Apple History At folklore.org 223
oaklybonn writes "Andy Hertzfeld seems to be the primary author on this fascinating site, which details many of his experiences in the Macintosh (Bicycle??) development efforts. It includes such choice commentary as: "we were amazed that such a thoroughly bad game could be co-authored by Microsoft's co-founder, and that he would actually want to take credit for it in the comments.", on a page describing a game bundled with the original IBM PC." Reader themexican adds "As a plus, Hertzfeld notes in the faq that the python code running the well-designed and easy to navigate site will be made public in the near future."
Mac Anniversary (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mac Anniversary (Score:2, Funny)
Not my joke, just copying from an earlier post from another story.
Bicycle (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently there was a story in Scientific American, or Popular Science, or some such magazine where the scientists were trying to determine what was the most efficient of animals in terms of locomotion. Which creature moved with the least amount of calories burned? Well, humans were waay down the list, pathetic in terms of other creatures. The top animal with the most efficient means of movement was an eagle or something. Then, one guy had this idea to measure how efficient a human being is on a bicycle. It was awesome, he was drastically more efficient, able to go further and without burning as many calories. It knocked the bird out of first place.
So, early on, Apple was planning on calling it the "Bicycle for the Mind." I don't know if it makes as much an impact if you don't know the story behind it.
I got this anecdote from one of the Apple behind-the-scenes books (I forget which), like Apple Confidential [amazon.com].
Re:Bicycle (Score:5, Interesting)
It was right about at that time that the number of bicycles in America once again outnumbered cars.
In 1980 in think there like 10,000 people in America who had ever heard of the Tour de France. In 1984 it was nearly as commonly known as the World Series.
Bicycle was actually a buzzword.
There is a species of albatros that lives entirely at sea for months at a time, generally soaring at little more than wave hight. It is so adapted to this enviroment and so efficeint in flight that it can sleep while so soaring.
Even though water is a dense medium animals that are adapted to it do not have to expend energy supporting their own weight. I've got the chart from MIT around here somewhere, but can't lay hands on it immediately, as I recall the dolphin and tuna and salmon topped the list for animal motion by its own power (a soaring bird may use little energy, but that's because it's not doing much of anything. Air and gravity are.) A Portugese Man-o-War simply floats with the tide, as a man in an innertube might. Torpor is very energy efficient.
So what animal is the most efficeint will change with your definition of "motion."
It is interesting to note, however, that not only is a man on a bicycle more energy efficient than a swimming dolphin, but he is more energy efficient than the same man riding a horse.
This is why the invention of the bicycle was such a stunning technological step that transformed society even before the advent of the motor car. The first smooth paved roads were made for the bicycle. The cars uspurped them.
KFG
Re:Bicycle (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but can they do it while nursing a series of gin and tonics like human airline pilots
Re:Bicycle (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand if you've done any riding of both it's surprising at first, but reflection bears it out.
If you try to sit on a horse like you do on a chair you'll get pounded to death. Your butt will turn to hamburger, your spine will get crunched (forensic examination of Custer's troops showed spinal degredation even among teenagers as I recall). You have to lift yourself up and down in stirrups in rythmn with the horse. Saves your butt and spine, but until you've done a fair amount of riding you'l come home with your legs aching. Riding a horse is a lot of work. This is why the genteel class prefered the surrey. Even if, for some reason, you choose to sit like a sack and take the pounding you'll burn a fair number of extra calories in the process. Riding a horse works all the muscles of the body, each burning calories, no matter how slightly.
On a bicycle you can simply sit; only the legs are really using extra calories; and fairly gentle pressure on the pedals will give you 8 mph or so on the level. Grandma can do this and keep it up all day. 12 mph is the speed a man with virtually depleted sugar stores can ride all day (although he won't enjoy it very much). An expert can ride at 15 mph until he falls asleep if he eats normally(the record average speed for crossing the US coast to coast is 15.3 mph, that average includes all downtime such as for sleeping. The clock started in California and stopped in Atlantic City NJ).
I have to note that all of this is highly speed dependant. For instance, it takes a world class athlete (horse or man) to hit 40 mph, but the jockey of a horse galloping at 40 mph is probably working at about the rate of a bicyclist going 20 mph; about
The bicycle is at the disadvantage going uphill or into the wind. On the other hand riding a bicycle downhill requires very little energy while riding a horse downhill requires more human energy.
None of it is very straight forward and thus the claim that a man on a horse uses more energy than a man on a bicycle is provisional based on the conditions.
As I recall the figure I have is for a horse at a trot of about 8 mph (which is why I chose that figure above) and a man bicycling at the same speed on the level in still air.
The man on the bicycle will be expending about
Yeah, in the mid 70s I was a bicycle researcher, which is why I have that chart, and why it is "somewhere," although I concentrated more on dynamics.
KFG
mod parent up, please. (Score:2)
Re:mod parent up, please. (Score:2, Interesting)
Another reason the bicycle ended the reign of the horse. And all that shit happens because an idle horse burns fuel and requires maintainence, a lot of it.
Bicycles don't run up $3000 dollar vet bills and then die anyway either.
KFG
Re:Bicycle- a man on a bicycle would be like a (Score:2)
12 mph on a loaded touring bike and depleted sugar is a dream at 10,000', trust me on that.
Had a friend who worked with Eddie B in Colorado Springs.
he coached the women for a bit.
Re:Bicycle (Score:4, Informative)
The Susan Kare-style logo at the top of the WotM letterhead was the same featured in the Folklore site. Pretty cool, if you ask me. Still cool, even if you don't.
It still is in Australia... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bicycle - no surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
No surprise they were enamored by the efficiency of a bicycle. After pounding on my old Apple II/e's keyboard through grade school & high school almost anything was bound to be more efficient. Those were keys of lead. Even an old-fashioned manual typewriter was easier o
Re:Bicycle - no surprise (Score:2)
The
Re:Bicycle - no surprise (Score:2)
Ahhh, youth.
If you think that was bad, try pounding through on a manual typewriter.
Or writing it all by hand.
Apple history (Score:5, Informative)
Nostalgic (Score:4, Interesting)
At my university, they replaced them pretty quick with *REAL* mice. (Yes, I risk of sounding like a troll... but you know what I mean if you've ever used one of those mice)
But the Macintosh Classic brought back some fond memories of elementary school. I remember sitting in computer class, and the teacher would say, now double click on clarisworks, and then she'd lecture for about 5 minutes then let us use the program.... because clarisworks took that long to load.
Re:Nostalgic (Score:2, Insightful)
At the risk of sounding like a troll myself, I wish to publish a quick defence of the "hockey-puck" mouse.
The problem was ergonomics, and the manner in which most people hold mice, which is not ergonomically sound. The mouse is supposed to be held lightly, not tightly, the thumb on the left and third finger on the right (if right-handed), with the first two fingers resting atop it. When held this way, it works fine. You also find yourself much less at risk of getting "mouse-strain".
Unfortunately, man
Folklore (Score:2, Interesting)
Cool. This looks like a neat software setup for a website. I'll be interested in trying it out after it gets released.
A little more history... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Eazel (Score:2)
Interpreted code and high volume traffic (Score:3, Insightful)
Shows if you want to run a site written with an interpreted language and expect Slashdot level interest, you'd better be running it on one hell of a monster machine.
Sheesh!
Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even today the interface is still significantly different and better than the alternatives. The concept of only a single window frame with a single menu bar at the top of the screen is easy for new users to grok. The reduction of mouse buttons to one makes such things as "Press the right-click... nono the button on the right... no, don't double click it, only click it once... no, press Control-Z to undo that... no, just stop touching the computer until I can come over, mom" a thing of the past. Who would have thought that a seemingly backwards step as the single mouse button would be such a revolutionary step forward for computing?
It's almost like Apple has sucked all the brainpower out of Silicon Valley and packed it all into their Macintosh line. I have never owned a Mac, but I have many friends who do and who constantly rave about how much they love it. And I believe deep down that the reason they love it so much is because fundamentally they hate computers, but their Mac behaves unlike any other computer out there. It does its job and gets out of the way, unlike other operating systems which force you to spend half your time fiddling with screen refresh rates and Config menus just to get down to your real business.
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:3, Interesting)
Making a UI easy enough for a first time user to just turn the machine on and instantly have things act like they would like them to, or expect them to has always been a feature that Windows never accomplished. I remember sitting and using a Mac for the first time when I was 6 (in 1990) and I didn't need any help from our teacher to use it (no comp at h
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, Apple invented the double click, which totally breaks the motif that Apple intended to create with the introduction of the mouse.
Secondly, by getting rid of the right mouse button, Apple introduced things such as "control click.. no, control, not option.. no, not alt.. control.. yeah" You will never convince me that control clicking, or click-and-hold (which doesn't even work outside of the finder) is an adequate replacement for a second mouse button.
Of course you can plug in a multibutton mouse into the mac and it works, this doesn't help people with laptops.
The lack of a right mouse button and a scrollwheel on mac laptops makes things very frustrating.. and we have to resort to installing things like SideTrack to do things with the touchpad that PC touchpads do by default.
In fact, Apple should just integrate SideTrack into the OS, or add a damn scrollwheel.
Don't forget other UI disasters Apple is responsible for like Home and End keys that never seem to do what you expect.
For example, in Safari, I expect that when I'm editing a text field, if I hit home, the cursor should move to the beginning of the field, not scroll to the top of the page. If I'm selecting emails in mail.app, hitting up and down selects the next and previous emails, but hitting home doesn't take me to the top of the email list, it scrolls the currently selected email.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Still flawed (Score:2)
Actually, I don't have a huge problem with Home/End working one way or the other. (Where Mac style is Home/End == begin/end of document, and Windows style is Home/End == begin/end of line, and Ctrl-Home/End == begin/end of document. I *do* have problems shifting back and forth, however, which I find extremely disruptive.
I tend to feel that the Mac chose a better system. The closest keys to
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:3, Insightful)
The reduction of mouse buttons to one makes such things as "Press the right-click... " a thing of the past. Who would have thought that a seemingly backwards step as the single mouse button would be such a revolutionary step forward for computing?
Although for most users at the time, who had never before seen any mouse, let alone a three-button Xerox Alto or two-button Microsoft mouse, the Mac one-button was the first and original. Let's just say it was Microsoft's seemingly revolutionary two-button mo
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is true. The single menu bar does save space, and it is consistent (two bonuses in my book), but it does feel like it isn't part of the app. I think that most users forget the menu is even up there.
To many people, the toolbar has become the menubar.. originally the toolbar was a place to put the most common things fro
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:4, Insightful)
IMHO, there's more to that design decision that you think. The fact that the Mac's menu bar is placed at the top of the screen makes it a lot easier to point at with the mouse, because you simply cannot move the mouse pointer too far. This makes it far superior in terms of usability that Windows-style menus at the top of each window.
For more details, I recommend reading "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin. UIs should be based on scientific usability studies, not developers' tastes - that's what Gnome and KDE suffer from.
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:2)
The basic point is that people who hide behind usability studies and labwork, and say that "developer common sense" is misguided and unworthy of consideration, often miss the assumptions that their usability labwork has to make... whom are you making it easier for? The n00b, the "regular joe", the poweruser?
Though I think my biggest challegne as a developer is assuming what I'm used to is "best"...on the other hand, working like everything else is a
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is good reason for the way the Mac OS handles itself the way it does. While it would seem like a good idea to contain all parts of a program within a single window, there are several problems with this... many of which become very confusing to the end user.
- Too many menus!
- Where did my menu go?
- How do I create a new document after closing the last one, without having to relaunch the entire application?
There are other issues, but these are the major ones that tend to cause the most trouble. This is not to say there aren't problems with the Mac OS in it's current form though. For whatever reason, Apple apparently did away with most of the Human Interface Guidelines somewhere between Mac OS 8 and Mac OS X. As a result, things are now much more complicated than they need to be. So, if there is a problem with something in Mac OS 9/Mac OS X, blame Apple... not the Human Interface Guidelines they should have been following.As the user begins opening more and more applications, it takes longer for the user to find the correct menu among several windows. Going by the Human Interface Guidelines, a single menu on the screen reduces the time needed to locate the correct item. The menu also identifies the currently active application by displaying the application name/icon within itself.
By making the menu part of the window, the menu is forced to travel around the screen with the window, unless the window is maximized to full screen. By locking the menu into a single, isolated place on the screen, it causes the interface to become much more predictable for the user. Predictability equals efficiency.
With a menu stored entirely within a window, you can't... unless your application displays windows within other windows. Under the Human Interface Guidelines, this isn't an issue. The app continues running until the user decides to kill it himself. As applications get bigger over time, so does their load time. The time wasted per year by creating a new instance of an app each time the user mistaken closes the previous document when he meant to create a new document, could add up to hours or even days worth of time.
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:4, Informative)
On my desktop, I use xinerama, either two or three monitors (I have gone as high as five in the past). I use menus-in-apps (aka Windows style). I load many many apps and have them spread out all over the place. I also tend to open new URLs in new windows.
On my laptop, I use a single 1024x768 monitor. I use menu-at-top (aka MacOS style). I load only a few apps, and have them all maximized (in general). I tend to use tabbed browsing significantly more.
In both I use Konsole (the KDE terminal app) in a uniform manner... lots of tabs, a primary shell, a root shell, and then several task shells. I use the second desktop in both as a place to kick windows that either are running "in the background" (conceptually, a la xmms) or interesting tangents that I ran across while working on a task (web pages found while googling for something else, half finished documents I was working on, etc).
I also used to be an emacs kinda guy, and now I use vi. I use Kate often as well (the file sidebar is very handy for making small changes to many files).
It's interesting, because the menubar difference is very natural, and I move back and forth with no difficulty. I can't recall the last time I hunted for the menu with a false start. For the single screen, MacOS style is the best, especially with a eraserhead mouse. For many screens, Windows style is better because I don't have to move across several monitors to hit a menu.
--
Evan
Apple let their UI experts go? (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. I cannot figure out what motivated it. Changes could have easily been made without throwing the whole thing out.
Anyone know what happened politically
Re:Apple let their UI experts go? (Score:3, Interesting)
A need to sell. Apple had been promising OS X for many many years (not always in that name) and had failed to deliver. There were lots of high expectations, and when writing a new OS like this, it's obvious your first version released is not going to be up to par. As such, they needed something pretty. Something that looked astheticaly pleaseing to offset th
Another Advantage to the Global Menu (Score:3, Informative)
In contrast, you have to hit the correct horizontal range, but also the correct vertical range, both for Windowed menus, and for taskbar buttons. If you move a long-term Mac user to Windows, they will constantly battle with this, as they're accustomed to just mousing up to t
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:3, Insightful)
How do I create a new document after closing the last one, without having to relaunch the entire application? With a menu stored entirely within a window, you can't... unless your application displays windows within other windows. Under the Human Interface Guidelines, this isn't an issue. The app continues running until the user decides to kill it himself. As applications get bigger over time, so does their load time.
Actually this is something that caused me trouble on MacOS - I kept feeling that when I
Windows Media Player 9 (Score:2)
It might sound nice at first, but I would rather have predictable (though possibly un user-friendly) behavior all the time, rather then inconsistancy.
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:2)
Okay, I will grant that there are some good arguments for the Mac-style single-menu interface, but when it comes down to it I PREFER Windows-style menus -- it seems more logical to me.
A truly great GUI would allow users to select their preference from both kinds of behavior.
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, I have always considered this a confusing, bad design. It's a relic of single-tasking from the original Mac OS.
I always thought this myself comming from the Windows land, however, think of it this way ...
It is a multi-tasking OS, however, as a user you can only interface with one thing at a time. Hence you can only interfact with a single menu item no matter how many menu
Hat switches on mice? (Score:2)
I'm peeved that nobody has produced a mouse/trackball with a hat switch. Who wants a scroll wheel when you can have a hat switch? This is even more true now that hacks like horizontal scroll wheels are coming out.
Sorry, I have always considered this a confusing, bad design.
Second that. It makes perfect sense to someone who has been using a
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:2)
Not at all. One of Apple's primary goals is to sell the easiest-to-use computer in the world. A simple, one-button mouse fits that description. Its ergonomically more sound, and can be used much easier by young kids and anyone with motor control difficulties.
Besides, once you get past 1 button, everyone has their own preference on how many buttio
Re:Why is Apple's UI so much better than the rest? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's exactly what the Mac does, once you understand that part of that window (viz. the menu bar) is conveniently placed at the top of the screen. What they did, you see, is go past your preconception that a "window" has to be connected. [wolfram.com]
User testing (Score:4, Insightful)
iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:2)
http://tinyurl.com/3arpf [tinyurl.com]
Re:iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:2)
Re:iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:3, Informative)
So you can compare, here's a link to the original commercial [isd.net], which you can see didn't have an iPod in it. ;o)
(As has been mentioned, Apple digitally added the iPod in the 2004 version of the commercial.)
Re:iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:2)
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor? [colingregorypalmer.net]
American Weblog in London [colingregorypalmer.net]
Re:iPods predicted in 1984? (Score:2, Funny)
Apple is at war with IBM. Apple has always been at war with IBM. Microsoft is our ally.
2004:
Apple is at war with Microsoft. Apple has always been at war with Microsoft. IBM is our ally.
I'll play devil's advocate (Score:3, Insightful)
There was plenty. The PC when it was first introduced ran all the Infocom games at the time. It ran Wizardry and all the Epyx games. Sure it wasn't as homey as the Apple II my friend had, but all the business were buying it.
I'm opening myself up for -1 Trolls and Overrated, but the PC wasn't *that* bad. It's easy to take a swipe at Gates for something thrown together at the last minute. It's not like he was making Choplifter or anything. In the end, the PC's open architecture that led it to be the computer platform of choice. The C64, Amiga, Atari ST were all great gaming platforms but just couldn't keep up with the ever upgrading of the PC. The roots of today's Half-Life 2, Doom 3's and Counter-Strikes all have roots with that first PC so long ago.
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:5, Informative)
It was copied, that is for sure, but it was far from "open." A plagiarized design doesn't make it "open" in the same fashion that a blown up safe lock box is also an "open" box.
And most of the games you mention have more in common with the machines you dissed than the actual original PC. I.e. most of the Doom engine was actually developed in NextStep, a lot of the 3DS software that game designers adopted in the 90s come from an Atari ST design program, most of the multi channel audio we know assume as standard was inspired by the Amiga (.mod's were the
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:3, Insightful)
Um...no, it wasn't plagerized. The people who made the first clone were locked in a room and didn't come out until they finished their clone. All they did was pass the output of their design to people outside of the room who would either say whether the outout of the clone chip was the same as the IBM chip.
IBM did themselves in
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:2)
The hardware for the IBM PC was amazingly open, because IBM wanted other companies to make components to fit in the expansion slots. IBM has copyrighted their BIOS, thinking that made the design reliant enough on them. Even if a company copied the hardware, they would have to license the bios.
Then came a 'clean room' implementatio
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:2, Interesting)
The BIOS was propriatary and it was the clean room reverse engineering of such that allowed the true clone.
KFG
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:2)
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:2)
The thing about PCs was that the sound and graphics were always an add-on, most other computers had a higher (but less upgradeable) A/V capability out of the box. They were more like gaming consoles in that regard.
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:2)
How would you explain the success of the consoles, then? They are usually as closed as can be; the upgradability potential of a Sony Playstation nowhere matches the potential of said Amiga. Commodore and Atari failed because of their incredibly foolish marketing, but not because "open" is better than
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you'll find that it was IBM's name that made it the platform of choice - IBM had a reputation for business computing, therefore the IBM PC was a serious computer. It took a long time for the PC architecture to become open, and this happened long after the PC was the platform of choice.
Re:I'll play devil's advocate (Score:2)
When my Dad brought home an XT, my 7-year-old self LOVED to play Donkey. The 16-color textmode graphics may not have been as pretty as what other 8-bit compters of the time were cranking out, but the game was SIMPLE and FUN.
Remember, the IBM PC belonged to a legacy of BUSINESS computers. It was optimized for working on spreadsheets and driving line printers, not games and entertainment. That came later.
Oh, that's why it's so slow.... (Score:3)
Slashdot hit.
I had an idea, so checked here withi 20 minutes, and sure enough, it was the banner story. Shit. I was almost done reading the whole story of Macintosh as interpreted by Andy H.
Re:Oh, that's why it's so slow.... (Score:2)
Not a ringing endorsement for its Python backend.
For that matter, any site dedicated to a computer that has a history of advocacy war better put its house in order, server-wise, because even if the server has nothing to do with the computer system in question, it invites ridicule...
Offtopic: python (Score:4, Funny)
Site is terribly slow, it is running python all right.
Inside the Apple Studio with... Andy Hertzfeld (Score:2, Informative)
For those interested in Apple history... (Score:5, Informative)
Here are several other great Apple history resources.
Sites:
Books:
Other:
Re:For those interested in Apple history... (Score:3)
Liked DONKEY.BAS? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Liked DONKEY.BAS? (Score:2, Funny)
Hey, I don't want to catch() anything this Donkey throw()s!
I guess the real question here is... (Score:2)
Speaking of Apple History... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Speaking of Apple History... (Score:2)
Re:Speaking of Apple History... (Score:2)
That line looked insane! I've participated in holiday parades that were shorter than that. What made you think that going there that day would be so much cooler than a week later? Were they offering free stuff, or discounts?
Must not have been us
Mac information (Score:3, Interesting)
So What Ever Happened To Burrell Smith? (Score:3, Interesting)
Site software (Score:4, Funny)
Great. Maybe Slashdot could consider using it...
Apple History (Score:4, Funny)
1988 - Apple is Dying
1992 - Apple is Dying
1996 - Apple is Dying
2000 - Apple is Dying
2004 - Err, Ipod might save 'em
Re:Apple History (Score:3, Funny)
Now with BSD, they'll be dying faster, right? Or longer
BSD's been dying since I was a kid.
farkdotcom (Score:2)
Moore's Law and the Mac (Score:2, Interesting)
i.e., they kept the price point.
As it happens, while advising a friend on how much memory to buy in 2004, I had just looked at how A
Re:Moore's Law and the Mac (Score:2)
Slow like Python (Score:2)
What a great site. An important historical record. Perhaps the Python would explain why the site is so slow. Python is a scourge.
Re:MS co-founder? (Score:3, Informative)
I can get to it, it took a little bit to load but I got it now. At least the article that talks about the game.
The game they are talking about is Donkey.
(Somehow I doubt that's related to Donkey Kong.)
It says the authors were Bill Gates and Neil Konzen, it was written in BASIC, poorly animated, and called Donkey because at certain points in the game a "donkey" appeared in the middle of the road and you would then have to quickly hit the space
Re:MS co-founder? (Score:5, Interesting)
DOS was not an MS product, they bought the code from a Seattle based company. As far as I know MS were in the compiler business before 1981, and I doubt Gates wrote a single line of DOS code, he definitively was not in any shape way or form the main architect/coder of DOS. And if you even had any remote idea about what you are saying, you'd know that the DOS that gates and CO. bought was a quick and dirty copy of CP/M-86.
Gates may be a good marketer and commercial thug, he is by no means a decent coder. And BTW next time try harder, pulling a never existing article from Byte out of your arse is just too boring.
Re:MS co-founder? (Score:2)
Close but no cigar for you! (Score:3, Informative)
The original author of Q[uick and dirty]DOS was Tim Patterson who much later went to work for Microsoft in the compiler group. Bill gates did not work on the code.
Uh, check the history books (Score:5, Informative)
As was mentioned by another poster, MS is a marketing marvel, but this myth about it's founders being technnical geniuses has just got to go. It scares the kids...
Re:Close but no cigar for you! (Score:3, Informative)
Cheap shots aside, (Sir) [slashdot.org] Bill by all accounts did an excellent job of sqeezing it into a very small space.
Credit [sysun.com]where it is due.
Cheers, Andy!
Very early MS history. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsft DOS came from Seattle Computer Products QDOS; MS licensed QDOS-86, told IBM they had an exclusive (a lie) and the rest was history.
QDOS was a bad clone of CP/M, which was written by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, which was sold to Novell which was sold to Caldera, now SCO. Gary originally worked at Shugart and, lucky devil that he was, ended up with a very expensive 8" floppy drive. He decided to write a disk loader for it, hence "Disk Operating System" or "DOS". The rest of us loaded software from casette tapes using the BIOS; disk drives were very evry expensive.
Back in the day, Digital Reaserch sold Operating Systems and Microsoft sold languages. When DR decided to sell a langauge around '83 the rumor was MS retaliated by selling an OS. The motivation may be a myth, but it was a popular one back then.
Gates pubilshed some undocumented Z-80 instructions in, I think, Dr. Dobbs. It was the last usefull thing he ever did.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:SCO ownes all (Score:2)
Re:SCO ownes all (Score:2)
Seek help.
Now.
Re:SCO ownes all (Score:2)
If MS-DOS is from QDOS, there will be some code in QDOS. QDOS is from CP/M so there must be some code from that in it as well. So some of the code was owned by SCO. Wich means that SCO ownes the code to all off MS codes.
Actually, QDOS just copied the "look and feel" of CP/M, not the code. That's like saying that Microsoft copied actual Apple code (Steve: "Oh, here Bill, go right ahead!") in making Windows, or that various X Window Managers copied actual Microsoft code (Bill: "Hey, this Linux thing is s
Re:MS co-founder? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cheapest Mac (Score:5, Informative)
There is a difference between the cheapest Mac that runs OS X, and that runs Darwin. Darwin (the core) will run on a lot older hardware than OS X itself. For instance, you can run Darwin on the PowerMac 8NNN series, but dont try to take a retail OS X and install.
Have a lookt at Low End Mac [lowendmac.com] and Accelerate your Mac [xlr8yourmac.com]. Perhaps they can give you some kind of hint. Now finally, i'd just like to point out that if you indeed want to run OS X, keep in mind that the "minimum requirements", like 128MB ram, is NOT sufficient imho. My G5 even choked on 512MB
Re:Cheapest Mac (Score:3, Informative)
I disagree. I run Jaguar on an old Bondi-blue G3 imac at 233Mhz with 96MB Ram !
And it runs just fine. There's only a limitation in startup time (don't power it of : sleep it if you need to. Boot time is around 10 minutes) , most of the iApps (which are to big to fit on the 2GB harddisk anyway) and MS Office (to bi
Re:Cheapest Mac (Score:2)
Re:Love Andy Hertzfeld (Score:2)
This data isn't all positive (Score:3, Informative)
And he's the CEO of Apple now, and sure enough, we get lots of all-in-one models.