The Software That Failed To Compete With Windows 347
harrymcc writes "When Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0 back in November 1985 — it turned 25 on Saturday — it wasn't clear that its much-delayed windowing add-on for DOS was going to succeed. After all, it was a late arrival to a market that was already teeming with ambitious competitors. A quarter-century later, it's worth remembering the early Windows rivals that didn't make it: Visi On, Top View, GEM, DESQview, and more."
Don't Forget: (Score:1, Informative)
DR-DOS.
Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout
Re:OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
This site is generally more comprehensive, and has lots of screenshots (though can't see TopView, which is maybe just as well):
http://toastytech.com/guis/ [toastytech.com]
Re:OS/2 (Score:4, Informative)
I don't believe OS/2 was ever a competitor to the Windows 1.0 that the article is about. Maybe windows 3.x, but I believe Windows 1.0 predates OS/2 by a bit.
TFA indicate that IBM's Top View would have been around at the same time though.
Re:OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
Both the summary and the article are discussing the 25th anniversary of Windows 1.0 which shipped in 1985.
OS/2 was not available "at the time" in question, which was 1985, and wasn't an "option" to Windows 1.0.
Re:OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
OS/2 being a failure would be news to IBM, who sold it for a combined total of 19 years (1987-2006) across all versions.
Re:OS/2 (Score:5, Informative)
From the article: "I considered only environments which were designed to run on IBM-compatible PCs, and which (like pre-1995 versions of Windows) ran on top of DOS rather than replaced it. (That's why the Mac OS and OS/2, for instance, aren't here.)"
DESQview (Score:5, Informative)
DESQview was brilliant. It was completely workable on the hardware of the time, functional, did what the box said, fast... It was the right solution for the time. It just happened that hardware moved on and left the phase in time that DESQview occupied behind.
I was running multinode BBSes under DESQview back in the day and getting fantastic performance. None of the graphical competitors were in any way workable alternatives for that sort of performance on the hardware available.
Re:What about GEOS/GeoWorks? (Score:3, Informative)
GEOS is mentioned on page 2. I remember using a version of it on my old C64! Remarkable software.
Re:Desqview (Score:5, Informative)
Well, except for UNIX and a couple of others. There was real multi-tasking in 1985, don't let anybody tell you that Windows '95 was first with it.
MS was actually late to the game when it came to multi-tasking.
Re:I used to use GEM / Ventura (Score:1, Informative)
It may be true that DesqView was just a task switcher; but DesqView/X -- X meaning X11 -- was much more.
Revisionist history (Score:4, Informative)
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Informative)
DESQview rocked back in the day!
Ran several PCBoard BBS nodes off of one machine with DESQview.
Would not even think of doing that with the old versions of Windows.
DESQview on a 386 was incredible for its time! (Score:1, Informative)
IMO, for a year or two DESQview was a real marvel compared to anything else out there, it even had early cut and paste of ASCII text between applications. I once visited their small office not too far from the Santa Monica pier. (I think it was on Pico)
- TWR
CP/M (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, now you remember!
No? Anybody?
Re:So ... (Score:5, Informative)
Thought it was more the "lock-in" provided by the Window API. Microsoft didn't conquer the workstation market until around 1995 with Windows NT/95. One by one they got the workstation vendors to replace their UNIX OS's with Windows NT using a "UNIX is LEGACY" advertising campaign; DEC, Digital, then HP and SGI caved in, as application developers could really only support the three most popular OS's that their customers use. As Windows NT took over one vendor after another, they gradually reached No.1 position and forced customers and vendors to use Windows.
UNIX competitors didn't help themselves by charging "UNIX" prices for components like monitors and RS232 cables as well as having totally different API's for everything - remnants of this can be seen when reading Linux man pages - there will be references to POSIX behavior, parameters or result codes.
At this time, Microsoft Mail was the dominant E-mail server software, but even they had to adopt "sockets" in order to connect to web servers. Sun came out with this little PC on a board solution that ran a Windows desktop in a window in order to allow users to use Microsoft Office, before buying up StarOffice (renamed to OpenOffice) and released it to break the Microsoft stranglehold, then went on to provide JAVA as a rival to MFC, .NET and C#
You can stand up to Microsoft, but only through co-operation, quality and reliability. Make sure that whatever you develop is to an internationally agreed standard that literally leaves no bit unspecified (even in an API function call). Otherwise, Microsoft will just find a way of embracing, extending and extinguishing that specification through a patent on the use of that single bit. Similarly with "extension" based API's and formats.
Tie down every single bit and avoid any sort of "extension format"
According to MS, Win temporary, OS/2 + PM future (Score:5, Informative)
"I believe Windows 1.0 predates OS/2 by a bit."
You're right, but OS/2 is worth mentioning anyway. I tried it back in the day, and really liked it. It was a 32 bit os when Windows was still only 16 bit ...
OS/2 2.0 was 32 bit but OS/2 1.0 was a 16-bit protected mode text based replacement for DOS. OS/2 1 eventually had a GUI called Presentation Manager, the API was very similar to MS Windows. I think OS/2 1 + PM is the actual first competitor to WIndows, not OS/2 2.
In the early MS Windows 3 era MS told developers that Windows was just a temporary GUI for DOS to satisfy existing installations that will eventually be migrated to OS/2 1 + Presentation Manager. They emphasized how source compatible WIndows and Presentation Manager were and that porting would not be a major issue.
IBM and MS were partners in OS/2. IBM was developing OS/2 2.0 while MS was developing OS/2 NT in parallel. While both were 32-bit and GUI based, OS/2 2 was the more expedient reworking of OS/2 1 and ran only on x86 CPUs. OS/2 NT was to be to the complete rewrite that would run on various CPUs. At some point MS decided to ditch IBM and renamed OS/2 NT to Windows NT. Its interesting to note that Windows NT offered OS/2 1 support.
Re:OK. I'll speak the truth and take the hit. (Score:3, Informative)
This is an extremely insightful comment. I would add his ability to market vaporware. Remember...He didn't even have DOS when he sold it to IBM.
Re:Hard to forget hell. (Score:4, Informative)
The GP had a point. You remember what they jokingly referred to the CGA as? Crappy Graphics Adapater, because it had 4 colors: black, white, cyan, and magenta.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter [wikipedia.org]
Hell, even my Apple ][ had (graphics) Page Flipping plus 6 colors: black, white, green, violet, orange, blue
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/01/i-heart-cheatsheets.html [codinghorror.com]
DoubleDos (Score:2, Informative)
No windows or GUI, but you'd get two functioning DOS environments. Even better, you could run a CGA adapter and a Monochrome adapter at the same time. Each would be like its own functioning computer. It was extremely simple and lightweight.
Desqview was cool, but with 640K ram, more than 2 programs at once was unrealistic so DoubleDos was still better.
Windows was a pig. I tried it once and threw it out. A windowed GUI was pointless at 640x200 black and white.
Re:Desqview (Score:5, Informative)
Preemptive vs co-operative. In early multitasking setups (Win 3, MacOS, etc) each task had to cede control of the CPU itself so that the OS could schedule the next process - a badly behaved app could fail to do so and thus take over the whole system. Preemptive multitasking puts the OS in control so that it can decide how much CPU time each process gets.
Re:Hard to forget hell. (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed, except that the ST was 16-bit (actually parts were 32-bit). There's a rumor (not sure how true it is) that the letters "ST" came from "Sixteen/Thirtytwo".
Re:So ... (Score:4, Informative)
I would point out that StarOffice never ceased to exist (and never was quite the same as OpenOffice), and that .Net and C# came about to push Java out of the market, not the other way around.
Re:DESQview (Score:3, Informative)
My OS/2 moment was formatting a floppy in one DOS box while playing Wing Commander in another. Windows would effectively halt on floppy disk access at that point.
Re:Windows did fail... Totally. (Score:3, Informative)
Windows 1.0 was a total failure. Nobody used it. I worked at a computer store at the time and people would ask us to take it off the drives of the compter because they had no use for it.
I call bullshit. Microsoft didn't get into the pre-installed Windows until 3.0. Hell, in 1985, PCs didn't even come with DOS pre-installed -- you had to FDISK, FORMAT/S, and copy the DOS floppy onto the hard drive yourself.
Some machines came bundled with Windows 1.0x (I owned one), but they came with a box of 6 360K floppies that, once again, you had to install by yourself.
Re:DVX (Score:3, Informative)
Windows 3.1(or maybe it was '95) running on DVX.
It would've been Win 3.1. DV/X was released in the early 90s, well before Win95.
Re:Revisionist history (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, however, that wasn't the case here. Microsoft was sued and convicted for including code in Windows to crash the kernel when they detected competing software. And they sure didn't tell anyone.
Re:Desqview (Score:3, Informative)
NT came out in 1993 and was true 32-bit with full pre-emptive multitasking. It wasn't the first OS with those features, but it handily beat Win95.
Re:Windows did fail... Totally. (Score:3, Informative)
Kaypro and Zeniths did.
Kaypro didn't come with Windows but it come with a lot of preinstalled software.
Re:Windows did fail... Totally. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually we sold a lot of machines in 85/86 with Hardrives Kaypro 16s, Z-151's Z-158s. We also did a lot of business adding hard drives. 30 mb RLL was very popular.
Windows 386 was 2.1 but it was sold as Windows 386 and only ran on 386. Again very few people bought it.
Why run DOS apps under Windows 3.11? Really simple. So you could run more than one at a time. That was Windows 386 and Windows 3.0's big feature.
You could actually run a something like ACT! and your application at the same time!
Formatting a floppy would still bring a system to it's knees but that is why they sold preformated floppies!
Netscape? You better get a copy of Trumpet Winsock first!
Yes the browser plus 3.11 and Microsoft Office really helped.
Truth is that only one part of Office really carried the day. That was Excel. Word was also a major also ran until Excel came out. And yes I had a copy of Word 1.0 back in the day. They also came bundled with the Zeniths. Nobody wanted it. They all wanted Wordstar, PFS:Write, QnA, and later WordPerfect.
Re:Deskmate (Score:2, Informative)
Re:OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
They left out the most viable competitor [OS/2].
TFA: "For the purposes of this roundup of Windows rivals, I considered only environments which were designed to run on IBM-compatible PCs, and which (like pre-1995 versions of Windows) ran on top of DOS rather than replaced it. (That’s why the Mac OS and OS/2, for instance, aren’t here.) I also cover only products released in 1990 or before..."
Re:Hard to forget hell. (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, green not brownish-orange. You were so close.
Actually CGA had two palettes, each with a dark and light version:
black - dark cyan - dark magenta - gray (dark white)
black - cyan - magenta - white
black - dark green - dark red - brown (dark yellow (sort of))
black - green - red - yellow
Brown has actually encoded as dark yellow, but RGBI monitor hardware intercepted an altered the color to a "more pleasing" brown. On a composite monitor, the color remains dark yellow.
Re:OK. I'll speak the truth and take the hit. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DDF-4A9A-9515-531B0CA0C29C.html [roughlydrafted.com]
The above article is very demonstrative of the truth of the insightful GP comment.
Very interesting article even for someone that lived through it. I can remember reading articles and thinking that Microsoft is just doing it better or doing what's best for us consumers, when all along they were out to kill superior products and were trying to take over certain technological advances (such as streaming video or authoring media). Very interesting article.
Re:Hard to forget hell. (Score:3, Informative)
but the Atari ST was an amazing piece of hardware,
It wasn't. It was a shitty piece of hardware, bolted on the superior cpu of the time (the MC68000). The sound chip of the ST as an FM modulator with 3 channels and only one hardware channel, and there was no graphical acceleration. Graphics were limited to 320x200 with 16 colors, 640x200 with 4 colors and 640x400 with 2 colors. It had MIDI ports, but the joystick ports were 'reversed' so you could only buy Atari joysticks to connect to it.
I can see that it was clearly the best of the 8-bit era.
Having a 32-bit CPU with a 24-bit address space, the Atari ST was a 32-bit computer, with 24-bit memory, confined in the limitations of a 16-bit machine. It was not 8-bit. 8-bit computers included the machines with the Z80 and 6502 CPUs (ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Acorn Electron, Apple I/II, Commodore 64 and their offsprings).
and separate processors for both sound and video
No, it did not. It had minimal support for hardware sound and graphics. Most Atari ST games were really bad when compared to Amiga, which had real custom chips.
The Atari ST got a Blitter chip with STE, and a DSP with Atari Falcon.
And it was cheaper than most of its competitors.
It wasn't. It cost a little bit less than the Amiga, but it was way inferior to the Amiga in all things that mattered. The Atari ST was much more expensive than the 8-bit micros of the time.
I wonder how old the author of TFA is. It's not hard to remember life before Windows at all. I remember life before DOS, back when the first pull-down menus were implemented in WordStar -- a text editor by today's standards -- solely as an aid to learning the key commands.
I wonder if you really had an Atari ST. I had a friend who was a fanatical Atari supporter, while I had an Amiga. We had epic "battles" regarding which computer was superior, and the Amiga always came on top. This is understandable though, because the Atari ST lacked any sort of hardware support for graphics and sound.
Hardware and software have come a long way since then, but it came at the expense of losing the rich variety of the early personal computer era, to the point that people now have passionate arguments about the barely perceptible differences between Mac and PC GUIs.
The rich variety you mention was a setback, actually. It meant wildly different codebases for game companies for the same games, wildly different graphics, wildly different music. GUI applications had to deal with totally different UI concepts and capabilities. Software companies back then had to actually choose one of the platforms to develop on, as they were wildly different. Creating the same game for different platforms meant that you had to give all your data to a third party that was specialized in developing programs for the other platform. Writing code meant assembly. There were no fancy IDEs, C compilers, garbage collection and all that jazz and hand holding we have today.