Point #1. Athena is absolutely right, children. I’m sitting here reading her post, nodding my head, “uh-huh, uh-huh”. Those were the Bad Old Days. Remember the GEM desktop, too, and how “state of the art” that looked at the time?
Connected to that is:
Point #2. I think what Spoofe is getting at is the phrase “user-friendly”. What Microsoft Windows did was make the whole intimidating world of [gasp!] computers more accessible, more user-friendly, to people like my mother, my sister-in-law, my kid’s 4th grade teacher, and the grandma across the street, who now converses knowledgeably about modem speeds and Napster, and is constructing her own website. Before Windows, you couldn’t have PAID her to undertake something like that, but hey, her 10-year-old granddaughter is learning about computers in school and can give her a hand with the website, so they practically HAD to buy their own computer.
That’s what Microsoft did–they made it possible for Amber’s grandma to go down to Sam’s Club, buy a computer, bring it home, plug it in, and start constructing a website and surfing the Internet.
I could be wrong about the version of DOS, but it was DOS and not Windows. I wouldn’t call DOS easy to use.
You do have to be the first. MS wasn’t the first with an easy to use OS. They weren’t the cause of the widespread computerization of the late eighties and the nineties. A sound business decision led them to be well placed when the expansion happened. That’s not innovation; that doesn’t significantly change the field of computing. Even Bill Gates admits that it should have been Macs; Steve Jobs and the others were just too stupid to figure it out.
I’ll say it again: market share does not equal innovation. It’s not Microsoft you have to thank for your grandmother putting up a web page; she could’ve done it five years ago if she had a Mac.
Please remember that this isn’t a debate about whether Macs are better than PCs. You’ve all conceded that Mac beat MS to the user-friendly GUI, which is the important point.
Okaaay. Try using CP/M, or, for that matter, teaching the average person to use a *nix-type OS.
The Mac doesn’t matter – Apple made quite sure of that.
It doesn’t matter that they made something easy to use. They didn’t make something easy to use that worked on PCs.
If you think MacOS was easy to use, well, that’s up to you. I don’t.
Oh?
MS bringing us Office suites is innovation.
MS bringing us a LaserMouse is innovation.
MS bringing us COM is innovation (don’t say CORBA, CORBA is not as extensive as COM, and is far less useful).
MS bringing us a server OS that normal people can use is innovation.
MS bringing us “high-end” features, like pre-emptive multitasking and protected memory is innovation.
MS making a TCP/IP stack standard equipment on a non-server OS is probably innovation.
MS making a competent web browser is innovation.
Yes, but actually, who the hell cares about that? Who the hell cares about Macs? They’ve successfully ruled themselves out of mattering a damn, because Apple made the mistake of being a hardware, not a software, company.
Hansel, you’re missing the point. Innovation isn’t “create a good product”. Innovation isn’t “get big market share”. Innovation isn’t “design something for wide-range use”. Innovation is ALL of that. Microsoft made, by your argument, the same product that Apple did… but Microsoft was successful. Why? Because they were more innovative. It took innovation to realize what market a product should be geared toward. It took innovation to design an incredibly user-friendly, multi-use, multi-purpose product.
And I never said the MacOS is better… personally, I find it annoying and confusing. However, I DO say that Macs are power powerful (I’m incredibly impressed by the G4).
To innovate is “to introduce changes and new ideas”. That’s what we’re arguing about here. Not MS’s success as a business entity or a software developer; not how popular their software is, or how stable or useful their software is. It’s whether or not they added anything fundamentally new to the world of computing.
PeterB’s list is a challenge I’ll take up in the morning.
True (but it was MS Works back then), I’ll take your word for it, Dunno enough about the differences and whether OpenDoc counts too, and True (but you could maybe argue NeXT, HPUX and IRIX).
IIRC those two examples were in AmigaOS before they were in windows.
Pretty sure apple was here first.
How wasn’t Mosaic competent?
And SPOOFE, I don’t think anyone is going to deny that MS had great buisness sense. And some of their buisness practices were innovative. I think what the OP was asking about though was what technological innovations have they come up with. And to me applying some technology to specific hardware isn’t nearly as innovative as creating the technology or applying it to the whole class of hardware.
So Xerox makes the GUI: Innovation.
Apple puts it on a personal computer: Innovation.
Microsoft puts it on IBM Compatible hardware : Not innovation.
Microsoft didn’t introduce changes and new ideas? They brought an easy-to-use, user-friendly OS to the majority of the population. They changed the view of a computer from a “difficult to use tool” to “everyone’s gotta have one of these, they’re so easy!”
Along with this huge new use of computers by the general public spurred the new ideas, as well. Now, instead of just some obscure companies making software for a small portion of the computer-savvy population, we’ve got hundreds of hard/software companies, online companies, etc. All because of Microsoft’s “innovations”.
If these amazing programs were limited to Macs, the popularity of the Internet, the success of E-commerce, CG effects for movies, easy-to-use E-mail, digital video editing (which, I am aware, a Mac is better for, in general), computer games, and the super-fast advancements in processor design, hard drive size, RAM, video cards, audio cards, etc… ALL this would not have come to being so quickly, as only a small fraction of people would have had any use for any of it, making the entire computer industry a lot less lucrative.
Nope. I’m not talking about integrated suite things. I’m talking about bundles of first rate software. MS Office was the first.
Hardly – such an OS also has to run on commodity hardware, hence, be affordable.
Dunno 'bout that. The Amiga ran on 680x0 processors. Early 680x0 processors (I think up 'til the 68020) didn’t have MMUs, and so it is highly unlikely that their OSes had protected memory.
They might have been – but as they’re still pushing their proprietary networking standards (iDisks anyone? What the hell’s wrong with WebFolders (WebDAV)?), I’m not concerned with them. And again, they’ve ruled themselves out of mattering, by Apple’s decision to be a hardware company.
It was competent, five years ago.
Even since the web became popular, there have been two players, and one of those has cut its own throat by being completely shit.
At the time I was using an Epson Apex 20 with DOS, my friend had a mac with a full GUI.
The Mac is irrelevent today, but five years ago it was still the shit. I worked in a computer lab where, out of fifteen computers, five were Macs; they were the most powerful computers there, and people stood in line for them.
I think you’re just being stubborn here. I’ve worked on both Macs and PCs for a several years now, and Macs definitely have a smoother environment for computing. Fewer clicks, fewer settings to type in, easier software installation, more stable.
At this point, Windows 98 Second Edition can go head to head with Macs for features; debates I’ve seen in other threads here get down to niggling differences in which buttons you push to get what. That tells me that, basically, W98 is as useful and easy to use as a Mac. Prior to that, MS was playing catchup, as far as the user experience went.
This one may be a winner, because of OLE. The first draft of OLE came out of MS in 1991, the second in 1995. As far as I can tell, MS was the first company to provide drag-and-drop and embeddability in compound documents, as a matter of software and user interface.
Show me someone using a lasermouse, and I’ll buy this. No I won’t: what the hell good is a lasermouse?
This gets tricky. MS implemented COM after OLE, when they realized that OLE was just COM for office documents. Prior to COM, the principles behind Object Remote Brokering and distributed computing environments had been worked out in CORBA and widely implemented elsewhere. This was a case of MS following the industry, and doesn’t count as an innovation, whether or not their implementation is now more extensive. OLE is now being copied on other platforms (Linux, most notably).
I’m not sure what this means: using WinNT the way one uses Win98, sure, it’s almost as easy to use. Using WinNT as a server, meaning database server, web server, mail server, etc., well, no. The servers are by no means easy to set up and configure, and are still less secure than their corresponding *nix competitors, as is WinNT itself.
I have no idea who else might have done this first.
If apple was here first, then apple gets the laureate. It’s not an argument that Apple is irrelevent now; they weren’t then.
Not an innovation. Internet Explorer wasn’t better than Netscape Navigator until version 4. They were definitely following Netscape’s lead here.
Yes, but actually, who the hell cares about that?
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Well, it goes directly to the point that MS isn’t the innovating force behind easy to use computers. They were directly aping Macs.
Spoofe said:
This is just flat out wrong. Macintoshes were the computer that started changing people’s minds about computers being usable by the common man. They lost the desktop wars through stupidity well-documented elsewhere (please, for God’s sake, just read the damn article I linked above). MS didn’t offer anything even comparable until Windows 95, when widespread computerization was already well underway.
Remember, people were using computers at work before then. Universities had computer labs. It wasn’t limited to the small fraction you claim. Government offices and major corporations had already computerized (one of my jobs while I was in university was data entry at a talent agency, on Windows 3.0)
MS won the desktop wars by beating Apple, not by pre-empting them. They didn’t innovate computing for people - they stole the place of the Mac by winning the business marketplace first by offering a cheaper alternative. People’s first experiences were on PCs at their job, so when they bought a home computer, they bought PCs.
I’m stunned. I’m just stunned. I hadn’t realized that Microsoft was the Alpha and the Omega. Where’s the nearest temple? I feel a need to purify myself before the holy Gates’s eyes.
I guess history really is written by the winners.
Read this. The last four paragraphs mention why Microsoft drove the development of hardware so fast. The column itself is an interesting view on the breakup of Microsoft.
hansel, the Mac hasn’t counted for many years – a decade, at least.
Macs have about a 5% market share, and that’s optimistic.
Creating an easy to use GUI fortheMac is irrelevent. It’s not a market that MS – or anyone other than Apple – compete or develop in.
MS produced the first mass market easy to use OS. Apple didn’t, because Apple never made a mass-market product.
The thing that matters is creating stuff for PCs. Apple don’t even try. The PCs have been the only important thing since the mid-to-late eighties.
Five years ago, Macs weren’t “the shit”. They were just “shit”. Five years ago, PCs gained protected memory. This is fundamentally important. They gained Plug and Play, and other things (redressing one deficit they had). Speed-wise things were neck-and-neck, tho’ towards the middle of 1996 Macs took the lead.
I’m not being stubborn, I’m just using the things that I have experienced first hand. Windows provides me with the most consistent UI, I don’t type in any setttings except perhaps a machine name and IP address (very little else), my software installations are a breeze – put the CD in the drive, click next a few times, click the Start Menu icon.
And stability? Please, pull the other one.
For a long time the Windows UX has been superior to that of the Mac – since Windows 95, indeed. The taskbar is a boon (the MacOS applications menu is a nightmare in comparison, because of the sheer number of people who just don’t know that it exists), the Start Menu works incredibly well (the Apple menu works, kinda, but less well, IMO). For 95% of users, that’s all that matters. Having watched newbie users (And I mean newbies – literal first time computer users) use both platforms, I am quite convinced that Windows 95 beats MacOS hands down – and that Windows 98 (especially SE) and 2000 spank it even harder. It’s just little things like the little bouncing “Click here to start” message – they make a difference. It’s the fact that you can see what running programs you have just by looking on the taskbar, and that you can switch between them just by pressing the buttons. The fact that the “close program” widget is a bloody great “X”. The fact that your running programs don’t disappear when you click away from them.
By “LaserMouse” I mean “IntelliMouse with IntelliEye” and its related products. I know it’s not actually a laser (it’s a damn bright LED) but I think “LaserMouse” is a cooler name. 99% of people I’ve spoken to can work out what it means. I love my Intellimouse Explorer.
CORBA is a joke. A key part of CORBA is now EJBs – and they’re less than two years old. CORBA just does not do the same as COM+. Nothing does, at the moment. COM+ is just great.
Aaaah, the days before even an attempt at standards compliance. Of course, Netscape is still living in those days, wondering why it’s haemorraging (how the FUCK do you spell that?) market share.
Microsoft has made all kinds of innovations. COM was already mentioned. DirectX used to be a joke, but is actually very useful now. How about Visual Basic? This was a radical programming language that really made programmming accessible. I can’t remember if anything like it existed before.
Microsoft funds a huge R&D lab, and they are working on stuff that won’t be available in a commercial computer for a long time. The only things to make it to commercial applications from MS R&D that I can think of are the little paperclip and other helper apps (the research site has some really impressive ones), and Microsoft’s new display technology for handhelds which makes fonts look much better than the resolution should allow. Have a look at the book reader in the new pocket PC’s, and compare it to anything else - the image quality is amazing.
You and Spoofe keep arguing that MS is better now, so they’re the innovator. It doesn’t matter whether they took the lead, it matters who they were following. For the desktop, they were following Mac. For COM, they were following ORB, DCE and Corba (though not for OLE, as I observed). For Internet Explorer, they were following Netscape.
Against your user experience with Macs, I can only say that popular opinion, the opinions of everyone I know who’s tried both, and my opinion say otherwise.
BTW, how is a lasermouse and advantage over a regular mouse? It sounds gimmicky to me.
OLE was innovative, but not COM. I don’t consider DirectX innovative because it’s a kludge (though a good one, now) on handling diverse hardware (i.e., providing a unified API is not innovative). Visual Basic isn’t innovative - it’s pathetic as a language on its own, and gains all its power from providing easy hooks into Office and Windows. Shell scripting on *nix machines did the same long ago.
It’s true that Microsoft, given it’s market share, is now in a position to innovate. It’s research department is terrifyingly large, and they’ve hired a lot of really smart people. But that won’t show up for a while.
Microsoft has always had a large R&D department. I saw a special on AI in about 1990 that extensively featured people from Microsoft AI labs. They’ve been working on telepresence and virtual worlds since 1992. They’ve done a ton of research in natural language interfaces since 1985 or so. Their database research has produced from impressive innovations like data-shaped recordsets in ADO 2.0.
What Microsoft has really excelled at, however, is taking technology and making it useful, whether it is their own or someone else’s. I just finished a project using Microsoft’s new XML parser, and it’s great. SQL server 2000 will allow you to directly store and retrieve data in XML through HTTP requests directly to the server. That’s the kind of thing that is really useful. Microsoft didn’t invent XML, but once they decided it is a good standard they embraced it and made it much more useful.
If you think cinema CG is developed on windows software you are woefully ignorant of how the industry really works. As to all the hardware you listed we can thank companies like IBM for their non-proprietary PCs and their huge R&D departments. As far as processors go MS doesn’t make those either.
The computer revolution happened, and nothing was going to stop it, credit for developing GUI goes to Xerox. Producing it for home use goes to Apple. Market leader MS gets credit for its its business practices, illegal or otherwise, not because they originated the software or had any industry shaking ideas. If there wasn’t a MS the market would be different but the Mosiac would have still produced internet-madness and tons of PCs.
The computer revolution, when it comes to the home, was nothing compared to the innovation that Tim Bergers-Lee and the Mosaic team at the U of Illinois at Champaign developed - hypertext with graphics that works on over the world’s fiber network.
Its all downhill from there, though you don’t have to let the facts stand in the way of your opinions.
How old are you Peter? You seem to lack historical perspective. Your comment that the PC was the only thing from the mid-80’s on is just plain wrong. The PC market was fragmented, it had no user-friendly OS, IBM was trying desperately to recapture its marketshare by releasing the PS/2 with a proprietary architecture.
Apple was, by anybody’s definition except yours, a mass market OS and system well into the 90’s. At one point they were selling a million machines per quarter. I just don’t know what you’d consider mass market, if that isn’t.
Their Powerbooks were a widely recognized tour de force in
'92. Their market share was much less than the IBM PC, but still respectable until around '95 when Windows '95 came out at the same time as Apple was experiencing some truly grievious mismanagement.
Your comment that five years ago, the Mac was “shit” basically indicates that you’ve got some kind of chip on your shoulder. I’ve never really understood why some people just take the existence of the Macintosh as a personal affront, but apparently you’re one of them.
No, they weren’t. COM and CORBA are NOT comparable, because CORBA sucks. They do different things in a different way, and CORBA has only been vaguely approaching “usable” in the past two years.
Visual Basic, providing an easy to use, fairly powerful, language, was innovative.
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It had competition, yes.
I haven’t argued otherwise.
And…?
Pardon me if I don’t care. They sold a million machines per quarter. OK, now, please tell me how many PCs were sold during that same quarter? I’ll posit more than a million.
For any single manufacturer, a million a quarter isn’t bad. But as an entire market for a kind of computer, that’s abysmal. Compare the number of Apples sold to the number of PCs sold – the Mac doesn’t do so well. That’s why I don’t think that they’re important.
Define “respectable”. I don’t think that it was “respectable”, or even close.
Mismanagement isn’t the half of it.
Nope. I just think that five years ago there existed better machines than the Mac. In fact, I know there were.
This isn’t argument, this is hyperbole. This source (whom I consider reputable) says that they’re direct competitors. Besides, CORBA comes from the same thing that COM does: ORB and DCE. You haven’t contradicted my point.
hansel, you should check out the CORBA 3 specification, which is the closest yet to COM+/DNA.
Prior to CORBA 3, CORBA just didn’t begin to compete. It provided a framework for component-based systems, but that’s it. It was with the incorporation of EJB that it began to offer similar capabilities.
It’s interesting that CORBA is perhaps more proprietary than COM – Java/EJB being wholly proprietary, ActiveX being less so (it’s within the domain of the Open Group). That’s beside the point, obviously, but I find it amusing.
They’re both approximately the same age BUT COM is older – CORBA’s about 8 years old (its initial spec was released in 1992, tho’ the OMG had been around for longer), OLE was first used in 1991. (When its development began, I know not). Either way, the first COM products were available before the first CORBA specification had been finalized.
Now, OLE might have been a copy of the as-yet unreleased CORBA spec, but I don’t believe that it was – unless you have evidence to the contrary. However, given that OLE’s usage came before CORBA’s specification, I would argue that COM is the more innovative of the two things.
Furthermore, COM is both a specification and an implementation – CORBA is just a specification.
Hansel, you’re saying that Microsoft isn’t innovative 'cuz someone else did something similar to what MS did at a later date, 'cept that someone else didn’t do that similar thing very well.
By your definition, the invention of DSL wouldn’t have been innovative, since it only uses phone lines.
By your definition, manned space flight wouldn’t have been innovative, since it used the same technology used by standard jetplanes in atmoshpere.
By your definition, human sentience wouldn’t have been “innovative” (I’m stretching the definition a bit) since early humans were essentially hairless apes with tools.
Since it’s obvious that your dictionary seemingly ran away with the spoon recently, I’ll give you a hand:
(From Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary… big honkin’ thing, really… I use it for bench pressing).
You’re arguing that MS ain’t innovative since Apple did a bunch of things first. I’m arguing that MS is innovative since they took stuff that was already out there and made it BETTER.