Happy 30th Birthday, Windows! 249
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?
**appy 30th Birthday, Windows! (Score:5, Funny)
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... [gizmodo.com]
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What's your fondest memory of Bill Gates Blue Screen-of-death that could?
The Olympic one is excellent, though I'd also have to go for the classic demo of Windows 98 which actually had Bill Gates standing right there when it happened [youtube.com].
Bill: "... That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet..."
Absolutely, Bill. Absolutely.
Unfortunately... you did ship that (though 98 wasn't that bad). But then Windows ME. And then Vista. And then Windows 8. You keep doing it.
Windows has come a long way. (Score:4, Funny)
Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
Now Windows is too old to get a job in IT.
wow 30 years! (Score:4, Funny)
30 years of software releases and still no stable builds! how do they do it? ;)
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Yeah, haha, funny and all but I haven't experienced a blue screen that wasn't hardware related since XP. I'm not saying they don't happen but it's not Windows 98 anymore. Every time somebody makes a comment like this it makes me think they used a computer once about 1996 and then never touched them again.
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When Firefox causes LMDE to swap the machine grinds to a halt for at least 10 minutes before I can barely do anything with it. If Firefox is nice enough to crash (about 30% of the time) then it stops swapping and everything is usable again. If not, then I have to restart or deal with a 4-7 second lag on all computer input. The linux computer uses a SSD and has 8GB of memory and 9.8 GB of swap space,
This isn't even remotely credible. There is no way such a good hardware configuration (I'm assuming a decent CPU) would work so poorly unless you have something majorly screwed up, like disabling most of your memory.
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My Linux system (Fedora) can become unresponsive under seriously heavy disk I/O or swap load. I've seen Firefox do it rarely, but for me it's more often the linux versions of the Second Life client (including third party versions). The damn thing has memory leaks and WILL eat all your RAM and swap space if you run it for long enough.
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Try this:
sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=40 (change to lower and lower until happy)
When you're happy:
sudo bash -c "echo 'vm.swappiness = 40' >> /etc/sysctl.conf"
If it doesn't hold then try editing/creating this: /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
And put just the number in there and save it - you'll want gksudo $your_text editor for this.
Don't diss it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
'Logan's Run' and Windows (Score:2)
ruining songs (Score:3)
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!
Strangle Baby Windows? (Score:5, Funny)
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"Strangle Baby Hitler" is my euphemism for masturbating.
Just putting that out there.
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I used to dread the year of Linux on desktop. Now I just dread timetravel.
Looks (Score:2)
I remember... (Score:2)
Memory? Goinf to the Win 95 party (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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So your fondest memory of Windows is being bribed to say nice things about it? And Windows is a "phenom" -- which means what, that it's an actual thing that actually happened? Please forgive me, I take back everything bad I ever said about it.
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I thought it was a city in Cambodia.
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Yep. Windows 95 was good but no match for NT4, 2K, XP, 7, etc. Vista was OK. However, Windows fell apart with ME, 8, 10, etc. though. :(
Thirty years ago (Score:2)
I think Amiga Workbench 1.1 was around. It had plenty of bugs but was still pretty usable.
Thirty Years of Windows. (Score:2)
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 o
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Microsoft definitely wouldn't exist as it does today without its boost by IBM. And if IBM had not existed we would have had standardisation based on Commodore or some other brand of hardware - and been the better for it as the PC architecture was crippled. Standardisation occurred because the world needed it, not because of Microsoft, w
Run, runner! (Score:2)
Maybe we'll get lucky and Window's palm will start glowing red.
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"Renew! Renew! RENEW!!!"
I wish Windows were not relevant. (Score:2)
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.
Windows 95 lol early on (Score:2)
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
WIndow tech support issues (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Knowing I will never need to use it again (Score:2)
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.
Happy Birthday Windows (Score:2)
Thank you for years and years of job security, including the foreseeable future, on behalf of everyone in IT security.
And to think (Score:2)
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....
What was everyone's first Windows version used? (Score:2)
Mine was v3.0 [wikipedia.org] on a couple International Business Machine (IBM) [ibm.com] Personal System (PS)/2 [wikipedia.org] machines (models 30 (286 10 Mhz) and P70 (386)). :O
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Mine was Windows 3.1?@#?$w1
Before that we used PC's with DOS
iirc our school couldn't afford a computer with enough RAM to have a GUI OS
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Good old DOS. I used IBM DOS v4.0 during my early PC days. V4.0 was horrible due to its memory management like its free conventional memory. Argh! :( DOS v3.3 and v5+ were way better.
spreadsheets (Score:2)
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
And still better than any Linux desktop (Score:2)
Re:This is not something to commemorate. (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet has become the most used, most useful operating system in the world. Shut up.
Not most used, sorry (Score:2, Insightful)
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 th
Re:Not most used, sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who calls a phone or tablet a "general computing device" in an effort to lump them in with actual PCs is a fucking tool seeking to sell data and analysis to a bunch of MBAs.
Oh, you DID say it was Gartner, carry on then.
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kgiii@kgiii-desktop-8:~$ uptime
02:23:30 up 72 days, 4:32, 1 user, load average: 0.09, 0.21, 0.39
kgiii@kgiii-desktop:~$
I rebooted just prior to leaving on my current adventure and I rebooted sometime since, well - 72 days ago, for e kernel update. I can, reasonably, expect to go twice that long or even ten times that long - if I want. I've a server that I think has been about three years now? I can't do that, as easily, with Windows. I like Windows well enough but I prefer to use the correct tool for the job I'm trying to do and that, in this case, means Linux.
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kgiii@kgiii-desktop-8:~$ uptime
02:23:30 up 72 days, 4:32, 1 user, load average: 0.09, 0.21, 0.39
kgiii@kgiii-desktop:~$
I rebooted just prior to leaving on my current adventure and I rebooted sometime since, well - 72 days ago, for e kernel update. I can, reasonably, expect to go twice that long or even ten times that long - if I want. I've a server that I think has been about three years now? I can't do that, as easily, with Windows. I like Windows well enough but I prefer to use the correct tool for the job I'm trying to do and that, in this case, means Linux.
A properly managed and designed Windows server can stay up just as long as Linux systems. It's a myth that windows servers require a reboot every so often (excluding updates). All that means is that the server admin hasn't taken the time to track down and correct the system error. Most businesses put up with it because it's cheaper and easier to have the Windows box rebooted than it is to hire additional experienced Windows admins.
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the server admin hasn't taken the time to track down and correct the system error.
Excuse me, but how do you track down and correct system errors in Windows? With a disssembler and hex editor?
Oh, you probably mean googling for the error message (if there was one) and hoping that someone else has run into it before? Or clicking through the control panel in the hopes that changing something might accidentally fix the problem? Fair enough.
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Holy shit looooooooooool.
This is why I like APK. Calls out the tools.
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Time zones are a thing.
Re:Not most used, sorry (Score:5, Informative)
He did say useful though.
Desktop/laptops are where you get things done. IMO phones and tablets are toys. You can play simple games, check your email, bring your porn with you to the bathroom etc. But the email and phone calls that are work related are about stuff that, guess what, 90% of people need to go to their (mostly Windows) PC to do.
There are exceptions of course but most people do stuff other than communicating all day. Phones are horrible for anything requiring screen space, processing power etc. Phones might have the processing power but the apps that they run are still living in the 90's vs their PC equivalents.
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That's what my parents said about desktops: an expensive device just used as a toy. And they were right at that time.
I don't particularly recall people saying that. Desktops, even non-IBM ones, were that expensive (equivalent to $2-3k today) that they were not bought for children - more like for adults "writing their book", keeping home accounts, and of course in offices as superior typewriters. Games crept in later.
Anyway, you cannot sidestep ergonomics. A keyboard is and will remain the fastest and easiest way to input text information - even faster than voice when it comes to the editing which any serious text w
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Nope, parents used it to play Solitaire (in the early 90s) while children used it for adventure games and 3D games.
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I'm really not a Windows fan, but anyone who wants or needs to use Android for general computing tasks deserves pity.
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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", th
Sorry, users are not selecting Linux ... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Sorry, users are not selecting Windows eith (Score:2)
>> 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.
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>> 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" Li
Its shoddy 3rd party software not Windows itself (Score:2)
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 luc
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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?
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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.
Remembering Windows NT (Score:3)
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 be
NT proven portable, proven new archs easy to add (Score:3)
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
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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
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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 compatibili
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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. Jus
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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 mon
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"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.
Subway is (Score:2)
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Re:This is not something to commemorate. (Score:5, Funny)
You remind me of dogs barking while the huge caravan is passing in front of their tiny courtyards.
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"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.
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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.
Marketing not greatness of product (Score:3)
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),
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I'm still mad that the Steve Jobs movie tanked too. Why is no one interested in the greatest mind of the 20th century?
Bill Gates is a "marketing genius" but you never saw Steve Jobs resort to "marketing". did you? He did it all with nothing but pure genius, originality and grit.
AND he was the son of a Syrian migrant, so yay.
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When I purchased my first computer with an actual hard drive larger then 500 meg, we had to select an operating system and purchase it separate. I ended up with windows 3 (which was later upgraded to 3.11 windows for workgroups- for the networking stack) because it came preinstalled on a I486 system and the price was about the same as the other systems I was looking at sans OS.
Marketing is about right. D.O.S or Disk Operating System was named so in order to get the "well. you need an operating system now" c
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When I purchased my first computer with an actual hard drive larger then 500 meg, we had to select an operating system and purchase it separate. I ended up with windows 3 (which was later upgraded to 3.11 windows for workgroups- for the networking stack) because it came preinstalled on a I486 system and the price was about the same as the other systems I was looking at sans OS.
Marketing is about right. D.O.S or Disk Operating System was named so in order to get the "well. you need an operating system now" confusion advantage. Then when Microsoft started OEM bundling deals with windows that basically made it appear to be a free operating system, they had a huge leg up. Until then. I had purchased OS2 warp and DOS, both of which had Microsoft's name on it when you went to install even though you had to purchase it though IBM for a hefty sum. At this time, when you purchased a modem and went online (because the computers didn't come with them unless you paid for an add on when ordering), you were either stuck with a BBS screen through telnet or had to purchase a web browser. Netscape was my choice at the time too as it was leading in almost every area as a web suit and I was familiar with it from OS2. Then when Microsoft included Internet Explorer with win 95, it was a no brainer as my 3.1 investment was largely still compatible and I could upgrade and have an easier time with my sound card IRQs (sound blaster awe32).
Marketing is something MS did right. Of course they used their size and profitability from other areas of commerce to enhance that marketing. I will openly admit, I fell for it.
With you honesty you show a great deal of integrity and honor, and shine a light on the history of modern computing. It wasn't coincidence or accident that things played out the way that they did. It's that a genius for business outweighed a genius for sound system design, because all products of that era had to actually sell to gain marketshare. This was long before the GPL.
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GPL was written in 1989 if I recall correctly. I think it's a direct descendant of prior licenses - namely emacs among others (gcc maybe?). My memory is a bit fuzzy and that was quite some time ago. I believe 3.1 was early 1990s.
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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.
Spot on! And there's something else, too.
If IBM hadn't selected Microsoft to provide an operating system for it's IBM PC, I think it's safe to say that the computing landscape would look quite different right now. IBM approached Microsoft to do an operating system for the IBM PC in 1980. Microsoft then referred IBM to Intergalactic Digital Research (remember them?), where Mrs. Kildall (who ran business affairs for IDR) turned them away because she didn't want to sign IBM's confidentiality agreements. If IDR
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I will freely admit that Bill Gates is a world class genius when it comes to marketing software.
I don't agree. Gates got on the bandwagon not because of genius, but because of the staggering incompetence of others. The incompetence of Digital Research of missing the chance to write the OS for the IBM PC. The incompetence of IBM management for not taking their own PC seriously and allowing Microsoft free reign to cash in on it instead. Gates was not the only person to see the great future for personal computers - everyone (except IBM management) saw it at the time.
In another life Gates would ha
NeXTSTEP is in Mac OS X (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Why NEXT imploded (Score:3)
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
CompSci types loved NeXTSTEP OS and dev tools (Score:3)
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.
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"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... [theregister.co.uk]
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Watching this whole thread (Score:2)
... 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
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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 whateve
Re:say what you will about Windows 1... (Score:5, Funny)
And what would it have done with any information it collected, without a network stack? Print it, with a header politely asking you to drop it in an envelope and send it off to Redmond?
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Hello Mr or Ms Victim,
Please lift your telephone handset, dial the following toll number, and place the receiver into the acoustically coupled modem connected to 0x3F8.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely yours -- Mr Virus
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DEVICEHIGH=C:\OWS
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+1 bain
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I like the ribbon. why does everybody hate on it?
The Ribbon is functionally limited (Score:5, Insightful)
* 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.
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i suppose. sounds like a lot of whining. you're making an excel spreadsheet, not compositing a 3d animation.
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The Ribbon interface is basically not customizable.
Except that it is fully customizable [livefilestore.com].
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----> The Ribbon interface is not as complete as the drop-down menu's.
I've yet to come across something I could do in a pre-ribbon office that I magically can't do now.
----> The Ribbon interface is basically not customizable.
Good. Oh lord good. Thank good. Inconsistent interfaces are the bane of human existence. I'm all for minor customisations, but being able to just move buttons around is the reason why we're now in the world of "Have you done a complete system reset and nuked everything you ever own to try and fix your problem" style tech support. But you're wrong about that anyway. It's still customisable it's just not as easy
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Can I borrow $20 til payday? I'm good for it.
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"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 [ycombinator.com]
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No, that was Minix. Linus didn't hate Windows, he wasn't even using Windows. Have you not read the infamous Usenet exchange?