Slashdot Mirror
The Software That Failed To Compete With Windows
harrymcc writes "When Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0 back in November 1985 — it turned 25 on Saturday — it wasn't clear that its much-delayed windowing add-on for DOS was going to succeed. After all, it was a late arrival to a market that was already teeming with ambitious competitors. A quarter-century later, it's worth remembering the early Windows rivals that didn't make it: Visi On, Top View, GEM, DESQview, and more."
They left out the most viable competitor.
"Twenty-five years and two days later, it’s not just hard to remember an era in which Windows wasn’t everywhere"
Bullshit - As a C64 and Atari ST veteran, twenty-five years later it's painful to remember the extraordinary effort it took to lose to windows. I had better graphics playing Neuromancer on the C64 than windows managed for a decade, and let's not even talk about comparing Star Flight on the ST vs the DOS version.
Jack Tramiel should be strung up for crimes against computing.
{sigh} - Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Windows 1.0 was a total failure. Nobody used it. I worked at a computer store at the time and people would ask us to take it off the drives of the compter because they had no use for it.
Windows 2.0 was also a total failure.
Only when Windows 386 and WIndows 3.0 came out was Windows usable. Even then most people didn't use it. It just slowed down their dos programs.
Only when Windows 3.11 came out did WIndows become popular. Mostly to run DOS apps. Windows won because Microsoft just gave it away for the longest time. Almost nobody would have paid for it. That is why all the others failed. Most people wouldn't pay for a program to run programs!
Microsoft used the drug dealer method to win market share. But to call any version of Windows before 3.0 as not a failure is just not valid.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Same experience here. Nothing at the time other than DESQview was offering decent multitasking for tasks like BBSes. Windows was a joke in comparison.
Eventually I gave up DESQview, but it was a painful transition and I bitterly resented Microsoft for winning in the market with their inferior product.
These are not examples of technologies that Windows beat. They are example of companies, many of whom had superior products, that never made it due to Gates' underhanded business practices.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
First of all, your post erroneously assumes that the answer to the question: "When will Linux be ready for the desktop?" is not "It has been ready for years.". You also are overlooking all the lies told, the FUD sold, the standards committee tampering, and the Halloween Documents that prove that Microsoft indeed cheated, even though it still didn't win (though their customers have certainly lost.)
The question I want answered is "When will Windows be ready for the desktop?", because I guarantee you my Linux box blows the doors of of any Windows machine hands down, and does it all without being a Malware fest.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
" TSR...hacks to make your machine use memory above 640k..."
" It is hard for people to understand just how messy things were in those days..."
No, things were NOT that messy in those days. They were that messy in the DOS/Windows world.
Other systems of the time had device drivers that abstracted printing details from apps. They had no 640K barriers. They had preemptive multitasking. They had device independent APIs, and abstracted container file formats.
Don't confuse the mess that was DOS and early Windows with the state of the industry as a whole. It was not that bad, it's just that for whatever reason, everyone chose to support the system that was an architectural clusterfuck.