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Happy 30th Birthday, Windows!
v3rgEz writes: And what a ride it's been. Today marks the 30th anniversary since the debut of Windows 1.01, the first commercial release of Windows. At the time, it was derided as being slow, buggy, and clunky, but since then ... Well, it looks a lot better. .The Verge has a pictorial history of Windows through the years. What's your fondest memory of Bill Gates Blue Screen-of-death that could?
I am also 30 years old and my first Windows experience was Windows 98. I use command line pretty often, but that's about it.
You forgot Microsoft Bob, assholes.
Wow, I never realized how much Xfce resembles Windows 1.0. Maybe its time to try Gnome.
Everyone knows Windows 3.1 was the first Windows. There was no "1.01", you're photoshopping Windows 10 to make 3.1 look bad.
... At least it wasn't in the business of spying on everything you do.
It sucked, yes, but it was a less sleazy kind of suck.
And yet has become the most used, most useful operating system in the world. Shut up.
What's your fondest memory of Bill Gates Blue Screen-of-death that could?
Olympic fail - Blue Screen of Death Strikes Bird's Nest During Opening Ceremonies Torch Lighting
http://www.gizmodo.com/5035456...
lies
I switched over from my Mac when windows 95 came out. Before that there was no reason.
You remind me of dogs barking while the huge caravan is passing in front of their tiny courtyards.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Happy 30th Birthday botnets!
There's now a wider variety of reasons Windows is derided.
If NeXTSTEP was so great, then why didn't it become as popular as Windows? It's nearly as old as Windows. It runs on x86 PCs, and has for a long time. It even has modern descendants, like Windows does. Yet Windows still powers almost all desktops and laptops, while NeXTSTEP and its descendants have only a tiny sliver of the market.
We can't blame it all on the expensive-as-all-fuck hardware that NeXTSTEP and its descendants required. Clearly if the software were so good, it would be worth it for its users to spend some extra dough on it. Yet that never happened! NeXTSTEP and its descendants toil away in near obscurity while pretty much everyone uses Windows!
Every desktop software they have made has been terrible since Ballmer arrived. We all know about Vista, 8.0, 8.1 and now spyware 10.0. Windows 7 is a buggy mess with horrible random Clippies imposed on the end users (Libraries? Really?) And Microsoft hasn't made good office software since Office 2003. Their design choices since then, starting with the ribbon, have been ridiculous.
Satya Nadella promises new Microsoft software we will all love, but so far it's all detestable. Ballmer ruined that company. Nadella has a loong way to go to bring it back to the point where its software is at least at the level of unobjectionable, never mind loving it.
Now Windows is too old to get a job in IT.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
DEVICEHIGH=C:\OWS
There are more Linux devices in the world than Windows devices, and the gap is growing quickly. Perhaps you're thinking of which operating system is popular on general-purpose consumer devices only. Gartner reports than in 2014, 14% of general computing devices purchased ran Windows, while 49% run Android.
For about another month, until Christmas, you CAN make the following claim;
In English speaking countries, during work hours Monday through Friday, the majority of web surfing is on Windows. Android is the most popular on weekends, and after the another few million Android devices are unwrapped on Christmas morning it may beat Windows during work hours too.
30 years of software releases and still no stable builds! how do they do it? ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The idiots took over the design of Windows and MSOffice after XP was released. Every improvement that has been made has been counterbalanced with the removal of 2 useful features. Apparently they now believe that 3 clicks is more efficient than 1 and that removing all the contrast in the GUI makes it easier to see things.
Windows has a long and sordid history, with predatory business practices at the front of our minds, and there have been shithouse editions of Windows. But if I met the engineers and others who pulled together Windows 95, Windows XP or Windows 7 I would shake their hands as vigorously as I would those of a Linux kernel maintainer.
Has the rose in the palm of Windows' hand turned black now? Can we send it to Carousel and incinerate it? Please?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I can never again hear 'start me up' by the rolling stones without cringing due to windows 95 memories and the many parodies of the song that followed. I have a similar experience with 'come together' which will forever be in my mind as "the nortel networks song".
Marketing sure is sick. i can hear them both, plain as day, 20 years later!
-
"and fuck the trolls like Joe NoBloggs!"
I think I will celebrate by yet again doing the obligatory reinstall!
If you could go back in time and strangle Baby Windows, would you?
Why is Snark Required?
McDonalds is the most easily recognized and most popular restaurant in the world.
Popularity != merit.
Windows, yuck.
Says the asshole with an email address that clearly indicates they eagerly bent over to get fucked in the ass by Steve Jobs. I was forced to use shitty Apple II computers in elementary school. No sprites or dedicated sound chip. What a piece of garbage. Followed by the mac with a one button mouse and a black and white screen. Clearly the computer designed for stupid motherfuckers like you.
If NeXTSTEP was so great, then why didn't it become as popular as Windows?
The success of something does not depend solely on how good it is. How well it is marketed plays a huge role as well. I will freely admit that Bill Gates is a world class genius when it comes to marketing software. When it comes to writing well designed, easy to use software his ability is far more modest.
History is littered with examples where marketing has triumphed over technical greatness e.g. VHS vs. Betamax, the Sony mini-disc, the incandescent light bulb (invented by others marketed by Edison), Acorn Computers (who developed ARM in the late 1980's) etc. It's very common for better products to lose to better marketing - Just look at the film industry the Oscar for best picture is not handed out to the highest grossing film every year is it? So by all means admire Windows for the way it was marketed but if you are going to claim it is an excellent product you need to provide more evidence than just the volume of sales.
While the Ribbon interface is somewhat functional, it is limited compared to what it is replacing.
* The Ribbon interface replaces both toolbars and drop-down menus.
----> The Ribbon interface is not as complete as the drop-down menu's.
----> The Ribbon interface is basically not customizable.
----> The Ribbon interface takes up more space than multiple toolbars and a menu-bar.
----> The Ribbon interface is limited to one "topic" available to use at any given time,
whereas:
---> Toolbars could have multiple different toolbars on-screen at any given time.
---> Toolbars could be docked to different locations on the window: sides, top, bottom. ---> Toolbars could be UNdocked, and displayed outside of a given window.
If NeXTSTEP was so great, then why didn't it become as popular as Windows? {...} Yet that never happened! NeXTSTEP and its descendants toil away in near obscurity while pretty much everyone uses Windows!
Are you aware that Mac OS X is a derivative of NeXTSTEP ?
And that iOS is in turn a distant cousin of Mac OS X ?
These are immensly popular OSes (lots of Mac Books and Mac Air, around), and they are descendant of NeXTSTEP.
Apple rehired Steve Jobs, partially to get hold on the technology as a replacement of the aging Mac OS Classic platform.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
NeXSTEP was too expensive. The reason why OS X (the 'new NeXSTEP') isn't outselling Windows devices is because they are more expensive. Yet when you take a look in the high end range of laptops or desktops you see a lot higher market share for your NeXSTEP/OS X devices.
In the cheaper department Linux is growing too. I see more and more Linux desktops and servers when visiting customers. The reason is simple. It is good enough and it doesn't require you to deal with evangelizing MS valued partners who want to move everyone to the cloud. I don't know the situation in the US, but over here many have made the step to replace their Windows XP machines not with hardware with Windows 7/8/10, but just with a Linux install. They are just interfacing to some cloud service anyway and Firefox is good enough to do this task.
I guess I mainly played games on the PC and the games and all of them needed specific autoexec.bat / config.sys / etc. where I basically had to reboot the system whenever I wanted to play a different game. The games were always designed with the expectation that the end user only had DOS and not Windows so they came with their own DOS extenders (DPMI libraries/kernels) if required. I never had a reason to use Windows.
Even for applications other than games though, I preferred the DOS versions at the time since they were more mature and less buggy.
And regarding the top post where someone slags Windows and then someone replies to defend its success. The main reason why Windows succeeded really had little to do with Windows and more to do with the (relatively) low cost of the required hardware. DOS was more popular than Windows until the mid-90s and there was nothing wonderful about DOS. It was a glorified boot loader. But it was cheap and the hardware was cheap.
I pray you get "+5 Flamebait".
[Rent This Space]
My first experience with a GUI was on Sun workstations running Solaris. Another lab had a brand new Windows machine from "that DOS company, Microsoft". I went across grounds (that's campus for those not from UVa) and decided to try this new GUI. I gave up before it was finished booting... roughly 4 minutes into the boot process. Maybe the hardware was not ready for it; maybe it was all on the sys admins for doing that. That was 3.x probably. My later experiences with 3.x machines that were capable of booting in a timely manner wasn't much more impressive. It took Windows 95 to make me see it as worth more than DOS.
I stood with it through the rough years. It was the "working man's OS", and I wrote software targeted at consumers. Even later when I was targeting *NIX servers, I was already hooked on MS's visual tools and the environment in general. My software had the benefit of being compiled on two platforms, so I saw and fixed more bugs, and fixed them more easily.
Windows XP was the zenith. My XP machine almost ran 10 years. That's an eternity!
Now MS is installing spyware, locking down hardware, trying to be like Apple/google/mobile, and failing miserably. The Visual tools are the last link. One of these days I might actually ditch it, but unlike a lot of people here I'll be sad.
Open hardware standards, proprietary OS, IMHO it was the sweet spot for a lot of applications. Suck it, zealots; but suck it MS too because you failed to realize your own value.
Well. Looks aren't everything you know.
And yet has become the most used, most useful operating system in the world. Shut up.
Likewise, the most common form of government all throughout history has been some form of tyranny. Therefore, by your logic, tyranny is a good and highly desirable form of government.
Do you see the fault in that yet?
You may have missed some basic computer terminology back in grade school. Yes, a computer that runs hundreds of thousands of different applications is called a general purpose computer. A DVD player, a Nest thermostat, and the ECU is in your car are not.
Other basic terms you might wish to become familiar with:
CPU
RAM
email
keyboard
mouse
server
USB
Thirty years ago I was sure that Windows would never make it because it was so slow and cumbersome. [add slow and cumbersome jokes here.]
My Fave Moment: Arriving at a terminal at Toronto airport and finding *every* terminal in the placed displaying the BSOD. What a great advert for Microsoft.
And yet has become the most used, most useful operating system in the world.
Most used? If you're talking about the PC platform (including laptops etc.), yes, true enough.
Most useful? Matter of opinion. I personally find it anti-useful and a barrier rather than an aid to getting work done.
... left me thinking... Who says atheistic programmers and IT professionals are not religious? It's even driven some to pray...
Gates a marketing genius? I don't think so. He got lucky that he got that initial contract with IBM. He was even more lucky that IBM did not buy him out when he offered to sell. Jobs seems to be a much better marketing genius...if you ask me.
I think what made Windows last was applications and the attention Microsoft made to keep their software compatible with previous versions. The Windows team bent over backwards to work around problems that popular 3rd party applications had by misusing APIs.
And yet has become the most used, most useful operating system in the world. Shut up.
I liked Windows from Windows NT onwards, not the Win16 or the Windows 95 based OSs. In fact, I rooted for Windows NT to be the great microprocessor leveller - available on MIPS and Alphas, in addition to x86. Unfortunately, Microsoft at the time didn't make use of the leadership opportunity that it had of doing a 64-bit OS long before memory requirements would force it there. As early as the 90s, they could have made the RISC editions of Windows NT purely 64-bit OSs, and then today, Windows would have been as ubiquitous as Android, since the portability aspect of the OS would have been thoroughly tested. In addition to that, heavy duty applications, such as CAD/CAM, EDA tools, et al could have run on the NT/RISC platforms getting all the firepower they needed. In the meantime, MIPS and Alpha could have gotten market traction, providing alternatives to Intel and giving both DEC and MIPS volumes needed to become fab powerhouses.
Today, you have Microsoft wanting Windows 10 to be everywhere - trying to put it on Raspberry Pi's and so on. Sorry, but too little, too late. Had Windows NT and Windows CE been properly done on RISC based platforms, then they would have been viable platforms today, as a result of being tested on a range of hardware.
If NeXTSTEP was so great, then why didn't it become as popular as Windows? It's nearly as old as Windows. It runs on x86 PCs, and has for a long time. It even has modern descendants, like Windows does. Yet Windows still powers almost all desktops and laptops, while NeXTSTEP and its descendants have only a tiny sliver of the market.
We can't blame it all on the expensive-as-all-fuck hardware that NeXTSTEP and its descendants required. Clearly if the software were so good, it would be worth it for its users to spend some extra dough on it. Yet that never happened! NeXTSTEP and its descendants toil away in near obscurity while pretty much everyone uses Windows!
NEXTSTEP was a fiasco b'cos NEXT/Jobs couldn't get Sun and HP to realize what a gem they had when that OS was ported to SPARC and PA/RISC. Also, for the price of their hardware, NEXT made some poor choices for platform - the 68030 was a really wimpy CPU for what was required. NEXTSTEP should either have supported parallel processing, or they should have ported the OS to something like a SPARC or MIPS and made NEXTSTATIONS based on that. That would have been a more justifiable bang for buck.
I remember in college where I struggled w/ Unix terminals, not knowing much more than ls. Using a NEXT in our Computer Center totally exposed the power of Unix for me.
And one can argue that NEXTSTEP was what transformed Apple, even though by the time OS-X was out for the first Macs, Intel had closed the gap on the CPU performance front, which is why Apple finally moved to that platform. And once it did, it was in direct competition w/ Microsoft.
Yes, nevermind that anti-competitive period back in the 80's, it probably didn't do much to solidify Windows as the only commercially viable OS.
And it likely is also the most cursed at OS, and has caused the physical destruction of the most keyboards, mice and monitors of any OS.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I was an "official" journalist and my magazine got me and my spouse an invite to Redmond. We met at a Seattle hotel to be bused over. I was on the same bus as a very disgruntled John Dvorak. Jay Leno was the MC, making stupid jokes about "Bill's double-wide" while "Bill" kept making cutting comments over how much he paid Leno to be there. It was, as was usual for MS events, very well catered with crab and shrimp, and the day was absolutely beautiful for Seattle: Blue skies and fluffy white clouds EXACTLY like the Windows 95 box. I'm sure Bill ordered the day extra special.
There was a small plane which circled the campus with a banner that said, "Windows 95 brought to you by Windows NT" At the end of the day they threw open a massive tent where everyone there was given an MS bag with a copy of Win95 in. My wife was ecstatic that she got a copy.
And yeah, I get it. Linux, Linux, Linux, and the fact is I was dragged kicking and screaming into a GUI from the old DOS days, or even back to CP/M and dBase II. But Windows is a phenom, and that's a fact, too. My life in IT would never have been the same without it, and you haters need to get over it. Sorry for your loss.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
fully patched Win 2012 R2 blue-screened at work yesterday, like it was 1998. The only "enterprise grade" os in the world that apparently needs a reboot schedule.
> And yet has become the most used, most useful operating system in the world.
People don't buy computers to run operating systems, they buy them to run applications. They bought Apple II and Pets to run Visicalc, CP/M computers to run Wordstar, Supercalc and Peach Tree. They bought MS-DOS computers to run Wordperfect, IBM-PCs to run Lotus 123. Windows 1/2 to run Pagemaker, Windows/386 so they could run multiple DOS boxes.
Microsoft made it easy to send Office documents around (though it was very bad practice to do this for many reasons) and then changed the file format with each version to force users to buy each new version so they could read documents sent to them (and to prevent competing products from reading them). This started the cycle of Windows and Office entrenchment.
Windows is 'used' to start up applications, it is not particularly 'useful' beyond that.
The GP is obviously aware that OS X and iOS are derivatives of NeXTSTEP.
That becomes clear when you actually read the GP's comment.
Do you see all of the parts I emphasized in it?
The parts where it refers to the "descendants" of NeXTSTEP?
See them?
Guess what they refer to?
OS X and iOS!
Holy fuck.
I know the intelligence level here has dropped off completely since Dice took over, but your comment is supremely dumb.
I don't expect you to be capable of reading the article, or even the summary, but you should at least be able to read the comment you're replying to!
And you're wrong about OS X being "immensely popular".
It has a single-digit market share, at best.
Even iOS has a very small share of the market when compared to Android.
Your comment is truly one of the stupidest I have seen here in a long time.
It's remarkable how dumb it is.
I think Amiga Workbench 1.1 was around. It had plenty of bugs but was still pretty usable.
Except that along with MS-DOS, it put a PC in every office and eventually a PC in every home, without which Linux might not have been possible.
@jcr: "This is not something to commemorate." (Score:1, Flamebait)
"Windows was and is a tragic waste of time and money." ref
Why is this moderated 'flamebait', it's only a statement of fact ..
As opposed to Linux, which is only a tragic waste of time...
<puts on glasses>
...since it's free as in "not worth any money".
YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!
I am disappointed by the moderation of all the articles here. Some longer thoughtful ones have been marked down.
Recently I look at the articles selected on slashdot but don't sign in or read the comments.
Is there a better site for links to tech news?
And yet has become the most used, most useful operating system in the world.
Kind of.
Windows as we know it really is 22 years old, first released in July 1993 as Windows NT.
It was a complete re-design that bore only superficial resemblance to that grotesque piece of excrement that was bolted onto DOS, and reached its nadir in Windows ME.
That original windows was utter junk, and died when MS released XP, a version of NT with the nice desktop UI from Windows'95, but totally rewritten and redesigned underneath.
As for "most used, most useful", that is only on the desktop, and due to monopoly power. Linux dominates everywhere else, from supercomputers to embedded, and even phones (followed by BSD).
The MS-DOS and Windows PC entered the market as an affordable office workhorse, with strong software support from every major vendor.
The OEM Windows system install became the gold standard for retail sales and support. The modular design of the PC meant that hardware advanced quickly --- and with Plug and Play configuration becoming the norm --- quite painlessly.
Windows evolved into a capable operating system designed for users who share almost none of the geek's paranoia or obsessions with the internals of the system.
Billions of flies eat shit. What's your point?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Thanks in part to Jared, who only got 15 years today. Strange world...
I come here for the love
> What's your fondest memory of Bill Gates Blue Screen-of-death that could?
Nothing, really.
Well, there is one thing: I paid for Windows 3.11 and that made me very satisfied because I was not pirating it like others. IIRC I also bought OS/2 warp but could never make it work properly because it demanded a better machine than the one I had back then.
And that was it.
OTOH, when I finally started to use Linux for real (in '99), I knew I was on the verge of entering a wild brave new world (to borrow a cliché).
And, curiously enough, nowadays' users want phones for their main personal uses -- movies, communication, gaming, banking. John and Jane Doe won't want a personal desktop anymore.
It's easier to put a computer in each pocket than one on each desk... except that Windows can't manage to make the jump, for Android and iOS already took most of the market. Microsoft is taking its own bitter medicine: being locked out of the market.
I guess we can expect a fierce fight as Windows becomes more dependent on corporate purchases while people seem to grow attached to increasingly powerful phones.
Now would be a great time to find fans just like the auto industry did when Asia makers started offering quality cars. Except that it really is hard to find somebody to love Windows...
As I mentioned, the vast majority of people do in fact choose Android. Sorry if you're having trouble selling your 50 pound, $1,200 relics these days. On the bright side, some offices still use them.
Btw, in case you're not familiar with basic computer terminology, "general purpose computing" doesn't necessarily mean Visual Studio and CAD. It means a computer which runs more than one or two programs. A DVR is a special-purpose device, a Nest networked thermostat is a special purpose device, as is a fire-control radar system. On the other other hand, a computing device which can run hundreds of thousands of different applications is called a general purpose computer. And for that, for most of the applications released in the last three years, people use Android.
Maybe we'll get lucky and Window's palm will start glowing red.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
"Windows was and is a tragic waste of time and money."
Not so. It is now providing work for a second generation of IT specialists.
Yes. As just one example, think of all the effort and money lost by people rewriting their VB6 apps when Microsoft discontinued the language with no recourse.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Windows gets very usable once you installed Cygwin.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
"That original windows was utter junk, and died when MS released XP, a version of NT with the nice desktop UI from Windows'95, but totally rewritten and redesigned underneath."
But what the old Windows-over-DOS did accomplish was beta test the Windows user interface.
"If NeXTSTEP was so great, then why didn't it become as popular as Windows?"
It steadily IS gaining on Windows: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Except that the bulk of 'applications' written were written to the win32 API. There weren't too many written to the APIs of the other beloved OSs out there - no matter how much we may love them (and I do). While Apple had its fair share of applications, there weren't too many written for OS/2, Atari, Amiga, BeOS, or even the various Unix versions out there, except maybe Solaris.
Many have long wanted to see Windows wiped from existence. Thirty years, in those same people reluctantly send their pound of flesh to Redmond every release cycle.
Maybe in another thirty years there will be an open source desktop OS with more than single digit percentage use on the desktop.
The first time change after it came out, during a LAN party, I was still one of the DOS users. At midnight all the Windows 95 boxes rebooted themselves and the DOS users declared victory
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You win 3 Internets and a pizza.
look, we all take a break from shitting in Chevy Chase's cereal during his birthday.
I think Windows deserves the same respect.
I mean, Windows is terrible; but I think there's a time and a place for shitting on Windows and Windows' birthday is not it.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
There are more Linux devices in the world than Windows devices ...
That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Android users have no interest in Linux, do not even know it is there. The operating system these users care about is Android, and Linux merely sits behind the scenes hosting Android. If Linux were to be replaced by BSD as Android's underlying host nearly zero Android users would know or care if told.
Even the vast majority of Android developers have no interest in the underlying Linux host. Linux does not compromise part of the Android API.
In comparison, people who are buying personal computers are expecting Windows. Hell, even many people buying Macs have some interest in Windows and dual boot.
Microsoft did follow through on portability, the retail WinNT 4 CD had x86, MIPS, and PowerPC. Maybe Alpha but I think that may have been offered after launch day. WinNT was absolutely proven with respect to portability. Actually it was already proven, supporting MIPS and x86 from the beginning. NT 4 proved the "ease" at which new architectures could be supported.
If any corporation had a large part to play in failing to "level the microprocessor field" it was Apple. By failing to deliver CHRP, a PowerPC based motherboard capable of dual booting Windows NT and Mac OS there was no point to PowerPC Windows NT. Alpha performed better, x86 was less expensive.
As far as Alpha goes, few people needed the performance advantage.
And finally, hats off to Intel, they were absolutely miracle workers. The ability to keep x86 close to PowerPC was unexpected. Its not really that PowerPC failed to deliver on its expected performance, its really that no one ever imagined that Intel could get the x86 architecture to those performance levels. Yeah CISC is harder to work with than RISC, but with sufficient money to throw at the problem the difficulty can be overcome. Well, sort of, modern x86s are RISC at their core, the CISC instructions being translated to the RISC instructions on the fly and behind the scenes.
I remember in college where I struggled w/ Unix terminals, not knowing much more than ls. Using a NEXT in our Computer Center totally exposed the power of Unix for me.
My computer science department evolved out of the math department. While computer science degrees had been awarded for quite some time the CS department was organizationally a specialty within the math department. When CS became its own independent department in the 90s assets had to allocated. There was a fight over who would get the NeXT workstations and who would get "stuck" with the Sun workstations. Students and faculty loved NeXTSTEP and its development tools.
"Microsoft launched its first version of Windows on November 20th, 1985, to succeed MS-DOS."
Actually Windows was originally an attempt to make Microsoft's flagship operating system (MS-DOS) more user friendly.
It was not originally an operating system at all, but more akin to X-Windows, a user interface.
Windows NT was Microsoft's first attempt to replace DOS as an operating system, released 8 years later.
And finally Windows XP is the first non-NT version of Windows intended for home users, released some 16 years later.
Windows 10 is as fast as XFCE.
We are looking at 30 years of shoddy software because of shoddy programmers outside of microsoft, 3rd party application and driver developers. Such can screw up any ecosystem. See Linux hosted Android for a modern incarnation of this phenomena.
To be fair to microsoft Windows NT was OK. Modern, capable, and one bad 3rd party driver away from disaster just like Linux and FreeBSD. I've been going the build-your-own route for my PCs for decades and I am somewhat picky about my parts, I've had pretty good luck with Windows and Linux. When running installers I tend to do a custom install and deselect the crapware and unnecessary stuff, when browser extensions are requested I say no.
MacOS X's stability is to a large degree due to a lack of such 3rd party drivers, an artifact of Apple having such tight control over the hardware and providing most drivers. An open architecture with expansion slots is both a blessing and a curse.
No, that was Minix. Linus didn't hate Windows, he wasn't even using Windows. Have you not read the infamous Usenet exchange?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
>> That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Android users have no interest in Linux, do not even know it is there. The operating system these users care about is Android, and Linux
That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Windows users have no interest in Windows. They rather would like to get work done.
aaaaaaa
Just saying....
>> That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Android users have no interest in Linux, do not even know it is there. The operating system these users care about is Android, and Linux
That is a highly flawed argument. For example nearly all those Windows users have no interest in Windows. They rather would like to get work done.
Actually they have an interest in Windows-based apps so they do have an interest in Windows. Note the negative reviews of Chromebooks, lots and lots of complaints about not being able to installed Windows apps.
And this tangent has little to do with the fact that nearly all Android users and developers don't care about Linux and Linux does little to let them get their work done. It simply hosts Android, the operating system that their apps run on, the apps that let users get things done. The "embedded" Linux vs desktop Windows comparison made earlier remains absurd.
The reason WIndows takes a lot of tech support resources is because the whole world uses it for everything. If everyday people tried using Linux all the time, there would be just as many problems.
It ran only in NeXT computers, which were ridiculously expensive. Of course they did have some interesting HW, but the price was just too high.
My fondest memory is the day after I finished my previous job where I realized that I would never accept a job again that required me to use it. Fingers crossed anyway.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Thank you for years and years of job security, including the foreseeable future, on behalf of everyone in IT security.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is a whole business segment that runs on phones these days - small builders.
My favorite joiner and general fix-the-bits-that-are-falling-off-your-house man has a smartphone. He can barely use it. He is OK with texting and voicemail - email is a bit of a struggle. But he has to have it to keep in touch with customers, suppliers, and subcontractors. The younger ones are better with the technology.
I am dealing with a supplier who runs his business from his phone. He has a woodworking shop, does made to measure for builders. He uses ebay for leads, email to agree specs & prices and send invoices, internet bank transfers for payment.
His invoicing is a fine blend of old and new. He uses a stationers invoice book, a rubber stamp to put his business details in the blank at the top, writes his bank details, order details, prices by hand. Then he takes a picture with his phone and emails it.
I make an internet bank transfer, email him a screen capture of that, and wait for delivery.
He makes windows. From bits of tree.
--
One person's error is another person's data.
Ooh, poor baby. While you were wailing over your sippy cup about the lack of a dedicated sound chip, Physicists were using Apple IIs to control Ion Sources. And while you were struggling with a one-button mouse, (That second hand of yours is used for more than just whacking off...), we were running Absoft Fortran on some of the very first Macintoshes released to the Public. The onat button mouse was quite useful when we first ported Spice to the Mac. Also, our Macs talked directly to our Unix boxes. It was _years_ before a PC running Windows could reliably do the same. (Win95R2.)
Go back to your sippy cup, and remember to change your diaper, you moron.
And shut the fuck up, unless an Adult asks you a direct question.
> It ran only in NeXT computers, which were ridiculously expensive.
They were expensive compared to PCs, but not to the Unix workstations of the time. The problem was, it was underpowered as a workstation and couldn't justify the price.
So NeXT became a software company, and ported the OS to x86 and SPARC. They didn't stir up much business that way. Their main business before selling out to Apple was their WebObjects technology which had a decent enterprise business.
Coren22, be nice now. Just cuz apk caught your MyAlternateID sockpuppet you use while you work your 2nd shift menial techie job doesn't mean you have to be a dolt. Oh, wait. In your case it you do. It's all you know how to do.
While Microsoft did port NT to those 3 CPUs you mention, they did not support it beyond getting the OS itself on them. Like Visual Studio - they did Intel only, and DEC had to support the Alpha version, and maybe NEC the MIPS one. What I suggested above was that had Microsoft made Windows 7 for the RISC versions - letting their memory requirements be 4GB or above - and put all their own major apps on that, they would have had a good chance of succeeding. Some of the Alphas of that time were equivalent to some of today's x64s, so given a 64-bit OS, that could have worked, and Alpha too would have gone towards reducing the power consumption.
As far as CHRP goes, the primary blame goes on IBM for failing to deliver on OS/2 for PowerPC. NT was never gonna be a primary driver for PowerPC, given that it was already there on MIPS and Alpha. CHRP was good as long as there was something to run on it, but Apple failed to deliver on Pink, Copeland or Gerschwin, and once they acquired NEXT, Steve recognized the futility of trying to go against Microsoft and canned Power Computing. So given that Apple wasn't committed to defining the standard, IBM should have done it w/ OS/2 on PPC. It would have enabled them to move both their hardware and software solutions to a single platform that they could brand all their own for the PC market.
The reason Intel managed to catch up, other than their legendary fabrication models, was their ability to go the multicore route. And the reason they could do that was NT. Previously, for Windows 3.1 to Windows ME, those were only single processor OSs, so tossing in more cores wouldn't have done any good. But once Windows 2000 was out, merging the 2 Windows branches to the NT core, Intel could toss in as many cores as they liked to match anybody, while since they were running native x86, they actually saw the performance improvements that Alphas could only promise but never deliver. And once they combined that w/ power reduction as a strategy, the field was clear for them to steamroll the competition
They could have been successful had they managed to get Sun and HP to make it one of the optional default OSs for their workstations. It was a fine workstation OS, had it been priced properly. I guess the day we have GNUSTEP complete for both Linux and the BSDs, we could be closer.
That Commodore had a fully preemptive multitasking operating system (AmigaOS) during the same time Microsoft was trying to get Windows working with only task switching. Microsofts OS has been playing "catch up" ever since....
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Who could forget Microsoft Joe-Bob!
MICROSOFT UNVEILS NEW JOE-BOB(tm) SOFTWARE
by Andrew Burke (ABurke@eworld.com)
REDMOND, Wash. -- April 10, 1995 -- Microsoft today announced the
release of Joe-Bob(tm), a new software package that the company hopes
will open up a huge untapped computer market. With the motto "The
software for the rest of y'all(tm)," Joe-Bob reaches out to the same
demographic group that buys 4x4s, supports the gun lobby, and drinks
Miller Lite.
"Computers have been commonly seen as for leftists and
intellectuals," explains Microsoft spokesperson Willy Maclean, "but
we've recently seen people like Newt Gingrinch embracing new technology
-- the time is right for the rest of America to get wired!"
Instead of a desktop or office metaphor, Joe-Bob(tm) puts the user
in a garage. "Click on the Lynyrd Skynyrd tapes, and get a complete
music library in digital stereo. Click on the pinups, and get hooked up
to the Internet's hottest gifs," the promotional materials explain.
The package does not include a word processor or spreadsheet, but
does have software that keeps track of the football season, lists the
best roadhouses between Florida and Nevada, and can even order
spareribs and beer at the click of a mouse.
"This is righteous software, man," says beta-tester Billy Grugg.
"It thinks like I think." Brad Cunningham agrees: "I take it
everywhere," he says, pointing to a Pentium laptop racked under his
12-gauge in his pickup truck. Microsoft is offering desktop users a
special clip-on beer holder for their monitors.
"Look at what's popular out there," says Microsoft Chairman Bill
Gates.
"Four of the top-10 Usenet newsgroups are about sex, and splatter
video games like Doom and Mortal Kombat are bestsellers. We're just
catering to a demand, that's all."
Microsoft is reportedly distributing badges and bumper stickers
saying things like "Joe-Bob: Make Your Disk Hard," "Go Microsoft -- Go
Intel -- Go America," and "QuickTime is for Pinko Hippie Wimps."
Apple declined to comment.
Mine was v3.0 on a couple International Business Machine (IBM) Personal System (PS)/2 machines (models 30 (286 10 Mhz) and P70 (386)). :O
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Give up, APK. The only reason anybody cares even an iota is that we all just want you to stop. Stop your spambot auto replies to whoever your vendetta is against this week, stop your ridiculous posturing as if this was some kind of dick measuring contest. Please seek some help for your social difficulties and please just stop posting anything that does not directly contribute to the discussion about the article.
And no, I'm not either of the AC's above and I'm not any of your particular archenemies of the month either. I'm just someone who's been reading /. for years and is getting sick of your nonsense.
Except that along with MS-DOS, it put a PC in every office
No, IBM did that. Personal computers (non-IBM, non-Microsoft) had been around for a while already, but not in mainstream offices. That is because company IT buyers at the time would not buy anything without the IBM logo on it. The IBM PC made personal computers respectable to business because they were IBM, it would not have mattered what OS they ran (could have been CP/M-86, IBM could have written their own, Seattle Computer Products* could have provided DOS directly instead of via Microsoft, or whatever). Also, IBM PCs could be used as terminals to the company [IBM] mainframe so the clueless company buyers could be fooled into thinking the IBM PC was no more than that : that is how my office first got one.
and eventually a PC in every home
My home had a personal computer before the IBM PC with DOS was invented, and before I'd even heard of Microsoft. The young guys I worked with also had Commodores, Sinclairs etc. Home computing was taking off already without IBM/Microsoft's help and would have gone to the level it did with or without Microsoft
without which Linux might not have been possible.
That claim, sometimes heard, completely baffles me. Are you saying that personal computers would never have developed the power to run Linux if it had not been for Windows? WTF wouldn't they? Linux runs and is developed on almost any platform. It was originally developed on Minix, another Unix OS. IMHO Microsoft retarded the development of the PC by about 5 years while they had their love affair with Windows 9x.
* You do realise don't you that DOS was not written by Gates or Microsoft, it was bought by them? They hired the author (Tim Paterson) to port it to the IBM PC.
i liked it when it actually helped me do something productive and worked with no malfunctions, which mostly happened when doing database analysis with some kind of spreadsheet or relational database software
Thank you Dave Raggett
Nope, not even close. It became the default OS because Bill Gates sold a bill of goods to IBM who had effed up creating an OS for their first desktop.
Gates bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) then repackaged it as PC-DOS 1.0. And the standard of mediocrity was given a firm foundation.
The Windows GUI took until version 3.1 to actually be operable.
They actually got things right with the GUI with Windows XP then started effing it up.
The current Win10 GUI is horrendously horrid yet better than Win8. Who wants barely legible pastel on pastel as a default.. nuts. And the whole concept of APPS instead of Application Programs seems to mean marginally readable brain damaged interface with no indication where the settings menu is to get things set to readable or usable.
NRRPT/RCT
Holy shit looooooooooool.
This is why I like APK. Calls out the tools.
Note the negative reviews of Chromebooks
What negative reviews? I see on Amazon right now that the best selling laptop is a Chromebook with a 4.5 star rating out of 1,287 reviews.
The relevance of Windows is gone for most users.
nuff said.
Chevy Chase is a human being, Windows is not. Windows isn't even alive or tangible.
It's pretty sad that you can't make that distinction.
While Microsoft did port NT to those 3 CPUs you mention, ...
Actually MIPS was not a port. MIPS was the original development platform, one way to make sure its not x86 dependent, then x86 was added. NT was essentially developed on MIPS and x86 in parallel.
... they did not support it beyond getting the OS itself on them. Like Visual Studio - they did Intel only, ...
Actually Microsoft Word and Excel were PowerPC native. Adobe Photoshop too.
... and DEC had to support the Alpha version, and maybe NEC the MIPS one.
Alpha wasn't targeting consumers like PowerPC was. It was targeting servers and high end workstations, productivity apps weren't really needed.
What I suggested above was that had Microsoft made Windows 7 for the RISC versions - letting their memory requirements be 4GB or above - and put all their own major apps on that, they would have had a good chance of succeeding. Some of the Alphas of that time were equivalent to some of today's x64s, so given a 64-bit OS, that could have worked, and Alpha too would have gone towards reducing the power consumption.
The market had spoken long before Windows 7. The market wanted low cost and backwards compatibility.
As far as CHRP goes, the primary blame goes on IBM for failing to deliver on OS/2 for PowerPC. NT was never gonna be a primary driver for PowerPC, given that it was already there on MIPS and Alpha. CHRP was good as long as there was something to run on it, but Apple failed to deliver on Pink, Copeland or Gerschwin, and once they acquired NEXT, Steve recognized the futility of trying to go against Microsoft and canned Power Computing. So given that Apple wasn't committed to defining the standard, IBM should have done it w/ OS/2 on PPC. It would have enabled them to move both their hardware and software solutions to a single platform that they could brand all their own for the PC market.
I don't know, I think the market had spoken on OS/2 as well. I remember OS/2 2.0, it was amazing compared to its contemporary 16-bit Windows 3.1. Windows NT was still only in beta. And the market largely did not care, on a platform where OS/2 2.0 offered absolutely superb legacy support for existing Windows apps. Something one would not have under PowerPC. The only thing that made sense with respect to PowerPC would be a single platform able to run Windows NT and Mac OS. We already had a single platform for Windows NT and OS/2.
Note the negative reviews of Chromebooks
What negative reviews? I see on Amazon right now that the best selling laptop is a Chromebook with a 4.5 star rating out of 1,287 reviews. The relevance of Windows is gone for most users.
Apparently you missed the first year or so of chromebooks. What negative reviews there were often cited Windows apps. Windows is still incredibly relevant, its just that over the years the word has got out that chromebooks are not PCs, that they are something else.
Actually MIPS was not a port. MIPS was the original development platform, one way to make sure its not x86 dependent, then x86 was added. NT was essentially developed on MIPS and x86 in parallel.
Yes & no. Microsoft developed the MIPS version on a DECstation 3000, which was a Ultrix workstation, and which never officially supported NT due to the Turbochannel bus. But the x86 version was released first.
If you really want to nit pick, NT was actually developed on an i860 based computer.
Actually Microsoft Word and Excel were PowerPC native. Adobe Photoshop too.
As you mentioned below, Alpha wasn't targeted towards consumer apps. But Microsoft should have targeted some of their more compute intensive applications, starting w/ things like Access & Powerpoint. Just having Word and Excel on the Alpha edition of their Office Suite was lame.
Alpha wasn't targeting consumers like PowerPC was. It was targeting servers and high end workstations, productivity apps weren't really needed.
True. While that platform was supported by Pro-Engineer, DEC could have done a better job getting it supported by AutoCAD, Cadence, Mentor Graphics and others.
The market had spoken long before Windows 7. The market wanted low cost and backwards compatibility.
By Windows 7, I meant a 64-bit equivalent of Windows NT. DEC was working on some low cost versions of the Alphas, like their Multias. However, if a platform doesn't get much critical mass, there usually can't be much market segmentation done. Also, there were low cost RISCstations from other vendors, like DeskStation, Carrera Computers, Aspen and Microway. Companies that made workstations for NT out of MIPS or Alphas.
The backward compatibility could have been handled at source level had Microsoft worked on an ANDF or some other technique, like Java later did on Bytecode.
I don't know, I think the market had spoken on OS/2 as well. I remember OS/2 2.0, it was amazing compared to its contemporary 16-bit Windows 3.1. Windows NT was still only in beta. And the market largely did not care, on a platform where OS/2 2.0 offered absolutely superb legacy support for existing Windows apps. Something one would not have under PowerPC. The only thing that made sense with respect to PowerPC would be a single platform able to run Windows NT and Mac OS. We already had a single platform for Windows NT and OS/2.
OS/2 didn't succeed despite its support for win16 applications, since win32 applications came pretty quickly, and OS/2 couldn't run that. Therefore, OS/2's option was to run independently of it. If any Intel based PC was sold, it automatically came w/ Windows, and vendors would refuse to preload it w/ OS/2. Even IBM's PC company Amber refused to do it. The main thing that PowerPC had going for it was Apple's OS - be it Pink, Copeland or Gershwin, OS/2 and BeOS, which had just appeared. Too bad everything imploded after Apple's taking back NEXT and Jobs.
Apparently you missed the first year or so of chromebooks.
Wrong. In fact I just verified you are full of shit by looking up reviews for Chromebooks from the period of 2011-2012 and I see no negative reviews. I saw a couple of average reviews and many positive reviews.
Windows is still incredibly relevant, its just that over the years the word has got out that chromebooks are not PCs, that they are something else.
Hey, whatever you need to believe to sleep at night. For practically everyone else a Chromebook is just as much a PC as any Windows computer.
Time zones are a thing.
>> Except that along with MS-DOS, it put a PC in every office
> No, IBM did that.
Sort of. The fact that businesses wanted 100% IBM-PC compatibility made the clones a viable option. I worked in the offices of a fairly stodgy bank, and they were just fine with buying Compaq clones to run DOS and Windows. Nobody insisted on buying IBM, and the fact that you could buy a cheaper clone and keep running Windows, while IBM was pushing their proprietary PS/2 platform and OS/2, led to the explosion of desktop PCs in offices everywhere.
IBM shot themselves in the foot. People bought PCs because of all the DOS/Windows apps available, not because of the IBM brand, stodgy conservative companies notwithstanding.
i was making the joke that Windows is the Chevy Chase of software. Or that Chevy Chase is the Windows of comedy.
Either way I'm not sorry.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Yes, yes. Now go fuck yourself.