Quotes from 1992 • Hacker News Board

Re: Quotes from 1992

#141

Post by int_19h » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 1:47 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #140

jhbadger wrote: post #50

From Accidental Empires, which the article quotes: "Then there was Flight Simulator, the only computer game published by Microsoft". Even at the time (long before XBox), this wasn't true. Microsoft had published several games before Flight Simulator -- a version of the classic Colossal Cave adventure called "Microsoft Adventure", and "Microsoft Decathlon", an Olympic sports game.

If you're ever near the Microsoft Redmond campus, building 16 has an open courtyard with tiles on the ground, each corresponding to some Microsoft product that was released. I'd be surprised if most people here (or in the industry in general) recognized even half of the product names on the tiles. https://i.imgur.com/meVHgYm.jpg

E.g. have you ever heard of Microsoft Dinosaurs?

https://twitter.com/ThreddyTheTrex/status/101214445833740697...

Re: Quotes from 1992

#142

Post by kristianc » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 2:14 AM UTC

ken wrote: post #105

simonh wrote: post #2

>On big things failing to scale down: It occurs to me that the same applied in the transition to mobile. Microsoft was obsessed with making hand-helds and phones into little PCs, keyboard and all. It actually required a radically new interaction model and interface technology to unlock the potential of the form factor.

Story I was told from someone who worked on the early-2000's "Tablet PC": Microsoft's team originally produced a new touch-first interface that wasn't entirely different from the eventual iPad. They took it to various corporate customers, and the response was unanimous: it needs to run Real Windows or it has no future. Facepalm. So they went back to Redmond and changed it to be Windows on a touchscreen. It met all st…

> Microsoft's team originally produced a new touch-first interface that wasn't entirely different from the eventual iPad. They took it to various corporate customers, and the response was unanimous: it needs to run Real Windows or it has no future. Facepalm. So they went back to Redmond and changed it to be Windows on a touchscreen. It met all stated customer requirements, technically, but of course it was clumsy and people didn't really see the benefit over a laptop, and it never took off.

This is not so obviously wrong. It's fairly well acknowledged that the biggest barrier to the iPad becoming a general computer for most people is iOS. It's unclear that the answer is 'Windows on a touch screen' but it's also equally clear that Apple hasn't done anything like enough to make iOS work for the larger form factor.

Re: Quotes from 1992

#143

Post by simonh » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 3:44 AM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #129

simonh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are useful lessons that can be learned from mobile, that might be applicable to desktop, but you're right Microsoft made exactly the same mistake again in the opposite direction. I'd say they did that most egregiously with Windows 8 though. Microsoft keep looking at a few data points they have now, extrapolate those into the future and then try to jump directly to that future. Currently it's an attempt…

I don't think they're doing that anymore under Nadella. I don't think he sees Apple as their main competitor, but is really competing with AWS for the future of business computing, and not doing that badly.

That’s a good point. Microsoft saw what Amazon was going with AWS, projected that into the future and got the right answer. It’s an example of where this strategy paid off. To be fair to them it’s not just random chance it worked out either, execution matters too and they seem to have hit the nail on the head with Azure.

Re: Quotes from 1992

#144

Post by simonh » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 3:54 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #6

simonh wrote: post #2

>On big things failing to scale down: It occurs to me that the same applied in the transition to mobile. Microsoft was obsessed with making hand-helds and phones into little PCs, keyboard and all. It actually required a radically new interaction model and interface technology to unlock the potential of the form factor.

If we trace personal computers to their root origins, we'll see the LINC. The LINC was designed to be used by a single person. This was before time-sharing and interactive computing happened and, due to the differences in their use, the two kinds of computers diverged into what we saw in the 70's until today in every way - from the hardware to the software to the way they are used. OTOH, my laptop has more in common…

It depends how you look at it. For example the PET had a single chip CPU and recognisably PC like hardware architecture, while the VAX processor was built from individual TTL logic units. The point the book was making was that the two types of systems have different lineages, but he wasn’t ignorant of the fact that influence went back and forth between them.

Re: Quotes from 1992

#145

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:48 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #16

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In USA you have rights to format shift, so can libraries just 'rip' books in to an open format and lend those versions as long as they internally reserve a paper copy?

You can change formats, but they can't lend more than a single copy at any given time or they will be violating copyright (and making more copies of a book than they actually have).

The library could lend in a useful format though. I wasn't suggesting they lend tortuously.

Also if they limited loans to 1hr (or any time short of the regular loan), but allowed reservation ahead, then they could probably have many more people with the book available. The majority of the time I have a library book checked out it's on my shelf; doing the checkout virtually, when it's on my virtual shelf the library can loan it to someone else. Either I wait (if I want to access it and all copies are currently in use), or they take a payment from me to access the book immediately and they buy access to an extra copy.

Of course publishers would probably just increase the loan charge.

Re: Quotes from 1992

#146

Post by reaperducer » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

glhaynes wrote: post #132

reaperducer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess Steve thought the CPUs really were different, like, say, the difference between a CPU and a GPU. There's a lot of revisionist history on the internet about Steve Jobs not being technical, but he had an incredibly detailed understanding of the 68000 by the time the Macintosh project was launched. Perhaps your encounter encouraged him to delve into that area of study.

Where did you hear he had such a deep understanding of the 68000? (Not questioning whether he did, just curious because I've never heard that.)

Reading old computer magazines from the library.

Re: Quotes from 1992

#147

Post by Narishma » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #64

jhbadger wrote: post #50

From Accidental Empires, which the article quotes: "Then there was Flight Simulator, the only computer game published by Microsoft". Even at the time (long before XBox), this wasn't true. Microsoft had published several games before Flight Simulator -- a version of the classic Colossal Cave adventure called "Microsoft Adventure", and "Microsoft Decathlon", an Olympic sports game.

Not to mention some of the most popular games of all time - Minesweeper, Solitaire, and the earlier Reversi. And a pinball game in Windows 95.

Those were all after Flight Simulator.

Re: Quotes from 1992

#148

Post by FiddlyPack » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

0898 wrote: post #83

This guy sounds pretty ungrateful. He was able to read Robert X. Cringley's book "Accidental Empires" thanks to Archive.org's "virtual library card" service. This is a service where Archive.org sources a physical copy of a book for you, scans it, and lends it out to you digitally, one person at a time. Sounds like a useful service. But all this monumentally ungrateful guy can do is moan about how "aggressively user-h…

Oh please. He sounded quite grateful to archive.org. He sounds frustrated because the mobile application developers didn’t think that maybe double tapping a single pixel is extremely difficult to register on a touchscreen. The app dangles content in front of you, tells you that you can have it, but then it seems impossible to actually get to it. That’s the epitome of frustrating software. That software has nothing to do with gratitude to archive.org.

Re: Quotes from 1992

#149

Post by Godel_unicode » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 3:20 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #121

Godel_unicode wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 doesn't come with the tablet experience on by default, you have to put it into tablet mode to get that. That's been true for several years now.

Win10 is a lot less user hostile that 8, but it still has the legacy of having two different UIs in parallel. Finding specific configuration setting has always been hard on Windows but you also have the dumbed down don’t-call-it-metro interface getting in the way as well.

I've never understood that problem, whenever I'm looking for a Windows setting my process is always the same.

Hit windows key, start typing until the name of the setting I'm looking for pops up, arrow keys and enter.