The Secret Origin of Windows 402
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."
I still have a copy... (Score:5, Insightful)
...of Windows 1.02 (or was it 1.12) on 720k, 3.5" floppy. And no, I never used it - DOS was king and there were better file management programs at the time (which is all Win was at that point, iirc).
Isn't it still vaporware? (Score:0, Insightful)
Pipe firmly in mouth and cheek.
Different, new types of GUI? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oi woz there (Score:2, Insightful)
Back before Bit Torrent, sometimes you actually had to pay for software before you'd know if it was any good.
Destined to do badly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess it actually had a different destiny!
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
That video was made in what, 1985? And Windows sold for $99 according to the ad.
Today, Windows 7 (NOT AN UPGRADE) [amazon.com] goes for $178.54 on Amazon and lists for $199. According to the Minneapolis Fed [minneapolisfed.org], $99 in 1985 is worth $200.21 in 2010 - in other Words, inflation adjusted, Microsoft hasn't raised the price of Windows. And if you include all of the programs that are included with Windows 7 that you would normally have had to have purchased separately back in '85 (compression, file management, image viewers, etc, etc...) Windows has gone down dramatically. Now, they've been labeled a monopoly in court, but they're pricing isn't that of a monopolist. Actually, they've given the consumer a really nice value.
Now, cue the MS haters who are going to accuse me of being an "apologist" and for being a "revisionist". Whatever. I just think it's an interesting micro economic case study.
BTW, get a life.
Re:Different, new types of GUI? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean like iPhone OS? Call the iPad a gimmick if you want, but it does bring with it a brand new concept on human-computer interaction. One that I feel will carry over into traditional keyboard/mouse computing in the future.
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
to be REALLY fair, windows 7's market is bigger than Windows 1.0's was.1985 = 30 million PCs, 2007 = 1 billion PCs . Since costs are fairly fixed (dev accounts for a lot, DVD+packaging for almost nothing), we could expect the price to be $200 x 30 / 1,000 = $6, assuming stable dev costs, which they obviously weren't quite... but that raw calculation is no dumber than yours... actually may be a bit smarter .
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:1, Insightful)
But that is a ridiculous assumption. Vista cost 6 billion dollars to develop. Accounting for time, if dev costs were stable then Windows 1.0 should have cost 3 billion to develop. I'm pretty sure it didn't.
The OP has basically shown that in terms of % of disposable income, the price of Windows has not gone up. You are apparently arguing that Microsoft should not make more money when more people buy their products...
Re:To be fair... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Different, new types of GUI? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just corrected that common misconception in your statement. Apple actually paid Xerox in Apple shares for those visits, and at the time it was said to be the most lucrative thing PARC had done up to then.
You missed Windows NT (Score:2, Insightful)
NT was a solid OS. Then they let the hardware vendors back into ring 0 so that games would run faster.
Re:Oi woz there (Score:3, Insightful)
"One of them seriously thought Windows started with 95."
Ouch. Wow.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sub-Optimal (Score:4, Insightful)
There are local saddle points as well as global ones... sometimes a market gets stuck in a local one even though the global one would be overall better because it takes work to climb out of the local saddle.
the product manager who finally got Windows (Score:2, Insightful)
>> "the product manager who finally got Windows 1.0 out the door"
Yeah, I'm sure Microsoft engineers had nothing to do with it. He wrote it all by himself and shipped it.
The quoted phrase pretty much sums up what's wrong with the vast majority of tech companies (including Microsoft) -- they're no longer engineer-centric.
Re:Ah The Good Ol' Days (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oi woz there (Score:1, Insightful)
Just wait'll you find the ones who seriously thought computers started with Windows 95...
Re:Sub-Optimal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Destined to do badly? (Score:2, Insightful)
That depends on who you ask.
From a business perspective, it couldn't possibly have done better.
From a technical perspective, it couldn't possibly have done worse.
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Windows 1 was a failure, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
When I think of vaporware, I think of software that has vaporized; not software that's still being worked on.
When I think of eggs, I think of beef. Does that mean I had steak for breakfast?
Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No thanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck you, I'm not going to fix someone elses work when there's something out there that WILL work. I have better things to do with my time, and forced charity isn't one of them.
Or, from the Reality Layer (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh puuuhhhhlease....Cathedral and Bazaar was such a complete crock.
The only reason the largest software pirate on the planet, Micro$oft, had all that time to futz around with an endless version number of windows, was because they had the greatest monopoly the world has ever seen: DOS LICENSING.
And the only reason they ever achieved OS supremecy was that they licensed, then copied (i.e., stole) into Windows OS everyone else's original technology. End of that story.
And now the World Domination Society controls everything....
Re:No thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
> For example, I'm sure that with very little effort Linux developers could design and implement
> a stable ABI which would finally solve a problem which has been plaguing Linux for years, and
> that is the nightmare of shopping for Linux compatible devices at retail. You see if someone
Nonsense. A "stable ABI" has squat to do with it. A "stable ABI" doesn't help MacOS.
This is all about marketshare and whether or not a CORPORATION feels that it makes sense
for them to explicitly support a particular set of customers. On the one hand, many corporations
don't feel that explicit Linux support is worthwhile. On the other hand, there are plenty of
people in the community that can do a better job for most devices.
Stuff like GPUs is a notable exception of both princples: the drivers are more difficult and
you have companies that feel that explicit binary driver support is worthwhile.
Shopping for Linux hardware is not a "nightmare". That is just mindless Lemming FUD.
You know the great thing about Wal-mart? They have great return policies. So if you are
worried about something "not working with Linux" then buy it from then and then take it back
if you don't have any luck. It's not really a great tragedy. You would not get bent out of
shape if it were pants.
So take it back if it doesn't work out exactly how you wanted it.
This principle works well for HDTV antennas too.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Which, obviously, means they don't need to be competitive. It's not like their customers have a choice.
A situation where there is truly only one seller is exceedingly rare. The term monopoly is used mostly for situations where one seller controls the vast majority of the market. Usually there are competitors or alternatives. Even just the potential of someone setting up business is enough.
But the nature of the market often means that these alternatives are an unreasonable choice.
I don't. I do think it's pretty much impossible for them to not be perceived as "acting like a dick", but that's a different thing.
Your argument is basically
"Monopolists charge high prices and sell and never develop products. Microsoft improved Windows. Therfore Microsoft is not a monopoly."
Apart from being a logical fallacy (Affirming a disjunct), your proposition is simply wrong.
Why ? Their customers don't have any alternatives. That's what a monopoly is.
Because otherwise someone will come along with a product that is better and people will buy it, or the unreasonable alternatives suddenly become more reasonable.
Has nothing to do with it.
doesn't need to [...] improve their product, drop their prices
sat on their asses for the last 15 years charging $99 for every copy of Windows 95
Yeah, Nothing at all /sarcasm
I don't think there's another reason. That's _exactly_ why I think Windows has improved - to stay competitive. It's the premise that Windows is/was monopoly I disagree with.
Well that helps a lot, it's the first time you've clarified your position.
Thing is, if you've been paying attention for last, say, thirty years, you'd know that the term has come to describe extremely dominant businesses which use anti-competitive 'monopolistic' practices to expand their share and supress rivals. And that certainly applies to Microsoft.