Precursor to M.S. Windows ???

[GlennSprigg]

I remember with my old Commodore-64, I had an old software package from "Berkley Software".
It was called "G.E.O.S."..... (Graphical Environment Operating System), before PC's Windows existed!
As a purely 'graphical' interface environment, then anything could be done, (within the small system limits).
You had many types & sizes of 'fonts', there was a 'desktop' with icons, you had multiple 'Windows' you
could open including resizing/min/max/close for multiple 'apps' at once...  It even had a Waste-Paper basket,
(recycle-bin!!) you could drag/drop files to, etc etc..... Seemed like 'Windows' to me !!  :-)
I was later left wondering if Bill Gates & his buddies had THAT in mind, when they first made "Windows"...
As it sure as hell looked & behaved almost exactly the same... :-)

[dexters_lab]

there were (are!) many windowed GUIs... apple lisa's os, apple mac, digital research gem on the atari, amiga's workbench, x windows on unix etc etc

i think they all have their inspiration from the various projects at Xerox PARC and the Alto which was in the 1970s

[coppice]

Its Wikipedia page says GEOS was released in 1986. Window 1.0 was out a year before that. As dexters_lab said, there were many things MS used a model for how to build Windows. GEOS certainly wasn't one of them.

[Mjolinor]

I think that is GEM but it has been a while.

GEM ran under DOS before WIndo$e on PC hardware. Nothing to do with MS.

[helius]

The direct precursor to Windows 1.0 was Visi On from VisiCorp, the publishers of VisiCalc.
Neither had a graphical file manager: at the time of Visi On, the only systems to feature that were the Xerox Star and Apple Lisa. When it was released in 1985, GEM had one as well.
Windows 3.0 would add icons to the file manager.

[Mjolinor]

I used to use GEM on my Nascom (IIRC) and it was released for PC in 1985, about 6 months before Windows 1.0.

[GlennSprigg]

Thanks to ALL for your enlightening comments.
I wasn't aware there were so many 'contenders' back in the day !!!!
It's still amazing how back then, with just the 'C64' and it's limited memory space,
including switching out/in different memory banks, that they achieved it at all !!!  :-)

Back then, 'Code', and spaces for it, was TIGHT.  I remember the Joy of writing
M/C Boot-Strap loaders to fit into say 30 to 100 Bytes... and playing with my home-
made PCB Cartridge Interface to switch out/in multiple tracks with DIP switches, to
copy & re-write entry-points for software. High-speed loaders... double sided disks...
Lot of fun back then....

[Halcyon]

Thanks to ALL for your enlightening comments.
I wasn't aware there were so many 'contenders' back in the day !!!!
It's still amazing how back then, with just the 'C64' and it's limited memory space,
including switching out/in different memory banks, that they achieved it at all !!!  :-)

Back then, 'Code', and spaces for it, was TIGHT.  I remember the Joy of writing
M/C Boot-Strap loaders to fit into say 30 to 100 Bytes... and playing with my home-
made PCB Cartridge Interface to switch out/in multiple tracks with DIP switches, to
copy & re-write entry-points for software. High-speed loaders... double sided disks...
Lot of fun back then....

Thanks for the brief glimpse into your world. I just missed out on all that stuff. But "kids these days" wouldn't have a bloody clue. Their idea of drama is when Instagram goes down or when their internet connection is less than what's required to stream a 4K video on YouTube.

I can't say I "miss" the old days of computing, but I certainly appreciate and value everything that happened back then. These days, innovation seems rare. Look at Apple, they've just been churching out the same crap for the past 10 years, nothing much has changed or improved (in many cases, have gone backwards in leaps and bounds).

Microsoft are heading in the same direction. So many users are clinging onto Windows XP and Windows 7 for as long as possible... after that... I think we'll see a new revolution in computing and it won't include Apple or Microsoft. Perhaps we'll see a return to "grass roots" CLI before too long with a health dose of GUI for good measure.

[bd139]

Everyone in the software sector I know has moved or is moving to macOS X or Linux. I myself am a mac user. It's actually one of the only  certified UNIX operating system that you can run on a laptop that is left (Linux is not certified). The CLI is there and it plays music, 4k videos. Just what the doctor ordered!

[janoc]

I think that is GEM but it has been a while.

GEM ran under DOS before WIndo$e on PC hardware. Nothing to do with MS.

GEM and GEOS are different things. I have actually used this GEOS on a PC sometime in the early 90s, it was a pretty decent system, in fact. Compared to plain DOS and the (then current) Windows 3 and Windows 3.1 it was much nicer to use and quite a bit snappier. On the other hand, there were pretty much no applications for it apart from what was included with it.

[austfox]

Although I never used Geos for the 64, I have extreme fondness for the PC version of Geos (Geoworks). It ran well on my 386 at the time, and was released around the time that Windows 3.0 was ramping up. As already mentioned, third-party software was non-existent, which was a blessing in that it made it extremely stable, yet a curse that it faded away to nothing.

The suite of programs that came with it worked well, and it beat Windows to 'true-type' fonts. I recall upgrading from Geoworks 1.2 to Geoworks Enemble 2.0 where you had to mail back the 5.25 floppies to be eligible for the cheaper upgrade option.

I still have it installed in one of my DOS Virtualboxes to help relive some of those happy early computing memories.

[ebastler]

Everyone in the software sector I know has moved or is moving to macOS X or Linux.

Gosh, that would suggest that pretty soon there will be no more software for Windows -- I'm scared!! Or wait, maybe it suggests that you only know people in a certain, narrowly defined slice of "the software sector"? 

[bd139]

Not even slightly. I have spent the last 20 years doing consultancy across a large number of disparate industries from analytics, finance, media, defence, gaming etc. Most of the middleware type applications are moving away from Windows bar some crap stuck on sharepoint and even this is going away now because the TCO (via opex) is way too high. Web presence is almost entirely 100% not windows now. The only thing that is hanging on is traditional desktop applications and there is a big problem there: MSFT are pushing UWP and no one wants it.  People are getting very nervous. Ergo, the logical path they are taking is going cross platform via Qt / WX on v.next. Also lets not forget the persistent array of abuse large orgs get from MSFT "compliance" these days.

Even one of the crappiest bits of software ever written in the UK, a broker's desktop application which was a mulch of SQL Server CE, WPF, winforms and bits of C++ just to kill your soul, just arrived as an Electron application and is suddenly cross platform. We nearly fell on our arses when that was announced.

Also, at least here in the UK, it's starting to get hard to find windows platform developers. They are drying up. The older more established staff who were around in the 00's are wanting to escalate to management and architecture positions or have jumped ship already. The new people were brought up on other platforms. Nearly all our employees are from Europe / India.

Times are changing, much as they did for IBM's traditional workload in the 1980s/1990s.

[ebastler]

Ah, alright. So the slice is defined by „middleware“, right? The prior discussion about Windows and its precursor GUIs suggested to me that we were discussing desktop...

[bd139]

what do you think people talk to the middleware with? Acres of win32, winforms and WPF apps that are being ported away right now.

There are so many out there that the scope is far larger than the public side of things that we all see. I saw one for a commercial bank that has 5,600 forms and 50k users and several hundred financial models. That's big and that's just the front end of it.

[GlennSprigg]

Thanks to all the new contributors too 
(though it's starting to snow-ball into other topics haha... 
It was my learning here, at least, that there were many other 'precursor' contenders.

To make a few points about my observations, although off-topic......
Regarding 1st comments about MAC systems, (and I have nothing against them!!), PC's as of today, see....
https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0
Windows-7      46.63%
Windows-10    29.26%
Windows-XP     6.47%
Windows-8.1    5.97%
Mac OSX 10     3.34%
Linux                2.98%
(Plus others....)

Of course this is for personal PC's, not the likes of Server-Side Linux servers etc......
I KNOW Mac's are good!! (although I'm ignorant about them), and it seems that a LOT if not most? technical
or scientific establishments use them. In Australia, virtually ALL medical establishments use them !!!, including servers?

Within this 'post' people have also talked about future redundancy for PC's as we know them,and the likes of Microsoft,
ALSO in regards to SOFTWARE development that IS, or WILL decline.
Well, here's MY take on it, and it pisses me off, and a lot of other people too . . . . .

I hate the look of Windows-10, (but luckily I can change that), but it's layout & interface is to facilitate the ever increasing
touch screens & Tablets!!!  One of my Laptops can fold down to just a Touch-Screen like a large Tablet, and that's fine.
Secondly, a LOT of software is now changing to "Cloud-Based" for the interface. I KNOW why, (portability), but I HATE it !!
Thirdly, more & more software these days is TOTALLY running while 'on-line' with nothing really 'installed'......  NOPE !!!

I'm old school, and I know that's a problem 
But I want to install & run a local app, when I want, and off-line, when ever I choose to do so !!!!! (Pant-pant...)
The FUTURE.... (I'll probably be dead) is just for Smart-Phones' & 'Tablets', and will be like the 'Old-Dumb-Terminal'
screens & keyboards, that were literally an 'interface' to the REAL Computer/Server/Brains.....
I would like to think there will always be a compromise between the two.... but there won't be.
WE will be 'dealt' the hardware that the 'Gods' deem we need, and all the young up-and-comers will do what THEY are
told, in regards to Server-Side scripts, (& Java, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, and numerous new DataBase standards......
Ok...  I'll shut up now.... 

[Alex Eisenhut]

GEOS on the 64 was a tour-de-force. I worsphipped the stupid thing when I was in high school, and ended up spending a lot for a 1581, 1351, and 1764 RAM expansion unit.

Basically, this was a 3.5" 800K floppy, a proportional mouse (as opposed to the older C64 mouse that simply simulated a joystick), and a 512K (well, it was a 256K unit I expanded to 512K for free) RAM expansion.

GEOS fairly flew in that setup, the RAM was used as a RAM drive so all applications simply loaded instantly. The RAM expander had a DMA controller and it was able to transfer 1 byte per CPU clock cycle in and out of the 64's main RAM.

The problem was that computer users in the 1980s were fairly sectarian, with the school's IBMs viewed as "serious, academic computers" and the Commodore 64 as a game machine for children.
 
edit: corrected 1581 storage capacity

[james_s]

There is one aspect I truly do miss about the earlier days of computing. Software (and hardware) were improving by leaps and bounds and every year there were exciting new things. New versions of software were virtually always superior to the older versions they replaced, offering new and improved features, better user interface, allowing me to do things with my computer that I never could before. Processor speeds were doubling on a regular basis and overclocking could net you a very substantial boost. Also when a piece of software shipped it was *done*, tested, ready to use, none of this "ship it now and fix it later" crap that has plagued the industry. It wasn't bug-free by any means but the overall quality level was much higher.

These days all of this has plateaued, computers have become so powerful that we are seeing diminishing returns on the improvements, even a 10 year old PC is still completely usable for many people. Most software categories matured 10+ years ago and new versions now typically focus on shuffling the UI around to make it look "new" and adding useless features nobody asked for. With fewer reasons than ever to upgrade to the latest version every company seems to be jumping on the software "as a service" (rental) bandwagon where lacking any compelling reason to buy the latest version they will simply extract the money anyway and continuously tinker with the product in attempt to justify the ongoing payments. No longer can you stick with a version you like and choose when to upgrade, the company has control now and you will take what they give you or leave. Software companies themselves now routinely spread FUD about their own previous products, pushing the benefits of staying constantly updated. Despite the fact that every bit of malware I've ever cleaned off someone's computer got there by the user installing something sketchy rather than some exploit being leveraged by a hacker.

[daybyter]

Back in the days I bought the zorland C compiler dev system for my commodore pc 10. It came with a gem copy and I guess all the libs to write gem apps. The only app, that I ever got to work, was a demo app. It seemed, that at least some of the libs were missing, I guess.

[Sam Hobbs]

I assume you know that IBM tried to work with Microsoft in the development of OS/2.

Look at Graphical Data Display Manager \- Wikipedia. That is not clear but the implication at least is that Windows was influenced by IBM's GDDM. Of course if that is true then that occurred before the development of OS/2.

Also see IBM TopView - Wikipedia. TopView was released in March 1985 and Windows 1.0 was released in November 1985. Note that the Hopeful beginnings section of the WikiPedia article about TopView seems to (currently) have errors, speculation and misleading statements. I created a talk page about that.

[techman-001]

Everyone in the software sector I know has moved or is moving to macOS X or Linux.

Gosh, that would suggest that pretty soon there will be no more software for Windows -- I'm scared!! Or wait, maybe it suggests that you only know people in a certain, narrowly defined slice of "the software sector"? 

There will always be Microsoft Windows!

However one day Microsoft Windows will be indistinguishable from Linux apart from the name and the price.

[SiliconWizard]

there were (are!) many windowed GUIs... apple lisa's os, apple mac, digital research gem on the atari, amiga's workbench, x windows on unix etc etc

Sure were. I wonder why the OP forgot about Apple altogether... And Apple took the ideas from visits to Xerox research.
There were probably earlier attempts than the ones at Xerox, but I think they pretty much laid out what a modern GUI would look like.

[Rick Law]

I remember with my old Commodore-64, I had an old software package from "Berkley Software".
It was called "G.E.O.S."..... (Graphical Environment Operating System), before PC's Windows existed!
As a purely 'graphical' interface environment, then anything could be done, (within the small system limits).
You had many types & sizes of 'fonts', there was a 'desktop' with icons, you had multiple 'Windows' you
could open including resizing/min/max/close for multiple 'apps' at once...  It even had a Waste-Paper basket,
(recycle-bin!!) you could drag/drop files to, etc etc..... Seemed like 'Windows' to me !!  :-)
I was later left wondering if Bill Gates & his buddies had THAT in mind, when they first made "Windows"...
As it sure as hell looked & behaved almost exactly the same... :-)

If you are including GUI on non-PC systems, many GUI systems existed way before Windows 1x.  GEM was really an Apple look alike for PC (perhaps because they both have similar graphic resolution limitations), which I quite like but I think Windows 1x existed before GEM.

Walking back, you have Apple Mac, then Apple Lisa, X-Windows on Unix systems, then you get to pretty much the first commercial GUI which was Metaphor Systems (1982) - they were directly descended from Xerox PARC - descended as from the implementation (look and feel) standpoint but not organizational/ownership standpoint.   Xerox PARC is whom most would considered as the inventor of GUI.  They were acquired by IBM and Metaphor was no more.
^{More info on Metaphor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor_Computer_Systems}

But wait, then you have Control Data System's PLATO which was a touch screen based GUI back in the early 1970...
^{See an old PLATO terminal here:https://www.knkx.org/post/timeline-history-touch-screen-technology} 

[guenthert]

  And ultimately you have The Mother of All Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos, Douglas Engelbart's astonishing presentation in '68.

[eugenenine]

My recollection is that everyone (Apple, Microsoft, GEOS) were all based on the Xerox ideas and developed nearly in the same time frame.

I had used Speedscript on my C64 and used money I was given around me high school graduation to buy a second 1541 drive and GEOS and the 1351 mouse and tool that on to college and later moved to an Amiga then a 286 PC.

[Tac Eht Xilef]

… but I think Windows 1x existed before GEM.

GEM (released Feb 1985) predated Win 1 (Nov 1985) by a few months.

Walking back, you have Apple Mac, then Apple Lisa, X-Windows on Unix systems, then you get to pretty much the first commercial GUI which was Metaphor Systems (1982)

From most recent to earliest:
GEOS: 1986
MS Windows v1: Nov 1985
Gem: Feb 1985
X Windows System: Jun 1984
Apple Mac: Jan 1984
Apple Lisa: Jan 1983
W Windows System: c.1983
Metaphor Workstation: 1982
Xerox Star Workstation: Apr 1981
Xerox Alto: Mar 1973, the famous GUI demo in Dec 1979
Control Data Plato IV touchscreen demo: 1972

[Nusa]

… but I think Windows 1x existed before GEM.

GEM (released Feb 1985) predated Win 1 (Nov 1985) by a few months.

Walking back, you have Apple Mac, then Apple Lisa, X-Windows on Unix systems, then you get to pretty much the first commercial GUI which was Metaphor Systems (1982)

From most recent to earliest:
GEOS: 1986
MS Windows v1: Nov 1985
Gem: Feb 1985
X Windows System: Jun 1984
Apple Mac: Jan 1984
Apple Lisa: Jan 1983
W Windows System: c.1983
Metaphor Workstation: 1982
Xerox Star Workstation: Apr 1981
Xerox Alto: Mar 1973, the famous GUI demo in Dec 1979
Control Data Plato IV touchscreen demo: 1972

Control Data didn't demo the touchscreen in 1972. The correct attribution would be the University of Illinois CERL labs, run by Don Bitzer. CERL also developed the plasma graphics panel that the touch screen was designed for. CDC bought commercial rights from them in 1976 if I remember correctly.

Most people can be forgiven for not remembering the Apple Lisa. There were never that many of them, being commercially eclipsed by the Apple Mac the next year. I can only think of one person I knew that owned one.

[rrinker]

 I don't recall anyone I knew owning a Lisa, but they were on display at the Hess department store near me. It looked interesting, but then I would see the price tag. Given a TRS-80 Modle 1 was out of reach for me, the Lisa certainly was.

[SiliconWizard]

My recollection is that everyone (Apple, Microsoft, GEOS) were all based on the Xerox ideas and developed nearly in the same time frame.

I'm pretty sure Apple was the first one to implement Xerox ideas on a personal computer, and the others followed. As I've read, despite innovative and visionary ideas, Xerox was having a hard time getting people interested in their GUI systems. Contrary to what has been sometimes said, Apple didn't steal anything from Xerox. Xerox executives at the time decided to actively transfer the concepts to Apple because they were not seeing any future of those for Xerox itself.

[coppice]

My recollection is that everyone (Apple, Microsoft, GEOS) were all based on the Xerox ideas and developed nearly in the same time frame.

I'm pretty sure Apple was the first one to implement Xerox ideas on a personal computer, and the others followed. As I've read, despite innovative and visionary ideas, Xerox was having a hard time getting people interested in their GUI systems. Contrary to what has been sometimes said, Apple didn't steal anything from Xerox. Xerox executives at the time decided to actively transfer the concepts to Apple because they were not seeing any future of those for Xerox itself.

I think Xerox was only struggling to get people to take their cost performance balance seriously. Apple had the same problem. The Lisa was unaffordable and a dismal failure. The Macintosh started with a price target, and they built the best thing they could within that price target. The first Mac also didn't take the world by storm, as its functionality was so badly compromised to meet its price target. The thing that made the GUI world take off was not Apple, but components getting cheaper and more powerful.

[helius]

The Macintosh started with a price target, and they built the best thing they could within that price target. The first Mac also didn't take the world by storm, as its functionality was so badly compromised to meet its price target.

The original 128K Mac was so compromised that it could not support its own development environment. Software for it had to be built on a Lisa!
As you say, downward trends in component prices (especially DRAM) enabled more powerful machines that were eminently useful. The "Fat Mac" (512K RAM) came out a year later and was able to run developer tools.

[CatalinaWOW]

While stolen is a strong word, ideas flowed freely back and forth among these early leaders.  And the lawyers did their best to nail down IP rights.  Remember all the arguments about overlapping vs non-overlapping windows, nesting windows vs non-nesting and other such minutia?  The whole concept of "obvious to a practitioner of the art" seems extremely murky to the legal profession.

I actually liked GEM better than the Mac128, but GEM died almost before it got started.

[andersm]

From most recent to earliest:
GEOS: 1986
MS Windows v1: Nov 1985
Gem: Feb 1985
X Windows System: Jun 1984
Apple Mac: Jan 1984
Apple Lisa: Jan 1983
W Windows System: c.1983
Metaphor Workstation: 1982
Xerox Star Workstation: Apr 1981
Xerox Alto: Mar 1973, the famous GUI demo in Dec 1979
Control Data Plato IV touchscreen demo: 1972

Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad: 1963. The program ran on a Lincoln TX-2.

[ggchab]

There will always be Microsoft Windows!

However one day Microsoft Windows will be indistinguishable from Linux apart from the name and the price.

Windows 10 is almost free (https://selected-software.de/shop/microsoft-windows-10-pro-oem-3264bit-product-key/?mc_cid=cc8e5e2913&mc_eid=3142428367) and you can often get it for less than €10.
There shouldn't be any new version of Windows. Updates only.
Software runs more and more on virtual machines (Java, .net, ...) that hide the OS details.

[RetroSwim]

I wouldn't say Sketchpad counts as a GUI much more than preceding minicomputers with light-pen inputs.

OP, the modern GUI can indeed be traced back to Xerox, and a famous demo in 1968:

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

[ebastler]

OP, the modern GUI can indeed be traced back to Xerox, and a famous demo in 1968:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

Except that the demo had nothing to do with Xerox? 

Engelbart was working at Stanford Research Institute, and to my knowledge his project had no affiliation with Xerox at all. Some of his team members ended up at Xerox a few years later, and continued to work on GUIs.

[eugenenine]

There will always be Microsoft Windows!

However one day Microsoft Windows will be indistinguishable from Linux apart from the name and the price.

Windows 10 is almost free (https://selected-software.de/shop/microsoft-windows-10-pro-oem-3264bit-product-key/?mc_cid=cc8e5e2913&mc_eid=3142428367) and you can often get it for less than €10.
There shouldn't be any new version of Windows. Updates only.
Software runs more and more on virtual machines (Java, .net, ...) that hide the OS details.

The initial cost is only part of the cost, windows costs too much time keeping it working.

[RetroSwim]

OP, the modern GUI can indeed be traced back to Xerox, and a famous demo in 1968:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

Except that the demo had nothing to do with Xerox? 

Engelbart was working at Stanford Research Institute, and to my knowledge his project had no affiliation with Xerox at all. Some of his team members ended up at Xerox a few years later, and continued to work on GUIs.

Yes, you're right, poorly worded on my part.

It should have read "back to Xerox, and further to a famous demo..."

[shawty]

Everyone in the software sector I know has moved or is moving to macOS X or Linux.

Gosh, that would suggest that pretty soon there will be no more software for Windows -- I'm scared!! Or wait, maybe it suggests that you only know people in a certain, narrowly defined slice of "the software sector"? 

I can't give you actual details, I can only tell you what I know to be public knowledge, but I work as an external developer with/close to or in advisory to a LOT of Microsoft beta and testing teams (I'm currently working along side the .NET core 3 and Blazor folks) - however...  this does put me in a position that I do often find out "stuff", which for obvious reasons I'm not allowed to repeat.

Public knowledge (No matter how thinly spread it is) is allowed...

Right now, if you are a business with less than 1000 employees, AND you have an enterprise site license, AND your moving to windows 10, you can NO LONGER get physical media to install Windows 10.

Instead, you get a log in to the Microsoft network, which allows your I.T folks to create a bootloader on a USB key, this bootloader is then booted on the PC to be installed, that PC then installs a secure UEFI bootloader on the device (Read secure as in, once it's installed it's locked down and cannot be removed [or changed/edited] - bye bye multi booting OS's) .

The entire device then boots directly from Microsofts Azure Cloud systems.  From that point on, that device can no longer have any other OS installed on it, and it can ONLY boot over the network to load W10 and/or Office 365.

MS are not making any qualms about this, and have openly admitted that they are moving towards a future where windows will be a service.

If you have over 1000 employees, or are a large corp, you can get some physical install media, but in most cases, the baseband OS that is installed is still a cloud booted version.  MS WILL supply a version to be installed directly on a hard drive, but you need to go through special channels, and prove why you need an offline version, which if MS decide to refuse, you won't be allowed to use "Windows as a service".

Also, if you have over 1000 employees and/or deployed OS's, you must sign up for "Windows servicing as a service", and yes that's exactly what it sounds like.  ALL of your I.T. upgrade, management, servicing, patching, installing of apps... basically everything your internal I.T folks would normally do, WILL BE delegated to MS technical staff (For a monthly fee of course) this is a requirement to getting an enterprise license, and businesses using W10 in any shape or form (Unless your a little 1 or 2 man band) will NOT be allowed to license anything other than an Enterprise version.

MS Office, the current "Office 2019" version will be the LAST ever version of MS office that will ship as an install-able product.

There's still a good few years to go yet, but they will eventually roll these things out to the consumer versions too.  The reason they are trying so hard to eradicate all copies of "Installable Windows" is because they want everyone eventually on "Windows as a service".  For those who write software, right now is a golden time, with them giving away free copies of visual studio left and center, but it's all a ploy to get you hooked, they are slowly moving visual studio to the cloud.

And .NET core is not all nice and cross platform for the hell of it, it's heading that way, so it'll run in whatever you throw it at, when your forced to move all your software development activities to Azure too.

We'll leave it there for now......

Suffice to say, it's gonna be a fairly lengthy time before we get there, but that's the direction MS are heading, and there not making it a secret...

[shawty]

So anyway, back on track to the subject of the thread.

The one thing that ALWAYS tickles me and makes me LOL, are the Raspberry PI crowd with "RiscOS Open" (https://www.riscosopen.org/content/) it's new, it's shiny and it's ooooo soooo fast compared to anything else.

And it was originally doing the rounds in the late 80's early 90's when MS-Dos 6.22 and Windows 3 where just starting to become popular.  :-D

I love RiscOS, always have, I still have a FULL set of dev tools, for both the older ROS3.11 and lower versions, and the newer versions such as ROSOpen, the programming model is great, they have something called "The Toolbox Libs", which guess what?

Is graphical drag and drop, of widgets and such like, with properties and events..... just like, hmmm Visual Basic 6, and VB/VC .NET and even Delphi, the "Toolbox" and it's software development model pre-dates all of them.

Of course, you didn't have to use C and the Wimp/TB Libs if you didn't want to, because all 32 bit Acorn machines as well as a desktop in rom, also had a Basic interpreter and ARM assembler built in too, so while you may not have had the Drag and Drop stuff, it didn't cost you anything to get started writing software either, the only thing that did cost if you wanted it was the official "Programmers Reference Manuals" (All of which you can get online as PDF's for free now : http://www.riscos.com/support/developers/), back then the whole set cost you £150 and came in 5 volumes of about 500 pages each!!!  Delivered by the UK royal Mail...  I still fondly remember the morning mine where delivered and the look on our post mans face...

Many folks however don't realize, that the Archimedes range was NOT the first of Acorns computers to have a desktop.  The 32k BBC Model B had an add-on called the "AMX Super Mouse" which plugged into the 8 Bit parallel user port and that had a desktop environment that came with it in a sideways ROM chip, that you plugged into a spare ROM socket on the BBC's motherboard.

Many of the emulation sites still carry a ROM image, which can be soft loaded into the existing BBC B emulators enabling you to use the wonderful, AMX art painting program (For which I still have a user guide on the shelf behind me) and other mouse based software.  It was single tasking (What else would you expect on a 32k machine with a 2mhz CPU :-)  )  but it worked incredibly well for 1981/82.

[james_s]

The Macintosh started with a price target, and they built the best thing they could within that price target. The first Mac also didn't take the world by storm, as its functionality was so badly compromised to meet its price target.

The original 128K Mac was so compromised that it could not support its own development environment. Software for it had to be built on a Lisa!
As you say, downward trends in component prices (especially DRAM) enabled more powerful machines that were eminently useful. The "Fat Mac" (512K RAM) came out a year later and was able to run developer tools.

The aftermarket also contributed hugely to the success of the Macintosh. While it was designed to be an appliance with no internal expandability at all, that didn't stop 3rd parties from developing RAM upgrades, accelerators, graphics cards to drive external monitors, hard drives, networking, etc. 3rd party upgrades allowed the Macintosh to be central to the development of desktop publishing and graphic arts.

[Rasz]

Oral History of Lee Lorenzen
"His early career included positions at Xerox, where he developed the Lone Star graphical user interface, and Digital Research, where he developed the GEM (Graphic Environment Manager) operating system."

[xmetal]

I remember using GEM on the Atari ST in the mid 80's. The first version of MS Windows I used was Windows 3.0.

[coppice]

I remember using GEM on the Atari ST in the mid 80's. The first version of MS Windows I used was Windows 3.0.

Hardly anyone touched Windows before 3.0. Even 3.0 wasn't that widely used. It was 3.11 that really made things take off.

I had a copy of Windows 1.0 and a copy of the SDK for it, bought before we realised just how much 1.0 was merely a work in progress. That wasted us some time finding out.

[SiliconWizard]

Hardly anyone touched Windows before 3.0. Even 3.0 wasn't that widely used. It was 3.11 that really made things take off.

Absolutely!

[xmetal]

I remember using GEM on the Atari ST in the mid 80's. The first version of MS Windows I used was Windows 3.0.

Hardly anyone touched Windows before 3.0. Even 3.0 wasn't that widely used. It was 3.11 that really made things take off.

I had a copy of Windows 1.0 and a copy of the SDK for it, bought before we realised just how much 1.0 was merely a work in progress. That wasted us some time finding out.

I had a copy of Windows 2 but never installed it. I had and used Windows 3.0, 3.1 and then 3.11 in that family. Windows For Workgroups (3.11) was the best out of the three though.

[SiliconWizard]

IIRC, my first Windows station was a computer I built from a couple spare parts, based around an AMD 5x86 and 4MB of RAM, Windows 3.11. Upgraded it to 8MB shortly after. That was in the mid-90s, after several years of using MacOS. This machine was more powerful than the Mac I had back then, and for a very humble cost at the time. The OS looked definitely less polished than MacOS at the time, but the machine was just much faster.

[eugenenine]

I remember windows 3.1 was the popular.  the patch to 3.11 was so small you would never notice it.

Anyone ever use the dos client for windows 3.1?

I setup dos 6.2 (or maybe 6.22 i can't recall for sure which) on an 8088 with a 10M hdd and an intel nic that could work in 8 bit mode and then the dos client for windows and got that ols xt to actually talk to the rest of my network.

[guenthert]

I remember windows 3.1 was the popular.  the patch to 3.11 was so small you would never notice it.

[..]

  In corporations, 3.11 was huge.  Before that, MS Windows was an also-run at best, but 3.11 rang the death-bell for Novell's Netware.

Edit: I meant Windows for Workgroups 3.11 of course -- I didn't know that there was a MS Windows 3.11 (I never used either, I played in the Unix adventure land instead).

[eugenenine]

Yeah there was windows 3.1, and WFW 3.1
as well as Windows 3.11 and WFW 3.11


I can't even remember what the 3.11 patch was for anymore but I'm wondering of the issue was found when used in workgroups so the association of 3.11 with WFW.

[Nusa]

Yeah there was windows 3.1, and WFW 3.1
as well as Windows 3.11 and WFW 3.11


I can't even remember what the 3.11 patch was for anymore but I'm wondering of the issue was found when used in workgroups so the association of 3.11 with WFW.

Windows 3.11 was almost entirely bug fixes, and was a free update for anyone that owned Windows 3.1  They would call that sort of thing a service pack these days.

WFW 3.1 was basically Windows 3.1 with network support included, using SMB and NetBIOS.

WFW 3.11 was bug fixes, but it also added 32-bit features and had a minimum 386 CPU requirement.

For all of the above, if you wanted TCP/IP support you needed to add a winsock package. Most people used 3rd-party winsock solutions that were available much earlier than the Microsoft solution that only worked on WFW 3.11 because it used 32-bit features.

And, of course, all of the above got replaced by Windows 95 when it came out. And Windows 98 after that. And finally Windows 2000 ME, which was the last of the DOS-based windows that most people considered worse than Windows 98.

[rsjsouza]

Back in the day I only saw Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the wild. Plain Windows 3.11 was not seen around where I lived.

Wikipedia to the rescue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x

I've been working to bring back to a healthy life an old Toshiba T2000SX laptop and, during the process and with the help of a CF to IDE adapter, I was able to create and install both DSO6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on a 256MB CF card. Quite the trip down memory lane...

[rrinker]

Windows 2000 and Windows ME were two completely different things. 2000 was NT based, ME was an update to 98 and still DOS based. 2000 Workstation was not bad at all. I don't remember if I had 95 or 98 on my computer when I upgraded it to 2000. I never ran a machine with ME. I always had a second one in the Win 3.1 and 95 days running NT, 3.1 then 3.5, 3.51, and finally 4.0, but too many things wouldn;t run well or at all, so I always had that DOS/95 machine available.

[ebastler]

For all of the above, if you wanted TCP/IP support you needed to add a winsock package. Most people used 3rd-party winsock solutions that were available much earlier than the Microsoft solution

Oh yes, that brings back memories! "Trumpet Winsock", anyone? 

Prompted by your post, I just Googled that name and found a page where you can donate to the author, who did not see much income from this very popular piece of software in the early 90s: https://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/

[xmetal]

Windows 2000 and Windows ME were two completely different things. 2000 was NT based, ME was an update to 98 and still DOS based. 2000 Workstation was not bad at all. I don't remember if I had 95 or 98 on my computer when I upgraded it to 2000. I never ran a machine with ME. I always had a second one in the Win 3.1 and 95 days running NT, 3.1 then 3.5, 3.51, and finally 4.0, but too many things wouldn;t run well or at all, so I always had that DOS/95 machine available.

I remember I later had the Windows 95c version which had USB support and the version of 98 I got was Windows 98SE (Second Edition).

[eugenenine]

Windows 2000 was the last good Microsoft OS.  XP took 2000 and forced IE into it and moved the video to a lower layer for performance which reduced security and stability.

[rsjsouza]

Windows 2000 was the last good Microsoft OS.  XP took 2000 and forced IE into it and moved the video to a lower layer for performance which reduced security and stability.

I disagree. Moving from Windows 2000 to XP reduced the boot time by a factor of 10x, which was a very good benefit for my role as a road warrior on my PIII Dell laptop. Stability was about the same and compatibility with high speed graphics for non linear video editing was a very welcome addition.

Sure, Windows 2000 was a quantum leap in stability when compared to the former "desktop OSes" 95 thru 98SE, but it required an equivalent quantum leap in hardware. IMO far from the best OS from Redmondland.

Years earlier, a similar quantum leap was the introduction of DrDOS 5 (not Microsoft) and its much better usage of the upper memory area - especially after the Microsoft's 4.0 fiasco.

[Nusa]

Windows 2000 and Windows ME were two completely different things. 2000 was NT based, ME was an update to 98 and still DOS based. 2000 Workstation was not bad at all. I don't remember if I had 95 or 98 on my computer when I upgraded it to 2000. I never ran a machine with ME. I always had a second one in the Win 3.1 and 95 days running NT, 3.1 then 3.5, 3.51, and finally 4.0, but too many things wouldn;t run well or at all, so I always had that DOS/95 machine available.

I know that. Back when it was actively being marketed, it was commonly called Windows 2000 ME. So common that you couldn't say Windows 2000 by itself without being ambiguous. I suspect a deliberate choice by marketing people to convince consumers that it was just as good as Windows 2000 Professional they might have heard good things about. Probably combined with some genuine confusion among reviewers about the distinction between the consumer and the corporate path.

NT came in Workstation and Server version. Windows 2000 came in Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter versions. So no such thing as Windows 2000 Workstation. But I get your meaning. Yes, it was a great OS. I used Windows 2000 Pro on my 2-processor work machine for years, and on my home machine even longer (with a dual-boot to Win98se for certain games). So long I went straight to Windows 7 when I replaced the hardware. And I'm still on Windows 7.

[NivagSwerdna]

 When looking at windowing environments you also need to consider the hardware in the evolution...
Windowing on Xerox Alto etc. was where the initial ideas came from (spent many happy hours programming Dandelions in MESA) but the roll out of graphics to PCs came a lot later. Graphics cards and monitors were very expensive.
As for Windows... The first version that was useable was 3.1, before that it was too unstable, and really it wasn't until Windows NT 3.51 that it became a proper platform and thereafter the days of the mini/mainframe were thankfully numbered.
(A good chunk of OS/2 PM was written in the UK and not by Microsoft)

[eugenenine]

Windows 2000 was the last good Microsoft OS.  XP took 2000 and forced IE into it and moved the video to a lower layer for performance which reduced security and stability.

I disagree. Moving from Windows 2000 to XP reduced the boot time by a factor of 10x, which was a very good benefit for my role as a road warrior on my PIII Dell laptop. Stability was about the same and compatibility with high speed graphics for non linear video editing was a very welcome addition.

Sure, Windows 2000 was a quantum leap in stability when compared to the former "desktop OSes" 95 thru 98SE, but it required an equivalent quantum leap in hardware. IMO far from the best OS from Redmondland.

Years earlier, a similar quantum leap was the introduction of DrDOS 5 (not Microsoft) and its much better usage of the upper memory area - especially after the Microsoft's 4.0 fiasco.

XP simply moved the login screen earlier so yes it booted to login faster but after that you got to watch the hard disk blink while you tried to work as it kept starting other services as you were logging in.  I could get older slower hardware to boot to usable 2000 faster than newer faster hardware with XP.

XP fubar'ed the IRDA file transfer (OBEX) so my HP capshare quit working and if you tried between 2000 and XP you had to retry twice.
XP messed up USB to where it would occasionally create duplicate USB storage devices requiring manual clean up
XP removed support for the 'swappiness' (using the linux term here since I can't recall what the reg key was called) so with VMware workstation or Player where I could run 4 guests at a time the same hardware with XP could only run 2 because it kept trying to swap them.  I had to double ram and add a separate small drive for swap to get the same performance.
XP/2003 server introduced a bug into typeperf where you would get negative cpu usage % numbers if you used a wildcard (microsoft issued a refuse to fix, use this workaround instead for my case)
XP embedded would not work from a read only drive where 2000embedded would.
The move of video and other user processes to a lower ring made XP/2003 less secure because it was easier to get malware in.
And of course the worse, forced integration of IE to win the court case so now you had a huge security hole that existed for years making it extremely easy for anyone and their brother, monkey, dog or cat to infect systems.

Windows 2000 IE/OE were optional you could install them if you wanted and yes, you could actually remove them though it was easier and quicker to just reinstall but xp was when they really integrated the two to make the huge hole risk IE was and even made some later XP/2003 patches refuse to install if the outhouse express .exe had been deleted (and WFP db edited to prevent the OS from putting it back of course) even if said patches were unrelated to IE/OE.

Many say SP2 was a lot better but by that time I had given up on XP myself and was no longer involved in anything desktop support related so I'm only familiar with the server 2003 issues such as typeperf, TCPChimney,  etc.

[eugenenine]

I know that. Back when it was actively being marketed, it was commonly called Windows 2000 ME. So common that you couldn't say Windows 2000 by itself without being ambiguous. I suspect a deliberate choice by marketing people to convince consumers that it was just as good as Windows 2000 Professional they might have heard good things about. Probably combined with some genuine confusion among reviewers about the distinction between the consumer and the corporate path.

It was never marketed as 2000 ME, 2000 was marked as the next NT (what was speculated to be NT5) and ME was the successor to 98.  Maybe you saw something like " use the latest Microsoft OS such as 2000 and/or ME" but never 2000ME.  I was running the early technet beta or 2000 for over a year before the release.

around 1998 or so Microsoft's roadmap was to merge the 9x and NT products together but when that was delayed they polished NT and release it as 2000 and threw some crap on top of 98 and release it as ME and then pushed the product line unification back and finally released it as XP.

[coppice]

I know that. Back when it was actively being marketed, it was commonly called Windows 2000 ME. So common that you couldn't say Windows 2000 by itself without being ambiguous. I suspect a deliberate choice by marketing people to convince consumers that it was just as good as Windows 2000 Professional they might have heard good things about. Probably combined with some genuine confusion among reviewers about the distinction between the consumer and the corporate path.

It was never marketed as 2000 ME, 2000 was marked as the next NT (what was speculated to be NT5) and ME was the successor to 98.  Maybe you saw something like " use the latest Microsoft OS such as 2000 and/or ME" but never 2000ME.  I was running the early technet beta or 2000 for over a year before the release.

around 1998 or so Microsoft's roadmap was to merge the 9x and NT products together but when that was delayed they polished NT and release it as 2000 and threw some crap on top of 98 and release it as ME and then pushed the product line unification back and finally released it as XP.

What they marketed was that ME was supposed to be a transitional step towards the NT platform. They put a number of features from NT into ME, in a half hearted way. I guess they felt pressure to offer consumers something that looked like a refresh over 98 second edition. It was a horrible botch, though.

[eugenenine]

Yes, it was like if you took 98 and went to microsoft's web site and downloaded anything and everything you could find for it, resource kits, add ons, beta software, etc.  it was just a bunch of stuff piled on top.

Xp was similar though, take 2000, add in IE, OE, .net, etc.

[SiliconWizard]

At the time, after Windows 3.11, I upgraded to Win95. It was not the most stable thing, but it was a huge improvement in so many ways still: a preemptive scheduler (one of the biggest plusses), a modern GUI, and many other things. So let's give it some credit...

Then I switched to Win NT 4 workstation. Now THAT was a decent OS. It was lacking USB support though, and so when Win2000 was released, I switched to it almost instantly. To me it was as stable as Win NT 4 (same kernel and same of many other things), supported USB and looked more modern.

I never installed XP on any of my own machines. After Win2000, I upgraded to Win2003 (it was easy to configure it for workstation use). And finally, Windows 7.

[rsjsouza]

XP simply moved the login screen earlier so yes it booted to login faster but after that you got to watch the hard disk blink while you tried to work as it kept starting other services as you were logging in.  I could get older slower hardware to boot to usable 2000 faster than newer faster hardware with XP.

It didn't matter for what I needed. I could get running whatever I needed before Windows 2000 was still in the splash screen. Delayed start was beneficial to me.

As for the rest of tour post... Sure, after four or five service packs Windows 2000 should be a better OS with lots of bug fixes. IrDA was on its way out, the USB subsystem was crap before SP2 or 3 on Windows 2000, the graphics performance was never properly up to snuff and compatibility with legacy software was way worse.

The two OSes brought a lot to the table at their time, but merging enterprise with end user requirements is always a process that will penalize one thing or another.

[andersm]

XP (...) moved the video to a lower layer for performance which reduced security and stability.

That happened earlier, in NT 4.0.