Slashdot Mirror
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?
You forgot Microsoft Bob, assholes.
... 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
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)
There's now a wider variety of reasons Windows is derided.
When Windows 95 came out I switched from Windows 3.11 to Linux. It was the best thing I did for both my desktop and my career.
Now I make 2 to 3 times more than a Windows Architect.
So you make 2 to 3 hundred thousand?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
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.
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!
-
+1 bain
If you could go back in time and strangle Baby Windows, would you?
Why is Snark Required?
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 ]
Well. Looks aren't everything you know.
Can I borrow $20 til payday? I'm good for it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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?
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.]
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.
I think Amiga Workbench 1.1 was around. It had plenty of bugs but was still pretty usable.
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.
@Strange Attractor: "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?."
Hacker news
Thanks in part to Jared, who only got 15 years today. Strange world...
I come here for the love
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."
"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.
I think it's fine that PCs are migrating more towards work or content creation type tasks, while phones and tablets are being used for light computing / content consumption for most people. Those smaller devices are much better suited for the masses than PCs ever were. Moreover, their portability and ubiquitous nature means they're going to be a lot more useful in the sort of small, everyday-life sort of situations that most people find practical for their personal needs.
Don't mistake PCs for "relics", though, any more than a pickup truck or utility van is a "relic". They're just industrial-sized vehicles that most average drivers don't need, similar to how full-sized computers are designed for serious work (or play). And like it or not, when people have a PC, they're likely to be using Windows. While it's no longer as relevant as it once was in the computing world, it's very far from being irrelevant.
P.S. High end phones can cost as much as $600-800, while low-end laptops can be bought for as low as $230.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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!!!
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).
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.
nuff said.
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.
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.
Time zones are a thing.
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.
Google is only 17 years old.