Return of the '70s Microsoft Weirdos 338
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."
Re:Thank you (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:Thank you (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Thank you (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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]
Re:Thank you (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 on the IBM PC platform was poised to be king. If Windows didn't do it, OS/2 would have. I refuse to see how that would've been any better. The brilliant OSes that Atari and Amiga designed would be forever attached to what was considered "toy" hardware by most.
Re:Thank you (Score:2, Interesting)
It would be fascinating if the actual intent of having the key input was to make it seem more valuable.
Re:Thank you (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:Plus free strings! (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:3, Interesting)
Re:Thank you (Score:3, Interesting)
You completely omitted the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, which were technologically-wise running circles around the ones you mentioned. They lacked proper business perspective, though, and the (anti-?)competitive climate being created by Microsoft became a nail to their coffins.
Re:The 70's called they want their CP/M back (Score:3, Interesting)
As a former CP/M user and as someone who worked through college in the 80s selling computers, I can not recall CP/M ever really being "healthy". It was there, but not exactly healthy.
Here was the breakdown at the shop that I worked at circa 1984:
DOS Compatibles: Compaq, Eagle, Bear, Sanyo, etc. (man the clone market was on fire back then. We even made grey boxes).
CP/M machines: Kaypro, and Osborne. The Kaypros were actually well made. I like the Kaypro's much larger screen, while the Osborne was a sewing machine with a small screen. The main selling point of the Osborne was the software that came with it.
Home computers: Commodore 64, 128, and Amiga. Atari 800 and ST.
Granted this is just my observation at the store I worked for, but here it goes:
The bulk of our sales were Commodore 64s, followed by the PC clones (Mostly Compaq and for some strange reason Sanyo). Atari 800 sales were OK. Amigas outsold STs. CP/M sales were much lower.
A competitor of ours was an authorized Apple dealer, and he couldn't keep the Apple IIs in stock.
Anyway, what killed CP/M was the following:
Clones - Who could compete with a onslaught of computer clones whose definition of PC compatible was the ability to run MS-DOS?
Price - The clones were cheaper, and easier to get.
Bad business practices - Kaypro and Osborne manufactures couldn't move product, and mismanaged the introduction of newer models. Ultimately finding themselves out of business. (Radio Shack (aka Tandy) had similar mishandling issues).
Features - MS-DOS was faster and had better file management than CP/M at the time.
Microsoft was NOT a monopoly in the 80's...
I'm sure there was something else, but this is all I can remember at the moment...