Vista vs. Cairo - A Microsoft History Lesson 194
avocade writes "Here is a nice history lesson by (the unfortunately infamous) Daniel Eran, arguing why the Longhorn/Vista road is very similar to the NT/Cairo road that Microsoft took in the 90's, effectively trying their best to discourage competition in the marketplace."
Cairo vs NT/Cairo (Score:5, Informative)
Infamous indeed - spammer (Score:5, Informative)
Daniel Eran. Just Say No.
Cheers,
Ian
WTF (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Infamous indeed - spammer (Score:1, Informative)
Better Windows history here... (Score:5, Informative)
Incidentally, I distinctly remember Cairo not being vaporware or a hoax as stated in the article, there were certainly dodgy builds of it floating around before it was canned and NT 4.0 appeared as a Win95-ified NT 3.51 replacement. The idea that Cairo was a hoax in a non-starter. That's like saying Copland was a hoax, no, sometimes projects get shelved because they're not working out - OS design is an area of computing where it's incredibly easy to be idealogical about features, then figure out that you just can't deliver the goods.
More spam from Daniel Eran (Score:0, Informative)
This guy has been caught spamming dozens of sites. Apparently, only
Re:How else do you get a message out? (Score:3, Informative)
Damn, that was crap (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Perfect Timing (Score:2, Informative)
They were NeXT. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Damn, that was crap (Score:2, Informative)
>before Apple got out a consumer OS with the same.
Win32 is an API, not an OS. Protected memory is an attribute of the OS, not the API. If we're talking about significant consumer implementations, the first serious implementation of win32 would be Windows 95. (Earlier ones were NT 3.51 and Win32s in Windows 3.1.) That's 1995.
The Mac equivalent to the win32 API would be Carbon. I agree that the first real protected mode implementation was 2001, with OS X, though I'm not convinced that anything before 10.2 was commercially significant. That's in 2002.
But that's still a long gap. While some had a different experience, during that gap I remember that every time my Mac staff wanted to show me something, their systems hung. I told them to come see me again when they had a real OS. Of course now they do, and I prefer it to XP/Vista.
Re:How else do you get a message out? (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you think SPAM implies commercial benefit? One of the earliest spammers was an 'evanglist' - sending out generic jesus-freak messages.
Re:Ok, I'll bite. (Score:5, Informative)
Win32 contained lots of changes compared to Win16. Threads, overlapping I/O, lots of new controls, additions to GDI, long file names, pipes for IPC. It might seem like a joke, but access violations really had a greater chance of not taking the full machine down in Win95, versus Win 3.1.
And of course, a full driver model for all devices, with the Registry (yuck) to track the config. Yep, you could do anything in a VXD in 3.1, but there was no real structure to it. 32 bit disk I/O wasn't present in the original 3.1 either, so the difference is greater if we compare 3.1 versus 95, or the very last releases of 3.11 WfW versus 95.
Re:Perfect Timing (Score:4, Informative)
Some of their achievements include:
Re:Ok, I'll bite. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Show me a better summary (Score:1, Informative)
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoc
Re:Better Windows history here... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the perspective. It has zero to do with "15 years later, we have a feature". It has *everything* to do with, "15 years ago, when we needed a solution, Microsoft said they would provide it in a TIMELY fashion." As a result, purchase decisions were directly impacted.
We needed a mutlitasking OS to replace a DG Mini. Windows 1.0 was reputed to provide this functionality.
We called them. "Multi tasking?" "Yes." "Multiple users?" "Absolutely."
We bought it.
They lied.
We called them back.
"The sales engineer was confused with the next version." End Quote.
The project was shelved.
CDOS, released by a company named "Digital Research", became viable.
The project was rehashed, but Windows 2.0 was out. It's DOS support had few caveats, compared to CDOS.
We called Microsoft.
"Multitasking?"
"Yep!"
"You said the other one was. It wasn't."
"We've totally rewritten it. It works for real."
"Multi user?"
We bought it.
They lied.
We called them back.
"It doesn't work."
"No? The NEXT one will, and it's due soon."
See the pattern yet?
We eventually bought CDOS (and later, CCDOS, a value-add version).
We also bought Win30. Hazard a guess why?
They lied, again.
We also bought Win31. THAT one was initially stated to be preemptive, remember? And the sales pigs all claimed it was, when it was time to sign the check. Perhaps you've forgotten the RAGING DEBATES over that very issue, at the time... "Preemptive!" "No, it isn't!" "Yes, it is!" "No, it isn't!"
Our project was fairly simple - run a couple of DOS boxes, and redirect STDIO to a serial port so that two people could run a program. This specific detail was explained to "Microsoft", EACH TIME.
Every time... EVERY time... the MS tactic was to stall our purchase of a competing, fully viable product, via the gross misrepresentation of their own.
The MS philosophy is, and has been, that it is better to ship an "empty box" on-time than to ship a working product a day late.
And they have done so, and I have the disks to prove it - Excel's initial "DMF" floppy distribution, who's lzexpand didn't comprehend DMF... they literally put the "standard" Win31 lzex onto disk 1. Funny, it's LZEx that needs to READ these FATless disks. It couldn't POSSIBLY work. But, the version they needed wasn't read yet, so... ship it!
Clearly, two "top tier" products at the time, and the installations not even been tested. Not once. NOT ONCE. And, the devs KNEW the crap wasn't finished. The Mgt KNEW the crap wasn't finished. Both cases, which were a year apart... the "official" MS reason for issuing new disks to me?
"Media Defect". Again, I am NOT joking. Both cases, no matter how hard I argued, the call takers flat out REFUSED to admit the actual flaw. "No, the media is perfect. The setups are WRONG. Syntax errors... referencing a directory path that doesn't exist on the CD... trivial little things like that..."
Because, you know, the standalone install disk for Exchange had the base directory in the root. On BO4.5, the base setup was a subdirectory. And the scripts hadn't been adapted for it.
Trivial, little things. Right? Or, an omnipresent pattern, that just keeps on recurring.
The point of the article is exactly correct; promise vaporware as a solution NOW, to prevent or stall the purchase of an existing solution, NOW. That they *might* actually deliver the vapor in five years? Irrelevent; I am NOT going to buy a "viable" solution today, when "nervana" is coming next week. I will wait, so that I can assess. Or worse, if the "vapor" is claimed to now exist,
Re:Infamous indeed - spammer (Score:3, Informative)
Because he states he is, has stated he is in replies and has taken part in email conversations with members of the group - see this thread [google.com] for more details.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Damn, that was crap (Score:3, Informative)
Windows NT started from the OS/2 3.0 codebase which was developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM ... so Microsoft cannot receive full credits for it.
No, Windows NT *was* the OS/2 3.0 (ne: NT) codebase. Microsoft alone worked on OS/2 3.0, although by that time most of the work in OS/2 2.x was IBM's.
What went on to become OS/2 3.0 was a further development of OS/2 2.x by IBM, *not* the codebase that went on to become Windows NT. Even a cursory examination of their architectures should make it obvious that Windows NT and OS/2 have next to nothing in common.
IBM were still paying Microsoft royalties for their code in OS/2 *4.0*.
Windows 9x had pre-emtive multitasking for 32 bit applications, and cooperative multitasking for 16 bit applications, at least theoretically. And everyone here knows that Windows 9x provided real quality, especially Windows Millennium ;)
Relatively, it was competitive.
Mac OS Classic sucked, yes, but it was much better than Windows 9x which was replaced by Windows XP in late 2001.
Er, no. MacOS of the day couldn't hold a candle to Windows 9x in anything except UI (and even that is debatable). Windows NT utterly eclipsed it.