What does Micro$oft do Well ?

hot...@spambegonewhidbey.net

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Feb 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/12/98

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A recent thread discussed Micro$oft's lack of success with products that
it developed from scratch... and its spectacular profits from technology
that it bought. Let's talk about that.

Traf-o-meter was Gate's product ( I think)

BASIC for Altair was something that Gates and Allen built. It could be
argued that the Altair BASIC was an adaptation of somebody else's
product.

MS-DOS was bought outright.

Windows was coded in house, based on ideas stolen from Apple (who stole
them from Xerox). They did this reasonably well on version 3.1 - which
was almost 10 years after the project started.

Where did the pathetic piece-of-crap Word originate?

I'm sure that M$ bought Excel, but can't back that up. Help?

What about Access? Power Point?

I could believe that M$ developed Exchange. It has all of the features,
quality, and speed I expect from those folks. Bob squared.

NT couldn't have happened without gutting Digital's OS group. After 8
years, they got something that worked. After 10 years, NT is a mere
shadow of the VMS on which it is loosely based (granted, it has a GUI).

--
L. Nino
-- You can blame everything on me this year.

Paul Workman

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Feb 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/12/98

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hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net writes:

> A recent thread discussed Micro$oft's lack of success with products that
> it developed from scratch... and its spectacular profits from technology
> that it bought. Let's talk about that.
>

> ...

> I could believe that M$ developed Exchange. It has all of the features,
> quality, and speed I expect from those folks. Bob squared.

"Microsoft Bob" is I think the shining example of Microsoft
"innovation". Although it wasn't completely lacking in good ideas
(I've read about a few ideas in it that weren't completely off-base),
as a whole it was a dumb, crusty idea that failed.

One thing that DOES impress me about Microsoft is the VISUAL DESIGN of
their products. I'm not talking about the clarity of their GUI's -- I
find them frequently MORE obtuse than a straightforward CLI -- but the
LOOK of their products. The color schemes, the little details: they
all result in handsome-looking products, generally more attractive
than what you see in, for example, X11 stuff.

This may be a major contributing factor in their success.

But they still suck.

Pete Fenelon

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Feb 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/12/98

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Paul Workman <pau...@shell15.ba.best.com> wrote:
> One thing that DOES impress me about Microsoft is the VISUAL DESIGN of
> their products. I'm not talking about the clarity of their GUI's -- I
> find them frequently MORE obtuse than a straightforward CLI -- but the
> LOOK of their products. The color schemes, the little details: they
> all result in handsome-looking products, generally more attractive
> than what you see in, for example, X11 stuff.

You think? I thought the '95 user interface was a great step backwards in
many respects -- far too many half-understood ideas from Motif, OS/2 and
Apple in there.

While we're on the subject of GUIs, a great guru once described Motif as
having "that 1940s Utility Furniture Look" to it. Exactly right.

I'm generally anti-GUI, I tend to prefer text to pictures; my favourite
windowing environments tend to be minimalist ones, often by Rob Pike --
I like the look and feel of the blit/mux/layers/8.5 systems he's
desgned. I also like Oberon, which I think is an absolutely excellent
environment and system...

Of GUI's I've not found totally offensive, I think the NeXT got it pretty
close to right -- very classy and consistent; my Linux machines tend to
run afterstep most of the time...

I must say, though, kde looks almost useful, if only it wasn't so 95-ish :)

pete
--
Pete Fenelon ("There's no room for enigmas in built-up areas")
pe...@fenelon.zetnet.co.uk http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/petef/
3 Beckside Gardens, Melrosegate, York, Y01 3TX +44 1904 438472

Pete Fenelon

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Feb 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/12/98

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hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net wrote:
> I'm sure that M$ bought Excel, but can't back that up. Help?

I'm pretty sure you're right -- Multiplan was M$'s spreadsheet product.

> What about Access? Power Point ?
Dunno -- I have a similar feeling about Access.
I recall that the earliest versions of VC++ used to pay allegiance to
some French software house or other...

> I could believe that M$ developed Exchange. It has all of the features,
> quality, and speed I expect from those folks. Bob squared.

Exchange Server worries me -- I'm familiar with a site which has under 10
users on Exchange, and it pretty much takes a 96Mbyte P133 to look after
it. You could probably run incoming and outgoing NNTP, SMTP smarthosting,
and POP or IMAP for a couple of hundred fairly demanding Unix users off that :)

Outlook causes me the same woes -- seems to want about 11Mbytes of
virtual memory, for a second-rate mail client and a third-rate PIM.

Ben Coleman

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Feb 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/12/98

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On 12 Feb 1998 22:20:17 GMT, Pete Fenelon <pe...@fenelon.zetnet.co.uk>
wrote:

>Dunno -- I have a similar feeling about Access.

Which one? ISTR a failed terminal emulator product from MS called Access.

Ben
--
Ben Coleman b...@termnetinc.com |
Senior Systems Analyst |
TermNet Merchant Services, Inc. |
Atlanta, GA |

Neil.Frankli...@ccw.ch

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net wrote:
> Windows was coded in house, based on ideas stolen from Apple (who stole
> them from Xerox). They did this reasonably well on version 3.1 - which
> was almost 10 years after the project started.

IIRC it was mainly copied directly (first advertised autumn 1983),
also see below. The first MS mouse is also 1983, pre Mac!

> Where did the pathetic piece-of-crap Word originate?

Xerox PARC (!). Its original author (Charles Simonyi) was part of the
PARC team that wrote Bravo on the Alto. So it is also copied. He is also
the originator of the "hungarian" naming style for function names in
Windows (hwndXxxx() anyone?).

--
Neil.Frankli...@ccw.ch, http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/
for Geek Code, Papernet, Voicenet, PGP public key see http:
Mac, 95 and NT users are CLUEless (Command Line User Environment)
If I go missing, its once again my newsfeed that has craped

Richard Shetron

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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In article <1zx8l5...@chonsp.franklin.lugs.ch>,

<Neil.Frankli...@ccw.ch> wrote:
>hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net wrote:
>> Windows was coded in house, based on ideas stolen from Apple (who stole
>> them from Xerox). They did this reasonably well on version 3.1 - which
>> was almost 10 years after the project started.
>
>IIRC it was mainly copied directly (first advertised autumn 1983),
>also see below. The first MS mouse is also 1983, pre Mac!

The first mouse I saw was in 1977 when I worked at Rome Air Development
Center (Griffiss AFB) used on Arpanet by people using a word processor
running on Dec 10's someplace else on the net. I don't remember the
number of buttons.

Peter Seebach

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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In article <1zx8l5...@chonsp.franklin.lugs.ch>,
<Neil.Frankli...@ccw.ch> wrote:

>Xerox PARC (!). Its original author (Charles Simonyi) was part of the
>PARC team that wrote Bravo on the Alto. So it is also copied. He is also
>the originator of the "hungarian" naming style for function names in
>Windows (hwndXxxx() anyone?).

No, he's the originator of a set of formal rules for naming conventions.

It's been pointed out that the Windows naming convention, and the Microsoft
naming conventions in general, violate every single one of the rules in
spirit.

For instance, consider
int iCount;
What does the i tell you?

NOTHING!

What it should say is
int ctFoo;
or something similar - the prefix should tell you that this is a count,
not how you happen to have implemented it, and the primary name should
tell you *what it counts*.

The microsoft naming convention is probably a good chunk of the reason
their code sucks so badly.

-s
--
se...@plethora.net -- I am not speaking for my employer. Copyright '97
All rights reserved. Boycott Spamazon! End Spam. C and Unix wizard -
send mail for help, or send money for a consultation. Visit my new ISP
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D. Peschel

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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In article <MPG.f4c1ef5c...@news.whidbey.com>,
<hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net> wrote:

>Traf-o-meter was Gate's product ( I think)

It's "Traf-O-Data", as I reacall. (Probably, it WAS "Traf-O-Data".)

>BASIC for Altair was something that Gates and Allen built. It could be
>argued that the Altair BASIC was an adaptation of somebody else's
>product.
>
>MS-DOS was bought outright.

Someone else wrote the floating-point routines, so BASIC was written by
three people. Gates spent a lot of time on PDP-10's. Some DEC machine had
PEEK and POKE commands (I forget which machine, or at what level), and these
might have been "adapted" by Gates for MS' BASIC. I don't know.

Certainly, the FAT which Gates used in his standalone BASICs (and IIRC added
to DOS after buying it) bears a striking resemblance to the SAT or Storage
Allocation Table in TOPS-6. (At least, that's how I remember it from e-mail
with one of the TOPS-6 developers a while ago. He mentioned that even the
original TOPS system was quite flaky, so the SAT was perhaps a bad data
structure to borrow.)

>Where did the pathetic piece-of-crap Word originate?

People have already mentioned Charles Simonyi (who wrote Word, I think).
He based it on ideas from the Bravo editor which ran on Xerox machines.
Word hasn't always been crap in my opinion -- and the code base has changed
a couple of times, too.

>What about Access? Power Point?

As people have mentioned, there are two Accesses. One was a contemptible
terminal program of some sort. It failed so much that they had no qualms
about recycling the name. I don't know about the database.

>NT couldn't have happened without gutting Digital's OS group. After 8
>years, they got something that worked. After 10 years, NT is a mere
>shadow of the VMS on which it is loosely based (granted, it has a GUI).

In the case of Windows, I get the impression that MS didn't understand what
they were doing. In the case of NT, I've heard that they _did_ understand
what the program should have done, but decided not to do it anyway.
(There's some quote about various design decisions which appear to be flaws
actually being deliberate.)

I know, I haven't checked any sources. At least I'm being honest.

-- Derek

Rob Hafernik

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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In article <ylsafbw...@shell15.ba.best.com>, Paul Workman
<pau...@shell15.ba.best.com> wrote:

<snip>

> One thing that DOES impress me about Microsoft is the VISUAL DESIGN of
> their products. I'm not talking about the clarity of their GUI's -- I
> find them frequently MORE obtuse than a straightforward CLI -- but the
> LOOK of their products. The color schemes, the little details: they
> all result in handsome-looking products, generally more attractive
> than what you see in, for example, X11 stuff.

This may be so, but one of the factors (and there were many) that lead
graphics designers to early adoption of the Mac (back in the late 80's and
such) was the fact that, to a person who does graphics design for a
living, Windows looked like crap. Lots and lots of those kinds of folks
(I personally heard this from several) were simply offended by the look of
Windows. This got better with W95, but lots of them still have a bad
taste left in their mouths.

Inside the various applications (such as Word), things are a little
better, it was the desktop that they objected to. One graphics designer
once told me: "Windows looks like some goddamn PROGRAMMER designed it. I
don't like the Mac that much either, but at least it looks like they
TRIED."

YMMV.

Lars Duning

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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Rob Hafernik wrote:

> Inside the various applications (such as Word), things are a little
> better, it was the desktop that they objected to. One graphics designer
> once told me: "Windows looks like some goddamn PROGRAMMER designed it. I
> don't like the Mac that much either, but at least it looks like they
> TRIED."

AFAIK, Apple requires professional experience in graphics design when
recruiting interface engineers. Or at least did require it (who knows what
Apple is doing today, or tomorrow (ok, maybe Steve does)).
--
Lars Duening; la...@cableinet.co.uk (Home)

John Bayko

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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In article <MPG.f4c1ef5c...@news.whidbey.com>,
<hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net> wrote:

>A recent thread discussed Micro$oft's lack of success with products that
>it developed from scratch... and its spectacular profits from technology
>that it bought. Let's talk about that.

[...]

>I'm sure that M$ bought Excel, but can't back that up. Help?

Developed by MS, but much of it was merged from a Macintosh
spreadsheed called WingZ, which was ported to Windows, and then bought
by Microsoft which discontinued the competing (superior) product,
incorporating many of the features into Excel.
But there are two things that Microsoft does well that are
responsible for its success, and marketing isn't one of them (many
other companies can market as well, but are not in the position that
gave Microsoft incredible leverage in the market).
First, Microsoft is persistant. They will stick with a product,
refine, improve, and develop it even if it loses money until it has
been refined enough and is capable of functioning adequately that
people will buy it. Windows 95 sucks, but it works 91% of the time,
just past the 90% acceptance barrier.
This process has been repeated with many bad Microsoft products.
The second thing is that Microsoft listens to the users
complaints, and addresses them. Usually with little or no insight into
the fundimental problems, but that's not the point - each release, the
users get something that they wanted, that makes a big fundimental
problem less big and not as irritating. This constant improvement has
a profound psychological effect on people, something that shouldn't be
underestimated.
Back in the late 80's, when DOS dominated over the Macintosh,
people pointed out that there were thousands of programs and utilities
for DOS, but only a few for Macintosh, but kept forgetting that most
of these were to fix problems that the Macintosh didn't even have.
Buying a DOS computer was an imcremental experience - first the
computer, then QEMM to get more memory, then Norton Utilities to
simplify file management, and so on. This feeling of improvement is an
odd, but overpowering satisfaction for people.
Oddly, Microsoft's add-hoc methods make them *seem* like they're
more productive - making a problem better is a more visible result
than eliminating the problem entirely. For example, the long filename
aliases to extend 8.3-character names in Windows 95 were hailed as a
wonderful advancement, even though OS/2 eliminated the 8.3 name
restriction entirely with a more efficient file system. The OS/2
solution was rejected with accusations of incompatibility, even though
it functioned more compatibly than the Microsoft version.
That aside, the fact is that Microsoft does make a strong effort
to respond to users, and when the users demand more, they end up
getting more - check out the reviews of Microsoft Office 98 for
Macintosh. Macintosh users refused to settle for Windows quality
standards, and Microsoft lost a lot of potential profits and
marketshare in a lucrative market (yes, the Macintosh market is
profitable - many companies make the mistake that it's 'not worth it'
because they think Microsoft abandoned it, when in reality, Microsoft
merely failed in it).
Incidentally, Microsoft might be looking at the Unix market next -
they plan to port Internet Explorer to Unix systems.
Most other companies don't seem to do this. For example, I've
recently had a fair bit of experience with PowerBuilder versions 4 and
5, and it amazes me how many user interface problems in version 4
remain unfixed in version 5. Microsoft would never have allowed those
to slip through, even at the expense of some functionality.

Ooops, this turned into a long, rambling post.
Anyway, the point is, Microsoft persists, and listens to
customers. Not many other computer companies do that.

--
John Bayko (Tau).
ba...@cs.uregina.ca
http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~bayko

Tom Harrington

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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Pete Fenelon (pe...@fenelon.zetnet.co.uk) wrote:
: hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net wrote:
: > I'm sure that M$ bought Excel, but can't back that up. Help?

: I'm pretty sure you're right -- Multiplan was M$'s spreadsheet product.

When the Macintosh was new, Apple persuaded MS to develop a spreadsheet
for it. This was the genesis of Excel. It was, certainly, based on
existing ideas going back to VisiCalc, but I'm pretty sure it was
coded in-house rather than bought.

--
Tom Harrington --------- t...@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph
"Welcome to the real world - an interesting place to visit, but I
refuse to live there." -Andy Rozmiarek
Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx

Robert Billing

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98

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In article <wPPE.9$Ih1....@ptah.visi.com>
se...@plethora.net "Peter Seebach" writes:

> int iCount;
> What does the i tell you?
>
> NOTHING!

Actually, to me it means, "Oh no, not again!"

BTW I once had to work on some win3.1 stuff, and took to wearing a
Russian submariner's cap badge in my lapel. I said, "If I have to grope
about in the murky depths of this stuff, I shall need a submarine..."

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Feb 14, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/14/98

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On 1998-02-13 dpes...@u.washington.edu(D.Peschel) said:
:>Where did the pathetic piece-of-crap Word originate?

:People have already mentioned Charles Simonyi (who wrote Word, I
:think).

the dos or windows version? the dos version was interesting, from what
we remember (we only ever used it the once).

:In the case of Windows, I get the impression that MS didn't

:understand what they were doing.

windows was (apparently, quoting from some programmer's tech. ref.)
originally conceived as a kind of graphical ansi.sys thing, which just
gave you (well) windows and a uniform graphical system. but somewhere
along the way it became a full-fledged (and half-arsed) gui. we used
windows 1 at high school. boy...

-- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her...

Net-Tamer V 1.08X - Test Drive

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

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Feb 14, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/14/98

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On 1998-02-13 ba...@borealis.cs.uregina.ca(JohnBayko) said:
:First, Microsoft is persistant. They will stick with a product,

:refine, improve, and develop it even if it loses money until it has
:been refined enough and is capable of functioning adequately that
:people will buy it. Windows 95 sucks, but it works 91% of the time,
:just past the 90% acceptance barrier.

..and enough for microsoft to call it "stable" and not bother doing
much for win98. yes, microsoft will stick with a product until it works,
but many other companies either release stuff that works in the first
place or realise they screwed up when nobody bothers with it.

:The second thing is that Microsoft listens to the users

:complaints, and addresses them. Usually with little or no insight
:into the fundimental problems, but that's not the point - each
:release, the users get something that they wanted, that makes a big
:fundimental problem less big and not as irritating. This constant
:improvement has a profound psychological effect on people,
:something that shouldn't be underestimated.

perhaps you're right - this feeling that "with just a few extra
programs, we can make things *so* much better" is illusorily empowering.
but it doesn't compensate for the thing being a crock in the first
place - because it's very hard to retrofit foundations...

in any case, we get the impression that microsoft only listens to the
users it wants to listen to, the ones who work for big corporations and
are quite happy to say "we'll buy your next system whatever, but if we
could just have ... it would be soooo great". the people who are telling
it "why the hell couldn't you scrap this heaposhite and start again??"
are ignored. that's not how ms does things - even when it's blatantly
bloody obvious that it should.

the success of microsoft is largely due to the fact that by and large,
people believe what they're told. it's also due in no small part to the
success of microsoft...

John Varela

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Feb 14, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/14/98

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On Fri, 13 Feb 1998 19:16:43, dcra...@SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMliveoak.com (David Cranford) wrote: > In 1973, I played briefly with a 60's-era USAF air defense system > called BUIC (Back-Up Intercept Control) which used a track ball - > which was, IIRC, based on a similar device used to control the cursor > on 50's-era manual radar systems. Ten years before that, in 1963, when we were starting to write the specifications for the FAA en route air traffic control automation system (the one that's still being used), for screen position entry we had to choose between light gun/pen (a la SAGE), joy stick (a la the FAA analog radar displays), or track balls (a la ???). The FAA didn't like light guns because they were too heavy and required taking the hand too far away from the keyboard. They didn't like joysticks because there had been breakage problems with them, controllers not being known for being gentle with the equipment. So track balls were chosen. John Varela (delete . between world and net to e-mail me)

George Gray

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Feb 14, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/14/98

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I guess I am one of the minority (?) who happen to LIKE the look and feel of
Win95. I have never had any usability problems with the software. The
taskbar is the most welcome addition followed closely by the RIGHT mouse
click menu. I never understood why the Mac only had ONE mouse button.

I am also one who does NOT like the Mac's look and feel. I find the Mac OS
alot more difficult to use, the performance is terrible and it looks like
crap. I do like the startup sounds, tho. I get a kick out emulating the
thing on my WINDOWS PC. The emulated performance is BETTER than any of the
real Mac's I have used. Oh my! The PowerMac is even worse! I hope, for
Apple's sake, the Mac OS 8.x is better. And the Newton? It's such an
improvement over the Mac but still needs work.

Yep, I'll take my Win95 machine (that multitasks, has tons of software and
is much simpler to use) and my Palm Pilot any day.
Lars Duning wrote in message <34E46A46...@mdisystems.com>...

hot...@spambegonewhidbey.net

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Feb 14, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/14/98

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In article <6c1rl3$59q$1...@sue.cc.uregina.ca>, ba...@borealis.cs.uregina.ca
says...

You make very good points throughout your post. You're quite right that
M$'s success is largely due to three factors:
1) Listening to customers
2) Persistence
3) Vast resources (which allow them to persist through their incompetence
[my editorial added])

I do take issue with one comment:

> many companies make the mistake that it's 'not worth it'
> because they think Microsoft abandoned it, when in reality, Microsoft
> merely failed in it

Failed in it? Micro$oft is the leading provider of MAC software.

For that (and many other reasons) Jobs needs Gates, and Gates needs Jobs.
The infusion of Micro$oft money into Apple solves a number of problem for
both companies.

Neil.Frankli...@ccw.ch

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Feb 14, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/14/98

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In article <1zx8l5...@chonsp.franklin.lugs.ch>,
<Neil.Frankli...@ccw.ch> wrote:

> also see below. The first MS mouse is also 1983, pre Mac!

mul...@wizvax.wizvax.net (Richard Shetron)

> The first mouse I saw was in 1977 when I worked at Rome Air Development
> Center (Griffiss AFB) used on Arpanet by people using a word processor
> running on Dec 10's someplace else on the net. I don't remember the
> number of buttons.

Note that I said _MS_ mouse.

The first mouse at all was in 1964 in the NLS project of Doug
Engelbart at the Augmentation Research Center of Stanford Research
Institute.

(from: an paper given by DE to the ACM in 1988).

--
private: Neil.Frankli...@ccw.ch, http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/

for Geek Code, Papernet, Voicenet, PGP public key see http:

office: fran...@arch.ethz.ch

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

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Feb 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/15/98

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On 1998-02-14 geo...@bellatlantic.net said:
:I guess I am one of the minority (?) who happen to LIKE the look

:and feel of Win95. I have never had any usability problems with
:the software. The taskbar is the most welcome addition followed
:closely by the RIGHT mouse click menu. I never understood why the
:Mac only had ONE mouse button.

because you can do everything with one mouse button on the mac. jobs
wanted it to be as simple as possible to use; more than one mouse button
he thought might confuse people.

how many buttons *does* a pc mouse have, btw...? :>

right-clicking is handy but not new; unix (and riscos on acorns) have
been doing it for years. nobody ever said that gatesware couldn't steal
a good idea.

fwiw, we also prefer the fact that you only have one menu on the mac, at
the top. menus don't belong inside windows. the taskbar is a rather poor
substitute, and you can't put the icons of minimised active windows
where you please either.

(btw, the taskbar is actually a move away from ergonomic interfce design
in our view - in win3.11 our mail client used to change its icon when we
received mail. win95 can't do this, instead relying on putting a little
icon in the corner of the taskbar. ugh.

:I am also one who does NOT like the Mac's look and feel. I find

:the Mac OS alot more difficult to use, the performance is terrible
:and it looks like crap. I do like the startup sounds, tho. I get

oh dear... (btw, our dos system has startup sounds too. who gives a
shit? it's cute, but distinctly non-functionality-enhancing...) and ok,
the mac interface hasn't exactly kept up with the times as well as it
might have done, but it was bloody well designed in the first place.
it's gone from several years ahead of its time to maybe a year or two
behind, without really moving.

:a kick out emulating the thing on my WINDOWS PC. The emulated

:performance is BETTER than any of the real Mac's I have used. Oh

so when was the last time you used a real mac...? :> we used a mac se/30
at university, and it was running quite an old version of the os.
nevertheless, it still flew - much more so than win3.11 (crippleware
sold at professional prices) and we still think macs are dead cute. :>

:my! The PowerMac is even worse! I hope, for Apple's sake, the Mac
:OS 8.x is better.

well, it might help if it were actually an os this time round, rather
than a glorified graphics library. ;> ;>

:Yep, I'll take my Win95 machine (that multitasks, has tons of
^^^^^^^^^^ badly
:software and is much simpler to use) and my Palm Pilot any day.

admittedly it's better than the mac, which doesn't, but still not a
patch on unix. as for us, we'll keep going with dos, because whilst it
does a fraction of what we'd expect from an os, it does at least have
the good grace to keep right out of our way when we want it to.

(also, our efforts to set up tcp on win3.1 ended dismally, and we don't
have a system that could run win95.)

Peter Seebach

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Feb 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/15/98

to

In article <6c4jf9$k...@world6.bellatlantic.net>,

George Gray <geo...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>I guess I am one of the minority (?) who happen to LIKE the look and feel of
>Win95. I have never had any usability problems with the software. The
>taskbar is the most welcome addition followed closely by the RIGHT mouse
>click menu. I never understood why the Mac only had ONE mouse button.

Because they thought it would be easier. They were wrong.

On the other hand, MacOS didn't put the close button *right next to another
completely different button which will invariably cause the close button to
move if you misclick*. UGH!

>I am also one who does NOT like the Mac's look and feel. I find the Mac OS
>alot more difficult to use, the performance is terrible and it looks like
>crap.

While I don't think either of them is winning any beauty contests, I don't
buy the "performance" argument. Neither is fast, but I don't see any
evidence that the Windows world is faster.

>I do like the startup sounds, tho. I get a kick out emulating the

>thing on my WINDOWS PC. The emulated performance is BETTER than any of the

>real Mac's I have used. Oh my!

Then you must have used only awfully slow macs, and almost certainly pre-power
macs.

>The PowerMac is even worse!

No, it isn't. The PPC will run circles around any currently available
Windows hardware.

>I hope, for

>Apple's sake, the Mac OS 8.x is better. And the Newton? It's such an
>improvement over the Mac but still needs work.

You're a markov chain, aren't you?

>Yep, I'll take my Win95 machine (that multitasks, has tons of software and

>is much simpler to use) and my Palm Pilot any day.

Yup, markov chain. Macs have been multitasking, however poorly, for a long
time now.

Rob Hafernik

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Feb 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/15/98

to

In article <6c4jf9$k...@world6.bellatlantic.net>, "George Gray"
<geo...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:

<snip>

> I never understood why the Mac only had ONE mouse button.

<snip>

Simple, really. When Apple was designing the first commercial GUI (they
only stole/bought/traded/scammed CONCEPTS from Xerox, the Lisa didn't look
or act all that much like the Star -- far less than Windows looks like the
Mac, at any rate), they did mucho user testing.

They tried mice with several different numbers of buttons. At the time,
when a mouse was a very new gadget, neophyte users (ie, their target
audience) did poorly with multi-button mice. They kept getting confused
about what button they were pressing.

So Apple went with a single button and invented the idea of a double-click
as an alternate type of input.

You could argue that today's more sophisticated users can handle
multiple-button mice and you might even be right. Certainly you can buy
them for the Mac if you want.

Still we know that, in those days, a single button mouse was better,
because they TESTED actual people and found out.

I've never heard of MS doing this sort of thing (and their software
doesn't seem like they do), but they MUST have user test labs somewhere?

>The emulated performance is BETTER than any of the

>real Mac's I have used. Oh my! The PowerMac is even worse!

I presume this is a troll, intended to provoke a big flame. It won't,
though, everyone knows that the top-end PPC's are quite a bit faster than
top-end Pentiums right now (where they will be next week is open to
question). If you want to start an argument, you need to start with a
proposition that provokes argument, not laughter.

Rob Hafernik

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Feb 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/15/98

to

In article <6c5gcv$862$1...@irk.zetnet.co.uk>, lis...@zetnet.co.uk wrote:

<snip>

> :Yep, I'll take my Win95 machine (that multitasks, has tons of
> ^^^^^^^^^^ badly
> :software and is much simpler to use) and my Palm Pilot any day.
>
> admittedly it's better than the mac, which doesn't, but still not a
> patch on unix.

<snip>

I didn't want to get into this, it's a very tired subject, but I can't
hold off any longer now that someone has compounded the original error.

BOTH W95 and the Mac MULTITASK. They both have for years, to suggest
otherwise is silly. The Mac does not use PRE-EMPTIVE multitasking and
some people contend that W95 does (although those who so contend are
usually not coming from "real" multitasking backgrounds, such as Unix).

Rob Hafernik

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Feb 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/15/98

to

In article <MPG.f4ebd68c...@news.whidbey.com>,
hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net wrote:

> In article <6c1rl3$59q$1...@sue.cc.uregina.ca>, ba...@borealis.cs.uregina.ca
> says...
>
> You make very good points throughout your post. You're quite right that
> M$'s success is largely due to three factors:
> 1) Listening to customers
> 2) Persistence
> 3) Vast resources (which allow them to persist through their incompetence
> [my editorial added])

<snip>

Well, I don't know about 1), if so, it's a new phenomena. The only times
I've tried to call MS to report a problem I haven't been able to actually
reach anyone who cared.

One time we found a TERRIBLE bug with Microsoft Mail for the Mac -- one
that prevented it from RUNNING AT ALL on Macs with more than 8 meg of
memory (this at a time when very few folks could afford that much memory
and we worked for a memory company).

We tried and tried to report it to MS, but never could find anyone that
could understand our call or even care in any way. Finally, we wrote a
patch that fixed the problem (it was a simple overflow in a 16-bit math
operation) and posted the patch on the BBS's. Thousands of people
eventually downloaded it as memory became cheaper and more common. Many
folks called us about the problem after they bought memory and couldn't
get a response from MS, we just directed them to the BBS's (no Internet
then). About 18 months later, MS put out a new version that fixed the
problem.

2) and 3), I'll agree with.

Nigel Orr

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Feb 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/16/98

to

On 15 Feb 1998 01:29:03 GMT, lis...@zetnet.co.uk wrote:

>in our view - in win3.11 our mail client used to change its icon when we
>received mail. win95 can't do this, instead relying on putting a little
>icon in the corner of the taskbar. ugh.

Actually, it can, at least with Eudora.

Nigel

AntiSpam- Reply must include next line to avoid deletion- sorry!
NigeL OrR Research Associate O ______
Underwater Acoustics Group, o / o \_/(
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne \______/ \(

Tom Harrington

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Feb 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/16/98

to

hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net wrote:
: In article <6c1rl3$59q$1...@sue.cc.uregina.ca>, ba...@borealis.cs.uregina.ca
: says...

: I do take issue with one comment:

: > many companies make the mistake that it's 'not worth it'
: > because they think Microsoft abandoned it, when in reality, Microsoft
: > merely failed in it

: Failed in it? Micro$oft is the leading provider of MAC software.

Failed with Word 6 for Mac. When Word 6 came out, it was such a poorly-
done program that Mac users simply refused to buy it. Word 5.1 was so
much better than Word 6 that MS was put in the rare position of being
forced to reintroduce an old version of the software in order to continue
making sales. And that's not all; there was apparently a Word 5.1
"downgrade" package for people who had bought Word 6. The problem was
partially resolved with Word 6.0.x, but people still stuck with 5.1
unless the change was unavoidable.

MS learned their lesson, though, or at least that's what I hear. Word
'98 for Mac is reportedly a great program, according to early reviews.
We'll see; it's not available to the public until next month.

--
Tom Harrington --------- t...@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph

"Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that
I have no grasp of it whatsoever." -The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Justin Stodola

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Feb 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/16/98

to

On Sun, 15 Feb 1998 22:21:49 -0600, shok...@well.com (Rob Hafernik)
wrote:
<mass snip>

>You could argue that today's more sophisticated users can handle
>multiple-button mice and you might even be right. Certainly you can

<more snip>
You'd probably be wrong. Ask anyone that has to tech support anything
that has anything to do with Win 95. Getting somebody to right click
on anything is nigh on impossible.

--
Justin Stodola

Robert Billing

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Feb 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/16/98

to

In article <shokwave-150...@as1-dialup-16.wc-aus.io.com>
shok...@well.com "Rob Hafernik" writes:

> then). About 18 months later, MS put out a new version that fixed the
> problem.

...thereby infringing your copyright on the patch.

Kirk Is

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Feb 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/16/98

to

lis...@zetnet.co.uk wrote:

: (btw, the taskbar is actually a move away from ergonomic interfce design
: in our view - in win3.11 our mail client used to change its icon when we

: received mail. win95 can't do this, instead relying on putting a little
: icon in the corner of the taskbar. ugh.

I *miss* animated Icon art. It Win3.1 the icon had its own little
client area you could paint on, just like the full sized windows...
(I discovered this by accident, making little software toys.)
Besides that, I think the task bar brings across a good dichotomy between
running programs and programs or doucments that can be run.

--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
"If you haven't been rejected three times this week then your not trying."
--www.emtex.com/toptips

David Thompson

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Feb 16, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/16/98

to

lis...@zetnet.co.uk wrote in message <6c5gcv$862$1...@irk.zetnet.co.uk>...
>
>
>On 1998-02-14 geo...@bellatlantic.net said:
> :I guess I am one of the minority (?) who happen to LIKE the look

> :Mac only had ONE mouse button.
>
>because you can do everything with one mouse button on the mac. jobs
>wanted it to be as simple as possible to use; more than one mouse button
>he thought might confuse people.

Like Gates said "No ever needs more than one mouse button". Oops I use that
when I say I hate MS stuff.

blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).
blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).
blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).
blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).
blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).
blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).
blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).
blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).
blah blah (so my damn nntp wii send this short reply).

Rob Hafernik

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Feb 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/17/98

to

<snip>

> > then). About 18 months later, MS put out a new version that fixed the
> > problem.
>
> ...thereby infringing your copyright on the patch.

Hmmm, maybe they did at that. I guess we should have snooped through the
code in the new release to see if they had "stolen" our patch. Lesson
learned... <G>

Victor Eijkhout

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Feb 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/17/98

to

hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net writes:

> Windows was coded in house, based on ideas stolen from Apple (who stole
^^^^^
> them from Xerox).

ITYM "bought". HTH. HAND.

--
Victor Eijkhout
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way
to factor large prime numbers." -- Bill Gates from "The Road Ahead," p. 265.

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

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Feb 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/17/98

to

On 1998-02-15 shok...@well.com(RobHafernik) said:
:BOTH W95 and the Mac MULTITASK. They both have for years, to
:suggest otherwise is silly.

using that definition, anything that's event driven multitasks. but to
us, co-operative multitasking is not true multitasking, because of the
one process that will refuse to co-operate. however, provided that
doesn't happen, it's probably the best approach to uniprocessor
multitasking, and certainly the simplest.

but it *is* fragile, and microsoft regularly seemed to build programs
that broke their own implementation of it...

:The Mac does not use PRE-EMPTIVE

:multitasking and some people contend that W95 does (although those
:who so contend are usually not coming from "real" multitasking
:backgrounds, such as Unix).

and that's precisely what we meant.

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

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Feb 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/17/98

to

actually, we suspect that the success of microsoft has nothing
whatsoever to do with any talent or merit of the organisationitself, and
everything to do with the extraordinary success of the architecture they
first piggy-backed and then hi-jacked, despite the technical reasons why
it should have fallen at the first hurdle.

so the question is, why didn't pcs drop off the edge of the world once
superior systems were available? probably because, by accident, it was a
completely open and eminently cloneable design. by the time the clone
market was established ibm didn't really know what had hit them, and
when they tried to close it off again their hands were bitten. (mca,
anyone...?)

microsoft, because of this market, had a steady income in the shape of
dos. they could do what they pleased, were free to tinker until they
came up with something to replace dos, safe in the knowledge that they
had a steady income anyway. they conceived first windows (a flop until
version 3), then os/2 (a really bad flop, for all kinds of reasons) and
then realised that they had a winner in win3 and dropped os/2 like a hot
spud.

so why did win3 take off? simply because the technology was ready for
it. other companies had tried to do similar things (notably dr with gem)
but the raw power just wasn't there in most cases; win3 coincided with
the readily available "386 plus large-ish hard drive" system. it also
had proportional fonts in the menus... and whatever could be said about
it, it was easier than dos, and you could run several dos and windows
programs at once using it. they also developed software for win3 that
gave them a head start in that particular market.

the rest is history, and now we're stuck with it... :<

John Robinson

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Feb 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/17/98

to

On Mon, 16 Feb 1998 01:25:06 GMT, Nigel Orr <Nige...@ncl.ac.uk> wrote:

> On 15 Feb 1998 01:29:03 GMT, lis...@zetnet.co.uk wrote:
>

> >in our view - in win3.11 our mail client used to change its icon when we
> >received mail. win95 can't do this, instead relying on putting a little
> >icon in the corner of the taskbar. ugh.
>

> Actually, it can, at least with Eudora.

And Forté Agent changes the icon too.

--
John Robinson jo...@thebeard.demon.co.uk
________________________________________________________________________________
"You know, just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that
wasn't immune to bullets." - Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

Russell Schulz

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Feb 17, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/17/98

to

ba...@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John Bayko) writes:

>> I'm sure that M$ bought Excel, but can't back that up. Help?
>
> Developed by MS, but much of it was merged from a Macintosh
> spreadsheed called WingZ, which was ported to Windows, and then
> bought by Microsoft which discontinued the competing (superior)
> product, incorporating many of the features into Excel.

I don't think Microsoft ever owned Wingz (<http://www.wingz.com/>).
--
Russell...@locutus.ofB.ORG Shad 86c

Dan Strychalski

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Feb 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/18/98

to

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

> actually, we suspect that the success of microsoft has nothing
> whatsoever to do with any talent or merit of the organisationitself, and
> everything to do with the extraordinary success of the architecture they
> first piggy-backed and then hi-jacked, despite the technical reasons why
> it should have fallen at the first hurdle.

Businesspeople trust the name IBM. Developers love expandable systems.
Microsoft had the OS. They had everyone by the jugular, and they knew it.

I recall a day in 1982, when I had a tiny booth at the West Coast
Computer Faire where I sold my first copies of my beloved word
processor, Volkswriter, and a fellow from Microsoft stopped by.... He
said that Micropro needn't worry about me... and that Microsoft
wasn't working on a word processor yet. But he predicted that someday
Bill would decide to eat WordStar's lunch, and that then they would.

-- Camilo Wilson, CEO, Cogix Corporation, April 17, 1996
http://www.cogix.com/NetscapeSunset.htm

What we have seen, what the DOJ has attempted to address, is only the tip
of the iceberg.

Dan Strychalski
dski at cameonet, cameo, com, tw
Apologies for the anti-spam devices and non-threading newsreader.

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

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Feb 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/18/98

to

On 1998-02-18 ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx(DanStrychalski) said:
:lis...@zetnet.co.uk wrote:
:> actually, we suspect that the success of microsoft has nothing

:> whatsoever to do with any talent or merit of the
:>organisationitself, and everything to do with the extraordinary
:>success of the architecture they first piggy-backed and then
:>hi-jacked, despite the technical reasons why it should have
:>fallen at the first hurdle.

:Businesspeople trust the name IBM. Developers love expandable
:systems. Microsoft had the OS. They had everyone by the jugular,
:and they knew it.

developers love expandable systems, yes, but they hate systems that have
to be expanded to work properly - as soon as you get into that
situation, you have a myriad of possible expansions to cover. ugh.
graphics cards are a case in point, as are printers, etc. etc. then
windoze comes along, says "hey! just write for virtual devices, we'll do
the rest!" and everyone says "wow, at last" and because they've
forgotten that when dr waved gem about and said much the same thing, the
hardware was too slow to endure the killer performance hit, they see
that it only almost cripples the computer and embrace it like good
little bunnyrabbits, and never mind about those two lights coming up
quickly from the distance there, petal, just stay between them and
you'll be ok...

:"I recall a day in 1982, when I had a tiny booth at the West Coast

:Computer Faire where I sold my first copies of my beloved word
:processor, Volkswriter, and a fellow from Microsoft stopped by....
:He said that Micropro needn't worry about me... and that Microsoft
:wasn't working on a word processor yet. But he predicted that
:someday Bill would decide to eat WordStar's lunch, and that then
:they would."
:-- Camilo Wilson, CEO, Cogix Corporation, April 17, 1996

is volkswriter for dos still available in some form somewhere? first
word processor we ever used for dos. best as far as we can remember,
too.

:http://www.cogix.com/NetscapeSunset.htm

:What we have seen, what the DOJ has attempted to address, is only
:the tip of the iceberg.

don't, please don't. the thought that keeps us going in this industry is
that microsoft's nemesis can't be too far away now. take that away from
us and we might as well shove pencils up our nostrils, underpants on our
head, and sit in a corner drooling and saying things like "wibble",
"millenium hand and shrimp", and "that bill gates is a really wonderful
person, he's done wonders for the computer industry".

wri...@eng.sun.com

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Feb 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/18/98

to

From hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net

>A recent thread discussed Micro$oft's lack of success with products that
>it developed from scratch... and its spectacular profits from technology
>that it bought. Let's talk about that.

>MS-DOS was bought outright.

The OS (QDOS) bought from Seattle Computer Products was a crude product,
which required a major effort to convert into MS-DOS.

Sabu

bill_h

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Feb 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/18/98

to

wri...@Eng.Sun.COM wrote:
> The OS (QDOS) bought from Seattle Computer Products was a crude product,
> which required a major effort to convert into MS-DOS.
>
> Sabu

There are good reasons to doubt there ever was a QDOS. If ANYONE, including
Bob Morrisette (sabu) can produce ANYTHING contemporaneous with it's
alleged gestation period, then DO SO!

Seattle Computer Products (Tim Paterson) created? developed? plagerized?
86-DOS. The earliest versions, 0.1 and 0.3, were sent, in very small numbers
(probably under a hundred copies) to OEM's, reviewers, and developers.
Version 1.0 was sold, along with Seattle Computer's S-100 8086 and support
boards, to the public for a couple years or so. IBM's Personal Computer
DOS was based on 86-DOS version 1.0, which was NOT backward compatible
with the earlier versions.

I can't confirm, but believe, that the 8086 operating system was sold under
several names PRIOR to the release of the IBM PC, including SCP DOS.

Dr. Peter Kittel

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Feb 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/18/98

to

Well, the world does not only consist of Mac and M$. Amiga users *had*
to use the right mouse button for every menu already in 1985, and I
did teach some people myself. There were few problems with this, as
the Amiga concept with the menus triggered by the right button is
rather easy to grasp. (This has also the very nice side effect that you
save screen space on the Amiga, as the menu bar is normally *not*
displayed and only is shown in the moment you press that right button.)

--
Best Regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // http://www.pios.de of PIOS
Private Site in Frankfurt, Germany \X/ office: peterk @ pios.de

wri...@eng.sun.com

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Feb 19, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/19/98

to

In article f...@prancer.cs.utk.edu, Victor Eijkhout <eijk...@prancer.cs.utk.edu> writes:
> hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net writes:
>
> > Windows was coded in house, based on ideas stolen from Apple (who stole
> ^^^^^
> > them from Xerox).
>
> ITYM "bought". HTH. HAND.
>
> --
> Victor Eijkhout

Then why did Xerox sue Apple? Prove your statement.

Sabu

Eric J. Korpela

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Feb 19, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/19/98

to

In article <6cfquj$c5g$1...@engnews2.eng.sun.com>, <wri...@Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>From hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net
>
>>A recent thread discussed Micro$oft's lack of success with products that
>>it developed from scratch... and its spectacular profits from technology

>
>>MS-DOS was bought outright.

>
>The OS (QDOS) bought from Seattle Computer Products was a crude product,
>which required a major effort to convert into MS-DOS.
>
>Sabu

It may be true that a major effort was required to convert QDOS into MS-DOS
version 7. However, anyone who has seen both will tell you that the effort
required to convert QDOS into PC-DOS 1.0 would hardly fill a skilled
programmer's weekend. The hard part is the BIOS, and IBM did that.

MS-DOS has always been a crude product, ranging from 5-15 years behind
the state of the art.

Eric
--
Eric Korpela | An object at rest can never be
kor...@ssl.berkeley.edu | stopped.
<a href="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/finger/mofo.ssl.berkeley.edu/korpela/w">
Click here for more info.</a>

Ralph Wade Phillips

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Feb 19, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/19/98

to

Hi there!

wri...@Eng.Sun.COM wrote in article <6cfspf$c5g$3...@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM>...

Because they hadn't been paid ENOUGH?

unread,

Feb 20, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/20/98

to

On 1998-02-20 se...@plethora.net(PeterSeebach) said:
:In article <6ccono$ml8$8...@irk.zetnet.co.uk>, <lis...@zetnet.co.uk>

:>wrote: so the question is, why didn't pcs drop off the edge of the
:>world once superior systems were available? probably because, by
:>accident, it was a completely open and eminently cloneable design.

:No. Because it was made by IBM, and they made the typewriter it was
:supposed to replace.

naah - if it was just "because ibm made it", it wouldn't have been half
so successful. the secret wasn't that ibm made it, so much as that
anyone else could. including a lot of companies who had made the cp/m
machines that also got replaced... if ibm had tried to enforce their
copyrights on its design (not just its bios) the pc would have sunk
under its own obsolescence.

:Later, because you already had one.

:Later, because this machine could run the software on the "old" PC.

agreed here, though.

George Gray

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Feb 20, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/20/98

to

>gee, and I was going to give it credit for beign a good Msoft designed
>product. No, not the current versions, but 1.05 for it's time, 3.0 and
>4.0 as still good, and 5.1 was at least usable. But 6.0 and the windows
>versions took out the stuff I used, and I bought a linux box.

With all of the extra crap that is currently in Word (and ALL other word
processors) what could they possibly TAKEN out? What did you use that is no
longer there? I cannot think of a single feature that is missing. Maybe it
was something so obscure only a die hard techie type would use it anyway.
Please enlighten me!

Kin Hoong CHUNG

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Feb 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/21/98

to

Peter Seebach (se...@plethora.net) wrote:

: In article <6ccono$ml8$8...@irk.zetnet.co.uk>, <lis...@zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
: >so the question is, why didn't pcs drop off the edge of the world once
: >superior systems were available? probably because, by accident, it was a
: >completely open and eminently cloneable design.

: No. Because it was made by IBM, and they made the typewriter it was
: supposed to replace.

: Later, because you already had one.

: Later, because this machine could run the software on the "old" PC.

I suspect it is also a case of all this old data which needed a PC to read
(with the old software).

Cheers,

Kin Hoong

Jukka Hoehe

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Feb 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/21/98

to

George Gray <geo...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:

> >4.0 as still good, and 5.1 was at least usable. But 6.0 and the windows
> >versions took out the stuff I used, and I bought a linux box.

> With all of the extra crap that is currently in Word (and ALL other word
> processors) what could they possibly TAKEN out? What did you use that is no
> longer there? I cannot think of a single feature that is missing.

I think he talks about the Mac-version. Word 6 had no font menu, no
screen test (a nice screensaver) and dropped some other useful
interface-enhancements but I don't remember exactly which.
(Command-Option-+ for adding dialog box items to the menus?)

--
Jukka

Rick Hawkins

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Feb 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/21/98

to

In article <6cllad$r...@world6.bellatlantic.net>,
George Gray <geo...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:

>>gee, and I was going to give it credit for beign a good Msoft designed
>>product. No, not the current versions, but 1.05 for it's time, 3.0 and

>>4.0 as still good, and 5.1 was at least usable. But 6.0 and the windows
>>versions took out the stuff I used, and I bought a linux box.

>With all of the extra crap that is currently in Word (and ALL other word
>processors) what could they possibly TAKEN out? What did you use that is no

>longer there? I cannot think of a single feature that is missing. Maybe it
>was something so obscure only a die hard techie type would use it anyway.
>Please enlighten me!

It is a bit odd, isn't it? :)

The biggest omissions were the typesetting commands. From 1.0 through
5.1, you could enter things like \f(4,5) for a fractions, \a for arrays,
etc. (the character wasn't really \, but one that looked like \ with a
grey . superimposed. but you could map it to keys). You could specify
signle/double sided parens around whatever. And don't forget
overstrike, to put ^ or ~ above a variable.

Actually, i first used it extensively in my law office, not for tech
writing. It let me put a huge } to the right of the case caption on
some forms that otherwise would have had to use preprinted with
typewriters.

When I started taking graduate classes again, learning the rest of them
meant that I could take math notes full speed. Also, i used the old
macro program that came with word4 to automate some of the sequences.
One math prof asked what I was doing, as noone could possibly write
latex that fast . . .

Open one of these files in word 6, and they're all changed irrevocably
to equation editor. Unlike eqution editor, you can easily edit the
typsetting stuff from the keyboard. When I tried the equation editor, i
found it frustrating at best.

I believe the insert symbol command, which gave a single character of
symbol, and was great for greek variables in the middle of something
else, still exists, but it's a pain on the configureatiosn i've tried.
I had it mapped to cmd-g, so i just hit cmd-g b to get a beta, and went
back along my way. On the windows machines with vers 6 or 7 that i've
tried, it pops up menus to choose which character and which symbol font
(just give me my (*^(*&%^ beta!!!)

Mail-merge also seems to have taken a step backwards. When i needed to
send out job letters in january, i ended up dragging out an old mac to
do it. I used to just be able to write conditionals. It still
recognizes them when it reads in a mac file, but it doesn't display them
fully on the screen. I think i managed to edit one, but it turned out
to be easier to write on the mac with 5.1 and transfer files.

Those are all that I'm certain are missing/seriously downgraded. But
they were also the only reasons that I was using word. For that matter,
they were why i still had macs.

Then I found lyx. It was easy to move arround arrays & equations with
the keys. I mentioned the single greek character to the developers, and
a few days later it was implemented.

So I now own a k6 running linux.

Lisa or Jeff

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Feb 22, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/22/98

to

Marketing.

Microsoft (and Bill Gates) are brilliant marketers.

As I'v mentioned before, look at the early GM model. Alfred Sloan
wanted to compete with Henry Ford. But Ford's factories built
the Model T so efficiently there was no way to compete head-to-head.

Well, Sloan sold _status_, not basic transportation. Sloan created
the cachet of fancy cars, the buildup from Chevy to Buick to Cadillac.

Ford, a very stubborn person, stuck to his Model T. GM flourished.

Much later on GM stumbled in the late 1970s when it still stuck by
selling "status" when the Japanese came in with superior cars. It
took a long time for GM to catch on what the public really wanted.

Getting back to Gates, how people REALLY need a Pentium CPU with
16 Meg of RAM? Most home users do not need all that horsepower to
write a letter to the electric company. Indeed, an awful lot of
business users write very simple memos or spreadsheets and would
do fine with the horsepower of an 8088 or even a CPM machine.

But Gates sold us on having Windows 95. And Intel has sold us
on having a Pentium II MMX. You often hear people bragging about
their CPU just as people bragged years back about their cars.

John Pearson

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Feb 22, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/22/98

to

In article <6cllad$r...@world6.bellatlantic.net>, George Gray wrote:
>
>>gee, and I was going to give it credit for beign a good Msoft designed
>>product. No, not the current versions, but 1.05 for it's time, 3.0 and
>>4.0 as still good, and 5.1 was at least usable. But 6.0 and the windows
>>versions took out the stuff I used, and I bought a linux box.
>With all of the extra crap that is currently in Word (and ALL other word
>processors) what could they possibly TAKEN out? What did you use that is no
>longer there? I cannot think of a single feature that is missing. Maybe it
>was something so obscure only a die hard techie type would use it anyway.
>Please enlighten me!
>

I'll bite; to name a single, random feature, Word 5.1a for the Mac
had a paragraph format 'keep with previous' (i.e., on the same page);
that got dropped in Word 6, and required us to redesign some of our
forms (before we had our signature block marked 'keep with previous',
which meant that it didn't get orphaned; now we rely on people to
apply 'keep with next' format to the last para of their document body
before printing, with predictable results).

For another, our Word 5.1a forms used Print Merge; Word 6 dumped
that for Mail Merge, which did the same thing differently. Word
6 makes no attempt at converting Word 5.1a merge fields, replacing
them with plain text; not a missing feature per se, but it felt
like it to operators.

What with the above, significantly slower performance, lower
perceived reliability and a totally re-organised set of menus,
the Word 5.1a -> Word 6 upgrade was very little loved in our office.

John P.
--
jo...@huiac.apana.org.au

Rick Hawkins

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Feb 23, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/23/98

to

In article <6cpjri$8...@netaxs.com>, Lisa or Jeff <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>Marketing.
>

>Well, Sloan sold _status_, not basic transportation. Sloan created
>the cachet of fancy cars, the buildup from Chevy to Buick to Cadillac.

NOt quite that clearly. Sloan formed GM, and ended up with 10 brands,
as well as a gaggle of parts companies.

He then lost control to bankers (if I recall, it was using stock pledged
as collateral. THe manner of loss would violate assorted laws today).

Sloan responded by forming Chevy, getting a famous french race driver,
Cheverolet, involved. The sales pitch was "a six for the price of a
four." As has been becoming common again, the "levels" of car tracked
well with the number of cylinders.

Chevy prospered, and it, it's subsidiaries, and Sloans's friends
(notably including the DuPonts, iirc), began quietly buying GM stock.

After several years, Sloan appeared at the annual meeting for GM, and
announced his control of 51% of the stock (can't do that anymore, either
:).

A new GM was formed in another state, and through this mechanism Chevy
acquired GM.

While I'm at it, but I forget where this fits into thetime sequence:
Chevy, competing with the Model T, named a model with the T's
price.(495?). And it also matched the T's price--sort of: some minor
standard equipment, such as the electric starter, wasn't included :)

rick

Edward Rice

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Feb 23, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/23/98

to

In article <6cpjri$8...@netaxs.com>,

hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa or Jeff) wrote:

> Getting back to Gates, how people REALLY need a Pentium CPU with
> 16 Meg of RAM? Most home users do not need all that horsepower to
> write a letter to the electric company. Indeed, an awful lot of
> business users write very simple memos or spreadsheets and would
> do fine with the horsepower of an 8088 or even a CPM machine.
>
> But Gates sold us on having Windows 95. And Intel has sold us
> on having a Pentium II MMX. You often hear people bragging about
> their CPU just as people bragged years back about their cars.

What was the price of an 8088 system with printer, scope, "high-speed"
1200-baud modem, and as much memory as you needed to hang on it?

What is the price of a like Pentium system?

Now, why should we give up cheap, fast computers in favor of not-as-cheap
slower computers?

wri...@eng.sun.com

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Feb 23, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/23/98

to

From hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net

"QDOS" was basically a rip off of cp/m, modified to work on an 8086 chip.
Even though 8086 could sort of handle 16-bit instructions, the early
iterations of QDOS/PC-DOS/MS-DOS pretended that it was written strictly
for an 8-bit processor.

It didn't break any new ground, and didn't even stretch to its own
limits. It was a sign of what was to come from Micro$oft.

-----------------------------------------------

Microsoft did not create QDOS. Can't blame them for everything.

Sabu

William Hamblen

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Feb 23, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/23/98

to

On 23 Feb 1998 00:43:09 GMT, rhaw...@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins)
wrote:

You're both confusing Sloan with Durant.

Lisa or Jeff

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

> What is the price of a like Pentium system?
> Now, why should we give up cheap, fast computers in favor of not-as-cheap
> slower computers?

I'll tell you: How much does a radio cost?

Not an easy answer. You can get simple "transistor radio" for $5. You
can get a home entertainment system with Dolby sound, foot massage, etc.,
for $5,000. Both convert public radio waves to sound for you to hear.

This price range has NOT happened in the computer world. A full service
PC is still around $1,000.

Why can't someone get a bare bones PC for $200?

Boris Gjenero

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

Maybe a new full service PC is expensive, but you can get used systems
for much less. If you know where to look you can get reasonably modern
used PC compatible systems for $200 or even less. If it doesn't have to
be PC compatible you could get it practically for free even if it used
to cost tens of thousands of dollars. Of course you can generally get a
free OS and free software for it.

So, basically... computers are not expensive if you're willing to look
around. If you insist on just looking at new PCs they may still be
expensive, but even that is changing. Some systems based on the new
highly integrated chips like the MediaGX are rather inexpensive, and we
may soon have $200 PCs

--
| Boris Gjenero <bgje...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> |
| Home page: http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~bgjenero/ |
| "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to |
| depend greatly on our own point of view." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, ROTJ |

Louis RAPHAEL

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

John Pearson <jo...@cognac.localnet> wrote:

: What with the above, significantly slower performance, lower

: perceived reliability and a totally re-organised set of menus,
: the Word 5.1a -> Word 6 upgrade was very little loved in our office.

This is probably a stupid question, but why *did* you upgrade, then?
I've made decisions *not* to upgrade old software at times, being that
I considered the old version better...

Louis

Duncan Grisby

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

In article <shokwave-150...@as1-dialup-16.wc-aus.io.com>,
Rob Hafernik <shok...@well.com> wrote:

[...]

>They tried mice with several different numbers of buttons. At the time,
>when a mouse was a very new gadget, neophyte users (ie, their target
>audience) did poorly with multi-button mice. They kept getting confused
>about what button they were pressing.
>
>So Apple went with a single button and invented the idea of a double-click
>as an alternate type of input.

>
>You could argue that today's more sophisticated users can handle

>multiple-button mice and you might even be right. Certainly you can buy
>them for the Mac if you want.
>
>Still we know that, in those days, a single button mouse was better,
>because they TESTED actual people and found out.

This statement exemplifies what, in my opinion, is wrong with a lot of
user interface design. Everyone seems to concentrate on what is
easiest for new users, when what is actually needed is a system which
is efficient to use once it has been learnt. People -- both users and
designers -- fail to realise that a little extra offort spent learning
something can make a huge difference later on.

Why is it that the main criterion for an "easy to use" system is ease
of learning?

--
-- Duncan Grisby --
-- dpg...@cam.ac.uk --
-- finger dpg...@badges.cl.cam.ac.uk for PGP public key --

Rick Hawkins

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

In article <slrn6f11...@cognac.localnet>,
John Pearson <jo...@cognac.localnet> wrote:

>For another, our Word 5.1a forms used Print Merge; Word 6 dumped
>that for Mail Merge, which did the same thing differently. Word
>6 makes no attempt at converting Word 5.1a merge fields, replacing
>them with plain text; not a missing feature per se, but it felt
>like it to operators.

Now for the really bizarre twist: word 6 for windows *does* convert the
5.1 for mac merge fields . . . (though you can't see quite what it does
with conditions, and there were a couple of things that I couldn't enter
or change)

Mark A. Malloy

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

Lisa or Jeff wrote:

> Why can't someone get a bare bones PC for $200?

I bought a new Amiga 600 back in 1993 for $199.

Of course, it was an Amiga, and you said PC...
And it wasn't cutting edge technology, even among the Amiga lineup...
And it didn't have a hard drive at first...

...but it was a new computer under $200.

- Mark

--
--- http://www.ntr.net/~reatta ---

Sir Isle

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

: hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa or Jeff) wrote:
: > Getting back to Gates, how people REALLY need a Pentium CPU with
: > 16 Meg of RAM? Most home users do not need all that horsepower to
: > write a letter to the electric company. Indeed, an awful lot of
: > business users write very simple memos or spreadsheets and would
: > do fine with the horsepower of an 8088 or even a CPM machine.

True. Many would probably be more productive, since then the
employees couldn't play solitare when no one was looking. ;)
Isle

Robert Billing

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

In article <6ct7ve$4...@netaxs.com> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com "Lisa or Jeff" writes:

> Why can't someone get a bare bones PC for $200?

I looked at this a while back. Once you have paid for the case, power
supply, monitor, keyboard and rodent, then the choice of CPU only makes
a small difference to the overall component cost.

--
I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal
lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/
"Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three"

Alan Bowler

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

In article <6cupot$htl$1...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> Duncan Grisby <dpg...@cam.ac.uk> writes:
>
>Why is it that the main criterion for an "easy to use" system is ease
>of learning?

Because the criteria, is NOT "what will make the user productive", it
is "what will make the salesman most productive". The salesman
is cultured in "marketing theory" that maintains what is being sold is
irrelevant (I.e. it is beneath his dignity to actually know something
about the product), and the purchase choice is made by soeone
other than the user (think of Dilbert's pointy headed boss).

John Stracke

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

(I came in late; in reponse to the subject: well, they made pretty good
Basics, once upon a time, if you like that sort of thing. ;-)

Duncan Grisby wrote:

> Why is it that the main criterion for an "easy to use" system is ease
> of learning?

Two reasons, one marketing and one real:

Marketing: If it's hard to learn, nobody will buy it, 'cause the people that
evaluate it haven't learned it yet.

Real: because ease of learning leads to continued ease of use, because there's
less to remember. I remember N+1 details for Unix, sockets, protocols,
etc...but that's my job. I have read the user's manual on my voicemail
system, but I don't use any of the oddball stuff often enough to remember it;
and I shouldn't have to. It's not my job. It's the system's job to make
things obvious.

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

On 1998-02-24 hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com(LisaorJeff) said:
:Why can't someone get a bare bones PC for $200?

we bought a 286 the other day for 30 pounds; does that count?

as regards your analogy, though; there are obvious differences between
radios at both ends of the spectrum. the circuits will be quite
different, the high-end ones will have much better sensitivity, etc. but
in a computer system, the driving force is the software - if it doesn't
run the software du jour, it doesn't cut it, and these days the software
du jour is win95 - and really, aside from having more hard disk, or more
ram (though it still wants to swap with 64mb - why...?) or bigger and
better hard drives... you're stuck with the basic specification (plus a
heap of mechanical bits whose manufacturing price stays about constant).
that basic spec just can't be done for much under a grand (or 600 quid
over here). things were different in the days of home computers, where
you basically sequestered the family tv and tape deck and what you paid
for was the odd little box you could play on - but nowadays, the shape
of pcs is predefined, and it's just not worth making anything less.

we'd love to see a basic computer coming out, which had lightweight
software, a minimal spec (floppy-storage only perhaps?), a
cheaper-than-cheap monitor, and a nice tiny keyboard. price $100. but
can it be done...?

we suspect it can be, it has been, and it's called a second-hand atari
st. :<

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

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Feb 24, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/24/98

to

On 1998-02-23 ehr...@his.com(EdwardRice) said:

:hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa or Jeff) wrote:
:> Getting back to Gates, how people REALLY need a Pentium CPU with
:> 16 Meg of RAM? Most home users do not need all that horsepower to
:> write a letter to the electric company. Indeed, an awful lot of
:> business users write very simple memos or spreadsheets and would
:> do fine with the horsepower of an 8088 or even a CPM machine.

:> But Gates sold us on having Windows 95. And Intel has sold us

:> on having a Pentium II MMX. You often hear people bragging about
:> their CPU just as people bragged years back about their cars.

:What was the price of an 8088 system with printer, scope,
:"high-speed" 1200-baud modem, and as much memory as you needed to
:hang on it?

:What is the price of a like Pentium system?

"like"?

no, "like" would be asking what the price of an 8088 system would be
today. and the answer is... not enough less than the pentium. sure,
less, because your cpu would be $5 rather than $50 (or is it $25 these
days?) and you'd only have to buy one 1Mb SIMM ($4) rather than 2 8Mb
ones ($40). but you've only saved $81; you still need everything else to
go with it, and it's just not worth the economy, sadly.

you can buy things for farthings on the second hand market; but
businesses looking to equip their office buildings will need more
stability than that.

:Now, why should we give up cheap, fast computers in favor of
:not-as-cheap slower computers?

don't - just boot up dos sometime, load the ten-year-old word processor
of your choice (you know, the one you adored until you got a *much*
faster machine and bought word / installed lyx / whatever, the one you
found perfectly usable on a system with 2 floppies) and watch it fly.

*that's* why the passing of such computers is sad. when programmers were
up against it, they came through. now their life is easy, and the
programs are sloppy.

*sigh*

Peter Seebach

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

In article <B1168D55...@0.0.0.0>, Edward Rice <ehr...@his.com> wrote:
>What is the price of a like Pentium system?

>Now, why should we give up cheap, fast computers in favor of not-as-cheap
>slower computers?

We shouldn't...

But, let's look at, say, the external cache.

If a machine running Windows, with the cache on, and a machine running
Unix, with the cache off, are equivalently fast (overall, they're very,
very, close), why on earth would you pay extra for the cache?

Peter Seebach

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

In article <34F353F8...@thibault.org>,

John Stracke <fra...@thibault.org> wrote:
>Real: because ease of learning leads to continued ease of use, because there's
>less to remember.

I disagree; I've used one button mice, and two or three button mice, and
it is *MUCH* easier to use a system that can describe two tasks for one
object.

Games are, as always, the software where this is most important. I may
be willing to struggle to get my work done, but if playing a game involves
struggle, I'll play something else.

Most games these days use a 2nd mouse button; in the Mac world, they
use command-click or control-click to simulate it.

Now, let's look at a specific game: Populous II. Very easy game to
use.

In this game, one of the things you can do - and in fact, which you do a lot,
at length - is raise and lower land.

In the PC and Amiga versions of the game, a left-click raises land, and a
right-click lowers it.

In the Mac version, there is a button on the screen you can click with you
one mouse button, which toggles between 'raise' and 'lower'.

Guess which one is nearly unusable?

I will freely admit that one would, in general, learn the Macintosh interface
faster. You can only do one thing, and it's clearly labeled what will happen
when you do it.

Still, it's more work *every time you use it*.

Ease of learning and ease of use are dimly related.

Have you ever used a feature like "mail merge"?

Most of them require some amount of learning.

Would you argue that a werp with no mail merge is "easier to use" than one
which has it? I wouldn't.

>I remember N+1 details for Unix, sockets, protocols,
>etc...but that's my job. I have read the user's manual on my voicemail
>system, but I don't use any of the oddball stuff often enough to remember it;
>and I shouldn't have to. It's not my job. It's the system's job to make
>things obvious.

Within reason, yes. However, if I had to move 150 voice messages from one
box to another, I'd be a lot happier with a slightly more complicated feature
to do tag-many-and-operate-on-theem than I would doing the same thing a
hundred and fifty times.

Anyway, I am unconvinced that single button mice are easier to use. I'd
buy two-button being easier than three-button, and I will defend at length
the claim that, in general, using modifier-keys on mice is unnatural and
confusing.

This isn't to say I won't, in fact, eventually learn to use such features -
but I grant that they should not be in the basic feature set.

Would MacOS 8 be easier to use with a two button mouse? Yes. Remembering
"control click" for contextual menus is a pain - more of a pain because
almost everything else that simulates a two-button mouse on the mac uses
command-click.

Jeff DelPapa

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

In article <6cupot$htl$1...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>,

Duncan Grisby <dpg...@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <shokwave-150...@as1-dialup-16.wc-aus.io.com>,
> Rob Hafernik <shok...@well.com> wrote:
>
>>They tried mice with several different numbers of buttons. At the time,
>>when a mouse was a very new gadget, neophyte users (ie, their target
>>audience) did poorly with multi-button mice. They kept getting confused
>>about what button they were pressing.
>>
>>So Apple went with a single button and invented the idea of a double-click
>>as an alternate type of input.
>>

Actually, multpile clicks were part of far earlier interfaces. A
system built at mit in the late 70's used triple clicks as well as
double, and also used modifier keys to overload things further.
(the mice they got from parc were two button, the "Metal Munching"
mice that they built for themselves had 3. Things like existing
digitizer tablets had 4 and sometimes 8 buttons on the pucks)

>>Still we know that, in those days, a single button mouse was better,
>>because they TESTED actual people and found out.

Unfortunately, they didn't test enough. They might have avoided the
click and hold style of interface which is hard on the hand.

>
>This statement exemplifies what, in my opinion, is wrong with a lot of
>user interface design. Everyone seems to concentrate on what is
>easiest for new users, when what is actually needed is a system which
>is efficient to use once it has been learnt. People -- both users and
>designers -- fail to realise that a little extra offort spent learning
>something can make a huge difference later on.
>

>Why is it that the main criterion for an "easy to use" system is ease
>of learning?

Because one thing that characterises the modern computer user is a
lack of training, and a complete inability to open a manual.

<dp>

Sir Isle

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

On 24 Feb 1998 23:53:15 GMT lis...@zetnet.co.uk uttered forth the following:
: don't - just boot up dos sometime, load the ten-year-old word processor

: of your choice (you know, the one you adored until you got a *much*
: faster machine and bought word / installed lyx / whatever, the one you
: found perfectly usable on a system with 2 floppies) and watch it fly.

I still have a copy of the word processor I used back in high
school: program, spell check, et al on what I'm sure is a 360k disk
with a little room left over. I wrote a ton of stuff with it and
thought it was fantastic.
I also have a pinball game I play sometimes on my XT laptop (my
nieces like it too). It's about the only thing I can play it on,
because the ball's just a blur on my P90.

: *that's* why the passing of such computers is sad. when programmers were

: up against it, they came through. now their life is easy, and the
: programs are sloppy.

I agree. I think a lot of the best programming we'll ever see
now resides in dumpsters and dusty disk boxes. When I look back at some
of the games for the C64, I think WOW! They may not look like much
now compared to Myst or Jedi Knight, but when you consider what the
programmers did with the amount of memory and disk space they had, it's
amazing. (And when it comes right down to it, were those games any less
fun than today's?)
Unfortunately, as you said, with hardware prices down, and
memory, disk space, and speed coming out most machines' ears, there's
no need to be neat. And the drive to get things to market ASAP doesn't
help. The marketplace has also gotten into a mentality that practically
discourages neat code. Like anything else, bigger must be better. "I
don't want your word processor that fits on a 1.44Meg floppy; I want
this one that comes on a CD-ROM and takes up 200 megs of my hard drive
because it must be good if it's that huge".
It would be an interesting experiment to take a word processor,
make two boxes for it listing the same features, but have one listed
as twice the size of the other (maybe put in a file that contains the
word "duh" a few million times), and then put them side by side and
see which one sells more.
Any bets on which it would be?
Isle

David Given

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

In article <6cvmhb$1de$4...@irk.zetnet.co.uk>, <lis...@zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
[...]

>no, "like" would be asking what the price of an 8088 system would be
>today. and the answer is... not enough less than the pentium. sure,
>less, because your cpu would be $5 rather than $50 (or is it $25 these
>days?) and you'd only have to buy one 1Mb SIMM ($4) rather than 2 8Mb
>ones ($40). but you've only saved $81; you still need everything else to
>go with it, and it's just not worth the economy, sadly.

Mass production's the problem. Noone wants to buy slow computers --- so
they're expensive. If someone built a custom plant, it ought to be
possible to produce a calculator-sized block of plastic with a ZIP drive
in one end, a 16MHz 286, 4MB, video adaptor, and various ports for
peanuts. Plug in a monitor and keyboard and you're there. Build in a TV
modulator and you don't need a monitor.

[...]

>don't - just boot up dos sometime, load the ten-year-old word processor
>of your choice (you know, the one you adored until you got a *much*
>faster machine and bought word / installed lyx / whatever, the one you
>found perfectly usable on a system with 2 floppies) and watch it fly.

Anyone remember PC/GEM?

Try that on a modern machine, or even a machine that's horribly slow by
todays standards. It was designed to run on an XT with 512kB from floppy.
It *flies*.

You can get various versions from http://cdl.uta.edu; follow the signes
for PCDOS.

>*that's* why the passing of such computers is sad. when programmers were
>up against it, they came through. now their life is easy, and the
>programs are sloppy.
>

>*sigh*

Indeed. I remember the days when 20kB was a lot of memory... and I'm only
22.

Scary.

David Given
d...@freeyellow.com

Sean Gilley,0B206,,

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

In article <6d040l$b...@sol.sun.csd.unb.ca>,

Sir Isle <w6...@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca> wrote:
> I agree. I think a lot of the best programming we'll ever see
>now resides in dumpsters and dusty disk boxes. When I look back at some
>of the games for the C64, I think WOW! They may not look like much
>now compared to Myst or Jedi Knight, but when you consider what the
>programmers did with the amount of memory and disk space they had, it's
>amazing. (And when it comes right down to it, were those games any less
>fun than today's?)

I thought that for a long time. Back when I was starting to program,
we used Compucolor computers with 16K of memory. A friend of mine
and I wrote games for that computer I didn't see for many years on
anything else, and ones that were almost impossible to write as easily
on other systems. We were writing multiplayer games back then -- now,
the user interface was two people pressing keys on the same keyboard,
but they were still multiplayer games. And because of the way video
was handled, graphics weren't the chore they were on, say, an Apple II+.
I waited *years* for a commercial company to come out with a multiplayer
game...

Sean.
--
I never purchase anything from unsolicted email. Ever.

Rage Matrix

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

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wri...@Eng.Sun.com wrote:
: From hot...@SPAMBEGONEwhidbey.net

: Sabu

I thought that QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) was bought by Gates
from Seattle Computers, a small business, for around 800 US dollars.
Am I wrong then? I must admit that I did see it on the British documentary
programme "Revenge Of The Nerds" shown on Channel 4 in 1996. But it had
interviews with Gates and the guy who programmed QDOS.

Jon.

=============================================================================
Jonathan M Baker Member of PLOT
J.M....@bton.ac.uk (Programmers Legion of Obvious Talent)
Tron Software "Not all drugs are good.
http://snowwhite.it.bton.ac.uk/~jmb36/ Some are great!" - Bill Hicks
=============================================================================

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

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In article 20...@azstarnet.com, bill_h <bil...@azstarnet.com> writes:
> wri...@Eng.Sun.COM wrote:
> > The OS (QDOS) bought from Seattle Computer Products was a crude product,
> > which required a major effort to convert into MS-DOS.
> >
> > Sabu
>
> There are good reasons to doubt there ever was a QDOS. If ANYONE, including
> Bob Morrisette (sabu) can produce ANYTHING contemporaneous with it's
> alleged gestation period, then DO SO!
>
> Seattle Computer Products (Tim Paterson) created? developed? plagerized?
> 86-DOS. The earliest versions, 0.1 and 0.3, were sent, in very small numbers
> (probably under a hundred copies) to OEM's, reviewers, and developers.
> Version 1.0 was sold, along with Seattle Computer's S-100 8086 and support
> boards, to the public for a couple years or so. IBM's Personal Computer
> DOS was based on 86-DOS version 1.0, which was NOT backward compatible
> with the earlier versions.
>
> I can't confirm, but believe, that the 8086 operating system was sold under
> several names PRIOR to the release of the IBM PC, including SCP DOS.
---------------------------------
All of the literature on Microsoft mention Tim Paterson and his
almost CP/M clone he called QDOS. "The Making of Microsoft" by Ichbiah
and Knepper (1993), and "Gates" by Manes and Andrews are good examples.
It is difficult to believe that all Microsoft authors would make the
same mistake about QDOS. Paterson later sold it as 86-DOS and licensed
it to Microsoft under that name. It took a major effort by Microsoft to
make 86-DOS into MS-DOS.

Bob Morrisette

bill_h

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

Rage Matrix wrote:
>
> : Microsoft did not create QDOS. Can't blame them for everything.
> : Sabu

I'm not so sure they didn't have a hand in it......

> I thought that QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) was bought by
> Gates from Seattle Computers, a small business, for around 800 US
> dollars. Am I wrong then?

Yes, wrong. They bought 86-DOS version 1.0 There were TWO prior
versions, 0.1 and 0.3 that were NOT compatible with the version 1.0
that became IBM's Personal Computer DOS version 1.0

Until I'm proved wrong, I say there WAS NO QDOS. If anyone can produce
QDOS- manual(s), listings, disks, etc, I'll admit being mistaken. But
so far, it appears to be a total fiction.

Clearly, from the relevant dates of existing stuff, MS bought 86-DOS v1.0

> I must admit that I did see it on the British documentary
> programme "Revenge Of The Nerds" shown on Channel 4 in 1996.
> But it had interviews with Gates and the guy who programmed QDOS.

No, it was on channel SIX! Actually, on the channel 27 translator because
there's a mountain in the way! Like most things, it's all a matter of your
point of view. I'm sure you DID see it on channel 4. I know I didn't.

While there are undoubtedly people who WANT to believe Tim Paterson
created an operating system in two or three weeks, and lawyer-like mr
gates certainly recognized a 'dirty' job when he saw one (using the
definition of "dirty" in that same "Triumph of the Nerds" program
mentioned previously, re: Compaq's BIOS cloning process) by the time
IBM was shopping for an operating system, Seattle Computer had been
selling 8086 based S-100 product for about two years. The operating
system had already made several evolutionary version changes. ALL of
them were called 86-DOS. Gates has been trying to distance "his" product
from whatever Tim Paterson did ever since. Even in that program, Paterson
admitted seeing "a DRI manual"......hence anything he did was "dirty"....

Circumstantial evidence suggests he saw a LOT more.

The question shouldn't be "What happened?" anymore, it should be "WHY?"

Why work so hard to deny Gary Kildall recognition as THE creator of the
first microprocessor based disk operating system? With a little help
from his friends, like John Torode, Gordon Eubanks, maybe JRP, I'm sure
several others.

Also, do whatever it takes to break his family's strangle-hold on his
personal memoirs, and publish the damn thing. It's Kildall's last
chance to be heard on HIS view of the evolution of the personal computer
business. That infamous lawyer who advised against dealing with IBM
on their terms, Gervaise Davis, says essentially the memoirs defame him.
He continues to do whatever he can to supress them. One man's bad
judgement shouldn't keep the thoughts of so innovative and creative a
mind as Kildall's from the rest of us.

If they truly are nothing more than drunken ramblings, there's plenty
of opportunity to counter the errors. Kildall, sober or drunk, was in
any event entitled to HIS opinions.

Don't YOU want to read them?

lis...@zetnet.co.uk

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

On 1998-02-25 shok...@well.com(RobHafernik) said:
:In article <6cvmhb$1de$4...@irk.zetnet.co.uk>, lis...@zetnet.co.uk

:wrote:
:> *that's* why the passing of such computers is sad. when
:>programmers were up against it, they came through. now their life
:>is easy, and the programs are sloppy.

:I'll bet I'm the Nth programmer to react to this one... <g>

:This statement has everything to do with marketing and nothing to
:do with programming. It's USERS who drive software and they, in
:turn, are driven by MARKETING. Companies need NEW customers, you
:can't stay in business if you only sell one item to someone.
:Repeat business is essential.

actually, you can, providing your support contract is tightly enough
wrapped up. ;> granted, though, things must sell - but why must they get
bigger as functionality is added? why can't the size remain constant, or
at least, why can't the added functionality outweigh the added code?
we've seen an exponential growth in binary size, versus a logarithmic
growth in functionality. something is horribly wrong there.

:In software, this usually means ADDING something to the software to

:make it more attractive and goad users into upgrading. The
:competition is up to the same thing and a vicious circle starts.

:Not much the programmer can do about it. If users didn't fall for
:it, there would be no demand for more feature-rich software and it
:wouldn't sell.

but you know the tragedy of all of that? it isn't the marketing guys who
write the software, nor the users. we programmers should be a lot more
strict. people are (or should be) paying us to be experts, artists, not
production lines. and in fact in bespoke development, that's exactly the
case (except for when an it manager has been foolish enough to believe
everything the microsoft rep told him) - it's only the shrinkwrapped
world that has led to programs becoming sprawling monstrosities.

Sir Isle

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Feb 25, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/25/98

to

>>*that's* why the passing of such computers is sad. when programmers were
>>up against it, they came through. now their life is easy, and the
>>programs are sloppy.
>

>Indeed. I remember the days when 20kB was a lot of memory... and I'm only
>22.

unread,

Feb 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/26/98

to

In article <34F471...@azstarnet.com>, bill_h <bil...@azstarnet.com> wrote:
<snip>

>Until I'm proved wrong, I say there WAS NO QDOS. If anyone can produce
>QDOS- manual(s), listings, disks, etc, I'll admit being mistaken. But
>so far, it appears to be a total fiction.

It seems entirely possible to me that "QDOS" was merely an internal
nickname for 86-DOS.

>Clearly, from the relevant dates of existing stuff, MS bought 86-DOS v1.0
>

>> I must admit that I did see it on the British documentary

>> programme "Revenge Of The Nerds" shown on Channel 4 in 1996.
>> But it had interviews with Gates and the guy who programmed QDOS.
>
>No, it was on channel SIX! Actually, on the channel 27 translator because
>there's a mountain in the way! Like most things, it's all a matter of your
>point of view. I'm sure you DID see it on channel 4. I know I didn't.

In Britain, channel numbers refer to the conventional numbering of the
networks, rather than the UHF and VHF channel designations. Channel 4
<URL:http://www.channel4.com> is one of the British networks.

>While there are undoubtedly people who WANT to believe Tim Paterson
>created an operating system in two or three weeks, and lawyer-like mr
>gates certainly recognized a 'dirty' job when he saw one (using the
>definition of "dirty" in that same "Triumph of the Nerds" program
>mentioned previously, re: Compaq's BIOS cloning process) by the time
>IBM was shopping for an operating system, Seattle Computer had been
>selling 8086 based S-100 product for about two years.

So what are you suggesting Tim Paterson *did* do? How much was he
involved in 86-DOS?

<snip>

>Also, do whatever it takes to break his family's strangle-hold on his
>personal memoirs, and publish the damn thing.

<snip>

>Don't YOU want to read them?

I certainly do.

--
Ben Hutchings, M&CS student | Jay Miner Society website: http://www.jms.org/
email/finger m95...@ecs.ox.ac.uk | homepage http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0223/
Sturgeons's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crud.

Daniel Bateman

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Feb 27, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/27/98

to

In article <6cunmf$m...@sol.sun.csd.unb.ca>, w6...@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (Sir Isle) wrote:

>: hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa or Jeff) wrote:
>: > Getting back to Gates, how people REALLY need a Pentium CPU with
>: > 16 Meg of RAM? Most home users do not need all that horsepower to
>: > write a letter to the electric company. Indeed, an awful lot of
>: > business users write very simple memos or spreadsheets and would
>: > do fine with the horsepower of an 8088 or even a CPM machine.
>

> True. Many would probably be more productive, since then the
>employees couldn't play solitare when no one was looking. ;)
> Isle

I agree that most people don't need much horsepower at all, but then again
everyone who owns a computer seems to want to go to their local software store
and buy the latest and greatest software. Which usually requires a fast
computer and lots of RAM and disk space.

And what if they want to buy a game?

Dan

hot...@spambegonewhidbey.net

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Feb 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/28/98

to

In article <199802260...@annexr1-12.slip.uni-koeln.de>,
j437...@athena.rrz.uni-koeln.de says...

> MS bought QDOS for 50,000$. You can get the transscript of the TV series
> via www.yahoo.com -->Computers -->History -->Triumph of the Nerds.

Tim Paterson later sued Micro$ and got a settlement estimated at $1
million.

--
L. Nino
-- You can blame everything on me this year.

hot...@spambegonewhidbey.net

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Feb 28, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/28/98

to

In article <6d2f5v$a...@news.seed.net.tw>, ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx
says...

>
> Especially after IBM found some 300-odd bugs in the first version MS
> submitted....
>

In late June, 1995, Microsoft 'fessed up to having over 10,000 bugs in
win95, hundreds of which were show-stoppers, with shipping date a few
weeks away. Trust me, they didn't get 'em all fixed in time. Come to
think of it, 2 1/2 years later, many of those bugs are still there
(certainly more than the 300 that annoyed IBM).

--
L. Nino (manic-depressive who hates California)

Craig Pickering

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Mar 2, 1998, 3:00:00 AM3/2/98

to

: because you can do everything with one mouse button on the mac. jobs
: wanted it to be as simple as possible to use; more than one mouse button
: he thought might confuse people.

: how many buttons *does* a pc mouse have, btw...? :>
A PC mouse has 3. An MS mouse has 2.

: fwiw, we also prefer the fact that you only have one menu on the mac, at
: the top. menus don't belong inside windows. the taskbar is a rather poor
: substitute, and you can't put the icons of minimised active windows
: where you please either.
You can't? (Wouldn't know myself, I'm M$-free, but that does sound awfully
strange..)

: admittedly it's better than the mac, which doesn't, but still not a
: patch on unix. as for us, we'll keep going with dos, because whilst it
: does a fraction of what we'd expect from an os, it does at least have
: the good grace to keep right out of our way when we want it to.
*grin* Hear, hear! I'm sure you've heard it before, but "DOS isn't an OS.
It's a glorified program launcher". I'm sure you'll agree there's a lot
more to being an OS than just launching programs, but it's put-asidedness
can be very handy at times.

-Pik.
--
-- PiKTag v0.01L
> DIVORCE =system("echo y| erase \wife\*.*"

Alan Bowler

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Mar 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM3/4/98

to

In article <6ddvg9$3...@hexium.magnet> p...@esmay.apana.org.au.no.junk.mail (Craig Pickering) writes:
>*grin* Hear, hear! I'm sure you've heard it before, but "DOS isn't an OS.
>It's a glorified program launcher". I'm sure you'll agree there's a lot
>more to being an OS than just launching programs, but it's put-asidedness
>can be very handy at times.

Right. MS-DOS is what used to be called a "monitor" nn the days of
second generation computers.

The Thought Assassin

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Mar 5, 1998, 3:00:00 AM3/5/98

to

Sir Isle <w6...@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca> wrote:
> >>*that's* why the passing of such computers is sad. when programmers were
> >>up against it, they came through.

> >Indeed. I remember the days when 20kB was a lot of memory... and I'm only
> >22.
> I remember when the C64 came out thinking wow, what a lot of
> RAM! :)

stayed up all last night trying to write an assembler for the thing. I you know
how to code that way, 64K is huge.

-Greg