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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
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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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.
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.