Did Microsoft deserve its success in the 90s?

[IntelliMission]

Everyone that has been around IT people or has worked/studied IT for a bit knows that many people have been complaining about Microsoft for years.

 

Amiga is better than PC, Linux is better than Windows... We've all heard that (and often suffered it too while being Microsoft users). However, Microsoft managed to have enormous succeed and growth in the 90s thanks to MS-DOS and then Windows.

 

Did they deserve it? Were they just in the right place at the right time? Or maybe their actual merit was all about finantial/marketing? Let's discuss.

[zzip]

They don't deserve it based on technical merit alone.   Remember how they got there.   They lied and told IBM that they had an OS for their new PC, then they went out and bought a product literally called "Quick and Dirty OS" and turned it into MS-DOS.   As the name implied, it wasn't very good but it created a legacy that hobbled PC for 2 decades until XP finally removed dependancies on it.

 

But then MS used their position to take out competitors and lock-in customers.   They backstabbed IBM over OS/2 which MS pledged to support.  They plotted to destroy Novell, and Netscape because they saw them as threats to their monopoly.   They would constantly changed Word and Excel formats so that competing products couldn't interchange documents and would have to play catch-up.   They tried to make the WWW use enough MS tech that you needed to use Internet Explorer to use websites properly.   They announced they would "embrace and extend" Java,  and to many techies "Embrace and Extend" became a meme representing MS's modus operendi of destroying competing tech while pretending to embrace it.   They bullied Windows NT into the Unix market where it was ill-suited for many of the use cases it tried to take on.  

 

90s MS tech was notoriously crash-prone and buggy.  "Blue Screen of Death" or BSOD became another meme.   Windows 98 embarrassingly crashed during an early public demo with Bill Gates.

 

It succeeded because Gates and Ballmer were paranoid and cutthroat, and would move to neutralize or destroy a potential competitor as soon as they spotted it.   For instance with Netscape,  Gates had the foresight to see how Netscape could enable Web applications that would run on any platform that could make Windows Apps redundant.  That's why they needed to die.   Now this was at a time when the average website was an ugly 90s abomination with horrendous colors, flashing text and repeating animated gifs-  so web applications replacing Windows would seem far-fetched to most people, but not to Gates (and he wasn't wrong!)  I think this is where his genius was,  not in building great tech but in being more like a general in seeing threats and conquering them.

 

When it came to tech,  MS in the 90s was usually late to the party and implemented poorly, taking some years to get all the bugs worked out.  Of course there were other operating systems and platforms that worked better, but MS usually won out because they had the important apps and games that people wanted

[Hwlngmad]

I will say yes as Windows 3.0 was a successful merger of a windows GUI on top of MS-DOS.  MS was then able to refine this further with each Windows iteration to where it became the juggernaut it is today.

[+5-11under]

For me, what sold me on Windows versus MS-DOS was things that became common, that is, shared, between programs. The big example for me at the time was printer drivers. Previously, if a program wanted to print something, it would need to include a variety of printer drivers. With Windows, after installing the printer driver, every program could access that driver. After programs transitioned to being Windows-specific (as opposed to MS-DOS programs started by the Windows GUI), the advantages of the common drivers became clear.

 

I'm guessing the same can be said about Amiga or Linux, but I wasn't using those in the 90s.

 

Did they deserve their success? Dunno... they got it, though, so probably yeah, and probably for a number of reasons, including being at the right place at the right time, and reacting according to those times.

 

[mr_me]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

They don't deserve it based on technical merit alone.   Remember how they got there.   They lied and told IBM that they had an OS for their new PC, then they went out and bought a product literally called "Quick and Dirty OS" and turned it into MS-DOS.   As the name implied, it wasn't very good but it created a legacy that hobbled PC for 2 decades until XP finally removed dependancies on it.

...

That's not exactly true.  IBM needed an operating system and Micro-soft told them to go to Digital Research.  IBM did that and came back to Microsoft and said we would like to work with you, can you provide the operating system.  Microsoft said okay and went out and got 86-DOS aka QDOS.  

 

Microsoft Windows 3.x and Windows 9x were bloated, buggy, and late to market.  OS/2 would have been the best way forward but Microsoft was more interested in their own systems even though it was inferior.  Prior to Windows the dominant office applications were Wordperfect and Lotus 123.  This changed to Microsoft Word and Excel as Microsoft had insider knowledge with the new Windows platform to get ahead of the competition.  This should never have been allowed to happen by regulation.  Microsoft operating systems and application software divisions should have been separated.  

 

My impression at the time was that Microsoft was holding back progress in personal computing in those early days.   Not that Intel was much better.  The IBM PC wasn't exactly built with the best technology or software available when it started out.

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by mr_me

[Krebizfan]

MS succeeded by making fewer mistakes than their competitors.

 

DOS: Digital Research was dawdling on the production of CP/M-86. MS offered to show IBM to SCP so IBM could buy 86-DOS which IBM declined. Everyone at the time thought that PC-DOS was only going to be a short term product until DRI got around to releasing a superior OS. Yeah, it is funny in retrospect how it seemed that IBM had scammed MS out of $50,000 to get an OS. Instead, CP/M-86 mutated into a DOS clone and DOS became the mighty cash engine that propelled the rest of MS. 

 

OS/2: Remember that at the time of the divorce, IBM wanted to delay OS/2 2.0 to get the Workplace Shell working and for MS to cancel Windows 3. Since that would have left MS with much less revenue for several years, MS had to go its own way. OS/2 2.0 was very buggy. One of the common magazine suggestions was to turn off WPS. More expensive OS that needs a lot more memory was a tough sell in the early 90s. 

 

Office: Wordperfect had a buggy first Windows release. Ami Pro was off the market after IBM purchased Lotus until the re-release in 96 as Word Pro. When many customers were replacing DOS software with Windows software, MS had the best choice available. 

 

Netscape: Netscape claimed that they would be larger than MS. Few things attract as much attention as that. Netscape was largely doomed by their own choices though. Netscape's business model was to give away client browsers to sell server tools and give away server tools to sell client browsers yielding very modest revenues. 

[zzip]

18 minutes ago, mr_me said:

This changed to Microsoft Word and Excel as Microsoft had insider knowledge with the new Windows platform to get ahead of the competition.  This should never have been allowed to happen by regulation.  Microsoft operating systems and application software divisions should have been separated.

They did eventually lose an antitrust suit to the government over issues like this.    But it was too late, the damage had already been done.

 

7 minutes ago, Krebizfan said:

Netscape: Netscape claimed that they would be larger than MS. Few things attract as much attention as that. Netscape was largely doomed by their own choices though. Netscape's business model was to give away client browsers to sell server tools and give away server tools to sell client browsers yielding very modest revenues. 

And they probably kicked off the Internet bubble with their insane IPO too.   Still, when MS not only gave away IE, but preinstalled it,  it sealed Netscape's fate.  IE got huge market share and NS couldn't compete.   Still Netscape kind of got revenge when they open-sourced their code and it eventually morphed into Firefox after some rewrites.   After conquering the market, IE stagnated.  Firefox took back a ton of market share and made the browser space competitive again.

[youxia]

I've always found M$ hate rather amusing. They're a typical industry whipping boy who allows people to create Star Wars type dark vs light narratives, and avoid admitting that everyone in a given field is equally ruthless and unfair (or would be if they had a chance). There numerous other, equally fallacious examples: eg Good Guys Sega/Nintendo vs Evil Sony, Valve vs Epic, etc...

 

The funniest one is the Good Guy Google, which most people amazingly still believe in.

 

 

[zzip]

6 minutes ago, youxia said:

(or would be if they had a chance)

This is the key here.   Sure a lot of other companies would do similar things if given a chance.   But that doesn't mean that you have to bend over and take the self-serving anti-consumer behavior of the top dog without objection.   MS's tactics inspired many techies to fight back and out-innovate them or chip away at their dominance...   Google, the rapid growth of Linux, Firefox, Libreoffice, Java, Wine, to name a few.

 

15 minutes ago, youxia said:

The funniest one is the Good Guy Google, which most people amazingly still believe in.

Back when Google started using their slogan of "Don't Be Evil", I just chuckled and predicted that within 20 years they would be 'evil' themselves.  Well it didn't even take 20 years :)    I don't know how many people still think of Google as the 'good guy'.   There's been a growing skepticism and backlash of 'Big Tech' in recent years.   In tech circles, I don't really see any Google 'fanboys', but on the other hand they don't seem to be as hated as much as MS still is..   Even though I don't think MS is anywhere near as awful as they were in the 90s. 

[youxia]

9 minutes ago, zzip said:

But that doesn't mean that you have to bend over and take the self-serving anti-consumer behavior of the top dog without objection.   MS's tactics inspired many techies to fight back and out-innovate them or chip away at their dominance...   Google, the rapid growth of Linux, Firefox, Libreoffice, Java, Wine, to name a few.

I've never said that any of that is a good thing or that there shouldn't be any objections. To the contrary. But there aren't ever any real ones, just empty lip service pronouncements which make people feel good but achieve nothing. The best example are all the brands you mention: they are largerly irrelevant outside of geek circles. Firefox is not much more than Google's kept anti-trust excuse, and Google themselves...heh. When I say they're the biggest threat to humanity's future 99.5% people start talking about tin foils, and yet...

 

But even aside of that (not so) extreme position, the alleged Big Tech backlash is  - or was already? - as performative as the MS hate. People make some righteous noises but keep using their stuff, without any effort to switch to, or even just research the alternatives. They're now already too big to fail, and within 50 years will completely dominate all the comings and goings on this planet (and eventually, beyond).

 

And if you want fanboys, just go and read comments under any related Ars Technica article. The groupthink rationalizations of those who after all should know better can be quite astonishing.

[zzip]

7 minutes ago, youxia said:

I've never said that any of that is a good thing or that there shouldn't be any objections. To the contrary. But there aren't ever any real ones, just empty lip service pronouncements which make people feel good but achieve nothing. The best example are all the brands you mention: they are largerly irrelevant outside of geek circles. Firefox is not much more than Google's kept anti-trust excuse, and Google themselves...heh. When I say they're the biggest threat to humanity's future 99.5% people start talking about tin foils, and yet...

Maybe people don't use these alternatives directly, but they indirectly use things like Linux that power internet sites they visit or embedded devices they use, same with Java.   Firefox destroyed IE's dominance and soon Steamdeck owners may be using Wine and not realizing it.   I think technologies like these by dedicated people did more to chip away at MS's monopoly than the govt antitrust suit did.   As the saying goes “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

 

22 minutes ago, youxia said:

But even aside of that (not so) extreme position, the alleged Big Tech backlash is  - or was already? - as performative as the MS hate. People make some righteous noises but keep using their stuff, without any effort to switch to, or even just research the alternatives. They're now already too big to fail, and within 50 years will completely dominate all the comings and goings on this planet (and eventually, beyond).

I knew a lot of MS haters who kept using MS products too.   For myself,  I've stopped using a lot of Google services.   It's difficult to get 100% off them though because right now for mobile your choice is Google or Apple, and I don't think Apple are saints either.   Twenty years ago a lot of people had the same concern about MS dominating everything as you're expressing about Google.   And I do think it is a real concern,  but it's also hard to see how things will shake out in the future.

 

 

[mr_me]

2 hours ago, Krebizfan said:

OS/2: Remember that at the time of the divorce, IBM wanted to delay OS/2 2.0 to get the Workplace Shell working and for MS to cancel Windows 3. Since that would have left MS with much less revenue for several years, MS had to go its own way. OS/2 2.0 was very buggy. One of the common magazine suggestions was to turn off WPS. More expensive OS that needs a lot more memory was a tough sell in the early 90s. 

 

Office: Wordperfect had a buggy first Windows release. Ami Pro was off the market after IBM purchased Lotus until the re-release in 96 as Word Pro. When many customers were replacing DOS software with Windows software, MS had the best choice available. 

OS/2 2.x came out in 1992 and ran beautifully with 8MB.  It might have been a problem with 4MB but with 8MB it ran DOS and Windows programs better than DOS and Windows.  During development, IBM complained that Microsoft was slow with OS/2 2.0, according to Wikipedia.  Microsoft was developing Windows NT at the same time which came out in 1993.

 

Lots of third party developers had trouble making stable windows 3.x programs.  It wasn't necessarily their fault. Word and Excel programmers could talk directly with Windows programmers and were written with code that wouldn't be possible by third party developers.

[Krebizfan]

3 minutes ago, mr_me said:

OS/2 2.x came out in 1992 and ran beautifully with 8MB.  It might have been a problem with 4MB but with 8MB it ran DOS and Windows programs better than DOS and Windows.  During development, IBM complained that Microsoft was slow with OS/2 2.0, according to Wikipedia.  Microsoft was developing Windows NT at the same time which came out in 1993.

 

Lots of third party developers had trouble making stable windows 3.x programs.  It wasn't necessarily their fault. Word and Excel programmers could talk directly with Windows programmers and were written with code that wouldn't be possible by third party developers.

OS/2 2.0 needed 8 MB to do the same things that Windows 3 did in 4 MB. Roughly $200 more for the OS and another $400 for the extra memory is a challenge for marketing. MS wanted to release 32-bit OS/2 2.0 in 1990 a few months after Windows 3. The final joint beta was fairly stable as those things go. IBM had a vision (an OfficeVision) of an interface that would span the entire IBM lineup from the lowest Personal System to the mightiest mainframe. IBM could rely on hardware sales to carry the company to completion; MS wasn't getting part of the mainframe profits to hang around and wait for IBM to fulfill its aims. 

 

Other third party developers could make stable Win 3.x programs. I did it. Adobe Type Manager delved into the inner workings of Windows without crashing but then few matched Mike Geary's skills. The seduction of the VXD led to a lot of horrible Windows programs as developers applied the worst excesses of DOS programming in an environment where any mistake was fatal.

 

WordPerfect for Windows was a project that was certain to fail. No outside consultants that knew Windows programming were brought in. All the developers were working on parts of the project before a design document was prepared so lots of code wound up being discarded. WordPerfect coupled that with a decision to defer upgrading Wordperfect for DOS until WordPerfect for Windows was finished skipping two upgrade cycles. Each WordPerfect upgrade generated a billion dollars which few companies can easily disdain. Release those DOS upgrades and WordPerfect could have held on until the Windows version was perfect. 

[mr_me]

OS/2 2.0 was a 32-bit operating, not comparable to 16-bit windows 3.x.  Windows 95 didn't have it's stability either.  OS/2 may have been bloated, it was written by Microsoft after all.  Business of course had no problem paying for that stability, once NT got compatible application software.  Consumers had to wait a long time to get a stable PC operating system.  It shouldn't have happened that way.

[zzip]

54 minutes ago, Krebizfan said:

OS/2 2.0 needed 8 MB to do the same things that Windows 3 did in 4 MB. Roughly $200 more for the OS and another $400 for the extra memory is a challenge for marketing. MS wanted to release 32-bit OS/2 2.0 in 1990 a few months after Windows 3. The final joint beta was fairly stable as those things go. IBM had a vision (an OfficeVision) of an interface that would span the entire IBM lineup from the lowest Personal System to the mightiest mainframe. IBM could rely on hardware sales to carry the company to completion; MS wasn't getting part of the mainframe profits to hang around and wait for IBM to fulfill its aims. 

Windows NT 3.51, which is probably a better comparison, needed 12Mb RAM and more disk space than OS/2.  

[Goochman]

OS/2 2.0 had so much promise.  Win 3.x was terrible and couldn't multi-task, NT 4.0 was 10x worse than OS/2 running software and even networking.  But IBM fumbled the ball - Win was MSFT main driver, OS/2 was a small biz for IBM so MSFT went all in to win and IBM let OS/2 die slowly.  Multi tasking on OS/2 was a unmatched for a long time on x86 platforms.

[Keatah]

IDK.. as a light soho user and hobbyist I was rather pleased with MS up till around the Win7/8 eras. Today I more or less tolerate 10 & 11.

 

I didn't have too much exposure to 286 & 386 machines. The 486 ushered in Win31 then Win95 for me. I actually liked Win31 because it did feel like a big-ass DOS menu program. I never took too much to 16-bit machines and their GUIs. They were either cheapish toys or extravagantly priced out the wazoo!

 

The 2x 2" thick MS-DOS manuals that came with my first 486 PC were impressive in their own right. Look at all that information & sophistication! Now THIS is a computer! Quite enamored was I.

 

[MrMaddog]

Let me put it this way...

 

In the 90's & 2000's you had no choice but to use Microsoft products especially for school, work and even PC gaming.  Even with alternate platforms like Mac or Linux you still had to use Windows for "serious" work.

 

Nowadays you got a choice of which Big Tech company's ecosystem to go with...either Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft.  Or if you're like me you use a mix of them and why not?  Everything is stored online and can by used by any device regradless if it's a Windows PC, Chromebook or iPad.

 

And I think that's what made using Windows a little more tolerable than it was 20-30 years ago.

 

[Keatah]

Multiple options is good. Yeh. EmmHmm..

 

In the 486 days I was introduced to MS products in a pleasing manner. I had some tasks to accomplish and MS software fit the bill.

 

In the PC world I was pretty green. Very much oblivious to marketing forces. I had a lot to learn. But I knew just enough, barely enough, that I didn't want anything to do with the stuffy Linux stuff and snotty purveyors of other little-known scary and business'ee alternate OS'es. Making fun of you if your question was too basic or overlooked something obvious to an experienced hack.

 

In contrast: The friendly kid at Comp-USA. Brightly colored retail boxes lined up as far as the eye could see. Gateway2000's chatty salesmen. Grocery-store atmosphere. The easily understood handholding promise and experience of AOL. The PC suddenly seemed to be everywhere - 12 stores within 10 miles. It was all a festivalic frenzy. Almost circus-like even. The stores were packed with activity like you see in today's cellphone carrier commercials. A grand gala everywhere! And sales events were real Sales Events. Banners and tables set up outside. Free snacks from a food truck. Circulars being handed to you as you entered the store. The ones embellished with words in 200pt boldtype, SALE! BLOWOUT! 25% OFF TODAY ONLY! Free 3-paks of floppies and cheap monitor cleaning spray being given out at the checkout.

 

Coming out of the stagnating and confining Amiga - a world of frustration - MS software was a breath of fresh air filled with all sorts of versatility. If I wanted to make a screenshot of FlightSimulator, now I could! If I wanted to study the celestial heavens above or execute a microscopic zoom into fractals in an interactive manner, I could! Working with software and data from other peers and colleagues was suddenly a breeze.

 

And even though I was still powering up my Apple II in that era, I clearly knew it's days were numbered due to the inexorable march of technology. What's 1MHz compared against 50? I have no regrets against the II, only a familial fondness of good times and exploration and discovery. I still think it neat that the ROMs in my Apple II+ say (C) Microsoft 1977. Thanks to Microsoft I had great experiences with the II series from day one.

[Keatah]

A brief counterpoint.

2 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Let me put it this way...

 

In the 90's & 2000's you had no choice but to use Microsoft products especially for school, work and even PC gaming.  Even with alternate platforms like Mac or Linux you still had to use Windows for "serious" work.

Sometimes a lack of choices isn't a bad thing. The product is there. Use it. Be done with it. Because with too many choices a user can start the back'n'forth game. A comparison game. This is better because this. That's better because that. And as the choices evolve and mature the best features may fork across several products potentially creating analysis paralysis (for those prone to it).

 

In an attempt to get the best of all worlds the user spends any future potential time savings right now in the management of those worlds/options. May be best to learn the idiosyncrasies of one product's landscape and work within that infrastructure instead of busting out everywhere to make statements. Statements which no one really gives a rat's ass about.

 

2 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Nowadays you got a choice of which Big Tech company's ecosystem to go with...either Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft.  Or if you're like me you use a mix of them and why not?  Everything is stored online and can by used by any device regradless if it's a Windows PC, Chromebook or iPad.

 

And I think that's what made using Windows a little more tolerable than it was 20-30 years ago.

Maybe. Not a big fan of online storage of any personal data. Not because of prying eyes & snooping or monetization or anything. But simply because it becomes tediously confusing to always remember exactly precisely where your stuff is. AND how to access it. There's changing services and passwords. Changing user interfaces. New front-ends that may not be completely cross-platform convenient and concise. Examples of such misdeeds could be Picasa or any now-defunct photohosting site.

 

So by keeping my stuff offline I can put it on a hard drive in a cardboard box under the bed. Security procedures, location, access method, all remain remain intact and the same since day one. And for years to come.

 

Windows is tolerable, and even welcome, since those aspects remain mainly undisturbed.

 

I can use the same 27yr-old paint program I used on my 1st 486 from 1993 to edit and print and view photos from 1993 to today. Stored on those drives hidden under the bed. Today. In any Windows OS from 3.1 through 11. Though to be complete and accurate in my statement I might have to say 9x through 11 because of USB support. Don't think 3.1 ever had USB going.

[Flojomojo]

I could have sworn there was a rule in here about not making topics about politics or religion. This question is both! I'm not voting in the poll because the answers lack the necessary nuance. 

 

Yes, Bill Gates's Microsoft was a nasty monopolist who didn't play fair. But the company was integral to the success of the PC as a standard, and IMHO have done more good than harm, at least from where I sit. They're still highly relevant even if they don't have the iron grip on everything, everywhere that they once did. 

 

The same arguments could be made about Nintendo, they behaved like bullies. They also revitalized the home game industry by learning hard lessons from Atari and others about controlling the supply channel and not allowing retailers to buy up more than they could sell. 

[zzip]

15 hours ago, Keatah said:

In the 486 days I was introduced to MS products in a pleasing manner. I had some tasks to accomplish and MS software fit the bill.

 

In the PC world I was pretty green. Very much oblivious to marketing forces. I had a lot to learn. But I knew just enough, barely enough, that I didn't want anything to do with the stuffy Linux stuff and snotty purveyors of other little-known scary and business'ee alternate OS'es. Making fun of you if your question was too basic or overlooked something obvious to an experienced hack.

On the surface level, MS products looked great.   I remember being impressed with Word and Windows 95 and some other things at first

 

But when you dug a little deeper you noticed how ugly it was.   Often times when you wanted to configure it, it felt user-hostile.  The software acted like it was smarter and knew better than the user, but it didn't.   It would fight you when you wanted to make a change and knew what you were doing-  it would revert your change back to the default that maybe worked for 90% of users, but not you.  Or insist that you install the OS CD every time to find drivers that I knew weren't on there.   And of course even the smallest change required a time-consuming reboot.   Let's not even get started on the registry!

 

I remember at work people called MS plug and play "Plug and Pray" because of how spotty it was.

 

MS Installers were some of the worst I've ever seen.   I remember one time I was installing Word from CD-rom, and it took hours because the CD-ROM drive was seeking constantly.   It wasn't a bad CD-ROM drive, it was the way the files were laid out on it, and the way the installer was written.   Maybe that just gave them more time to bombard you with ads for other MS products and services and tell you how you will soon experience the "Best Version Ever" of Word.

 

14 hours ago, Keatah said:

Maybe. Not a big fan of online storage of any personal data. Not because of prying eyes & snooping or monetization or anything. But simply because it becomes tediously confusing to always remember exactly precisely where your stuff is. AND how to access it. There's changing services and passwords. Changing user interfaces. New front-ends that may not be completely cross-platform convenient and concise. Examples of such misdeeds could be Picasa or any now-defunct photohosting site.

 

So by keeping my stuff offline I can put it on a hard drive in a cardboard box under the bed. Security procedures, location, access method, all remain remain intact and the same since day one. And for years to come.

Not just your data, but your entire life!   Amazon's AWS had a major outage last week, and articles came out about how people couldn't perform basic tasks, like make coffee, turn on their smart lights or use their door bell or see who was at their door because they have Alexa-powered coffee makers or Ring-powered services.   Meetings had to be cancelled because meeting apps were offline.  It's so disturbing for the future if we are so dependent on some centralized service to perform every day functions.    Personally I refuse to use such services, but many people accept them without thinking about the ramifications.

 

1 hour ago, Flojomojo said:

Yes, Bill Gates's Microsoft was a nasty monopolist who didn't play fair. But the company was integral to the success of the PC as a standard, and IMHO have done more good than harm, at least from where I sit. They're still highly relevant even if they don't have the iron grip on everything, everywhere that they once did. 

Maybe.  But to me PC was successful because of IBM's clout, it had the name-brand business apps, and the open architecture that made the clone market possible.   It's hard to say it would be less successful if IBM had chosen a different OS.   Maybe it would've IDK

 

1 hour ago, Flojomojo said:

The same arguments could be made about Nintendo, they behaved like bullies. They also revitalized the home game industry by learning hard lessons from Atari and others about controlling the supply channel and not allowing retailers to buy up more than they could sell. 

I'm convinced video games would have revitalized with or without Nintendo.   Simply because with the advancing tech, somebody would have made a compelling game and platform to bring the casuals back in sooner or later.   I don't think the market needed Nintendo's severe publishing restrictions either,  that was a move that benefited Nintendo and annoyed everyone else.  In fact when Nintendo was in negotiation with Atari to distribute the NES, part of the contract would have limited the number of games Atari could publish to the system each year.   So Nintendo was thinking about this before the crash happened.

[Keatah]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

On the surface level, MS products looked great.   I remember being impressed with Word and Windows 95 and some other things at first

I thought to my quite naive self that that's how things were supposed to be. And that was that. I was just thankful to have options and controls to play with. All this incredible versatility and customization! Look! At! That! And we're still continuing to use Office 2003, and "signed on" to use it another year. It works.

 

I recall the hype. I was not too impressed with Windows 95. My 486 could barely handle it. So it wasn't a stellar experience. I wouldn't start using 9x swimmingly till I got a PII-266.

 

The whole DOS/Windows ecology was more approachable and friendly compared to UNIX or OS/2 or anything coming out of an elite university.

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

But when you dug a little deeper you noticed how ugly it was.   Often times when you wanted to configure it, it felt user-hostile.  The software acted like it was smarter and knew better than the user, but it didn't.   It would fight you when you wanted to make a change and knew what you were doing-  it would revert your change back to the default that maybe worked for 90% of users, but not you.  Or insist that you install the OS CD every time to find drivers that I knew weren't on there.   And of course even the smallest change required a time-consuming reboot.   Let's not even get started on the registry!

I don't know about the settings in Office 2003, they seem pretty stable enough to me. Or at least the ones I changed.

 

I didn't experience driver problems much. I always stuck with safe hardware. Well-known hardware. Stuff from Intel or at least big names. I do recall some frustration with graphics board drivers, trying to find the right combination of speed and features supported - that's maybe expected because tech was evolving rapidly.

 

Nevertheless it was annoying as all hell. And continues to today, albeit due to different forces. Making change just to make change. Busywork.

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

I remember at work people called MS plug and play "Plug and Pray" because of how spotty it was.

Indeed. Especially the early versions that were on PCI + ISA + AGP mobos. And on-board peripherals like sound-chips and chipsets and "storage drivers", "hardware management" and sensors, all just added to the mystery. Or misery.

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

MS Installers were some of the worst I've ever seen.   I remember one time I was installing Word from CD-rom, and it took hours because the CD-ROM drive was seeking constantly.   It wasn't a bad CD-ROM drive, it was the way the files were laid out on it, and the way the installer was written.   Maybe that just gave them more time to bombard you with ads for other MS products and services and tell you how you will soon experience the "Best Version Ever" of Word.

I do totally agree with the CD. Oftentimes I'd (pointlessly in hindsight) copy the CD-ROM to HDD and then install from there. Greenly not considering the additional time it took to do that. I didn't care. I was continuing to enjoy my freedom from the confining 16-bit Amiga world. The coat of wax rubbed onto my PC world was still fresh from Gateway2000 and other bigbox experiences. They really buffed my ass to a shine!

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Not just your data, but your entire life!   Amazon's AWS had a major outage last week, and articles came out about how people couldn't perform basic tasks, like make coffee, turn on their smart lights or use their door bell or see who was at their door because they have Alexa-powered coffee makers or Ring-powered services.   Meetings had to be cancelled because meeting apps were offline.  It's so disturbing for the future if we are so dependent on some centralized service to perform every day functions.    Personally I refuse to use such services, but many people accept them without thinking about the ramifications.

When those types of products stop working I just gotta laugh. Stuff that is so basic should not be connected. Should not be on the internet. Should not use a multi-billion-dollar hi-speed world-wide-network to accomplish tasks you can do better manually. Locally. Will they be cutting cookies and baking the dough for me online too?

 

And wait till those 3G connected cars aren't so connected as carriers drop support and move to 5G and 6G. Should happen this upcoming year maybe? Automotive manufacturers may offer an upgrade that you will handsomely pay for, or entice you to trade in. Meaning more money comes out of your pocket. Tech doing what tech does best!

 

This house of cards tech structure doesn't serve any one individual as much as provide busywork for off-shore software sweathouses. Full of generic code 5 layers thick that seems to need ever-increasing storage space and processing power.

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Maybe.  But to me PC was successful because of IBM's clout, it had the name-brand business apps, and the open architecture that made the clone market possible.   It's hard to say it would be less successful if IBM had chosen a different OS.   Maybe it would've IDK

I believe the big driving force was synergy between home and business. Clout made that happen. Clout was the unspoken rule book Clout was the in-between the lines advertising. Making information exchange seamless was huge. As seamless as stuffing floppies in a briefcase was at the time.. If you had IBM at work and IBM at home, you could bet your ass on a frying pan that the two machines would have compatibility.

 

I experienced that first hand, using an Amiga to do schoolwork and then not being able to bring it to the lab computers. Didn't last long. I wasn't about to get more niche hardware and clumsy conversion software to make it happen. Not on a student budget. No tedium with Transformer. No.. Tried it and it just didn't work. Not like the advertisements

 

I could have gone the PC Transporter route from AE for the Apple II. It was rather expensive and the host platform still limited. Was over 10 years old at the time. No. Best to get a real 100% IBM Compatible.

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

I'm convinced video games would have revitalized with or without Nintendo.

Oh sure. If Nintendo didn't do it someone else would have. A few more fumbles and tries and the magic formula would be hit sooner or later.

[Keatah]

6 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

I could have sworn there was a rule in here about not making topics about politics or religion. This question is both! I'm not voting in the poll because the answers lack the necessary nuance.

Al seems to look the other way in cases like this.

[zzip]

19 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I recall the hype. I was not too impressed with Windows 95. My 486 could barely handle it. So it wasn't a stellar experience. I wouldn't start using 9x swimmingly till I got a PII-266.

I was excited for W95 for a few reasons.   One was I always found Win 3.1 to be awkward and not much more than a glorified app launcher that I didn't even need to use half the time.   Since I was used to GEM on the ST,  Win95 was more familiar in hour it worked than Win31.

Also the promise of 32-bit Windows applications removing all that nasty memory segmentation and low memory requirements that still haunted DOS apps.

Plus a single environment that could launch everything, including your games, which were usually not launched from Windows previously.   It was all exciting.   But by the time Win98 came out, I had soured on Windows/MS quite a lot!

 

Windows 95 ran pretty well on my 486,  it was either a DX4-100 or I may have upgraded it to a 5x86-133 by that point (still a 486 despite the name).  It might be not having enough RAM, or else it's swapping to virtual memory all the time.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

I didn't experience driver problems much. I always stuck with safe hardware. Well-known hardware. Stuff from Intel or at least big names. I do recall some frustration with graphics board drivers, trying to find the right combination of speed and features supported - that's maybe expected because tech was evolving rapidly.

This was an era when suddenly everyone wanted a PC to connect to the internet and get email and what-not.   Quite a few people asked me for help with that so I did lots of Windows installs, PC installs and ran into all sorts of struggles with Windows over drivers and other issues.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

When those types of products stop working I just gotta laugh. Stuff that is so basic should not be connected. Should not be on the internet. Should not use a multi-billion-dollar hi-speed world-wide-network to accomplish tasks you can do better manually. Locally. Will they be cutting cookies and baking the dough for me online too?

It's the Internet of Things, man! (iOT).  When a malicious AI takes over, it will weaponize our household appliances against us!  :P

 

Back in the 90s I made a joke that in the future people would not be able to make toast because their toaster had a blue screen of death.   Sadly it's become way too true, and worse.  All this for what?  So you don't have to push a button on your coffee maker to make coffee?  It's too hard to look through a peephole to see who's at your door?   Radio signals are not good enough for your baby monitor, it has to be streamed through the cloud?   I don't get it.