[thelist] History (was Quality Control, etc. of MS products)

Arlen.P.Walker at jci.com Arlen.P.Walker at jci.com
Thu May 30 10:12:01 CDT 2002


I'm catching up on old mail. This is not going to be an anti-MS screed.
It's just that as I'm one of the few folks on this list that knows what the
Kansas City standard was about, or remember the controversy over
S-100/IEE-696, I feel an unreasoning need to fill in gaps in the historical
knowledge of the youth of today. ;{>} Feel free to pass this by if you
don't like history.

>One of the strange things that happened with Microsoft was the computing
>became a household name.

Actually, Apple did that. It was the success of Apple's Apple II that drove
the early microcomputer revolution, and convinced IBM that it was worth
building a micro after all. At that point, the only people who had heard of
MS were hobbyists, because the only thing MS had was a language
interpreter. Digital Research had an OS called CPM, but Apple's market
share was greater than the entire installed base of CPM machines, and
growing. IBM's entry into the field legitimized the industry in the eyes of
the press.

>I don't know how accurate my dates are, but before
>Windows first came out, I think there was the Apple I (or was it IIe). Of
>course, DOS was around, and computers were very expensive.

Oh, the list of useful machines was far longer than that, and not all of
them were expensive, even by today's standard. Commodore's PET was decent,
OSI (Ohio Scientific) had a number of machines, as did Radio Shack. The
TRS-80 series, and the HeathKit/Zenith lines were popular choices for
businesses, and were in the same price range as today's iMac. I could have
purchased an OSI 3P (the object of much geeklust at the time, because it
had three processors!) for $750. The Apple II came in around $1750 during
those times, as well, though you could trick it out with lots of options
and raise the price up near $3000 if you really wanted to. All told, the
price for computing has remained fairly constant, though the capabilities
improved over time, as is to be expected.

The two major operating systems were AppleDOS and CPM. It was IBM's entry
into the field that raised MS (and made *really* high prices acceptable);
it wasn't anything that MS did itself, other than take advantage of the IBM
marque to get its OS business started. As the drive for IBM-compatibily
grew, it again wasn't because of anything MS did, but rather it was in
order to be able to run that great new spreadsheet from Lotus. Lots of
machines that ran MS-DOS still couldn't run 1-2-3, and that was the death
of them.

>Windows took the computing platform to the masses, making it easier
>to everyone...not just computer scientists/enthusiasts/geeks.

Actually, once again MS rode another company's coattails on that one, but
we'll try to avoid the usual spitball contest over that; go rent "Pirates
of Silicon Valley" if you're interested in more detail (while it's not
perfect, it's one of the better historical documentaries on the industry).

>after all, they bought DOS from IBM,

Actually, they bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products (if I recall the
name correctly) a small hobbyist-run enterprise which had this OS called
Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) which was one of the first things
to run on the Intel 8088 chips that IBM wanted to use. The masterstroke
there was that MS convinced IBM to not require an exclusive license for the
OS. IBM, still mired in Big Iron paradigms, "knew" the money was in the
hardware, not the software, so didn't insist on the point.

> and "borrowed" the mouse/gui aspects from Xerox.

They'd never seen either Xerox or Stanford (Doug Englebart -- inventor of
the mouse -- didn't work for Xerox). They got them from a completely
different source. See the above referenced movie again for details.

>No one expects microsoft (or anything else, for that matter) to be
perfect.

In my view, this is the reason software (note I'm not tagging it with *any*
given brand) is such junk. It's possible to build software which is perhaps
not defect-free but at least "defect-lite" compared to today's crap. It's
just that the consumer doesn't expect programmers to build anything that
works at all well. Since no one is holding the programmer's feet to the
fire, they don't build better software. In a free market economy, you build
to the quality expectations of the consumer, because that's all you'll get
paid for. Since we the consumers are not demanding good software, we the
programmers do not deliver it.

Sorry, I strayed a little off the history line there, but not to the point
of bashing any particular firm.

Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen.P.Walker at JCI.Com
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