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  computer history "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2015-07-13 14:38 -0400
    Re: computer history Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-07-13 18:52 +0000
      Re: computer history Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-07-13 20:56 +0000
    Re: computer history Andy Burns <usenet.feb2014@adslpipe.co.uk> - 2015-07-13 19:54 +0100
    Re: computer history Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-07-13 16:32 -0400
      Re: computer history "Kerr Mudd-John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2015-07-14 10:39 +0100
        Re: computer history Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2015-07-14 18:16 -0300
          Re: computer history Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-07-15 08:06 +0000
            Re: computer history Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-07-15 11:34 +0200
              Re: computer history Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-07-15 10:29 +0000
                Re: computer history Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-07-15 10:52 -0400
                  Re: computer history Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-07-15 14:54 +0000
                Re: computer history Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-07-15 12:53 +0200
            Re: computer history "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2015-07-16 16:52 -0400
              Re: computer history Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2015-07-16 22:50 +0100
                Re: computer history "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2015-07-17 12:42 -0400
                  Re: computer history Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-07-17 13:58 -0400
                    Re: computer history Nyssa <Nyssa@flawlesslogic.com> - 2015-07-17 14:17 -0400
                      Re: computer history Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-07-17 15:43 -0400
                        Re: computer history Nyssa <Nyssa@flawlesslogic.com> - 2015-07-18 11:05 -0400
                          Re: computer history mm0fmf <none@mailinator.com> - 2015-07-20 20:17 +0100
                      Re: computer history Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> - 2015-07-18 09:46 -0400
                        Re: computer history Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2015-07-18 14:48 +0100
                    Re: computer history scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2015-07-17 18:30 +0000
                      Re: computer history Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-07-17 15:49 -0400
                    Re: computer history Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-07-22 15:09 +0000
                  Re: computer history True Satan <true_satan@fastmail.co.uk> - 2015-07-17 22:24 +0000
                    Re: computer history Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2015-07-18 00:45 +0000
                      Re: computer history Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-07-17 23:59 -0400
                        Re: computer history Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-07-18 09:46 +0000
                    Re: computer history Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-07-18 09:42 +0000
                    Re: computer history "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2015-07-20 13:48 -0400
                      Re: computer history mm0fmf <none@mailinator.com> - 2015-07-20 20:43 +0100
                        Re: computer history RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-07-21 10:31 +0300
                          Re: computer history "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2015-07-25 13:47 -0400
                            Re: computer history Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2015-07-25 22:04 +0100
                            Re: computer history polygonum <rmoudndgers@vrod.co.uk> - 2015-09-13 09:22 +0100
                  Re: computer history Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-07-22 15:08 +0000
                    Re: computer history Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2015-07-22 18:43 +0000
                Re: computer history Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-07-18 02:25 +0200
                  Re: computer history Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2015-07-18 01:01 +0000
                    Re: computer history Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-07-18 10:43 +0200
              Re: computer history Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-07-16 22:00 +0000
                Re: computer history "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2015-07-17 12:44 -0400
                  Re: computer history Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-07-17 17:58 +0000
      Re: computer history "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2015-07-14 12:36 -0400

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#8183

On 18/07/2015 16:05, Nyssa wrote:
> and I
> would think that serious business users would have gone
> the CP/M route instead since there were more business
> oriented software packages available for that platform
> such as Visicalc

You do know that Visicalc originally was written for the Apple II not CP/M?

People used to buy Apples just for Visicalc. Some people didn't realise 
the Apple was a home/personal computer, they thought they were Visicalc 
engines. I can remember loading Apple Invaders onto an Apple used in an 
customer's accounts dept. I'll never forget what one of the employees 
said, "Hey look! You can play space invaders on Visicalc."

As for Z80 cards... the reason to have a Z80 running CP/M in an Apple 
was to be able to run Microsoft MASM M80. That was "the" Z80/8080 
assembler of choice back in the day. The cool feature the version sold 
for the Z80 card was that it supported 6502 development as well. The 
Microsoft linker L80 has some serious short comings but with PSA's 
PLINK-80 package you had a supercharged Z80/6502 development system that 
even including the outrageous costs of an Apple II plus disks in the UK 
still worked out cheaper than buying a crufty S-100 CP/M system. Of 
course you could always play some games on the Apple when you got bored 
programming.

Some of us where there and used these systems and tools to earn a living.

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#8168

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:17:46 -0400, Nyssa <Nyssa@flawlesslogic.com>
wrote:

>Michael Black wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015, Bill Cunningham wrote:

>>> "Tim Streater" <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote in
>>> message
>>> news:160720152250081512%timstreater@greenbee.net...

>>>> MS had a couple of joke versions of Windows (1 and 2) in
>>>> the mid to late 80s, then a slightly less jokey version
>>>> (3, and eventually, IIRC 3.3) in the early 90s. 

(minor nitpick, but it was annoying me ;-)
You are thinking of Windows 3.1, not Windows 3.3.
As far as I know, there never was a version 3.3. There was 3.11
(Workgroups) and a rarely-seen v3.2 (Chinese) but after that the
company jumped to Windows95 (v4)

>> Microsoft came out with that Z80 board for the Apple II. 
>> It came early
>> enough that it was relatively "new".  I still don't get
>> how that happened, it's not like Microsoft was in the
>> hardware business at the time, yet they offer this board
>> (rather than Apple) and the board is used to run CP/M,
>> which belonged to Digital Research, Microsoft's nominal
>> competitor.

At the time, DR wasn't their competitor. The Z80 board was released in
1980; MS-DOS was released almost 18 months later. Microsoft in the
early years was better known for its BASIC interpreters than its OS.
Its rise to dominance in the latter arena took almost everyone -
including Microsoft, I think - by surprise.

>I would be shocked to learn it came from MS rather than
>a third-party manufacturer. Oooo cooties!

Nope, definitely a Microsoft product. 
http://www.applelogic.org/images/MSZ80PCB.JPG
I seem to recall that there were other companies doing similar
products, but I could be mistaken in that. The early days of the Apple
2 were heady and exciting and full of innovation ;-)

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#8169

In article <9jlkqatp99i3uk7dbldmkpt25pj4v1m1du@4ax.com>, Spalls
Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 14:17:46 -0400, Nyssa <Nyssa@flawlesslogic.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Michael Black wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015, Bill Cunningham wrote:
>
>>>> "Tim Streater" <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote in
>>>> message
>>>> news:160720152250081512%timstreater@greenbee.net...
>
>>>>> MS had a couple of joke versions of Windows (1 and 2) in
>>>>> the mid to late 80s, then a slightly less jokey version
>>>>> (3, and eventually, IIRC 3.3) in the early 90s. 
>
>(minor nitpick, but it was annoying me ;-)
>You are thinking of Windows 3.1, not Windows 3.3.

Yes, you're right, sorry.

-- 
"A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then 
 quietly strangled." - Sir Barnett Cocks (1907-1989)

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#8155

In article <alpine.LNX.2.02.1507171356310.22821@darkstar.example.org>,
Michael Black  <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
>Microsoft came out with that Z80 board for the Apple II.  It came early 
>enough that it was relatively "new".  I still don't get how that happened, 
>it's not like Microsoft was in the hardware business at the time, yet they 
>offer this board (rather than Apple) and the board is used to run CP/M, 
>which belonged to Digital Research, Microsoft's nominal competitor.

If I had to guess, Microsoft was primarily a programming-languages vendor at
the time.  They already had money coming in from their BASIC interpreter
shipping in every Apple II (not counting the first year's production that
shipped with Integer BASIC, which Woz wrote himself), but a card that would
enable the Apple II to run CP/M would've given Microsoft the opportunity to
sell its CP/M-based language products to Apple II owners.

(All that's just a guess on my part.  I didn't get my first Apple II (a IIe,
more specifically) until 1985, which was more than a little bit past CP/M's
heyday.  I have a Softcard clone kicking around somewhere, but have never
done much with it.)

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/           Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#8157

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015, Scott Alfter wrote:

> In article <alpine.LNX.2.02.1507171356310.22821@darkstar.example.org>,
> Michael Black  <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
>> Microsoft came out with that Z80 board for the Apple II.  It came early
>> enough that it was relatively "new".  I still don't get how that happened,
>> it's not like Microsoft was in the hardware business at the time, yet they
>> offer this board (rather than Apple) and the board is used to run CP/M,
>> which belonged to Digital Research, Microsoft's nominal competitor.
>
> If I had to guess, Microsoft was primarily a programming-languages vendor at
> the time.  They already had money coming in from their BASIC interpreter
> shipping in every Apple II (not counting the first year's production that
> shipped with Integer BASIC, which Woz wrote himself), but a card that would
> enable the Apple II to run CP/M would've given Microsoft the opportunity to
> sell its CP/M-based language products to Apple II owners.
>
I've heard that before, it's the only explanation I've seen.  I can 
believe it, yet at the same time, I'm not sure it worked out for 
Microsoft the way they wanted it.  They had all those fancy languages, but
how many running CP/M on the Apple II actually used them?  I have no idea.

I gather the board might have been the reason IBM went to Microsoft first
when looking for an operating system for their "PC".  They assumed that if
Microsoft sold the Z80 board, then they were the source of CP/M.  I can't 
remmeber if I thought of that, or someone suggested it over the years.  It 
seems a bit much, but who knows.

> (All that's just a guess on my part.  I didn't get my first Apple II (a IIe,
> more specifically) until 1985, which was more than a little bit past CP/M's
> heyday.  I have a Softcard clone kicking around somewhere, but have never
> done much with it.)
>
I wanted an Apple II when they came out, had to settle for an OSI 
SUperboard in 1981 for reasons of money.  I finally got a pile of Apple II 
stuff in the early nineties when someone I knew was moving and needed to 
clear out the old, and then found an Apple IIGS at a school rummage sale 
for five or ten dollars.  And other than turn them on, I've never used 
them.  By then, I wasn't going to use them, and thus I didn't have enough 
reason to get good at them.  So they just sit there.  I have an AMiga 500 
that I got at a rummage sale, I think I paid five dollars for it with a 
Commodore monitor, something that was so exciting at one point, but when I 
got it about 1995, nothing practical.

   Michael

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#8209

Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015, Bill Cunningham wrote:

> >
> > "Tim Streater" <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote in message
> > news:160720152250081512%timstreater@greenbee.net...
> >
> >> The Star came first. Then came the Lisa and the Macintosh (both from
> >> Apple) in 1983/4 or so. Steve Jobs then left Apple and founded Next,
> >> which had NextStep (the world's first web site was on a Next machine,
> >> at CERN). Sun, DEC, and others had GUIs for their unix boxes by, I
> >> dunno, about 1990.
> >>
> >> MS had a couple of joke versions of Windows (1 and 2) in the mid to
> >> late 80s, then a slightly less jokey version (3, and eventually, IIRC
> >> 3.3) in the early 90s. They didn't have anything that I would have
> >> called useable in today's sense until 95 and then 98 or possibly NT
> >> came out.
> >>
> >> I always remember my brother, a Windows fanboi, proudly showing me how
> >> he could move a window from one screen to another under XP. His face
> >> fell when I told him that had been possible on a Mac for 15 years.
> >
> >    I have *never* known Microsoft to come out with /anything/ original.
> > Silverlight was copied I think from Adobe's (or I guess I should say
> > Macromedia) Flashplayer. C# and .NET from Jim Gosling's Java. Nope never
> > anthing original.
> >
> Microsoft came out with that Z80 board for the Apple II.  It came early 
> enough that it was relatively "new".  I still don't get how that happened, 
> it's not like Microsoft was in the hardware business at the time, yet they 
> offer this board (rather than Apple) and the board is used to run CP/M, 
> which belonged to Digital Research, Microsoft's nominal competitor.

But not an original idea.  S100 bus machines had swappable CPU boards
and it was common in some S100 systems to have more than one CPU board
in the system.  So all they did for this was "copy" the idea from the
S100 bus arena and produce an Apple II board.

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#8158

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 12:42:51 -0400, Bill Cun
>     I have *never* known Microsoft to come out with /anything/ original.
> Silverlight was copied I think from Adobe's (or I guess I should say
> Macromedia) Flashplayer. C# and .NET from Jim Gosling's Java. Nope never
> anthing original.
> 
> Bill

Bill,

I wonder if you know that even MSDOS owes an awful lot to the earlier CPM 
and that Excel owes yet another huge debt to Multiplan that MS bought 
from an outside company...come to think of it they bought in the first 
upderpinnings of Word rather that developing them in house.

David

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#8160

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 22:24:52 +0000, True Satan wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 12:42:51 -0400, Bill Cun
>>     I have *never* known Microsoft to come out with /anything/
>>     original.
>> Silverlight was copied I think from Adobe's (or I guess I should say
>> Macromedia) Flashplayer. C# and .NET from Jim Gosling's Java. Nope
>> never anthing original.
>> 
>> Bill
> 
> Bill,
> 
> I wonder if you know that even MSDOS owes an awful lot to the earlier
> CPM and that Excel owes yet another huge debt to Multiplan that MS
> bought from an outside company...come to think of it they bought in the
> first upderpinnings of Word rather that developing them in house.
> 

 As far as PCDOS goes, the custom version supplied to IBM for their 
fledgling PC by Microsoft, this was based on a port of CP/M86 that Bill 
had bought in from a small Seattle software house (it might even have 
been a one man band outfit) where the syntax and error messages were made 
more fit for 'normal human consumption'.

 Bill Gates somehow managed to get out of his contract with IBM, at least 
to the extent where he could sell a Microsoft branded and improved 
version of PCDOS that we now refer to as MSDOS. After that success, Bill 
never so much as glanced back as his company went from strength to 
strength on the back of IBM's and other's work as his company swept to 
world domination in the PC desktop OS and software markets. The rest is a 
history that most of us are only too familiar with (or should be if they 
haven't been hiding under a rock these past 25 years or so).


-- 
Johnny B Good

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#8162

On Sat, 18 Jul 2015, Johnny B Good wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 22:24:52 +0000, True Satan wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 12:42:51 -0400, Bill Cun
>>>     I have *never* known Microsoft to come out with /anything/
>>>     original.
>>> Silverlight was copied I think from Adobe's (or I guess I should say
>>> Macromedia) Flashplayer. C# and .NET from Jim Gosling's Java. Nope
>>> never anthing original.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>
>> Bill,
>>
>> I wonder if you know that even MSDOS owes an awful lot to the earlier
>> CPM and that Excel owes yet another huge debt to Multiplan that MS
>> bought from an outside company...come to think of it they bought in the
>> first upderpinnings of Word rather that developing them in house.
>>
>
> As far as PCDOS goes, the custom version supplied to IBM for their
> fledgling PC by Microsoft, this was based on a port of CP/M86 that Bill
> had bought in from a small Seattle software house (it might even have
> been a one man band outfit) where the syntax and error messages were made
> more fit for 'normal human consumption'.
>
> Bill Gates somehow managed to get out of his contract with IBM, at least
> to the extent where he could sell a Microsoft branded and improved
> version of PCDOS that we now refer to as MSDOS. After that success, Bill
> never so much as glanced back as his company went from strength to
> strength on the back of IBM's and other's work as his company swept to
> world domination in the PC desktop OS and software markets. The rest is a
> history that most of us are only too familiar with (or should be if they
> haven't been hiding under a rock these past 25 years or so).
>
I don't think that started with MS-DOS.

In the beginning, he somehow sold that BASIC to MITS without letting them 
have it exclusively.  I thought there was some conflict at the beginning
they thinking he worked for them, he thinking something else.  But either 
through scheming or design, he retained the rights.

So he could turn around and sell it to other companies.  IN some cases, 
he'd sell the company fairly good conditions.  OSI kept using the same 
BASIC, bugs and all, because they had the rights, but if they modified it 
or had Microsoft modify it, it would cost them.  Or so I gather.  So it 
was a good thing the BASIC in ROM was flexible enough.

Radio Shack got some other good deal.  When the Color COmputer III came 
out, they had that original CoCo BASIC in ROM, and then had Microware add 
soem code to modify it for the III's new hardware.  If I recall properly, 
what was in ROM was the same as the ROM in the original CoCo, so 
Microware's code moved it to RAM and modified it there.  It was something 
like that, again a liberal set of rights that Radio Shack bought, but too 
costly to go back and ask for a revision  I assume the Dragon from the UK, 
which was a clone of the CoCo, used the same BASIC from Microsoft, another 
case of MS selling the code to multiple places.

So I think by the time the IBM deal came along, Microsoft expected to 
retain the rights to the code, even if (for a price) IBM got liberal 
rights at a cheap price.

I seem to recall Microsoft selling the source code at one point to their 
BASIC, if you were willing to pay enough.  Not just the source code, but 
the right to modify it for use within the company.  I may be mixing that 
up with some other company, but I think they had flexible pricing (and 
levels of what you could buy) so long as you were willing to pay the 
price.  But I dont' think they ever sold off exclusive rights.

   Michael

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#8165

On 2015-07-18, Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Jul 2015, Johnny B Good wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 22:24:52 +0000, True Satan wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 12:42:51 -0400, Bill Cun
>>>>     I have *never* known Microsoft to come out with /anything/
>>>>     original.
>>>> Silverlight was copied I think from Adobe's (or I guess I should say
>>>> Macromedia) Flashplayer. C# and .NET from Jim Gosling's Java. Nope
>>>> never anthing original.
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>
>>> Bill,
>>>
>>> I wonder if you know that even MSDOS owes an awful lot to the earlier
>>> CPM and that Excel owes yet another huge debt to Multiplan that MS
>>> bought from an outside company...come to think of it they bought in the
>>> first upderpinnings of Word rather that developing them in house.
>>>
>>
>> As far as PCDOS goes, the custom version supplied to IBM for their
>> fledgling PC by Microsoft, this was based on a port of CP/M86

86-DOS, aka QDOS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS

>> that Bill
>> had bought in from a small Seattle software house

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products

>> (it might even have
>> been a one man band outfit) where the syntax and error messages were made
>> more fit for 'normal human consumption'.
>>
>> Bill Gates somehow managed to get out of his contract with IBM,

IBM foolishly didn't contract for exclusive use. That one error likely
made Gates the world's richest man.


[44 lines snipped]



-- 
Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 53rd day of Confusion in the YOLD 3181
                  I don't have an attitude problem.
    If you have a problem with my attitude, that's your problem.

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#8164

BTW, the newsgroup alt.folklore.computers is alive & well & full of people
who know a lot about computer history ...


-- 
Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 53rd day of Confusion in the YOLD 3181
                  I don't have an attitude problem.
    If you have a problem with my attitude, that's your problem.

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#8182

"True Satan" <true_satan@fastmail.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:mobvbk$9ur$1@dont-email.me...

> Bill,
>
> I wonder if you know that even MSDOS owes an awful lot to the earlier CPM
> and that Excel owes yet another huge debt to Multiplan that MS bought
> from an outside company...come to think of it they bought in the first
> upderpinnings of Word rather that developing them in house.

    I know nothing of Excel. I do not buy Microsoft products. I know CP/M 
had the letter prompt that could be changed. And MSDOS came from that. And 
today's Windows still have that letter prompt. As for Windows I'd get MS $20 
for it. Maybe strech to $25. It's just not that great. IMO.

Bill

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#8186

On 20/07/2015 18:48, Bill Cunningham wrote:
> I do not buy Microsoft products

But you do use them:

X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.3790.3959
Cancel-Lock: sha1:iA1qgJM6LXcoABi3FDX7ZvtLshs=
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.3959

;-)

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#8198

On 2015-07-20 22:43:37 +0300, mm0fmf said:

> On 20/07/2015 18:48, Bill Cunningham wrote:
>> I do not buy Microsoft products
> 
> But you do use them:
> 
> X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.3790.3959
> Cancel-Lock: sha1:iA1qgJM6LXcoABi3FDX7ZvtLshs=
> X-Priority: 3
> X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
> X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.3959
> 
> ;-)

He didn't buy that one, it came free with his computer!  :)

Didn't Microsoft Outlook Express cease to be an eternity ago, like 
Eudora?  Wikipedia says it died with XP.  Just went and looked at a 
couple of screenshots and was filled with nostalgia for 1999 :)  

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#8253

"RS Wood" <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote in message 
news:d16apsFptj1U1@mid.individual.net...

> He didn't buy that one, it came free with his computer!  :)
>
> Didn't Microsoft Outlook Express cease to be an eternity ago, like Eudora? 
> Wikipedia says it died with XP.  Just went and looked at a couple of 
> screenshots and was filled with nostalgia for 1999 :)

    Right. If the computer I buy comes with windows, I'm not going to thow 
it out. But OE has long been replaced with outlook, if I am correct.

Bill

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#8255

In article <mp0i0r$ajr$1@dont-email.me>, Bill Cunningham
<nospam@nspam.invalid> wrote:

>    Right. If the computer I buy comes with windows, I'm not going to throw 
>it out.

I'd throw the whole computer out (of the window). If I didn't do that
at the time the machine came to hand, I'd certainly do it after five to
ten minutes exposure to Windows.

-- 
"Please stop telling us what you feel. Please stop telling us what your 
intuition is. Your intuitive feelings are of no interest whatsoever, 
and nor are mine. I don't give a bugger what you feel, or what I feel. 
I want to know what the evidence shows."             -- Richard Dawkins

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#8691

On 25/07/2015 18:47, Bill Cunningham wrote:
> "RS Wood" <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote in message
> news:d16apsFptj1U1@mid.individual.net...
>
>> He didn't buy that one, it came free with his computer!  :)
>>
>> Didn't Microsoft Outlook Express cease to be an eternity ago, like Eudora?
>> Wikipedia says it died with XP.  Just went and looked at a couple of
>> screenshots and was filled with nostalgia for 1999 :)
>
>      Right. If the computer I buy comes with windows, I'm not going to thow
> it out. But OE has long been replaced with outlook, if I am correct.
>
> Bill
>
>
I wouldn't say that. Outlook co-existed with OE for many years, and 
Outlook continues to exist. However OE has been supplanted by Windows 
Mail and Live Mail and "Mail Trusted Windows Store app".

-- 
Rod

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#8208

Bill Cunningham <nospam@nspam.invalid> wrote:

> "Tim Streater" <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote in message 
> news:160720152250081512%timstreater@greenbee.net...

> > The Star came first. Then came the Lisa and the Macintosh (both from
> > Apple) in 1983/4 or so. Steve Jobs then left Apple and founded Next,
> > which had NextStep (the world's first web site was on a Next machine,
> > at CERN). Sun, DEC, and others had GUIs for their unix boxes by, I
> > dunno, about 1990.
> >
> > MS had a couple of joke versions of Windows (1 and 2) in the mid to
> > late 80s, then a slightly less jokey version (3, and eventually, IIRC
> > 3.3) in the early 90s. They didn't have anything that I would have
> > called useable in today's sense until 95 and then 98 or possibly NT
> > came out.
> >
> > I always remember my brother, a Windows fanboi, proudly showing me how
> > he could move a window from one screen to another under XP. His face
> > fell when I told him that had been possible on a Mac for 15 years.

>     I have *never* known Microsoft to come out with /anything/ original. 
> Silverlight was copied I think from Adobe's (or I guess I should say 
> Macromedia) Flashplayer. C# and .NET from Jim Gosling's Java. Nope never 
> anthing original.

Microsoft's sole contribution has been to copy [1] and then
successfully mass-market the items.

But production of original ideas, no, none of those ever came from
them.


[1] Usually badly, by leaving out the one or two critical features that
    actually make the tech. work as it should.

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#8215

On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 15:08:11 +0000, Rich wrote:

> Bill Cunningham <nospam@nspam.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> "Tim Streater" <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote in message
>> news:160720152250081512%timstreater@greenbee.net...
> 
>> > The Star came first. Then came the Lisa and the Macintosh (both from
>> > Apple) in 1983/4 or so. Steve Jobs then left Apple and founded Next,
>> > which had NextStep (the world's first web site was on a Next machine,
>> > at CERN). Sun, DEC, and others had GUIs for their unix boxes by, I
>> > dunno, about 1990.
>> >
>> > MS had a couple of joke versions of Windows (1 and 2) in the mid to
>> > late 80s, then a slightly less jokey version (3, and eventually, IIRC
>> > 3.3) in the early 90s. They didn't have anything that I would have
>> > called useable in today's sense until 95 and then 98 or possibly NT
>> > came out.
>> >
>> > I always remember my brother, a Windows fanboi, proudly showing me
>> > how he could move a window from one screen to another under XP. His
>> > face fell when I told him that had been possible on a Mac for 15
>> > years.
> 
>>     I have *never* known Microsoft to come out with /anything/
>>     original.
>> Silverlight was copied I think from Adobe's (or I guess I should say
>> Macromedia) Flashplayer. C# and .NET from Jim Gosling's Java. Nope
>> never anthing original.
> 
> Microsoft's sole contribution has been to copy [1] and then successfully
> mass-market the items.
> 
> But production of original ideas, no, none of those ever came from them.
> 
> 
> [1] Usually badly, by leaving out the one or two critical features that
>     actually make the tech. work as it should.

 The only good desktop GUIs they ever managed to create were in the win95 
and, their best ever imho, win2k Pro windows versions. Up to that point, 
Microsoft were still catering for user led needs. Win95 was the first to 
be perverted into a consumer-centric version that started the stripping 
out of user features in the form of win98 and that misbegotten version 
called winME (aka, 'Monumental Error').

 Win2k lasted a little bit longer before Microsoft felt they were finally 
in a position to start stripping out or breaking user features in the 
monstrosity which followed, winXP.

 This was an action akin to the waving of two fingers in the direction of 
their SME and corporate customers who had effectively bankrolled the 
development of windows NT, allowing them to attack the much larger and 
more lucrative consumer market.

 This market offered them a nice soft target several orders of magnitude 
greater that they could treat as their own personal cash cow and it's 
been a scarily fast ride downhill ever since as far as the user community 
is concerned (at least as far as *this* user is concerned at any rate).

-- 
Johnny B Good

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#8159

On 2015-07-16, Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

>
> The Star came first. Then came the Lisa and the Macintosh (both from
> Apple) in 1983/4 or so. Steve Jobs then left Apple and founded Next,
> which had NextStep (the world's first web site was on a Next machine,
> at CERN). Sun, DEC, and others had GUIs for their unix boxes by, I
> dunno, about 1990.

I helped install some DEC VAX workstations running VMS and DECwindows in
late 1986 or early 1987.  DECwindows was Motif IIRC.  In 1989 I bought a
similar system second hand.  DECwindows was too much of a memory hog on
that (6MB?) system and didn't leave much space on a 150 MB disk for
useful work so I ran a much leaner meaner alternative which was
available at the time, VWS.  I don't recall much in the way of GUI apps
with VWS but I was extremely happy to have an app running in one
terminal window, a command prompt in another and a text based editor
capable of viewing multiple files (e.g. both source code and the
compiler listing) simultaneously in another couple.


> MS had a couple of joke versions of Windows (1 and 2) in the mid to
> late 80s, then a slightly less jokey version (3, and eventually, IIRC
> 3.3) in the early 90s. They didn't have anything that I would have
> called useable in today's sense until 95 and then 98 or possibly NT
> came out.

In the Windows 3 run I only got as far as Windows 3.11 aka Windows for
Workgroups.  Windows 95 was a distinct improvement over 3.11 on my
Toshiba laptop, though I will note I had 12 MB RAM in that.  I found 12
MB to be a sweet price-performance combination at a time when most folks
were stuck with the 4 or 8 MB that their systems came with.

> I always remember my brother, a Windows fanboi, proudly showing me how
> he could move a window from one screen to another under XP. His face
> fell when I told him that had been possible on a Mac for 15 years.

I've got two brothers who are Windows fanbois.  It can be painful at
times trying to explain that there is better stuff out there, but
Windows is all they really know.


-- 
1972 - IBM begins development on its last tape drive (3480) ever because
of the declining cost of disk drives.

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