone elses work when there's something out there that WILL work. I have better things to do with my time, and forced charity isn't one of them.
Your little bit of charity gets you a whole operating system and ecosystem of applications back for Free. Selfish does not begin to describe your statement.
Shh.
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.
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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.
I don't care if it grows or not, personally. Its just like any other product; if it doesn't work I'll move on to something else. The fact is Windows works exteremly well for me; I don't need to google for solutions to obscure problems anymore, I don't have to spend hours fighting it for what should be a simple task.
With the time I've saved I've been able to use it to do other stuff that makes me way more money than I've put out in software expenses.
I'm glad you're happy watching something grow; personally though, spending $10 to make $300 is well worth it.