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."
MS (Score:2, Interesting)
It's just like MS. They may not succeed at first... Actually, they never succeed at first try, at anything.
And yet, they manage eventually - see how they kicked out Trevor in the end. It's no coincidence.
Oi woz there (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember the feeble beginnings of Windows quite well. I started purchasing Windows with 1.04, and started using it with 3.0.
I used to list "Windows 1.0 - [current version]" on the skills section of my resume, but too many interviewers thought I was joking, because they'd never heard of such a thing (and it started making me look like I might be over 30). One of them seriously thought Windows started with 95.
Re:MS (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just like MS. They may not succeed at first... Actually, they never succeed at first try, at anything.
Hence some people won't touch anything Microsoft until the third major release.
ancient history (Score:5, Interesting)
This brings back memories for me, too. I got my start before IBM came out with their first PC. My dad owned an early PC, and I used PC-DOS and MS-DOS versions up through the whole bleeding history. I used Windows 1.0 on those lovely old monochrome monitors, and was working on a GUI for a data collection circuit in college. Then 2.0/286/etc. with the proportional fonts and an untiled desktop. I beta-tested for 3.0, and joined Microsoft in time to be a part of the Windows 3.1 development team. Those were the fun days; most of those who hated Microsoft just preferred the technologies in other products from Lotus, Borland, or various Unix providers. And that was really just fine with everyone. Everyone but Microsoft management, of course. Managers steered the ship ever more steadily to the dark side, building on their success with monopoly-abusing deals and secret contracts with the OEMs. Ship a CPU, pay for Windows whether you use it or not. I left the company (for unrelated reasons) around the time when "Windows 95" was still code-named "Chicago," and that code name had just replaced the earlier code name: "Windows 93."
By the way, if anyone has an unmodified copy of Win3.10 (not 3.11) USER.EXE, shoot me an email. I've lost some of my ancient archives and would like to snag some of the resources in that file.
Re:I still have a copy... (Score:1, Interesting)
Ah The Good Ol' Days (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to say at the time that if they wanted to illustrate the difference between OS/2 and windows, they could just format a floppy on OS/2 while continuing to do other stuff. Not that OS/2 was a whole lot better about stuff like that -- not many developers actually threaded their applications, and so a single misbehaving app could lock up the OS by not processing its input queue messages. You still see symptoms of that in Windows today, although it's not as bad as it used to be.
They tried to fix that and some of the other OS/2 problems in Warp, but warp (IMO) looked like ass and didn't work as well as V2. The problem with IBM is they're used to listening to their corporate customers and wouldn't know sexy OS design if you beat them over the head with it. Fortunately Linux was just getting popular right around that time and so when IBM strangled the baby (You can tell I'm still a bit bitter about it eh? Heh heh heh) a lot of us were able to jump ship. Linux was pretty much everything I ever wanted in an operating system, anyway. I'm on OSX at the moment, but once you get past its pretty looks you realize that it just won't bend the way you want it to.
So... anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Get off my lawn, you damn kids!
Anyone remember reversie? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure I spelled that right, but anyway, Microsoft did manage to unload a boatload of V1.0 on the Navy at the least. I remember playing with it on the 286's the military had no clue what to do with. Instead of the infamous solitaire game it use to have reversie - a digital version of the othello game.
Even years late I was still happier with DOS 6.1 and Quarterdeck memory/application management. It was the only way to go to host a BBS and still have a little room to work on it while it was up.
Ah the good 'ol days when I was considered a genius simply because I did my own memory upgrades to my Tandy 1000...
XTree, Norton Commander, PC Valet, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure when NC actually came out, but I remember using several filemanagers back when I started (Windows 2.1 and MS-DOS 3.3). I remember a very nice little filemanager called PC Valet, and eventually also one called Stereo Shell that I used to almost live in. :-)
Re:Oi woz there (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with 'just asking someone' is at the time very few people had experience with it. Ask them about windows and they would say 'anderson or pela?'. It probably wasnt up on an BBS's to 'just try out'. So yes you ordered it and gave it a go. Realized it was crap. Waited a few versions and try again.
DOS while 'ok for its time'. Was mind numbly tedious to use. So any sort of gui was a good idea. The problem with windows was too little memory to run it AND your applications properly.
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Especially because back then, you still needed MS-DOS to run underneath Windows.
Re:To be fair... (Score:2, Interesting)
if everyone saw that obvious value and weren't tied to existing applications and data they'd all jump ship immediately and by doing so would also immediately raise my operating system's quality of code to amazing levels: just because of the weight of bug reports and new blood of code.
Either that or your operating system would get forked millions of times instead of thousands.
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anyone remember reversie? (Score:2, Interesting)
The navy had no clue what to do with the x286 Dos based PC's and just had piles of them sitting lifeless in corners. Most work was done in CPM. PIP'n this and PIP'n that ;)
Windows history (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember Windows. Back when I used to work for a little fly-by-night aerospace firm just down the road from Microsoft. We (engineering) were all using Macs for our 'productivity' applications. Serious work was done on VAX and various flavors of UNIX on mainframes/minis. It was the mid-90's. Windows had already been 'released' through version 3, but our IT department still considered it to be a joke. Unfortunately, someone in corporate had already drank the Microsoft Koolaide. The order was issued: We're going to become a Windows company. A cost justification was prepared, comparing a typical Mac, populated with every possible document/spreadsheet/database application to a bare bones DOS box. No Windows, no apps. Nothing but a C:> prompt. The DOS box won (go figure) and we all figured that the fix was in. The IT folks, under orders from management, started delivering empty DOS machines to our desks (Dells). So we could watch the little cursor blink, I guess. Meanwhile, the IT department was kicked into panic mode. They were tasked with running over to Redmond and sitting on Gates' head until MS delivered something that didn't stink. Meanwhile, for about 3 months, that damned machine just sat on my desk next to my Mac, taking up room, winking its stupid cursor at me.
At about this time, Linux passed the 1.0 kernel version and started to look interesting. I requested the requisite authorizations and installed it on the useless Dell. I never looked back. I could log on to any of the engineering systems through X Windows and (thanks to a Citrix app) eventually access MS Office apps hosted on remote NT servers. Until I left in 2003 (when they transferred engineering to their overseas units) I ran Linux on my desktop. So, thanks Microsoft. I you'd have had a viable GUI back then, I'd probably still be sitting in front of it reading PowerPoint presentations (the only thing the remains of our engineering group uses) innstead of running my own engineering firm.
Re:Anyone remember reversie? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure I spelled that right, but anyway, Microsoft did manage to unload a boatload of V1.0 on the Navy at the least. I remember playing with it on the 286's the military had no clue what to do with. Instead of the infamous solitaire game it use to have reversie - a digital version of the othello game.
Even years late I was still happier with DOS 6.1 and Quarterdeck memory/application management. It was the only way to go to host a BBS and still have a little room to work on it while it was up.
Ah the good 'ol days when I was considered a genius simply because I did my own memory upgrades to my Tandy 1000...
I did contracting for NAVSEA and NAVMASSO back then on the SNAP program. We sold a lot of 286 boxes just so people could run WordStar on DOS and WordMARC on PCs. I still have (somewhere) my old DOS 1.0 , Netscape 1.0 and Windows 1.0 disks.
Re:To be fair... (Score:3, Interesting)
- Preemptable (Linux isn't)
- USB & TCP/IP Implemented
- Multitasking, Mutexes & locks, tasks & co-routines
- 23 architectures. Mostly written in C - Overflow detect, Free dev tools, Execution tracing
It's isn't Linux or FreeBSD yet, but it (and many other kernels) is coming along well. This includes non-Filesystem kernels and Windows emulation kernels.
My run-ins with Windoze (Score:4, Interesting)
It was 1987. I was in Texas, working for a bank (as a consultant, installing some mainframe software for them), when the VP dropped by and asked whether I would want to see something new. He had an old guy pounding away at a new fangled thing called a personal computer (for them). I was more than happy to indulge him.
Windows 2.0 was it! The key things that I remember doing are that the PC I used had no mouse. Since I was a mainframe type, everything was keyboard based in my prior life. I assumed that there must be special keystrokes that I needed to use to play with the new computer.
Over a period of a few days, I stumbled on the keyboard shortcuts and familiarised myself completely with all of them. The amazing thing is that most of them are still relevant today - and my kids bug me to show them how to switch between windows quickly! In fact, I am amazed at how few people know many of the short cuts and the various ways in which you can play with computer without using the mouse! But I digress.
Next week the VP dropped by again and asked whether I could install a game for him. I went ahead and installed the floppies (and they were real 5.25" floppies - not diskettes). And I started playing my first graphical game - Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards [wikipedia.org]! Long story short - it was a fun few days while we indulged the old man (the Veep) and saw the various aspects of the game.
I remember wondering about the keyboard shortcuts and wishing they were not so complicated.
My next encounter with PCs was not until a couple of years later - Windows 3.1, a mouse and Quicken! And boy did I have a learning curve with the mouse! At first I thought the mouse was optional. It took me a good year or so to start using it without having to think about it.
Good times ... until the Linux revolution began.
Re:To be fair... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
I don't think you understand what a monopoly is.
A monopoly doesn't need to have crazy high prices, where the hell did this silly idea come from?
Microsoft has abused their position time and time again to kill out competitors, lock their users in to upgrades by making previous versions redundant through many paths, attempting to KILL the web (file formats being unsupported for example, instead of making a interpretor that just ignores stuff that it doesn't understand)
They have copied and extended on other peoples ideas and pushed it as hard as they could, harder than the people they copied it from.
THIS is why they are a monopoly, not because of price!
And I'm not some Linux loving Microsoft hater (i barely use Linux as it is, outside of some maintenance and web server stuff), but come on, wake up, Microsoft has a HUGE monopoly over the desktop PC market, and more-so with Office-related work. (and again, the whole deal with them forcing people to upgrade by making new file versions incompatible)
In fact, i quite like Windows XP, best OS they have made, but outright despise Windows Vis7a due to basically copying and pasting the awful Mac interface (for the most part) and essentially designing their OS around idiots and people with bad eyesight from the ground up... (Ribbon...)
Windows Vis7a is an insult to the computing world. I'd rather use my old Vtech laptop from a decade ago, at least i HAVE control over that.
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the grand scheme of things, an OEM windows license with a new PC isn't such a bad deal. Most people have no intention of opening a terminal/command prompt and typing in commands to ever get anything installed. With Linux, there's a lot of times this is the case. Me, I don't mind so much. I just put together a new PC, and if the hardware were better supported, I'd have probably gone back to Linux for it. The intel gfx regressions in the 9.04 version of Ubuntu actually drove me back to windows on my netbook. I know there are other distros, but I just needed something working relatively quickly. Funny that wound up being Windows in my case. In another year or so, I'll probably spend a year with Linux again (once my hardware is supported, and OpenCL is supported in ffmpeg).
I guess the point is, I've worked pretty well at not being locked into anything. I actually choose Windows for my desktop today. That may not be the case tomorrow.
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Interesting)
- Preemptable (Linux isn't)
Sure it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTLinux [wikipedia.org]
Or just a patchset:
http://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT_Patch [kernel.org]
Mach 10 (Score:3, Interesting)
My stepfather gave me a Christmas present; A Mach 10 board with a copy 'Windows'.
He also gave me a game. Balance of Power.
Oh
My
God
I frittered away hours, days, weeks, trying to survive without being thrown out of office at the end of the first term. It took me two weeks to keep from blowing up the world in a half hour of play.
The game never made it to any other version of Windows, but crap, it was magnificent. In fact, I may play it again [homeoftheunderdogs.net].
ps- My rig back then was an XT clone, 4.77/8MHz, 2 720k FDD, 20MB HD (ST228, I think), and CGA. Wicked decent. Getting an EGA board and monitor was a big step. The Mach board had LIM memory on it. A whopping 1MB, which cost me well over $500 and three trips back to swap bad chips. Ah, the memorys...
Re:Sub-Optimal (Score:1, Interesting)
Lock-in has been a known phenomenon for a long time in economics, you misunderstand what was under debate. It was not the existence of lock-in (better known as network effects among economists)... it was whether a market could stabilize in a sub-optimal solution configuration. I think maybe you had some terms confused.
What is now generally accepted is that a market CAN stabilize at a sub-optimal configuration, and that network effects are a reason this can happen. This was generally accepted among several schools of economic thought a very long time ago, it was only the backwards and retarded Austrian & Chicago schools that tried to hold out for idealogical reasons.
Re:Sub-Optimal (Score:4, Interesting)
With the introduction of "lock-in" as a concept it is recognized that while markets will find optimal solutions they can become "stuck" with sub-optimal ones for a while. The time-scales are what matter, a market may view a few decades as a blip while to you and I that is quite a while.
"But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." -- John Maynard Keynes, _A Tract on Monetary Reform_, 1923.
Excerpt from http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/Reviews/monetaryreform.html [berkeley.edu] , because I can't find an etext online (pretty strange since you'd think it'd be out of copyright now).\\
Shoulda been Xenix (Score:4, Interesting)
Back during the DOS 2.0 days, Microsoft intended for Xenix to be the successor to DOS. And the worst of Xenix was still preferable to the best of Windows.
Microsoft had several opportunities to ubiquitize a quality operating system, irrespective of their horrific business practices. They could have built their next-gen OS on top of Xenix. They could have finished the OS/2 project instead of stabbing IBM in the back and doing Windows on top of DOS. They could have even completed Dave Cutler's vision for Windows NT instead of MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE and top-loading all of their crap into the Win32 layer instead of building around the NT microkernel.
They could have done any of the above, and still practiced their bullshit monopolistic business practices, and they could have still taken over the market. In fact, if they had built Presentation Manager on top of Xenix, it's entirely possible that Linux would not exist today, and the X Window System would never have evolved past the days of TWM and Athena Widgets because all the unixheads would have happily moved to the commodity operating system.
But no. Aside from being monopolistic bullies in the marketplace, they also consistently deliver really bad products. There is a reason Linux has already overtaken Windows in the enterprise computing market, and has denied them a monopoly in this area. People who run back end data center applications don't want an operating system that has a GUI intertwined with the bottom layers of
the OS. They don't want mouse clicks in the same event queue as disk and network I/O. Windows is a bullshit design and it will never be adequate.
Re:No thanks. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't care if it grows or not, personally. Its just like any other product; if it doesn't work I'll move on to something else. The fact is Windows works exteremly well for me; I don't need to google for solutions to obscure problems anymore, I don't have to spend hours fighting it for what should be a simple task.
With the time I've saved I've been able to use it to do other stuff that makes me way more money than I've put out in software expenses.
I'm glad you're happy watching something grow; personally though, spending $10 to make $300 is well worth it.