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Windows 95 - Beyond the Hype



 
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     Subject: Douglas Adams ("Hitchhikers Guide" author) on Windows 95
			   Beyond the Hype (Guardian, 25-Aug-95)
	     Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers Guide to the
	     Galaxy,
	     argues Windows 95 does not cross any frontiers

     What on Earth is going on? Have we found intelligent life on other
     planets? Abolished war and famine? Found Elvis? Have we even devised
     a new and better way of using computers? No. All that's happened is
     that Microsoft has remodelled its operating system so that it's
     now more like the Macintosh.

     This may well be a cause for rejoicing among Windows users but
     it's hardly a giant leap for mankind and doesn't warrant this sense
     that we're all supposed to celebrate early and avoid the millennium rush.

     As part of this billion-dollar festival of smoke and mirrors, Bill
     Gates has apparently paid the Rolling Stones 8 million pounds for the
     right to use Start Me Up, the song which is better known for its
     catchy refrain "You make a grown man cry".

     This is a phrase you may hear a lot of over the next few days as
     millions of people start trying to install Windows 95. Even the best
     designed systems can be a nightmare to upgrade, but whatever things
     Microsoft may be famous for - the wealth of its founder, the icy grip
     he exerts on what is arguably the most important industry on this
     planet - good systems design is not, as it happens, one of them.

     Let's dispel a few myths. There's one which says that the original PC
     operating system was a brilliant feat of programming by boy genius
     Bill Gates. It wasn't brilliant and Gates didn't write it. He
     acquired it, "shrewdly", from the Seattle Computer Company and then
     immediately licensed it on to another, larger, outfit called IBM.
     When the IBM PC was launched into a market which had hitherto been
     serviced by garage companies named after bits of fruit, it carried
     the impimatur of a world-renowned name and sold a zillion, making
     Gates' operating system a world standard. IBM had failed to realise
     that any fool could make the boxes, but the hand that owned the
     software ruled the world. Big Blue had given the kid Gates a free
     ride into the stratosphere and then, astoundingly, found itself
     starting to fall away like a discarded booster rocket.

     Sadly this new world software standard was actually a piece of
     dingo's kidneys.

     MS-DOS, as Gates called it, had started life as QDOS-86 or the Quick
     & Dirty Operating System, which told you all you needed to know about
     it. A whole generation of people doggedly learned to run their
     businesses on a system that was written as a quick lash-up for
     hobbyists and hackers. Was there anything better around? Of course.

     In the 1970's, Xerox had funded a team of the world's top computer
     scientists to research the man/machine interface. They devised a
     graphical system, using windows, icons and mice. Their key insight
     was that a lot of needless complications could be cut short by
     harnessing people's intuitive and gestural skills. Oddly, Xerox
     failed to follow this up, and the research was taken up and brought
     to the market by Apple Computer as the Macintosh. After a shaky,
     underpowered start, this machine matured into a well-integrated
     system which was not only very powerful, but a real pleasure to use.
     Mac users tend to have an almost fanatical devotion to their machines.

     The Microsoft line on all this was that Windows was for wimps. The
     truth was that plain old MS-DOS couldn't actually do them.  Graphics,
     mice, networking, and a whole lot else, had to be added to the basic
     core of QDOS as one afterthought after another, which is why Wintel
     computers are so fiendishly complicated to set up and maintain.

     Gates, however, had always known which way the future lay, and for
     years Microsoft managed the awkward juggling act of rubbishing
     Apple's user interface while simultaneously trying to devise
     something like it that would fit on top of the bloated clutter that
     MS-DOS had become.

     BYTE magazine said recently: "It would not be an exaggeration to
     describe the history of the computer in the past decade as a massive
     effort to keep up with Apple."  However, the Macintosh is not the
     last word on interface design, and if Microsoft had been the
     innovative company that it calls itself, it would have taken the
     opportunity to take a radical leap beyond the Mac, instead of
     producing a feeble, me-too, implementation.

     An awful lot of people who try to install Windows 95 will end up
     having to spend so much money buying extra RAM and upgrading their
     peripherals to get features that Mac users have enjoyed for years,
     that they might as well give up and buy the real thing.

     The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour
     to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly
     ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate
     technology, led them into it in the first place.

     ---------------------------------------------------------------------
     ----       andy leslie, reboot ltd (andy@reboot.demon.co.uk)
	   a world away from DEC, but having fun.




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