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Return of the '70s Microsoft Weirdos
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jun 22, 2008 07:17 AM
from the kodachrome-moments dept.
from the kodachrome-moments dept.
theodp writes "On the eve of the company's move from Albuquerque to Seattle in 1978, a famous photo was taken (in a shopping mall no less) of the original Microsoft team, looking mighty sharp in their '70s outfits. Almost 30 years later, as Bill Gates prepares to depart from Microsoft, the group (looking older, but better) reconvened for a retake."
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Thank you (Score:5, Funny)
For the photo that I need for when time travel is invented, so windows can be prevented from happening.
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we get rid of that horrific myth once and for all? If there had been no Windows, we would have had something else, and chances are it would have been much better.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Unix, born in the 1960s, had a 20 year head start over Microsoft, but Unix geeks just weren't interested in bringing a desktop to the masses in the same way Microsoft was.
It's certainly true we could have had something better -- Amiga, Commodore, Apple, etc. -- but if any one of those alternatives succeeded like Microsoft, it would have most likely adopted the same evil practices Microsoft used, and we'd probably end up with a similarly crappy system. In the alternate universe, it could very well have been Commodore Doors.
Fortunately, Linux and Mac are both making headway in the current time line.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Interesting)
There was something else already, Windows and PC was the clone of it and it wasn't cheaper at all. Compare the original IBM to Apple prices. I think people can't think that the community chose that Text based horrible junk over Apple GUI and they think Apple came later to scene. It is the IBM who missed the personal computing revolution and dealt with MS in panic while MS didn't even have a single line of code in their hands.
IBM didn't heroically open their platform, they were forced to it. There are still some old school small computer shops advertising or requiring 100% IBM compatible. People should look at the reasoning of that percentage number.
Perhaps people shouldn't ignore the "Pirates of Silicon Valley" and watch/read it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_silicon_valley [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
We are 5 or even 10 years behind in computing thanks to MS. Think about it. Who wasn't in 32bit computing except MS customers back in 1995? Did you see the Netscape 4 demos which seriously drove them into panic that time? Now we are beginning to talk about Web services in freaking 2008 and people still suffer when they try it with IE.
You better watch Archive.org "computer chronicles" videos and think what would happen if MS wasn't in scene with their business tactics and backwards products.
http://www.archive.org/details/computerchronicles [archive.org]
People were video editing on their Amigas back in 1991 for instance.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say it held it back if anything.
I personally got into 16-bit, GUI computing in 1987 when my parents gave in to ten-year-old me and spent what for them was a load of money on an Atari ST. Over the next couple of years a lot of other kids my age followed suit and bought STs or Amigas. We were introduced to Windows (Version 2, y'know) at school and it just seemed hopelessly antiquated. We couldn't get our heads round why anybody would buy a system running this crap when they could get about five STs for the same price, all of which would run rings round the PC clone.
Of course, time passed and Atari, Commodore et al proved themselves much less proficient at running businesses than they were at designing computers, support waned and we found ourselves with no realistic option other than Windows (95 by this point). It still felt like a backward step and they'd had years to catch up.
So I reckon that if things had worked out a bit differently and, say, Commodore had been as ruthless in business as Microsoft, we'd be far ahead of where we are now. Or at least we'd have got to where we are now years ago. Windows never put a computer into my house, and it did a good job of killing off the better, cheaper alternatives that myself and millions liked me had plumped for.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Interesting)
I had 32bit Amiga 1200 back in 1992 or something. I turned it on, said "Wow it is fast", liked new workbench and there is that "32 bit" thing. Basically every program was already in 32bit.
Amiga crashed very bad financially so I moved to x86/PC in Win 3.1/95 Schizophrenia age (my worst mistake, should be Apple).
It was like surreal people were still in 16/32 bit age, being amazed to Windows 95. It is still same way to me, even running OS X Leopard. E.g. I had 64bit command line/linux back in 2003 with my first G5 1600 switched from PC at last, so it was 64bit processor, I could install 8 gig of RAM. Now imagine I switch back to Vista 64 bit and watch people saying how cool 64bit is after 5 years.
We shouldn't have Atari ST or Amiga so we could really get impressed by these things :) It is still effecting, e.g. after the magnificent Word Processing tools in Amiga, I can't get so much excited about the Apple Pages 08. I had much of the functionality back in Amiga 1200.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it held anything back because those OSes you mentioned all had the same problem: they were built to sell hardware. There's no way you'd ever see an Amiga or Atari OS running on IBM (or compatible) hardware. IBM PC hardware wasn't that great but it was seen as "professional" hardware. If you'll remember correctly, there was already an IBM PC sales boom starting before Windows was really popular. DOS of all things was the OS installed on most of those PCs. The first reasonable GUI-heavy OS
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows did a fantastic job of stifling innovation in the PC industry. Imagine how much more reliable and diverse computers would have been if Microsoft had not prevented innovation from occuring? Microsoft was more concerned about monopoly maintenance than innovation.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
The 8088 processor was chosen by IBM for the IBM PC specifically to hold personal computing back. The processor series was a very poor choice for a desktop machine.
The 6809 was a far superior chip, good enough that a reasonably convincing Unix clone was available in 1980, the year IBM decided to create the "IBM PC". That was bad from their perspectives, because it would strengthen Unix as a competitor in the midrange business. You can still get OS-9 for embedded use or set-top box use. The 6809 shared many architectural features and philosophy with the much more powerful 68000 (which also appeared in an eight bit external bus form in 1982). This would have eased the transition to 32 bit computing, which also would have been a bad thing.
This, of course, is not Microsoft's fault. IBM didn't give a damn that the processor wasn't the best choice of a desktop OS, nor did they very much care about the fact that the "OS" they chose wasn't much more than a set of primitive libraries and provided no real hardware management at all. These were, in fact, desirable from their point of view. They wanted something quick, on which they could slap the IBM nameplate and make a lot of short term bucks selling expensive doorstops, along the way keeping Apple IIs out of businesses. They succeeded on all counts in the short term, which was all the term there was meant to be. The "IBM PC" would have been a technological dead end, it was in fact intended to be so, if it wasn't for the fact somebody ended up creating a killer app for all those doorstops: Lotus 1-2-3.
Windows 3 (ca. 1990) was a tremendous achievement, given what they had to work with. But it was technically far behind what was available at the time. MacOS 6 had been available for a couple of years, and it not only had a superior GUI, it had built in support for sound and networking (which didn't come on most PCs). There was, of course, OS-9. Even Microsoft had a better OS than Windows 3 on top of DOS, namely XENIX.
So it is true that Windows accelerated the usage of MS-DOS by the average user. But DOS itself, which was the underpinnings of Windows, held the user back. How many users had to learn the nuances of TSRs, extended memory vs. expanded memory etc? How many programers had to deal with non-productive technical details like thunks as they struggled to take advantage of 32 bit hardware with a sixteen bit operating system? How long was networking delayed by proprietary protocols shoehorned onto an operating system with no fundamental support for networking, when TCP/IP had already been existence for years?
All in all, its a mixed bag. Windows made a really bad computer with really bad system software a lot more tolerable for users, and Microsoft deserves credit for this. But they don't deserve credit for personal computing. The whole "IBM PC" and "DOS" enterprise set computing back almost a decade.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Informative)
No, that was the Internet.
The spreadsheet was the "killer ap" that got PCs on to the desktops of accountants and managers. The Internet was the "killer ap" that finally got the PC in to the homes of people like our parents. Email, the web and now digital photos of grandchildren on Facebook and Flickr have pretty much made even a dial-up account a necessity for pretty much everyone. Homeless people use the Internet.
And Bill Gates famously [salon.com] missed the potential of a free & open Internet until quite late in the game (I don't think Windows shipped with built-in support for TCP/IP until Windows 98, but correct me if I'm wrong).
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'd grant you the fact that Linux is indeed powering many of the systems people interact with, it remains that Linux has failed time and again to fulfill it's Year Of Desktop boasts.
Windows, for all it's warts, allowed almost everyone access to the world of computers.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Between 1980 and ~2000, the cost of a license was small compared to the cost of a computer.
Re:Thank you (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft does charge less, to OEMs that is.
The license that is sold for $250 in-store, costs $80 (or less) to the OEM - even mom & pop shops. That's one hell of an insult to the loyal customers who actually buy the new OS to update their existing PCs, and to the businesses that buy hundreds or thousands of licenses. They can negotiate a "preferred partner" deal, but it's still nowhere near the OEM pricing.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do people assume WGA is the end of piracy ?
WGA, like any other protection scheme, is defeated with a small patch. I've seen one that loads some resident code at boot time, before handing control over to the Vista loader, and somehow convinces the activation check to always pass. Game over!
Plus free strings! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Windows, for all it's warts, allowed almost everyone access to the world of computers."
Plus free strings attached to it! viz.
Your 'access to the world of computers' must be acknowledged as a service that you license from a vendor, rather than a skill that you acquire and use for your own purposes.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your 'access to the world of computers' must be acknowledged as a service that you license from a vendor, rather than a skill that you acquire and use for your own purposes.
What exactly are you trying to say.
What skill do I require beyond turing on my computer, starting Firefox and browsing? Would compiling my own Kernel enhance my experience somehow?
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
What you fail to understand is that, without Windows, something else would have filled the void. Progress in personal computers would not have stopped if Windows weren't around. Indeed, Microsoft was so concerned about monopoly maintenance, that innovation in the PC industry suffered. Progress might have been faster without Bill Gates' presence.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Valid speculation, but speculation nonetheless. It may well be the case that someone would have filled the void, but I don't think you can consider it a certainty. Consider what else was out there about the time that, say, Windows 3.0 was really taking root as the OS of choice for the masses:
- Apple's MacOS was good, but tied to a hardware platform that was horribly overpriced, which would have been a barrier for a lot of computer purchases by families/individuals
- Unix/Linux flavors. Linux was just starting out and certainly wouldn't have been ready as an OS for a personal computer for most. Unix would have been overkill/pointless in the same role.
- OS/2 would probably have been the defacto choice for most PC's, but would IBM have filled the role of Microsoft to the same level? Remember that in the early 90's IBM was still arguably in their "Computers are for businesses" mode, and like Apple saw the OS as tool for selling hardware; without Microsoft to drag them into/compete with them in the home computer arena, would they have dedicated the kind of resources necessary to improving OS/2 at the same rate that Windows improved?
Microsoft really was in a somewhat unique place to do what they did; they had ties to IBM (and others) that allowed them to get their OS's on a lot of computers, but they were still independent enough to take advantage of the then bold idea that "It's all about the software". I don't think you can say for certain that another company would have just stepped in and filled their shoes, and succeeded in bring computers to the masses as well as they did.
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Re:Thank you (Score:4, Insightful)
Nor can you take that nothing would fill the void as a certainty. Indeed, most of your argument is based upon everything else acting as if Windows were still around. That's a false premise as it is negated by the opening hypothesis, i.e., that Windows was not present. So your entire argument is based upon something that doesn't exist.
I guess I have more faith in the American ingenuity than you, and that I believe there would be a real innovator (not a fake one like Bill Gates) to fill the void were Bill Gates not handed the gift from IBM.
Microsoft really was in a somewhat unique place to do what they did
That's true. They instituted the illegal per-processor licensing scheme to build and fortify their monopoly. It's all in the court transcripts, read it there if you'd like to learn more.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can.
Ubuntu is nice, in a entry level geeky kind of way. But it doesn't come close to fulfilling the Desktop boast of Linux.
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Informative)
I installed Ubuntu late last year, and setting up multiple monitors still requires editing text files.
Linux is friendly for people with a lot of skill, who need a lot from their computer and aren't afraid of the command line; or people with very little skill, who don't need to do anything but browse the web, check their email, and do some word processing.
For everybody in-between, Windows is still a clear win.
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Re:Thank you (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Thank you (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish you'd tell my family that XP "just works" then. I've taken to wearing my "I'm not here to fix your computer" t-shirt whenever I go and see family, because I tend to spend most of my time when I'm visiting running malware destroyers, anti-virus and trying to find why bits of hardware that used to work fine are now not working.
Windows has wasted more of my life than I care to think about.. the only windows systems I have used that "just worked" have been at work, where they have teams of dedicated professionals keeping them running 24/7.
I'm not saying that Linux would necessarily be any better, I'm just saying that the old saw "Linux is not for mom and pop" is getting old; Windows is not for mom and pop either, unless son doesn't mind spending all his visits fixing the computer.
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Re:Thank you (Score:4, Insightful)
'What was the year of Windows on the desktop?' and 'Why was Windows on the desktop successful?' and 'How did this happen?'
It has been asked many times. It was around 1995/1996, when Windows 95/NT came out. Previously, everyone used Windows 3.1, which was only suitable for reading E-mail or playing solitaire or checkers.
Microsoft's marketing slogan at the time was "Unix was legacy, Windows NT is the future", and the main selling feature was that Windows now offered a unified desktop API for writing applications, which could now all use the same command shortcuts.
A good few workstation vendors like DEC and HP believed this hype, and gave up their own UNIX OS's to switch to Windows NT. At this time, DEC Alpha's were the most powerful chip at the time, and 3D graphics cards with texture mapping still cost a three to four figure sum.
Such was Microsoft's grip on applications that some workstation vendors even had an add on i386 card just so that users could run their E-mail/spreadsheet applications in a window on a workstation.
Now, application developers want to use "skins" to customize the look and feel of their products and websites. Also, E-mail and other applications are available through any number of web browers and websites, and video can be streamed direct from the network, and not require a CD-ROM.
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Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Only when it was clear that the Internet was here to stay and that walled-garden rivals like MSN couldn't compete did MS go for it wholeheartedly. Thanking MS for the likes of Google Earth is giving them credit they don't deserve, in that area at any rate.
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Time travel (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, please send the second terminator. I am still typing this on Windows, so apparently, the mission failed.
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So... (Score:5, Funny)
which guy had a sex change?
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
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Should have left it as is (Score:5, Insightful)
The 70s photo is of of a bright eyed bushy tailed group ready to take on the world. It tells a story, smacks of potential and is a slice of history.
The current photo is a happy snap without a story. It begs the question "Why?" It adds an ending to the 1970s photo that would have best been left unwritten, allowing each viewer of the 1970's photo to make their own judgement of history. The photo is like a cliched ending to a stereotypical Hollywood morality tale.
Re:Should have left it as is (Score:5, Insightful)
You can argue that the photo's pointless, but suggesting that people would be better served by not having this information is ridiculous. This isn't some pretentious open-ended novel we're talking about.
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My IT Dept (Score:3, Funny)
Microsofts heritage (Score:4, Insightful)
This picture got me thinking.
For all the things people dislike about Microsoft, even the stuff people sees as evil one should still acknowledge the contribution made by Bill Gates and Microsoft to the world as it is today. I am by no means a fan of Microsoft, yet had it not been for the visions of Bill Gates I sincerely doubt that computers would have gained the same traction in society as they have today.
I often seem to forget this when shouting my mouth off about how bad Microsofts software is or how evil Microsoft is. I will try to remember this the next time I get into a "how I hate Microsoft" frenzy.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody doubts Bill Gates' vision helped bring computers to the masses a great deal, nor that OS and PC uniformising, sad as it is, is what brought down the cost of computing. The beef most people have with Microsoft is (1) how they got there, and (2) software quality : they copied, bought, monopolized, bribed and ransomed their way to the top, and they couldn't come up with one truly good software product if they lives depended on it.
Other than that, they're great guys.
Bill Gates "Vision" (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates vision? You mean his business model? Nothing visionary or new there. He was selling an operating system product that was included with each PC so OF COURSE he wanted "a computer on every desk". So would you if you were selling a product with zero marginal cost. He just was lucky enough to get on the right horse with one of the two most important products on the PC (along with Intel's CPUs). It wasn't an especially good product even by the standards of the day. If it wasn't him it would have been someone else - have no doubt of that. Microsoft wasn't even in the operating system business relatively late in the game but it turned out to be a cash cow that put them where they are today.
Vision? No I'm not convinced Bill Gates' "vision" helped accelerate adoption of PCs. You can make a reasonable (though hypothetical) argument that his company's crappy technology and operating system monopoly held adoption of computers by the masses back by several years. Don't get me wrong, there are many things he deserves credit for - both good and bad - but his vision isn't among them.
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Re:Microsofts heritage (Score:5, Interesting)
In the early 80s there were plenty of smaller players in the marketplace all with interesting products and different ideas. A more natural outgrowth of that which maintained that balance would have been much healthier. And while that probably would have led to a period of incompatibility and lack of standards, the lack of strong defacto standards may well have created a push for more industry standards earlier. By now many of those things that are still needed (standards for document, and multimedia interchange) would have long been settled.
For all the advantages that computers confer on society, don't forget the huge losses in both time and money that the poor quality of Windows and its apps have caused.
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Re:Microsofts heritage (Score:5, Insightful)
yet had it not been for the visions of Bill Gates I sincerely doubt that computers would have gained the same traction in society as they have today.
Ridiculous. Computers gained the traction they did in society because they greatly increased productivity, and we'd already developed the technology (the silicon chip) to make them cheaply. Bill Gates just was able to capitalize on those two circumstances.
If Gates hadn't have done it, someone else would have. Jobs and Apple? IBM? Hell, maybe even Commodore.
The path taken would have been different for sure, but the entry of computers into society at the level they exist was invevidible. Maybe cross-platform applications would have become far more prevalent than they are now without Gates and Company trying to stifle any such products, and the OS would become largely irrelevant. Really, the OS IS irrelevant to the end-user. The only thing that provides any value are the applications.
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THE GOGGLES (Score:3, Funny)
etc.
Gates on the desk (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:11/12 (Score:4, Funny)
well working making a new company having it grow to such a large level tends to put extra age on some people. Heck look at the guy in the middle in the before and after pic. Before he was a young guy and the other picture he is a older lady, that looks more like a traditional grandmother image.
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Re:Epitome (Score:5, Informative)
FTA:
Present for the reunion was office manager Miriam Lubow (center of new picture), who missed the original sitting due to a snowstorm. (When Lubow, now retired, first met Gates, she couldn't believe that disheveled kid was the president.) Absent for the reshoot was Bob Wallace (top center), who died in 2002; after leaving Microsoft in 1983, he pioneered the idea of shareware.
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Re:Epitome (Score:5, Funny)
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