Microsoft Bob: Microsoft's biggest flop of the 1990s
dfarq.homeip.net
dfarq.homeip.net
A few images for reference. Notice that you start MS Paint same way in the VR portal and Bob.
VR Portal: https://onewindows.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/windows-mix...
Bob: https://static1.howtogeekimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/upl...
I did as much of my computing in that space as possible, pulling up multiple desktop windows and floating applications and pinning them places. On one wall I had the Zune software with my whole music library, and my music played from that place, so I imported 3d models of speakers (I managed to actually find an end user use case for that default Windows user folder and I still as an admin and dev wonder why it's a default) and stuck them next to the app and they persisted. I'd drag discord around with me and I could even access the screen of my phone by bringing up Your Phone.
I found it really kind of nice to use, and I wish the space had been more capable. Able to take more object formats, able to handle more vertices, I wish I had been able to boot directly to the virtual environment and eschew the step of switching between desktop and virtual mode. It also visually paused basically every app and desktop you didn't specifically keep active, except for Zune--that would go into Mixview and look cool as hell on the wall.
I miss it, and I'm sad they killed it and I'm not aware of an experience like it for linux on an openish device atm.
(Well, I'd better come out of the closet now: Yes, I had a Microsoft mobile phone. But I was not the only one!)
Unfortunately, development experience (on PalmOS) didn't mirror the usage experience, though.
Please can you point out some games that do this? I cant find any.
My main memory of it was that it allowed you to add shortcuts to other installed programs, so I added the few games on the computer to Bob. This used way too many resources, causing Bob to crash and me being unable to get into my profile to fix it. It may have broken the program for anyone else using it too, I can't recall. Relatively standard behavior crashing the program far beyond their target market's ability to fix it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/the-lesson-melinda-gates-lea...
Looking at screenshots, Bob appears to be a more childish and cartoony version of the concept. I can see why it didn't fair well.
https://youtu.be/pwTIbYV_q6I around the 12 to 13 minute mark shows the Navigator interface.
It was ... odd. I opened it once or twice and deleted it.
I worked with a software developer who LOVED that puppy - way more than I loved MOPy fish (rip)
It was probably awful but I didn’t care at all it had extreme 90´s vibes. All of my games were in a space room or whatever I remember. I was 6 or 7 and I discovered computers. Everything was cool. Packard Bell Navigator was in everything so it was cool :)
Yes it’s nostalgia.
Totally off topic, I'm reminded that a high school friend gave me an old Packard bell machine for free once, and I ran OpenBSD on it for years. I got some ISA NICs and used it as a firewall.
This feels like an urban legend made up after the fact.
It would be way easier to just generate random bytes, and nobody could ever tell the difference.
Especially since no decryption key exists.
It's just a funnier story if that's the only thing Bob was ever good for...
Raymond Chen of Microsoft has this to say about that:
"... [the person adding 30 megs of random crap] could have just called the CryptGenRandom function to generate 30 megabytes of cryptographically random bytes, but where's the fun in that? Instead, he dug through the archives and found a copy of Microsoft Bob. He took all the floppy disk images and combined them into one big file. The contents of the Microsoft Bob floppy disk images are not particularly random, so he decided to scramble up the data by encrypting it. When it came time to enter the encryption key, he just smashed his hand haphazardly across the keyboard and out came an encrypted copy of Microsoft Bob. That's what went into the unused space as ballast data on the Windows XP CD..."[0]
[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-...
Programmers love easter eggs.
Edit: sillywalk's comment proves my point.
"Why did the Windows 95 CD have extra fun stuff, like the Good Times and Buddy Holly music videos, the Rob Roy trailer, and the cartoons by Bill Plympton? Because it was fun! Why does one have to justify having fun? In addition to the multimedia fun, there was also video game fun, with the addition of Pinball and the mercifully-forgotten hovercraft game Hover! (Some of us thought it was so awful, we secretly called it Hoover!)" -- Raymond Chen
You can set a password on your Bob account. If you fail to enter the right password three times in a row, Microsoft Bob lets you reset the password, no further questions.
A flop no but used hilariously for a things it shouldn’t be. One of the most divisive typefaces ever.
I like it.
Personally I don't get the outrage. In my opinion the likes of Bradley Hand ITC and Papyrus are abused more often but nobody's ever accused me of having good taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Babies and new employees and that sort of thing it was fine. But using it for death notices of employees family members, with frowny face emojis, was a bit much. She was so sweet, but so very very oblivious.
If you know anything about Microsoft, you know they don't innovate. That was true in the 90's when Bill Gates was running Microsoft, and it is true under Nadella. Anything they do is ALWAYS in response to a competitive threat. So what was the competitive threat that spurred Microsoft Bob? It was the "social interface" of General Magic's Magic Cap operating system. When that flopped Microsoft cancelled Bob.
Longhorn failed because MS tried to be too innovative within the scope of a single OS release. In some ways Microsoft was more innovative under Ballmer than Nadella--see e.g. the radical Midori OS that Nadella killed, or Microsoft Research's highly productive Silicon Valley campus that Nadella shut down.
What are some notable examples of innovations that came from MSR Silicon Valley campus? In my opinion nothing notable has ever come out of MSR, regardless of campus. Microsoft is needing to rely on third parties such as OpenAI because MSR seems incapable of contributing anything notable to AI.
One notable thing that came out of the Cambridge (England) campus was the implementation of generics in the CLR.
As https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/meteoric-rise-... reminded me, they were on like 20% of the SIGGRAPH papers in 1996. And several have stood the test of time, like Hugues's Progressive Meshes paper (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/237170.237216). A little later, the spherical harmonics paper (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/566570.566612) was basically all MSR (I think Jan maybe interned there while at MPI? It's been a long time...).
That isn't to defend anything in AI, but it's not the case that they had no impact. The oral history thing there claims that the first grammar checking in Office 97 came from their NLP work.
There's a bunch of stuff that didn't really work that well 30 years ago that we use today
For starters the spacial interface is so cumbersome it makes all interactions with the system tedious. The first time you walk through the system it's cute but when you need to painstaking navigate to a particular room to do something it's just frustrating.
The hardware could not keep up with the demands of the interface. The PCs that shipped with Bob (in my experience) could not run it without paging and thus slowed to a crawl running it. Launching a program from Bob just resulted in interminable waits while the disk thrashed. The Magic Link is painfully slow and does not demonstrate the OS well at all.
Magic Cap was really no less insulting to users than Bob. It wasn't as cartoony but its tediousness wasted your time. The sluggishness of the hardware did not help. Even the early Newton MessagePads were snappier devices and their UI didn't make you tediously navigate through a virtual space.
So proud of this one they had to explicity point it out. Thank you though, I never would have made that connection.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TabWorks
https://archive.org/download/tabworks/Windows3.12018-12-30At...
Developed by XSoft, a division of Xerox PARC!
What a trip, I remember as a 10 yo kid I quickly uninstalled it when I learned to do so.
It felt like bloat and I wanted a clean Windows 95 interface.
I switched to Mac in 2006 with MacOS Tiger and never looked back.
But I never got the impression it was more than a weird experiment, failed, but I dunno about "biggest flop" as the stakes weren't that high. 95 was coming and clearly the way forward.
If we were serious about biggest flops, we'd be talking about my beloved Lumia WP.
It was the purchase of Nokias mobile division by Microsoft that killed it.
Microsoft's stewardship over their entire smartphone campaign, however, was so miserable, it's kind of impressive.
Also, I kind of wish Microsoft Bob failed a little harder— the agentic stuff I'm hearing about these days sounds like the kind of software assistants they tried in the 90s, and I fear they have the same likelihood of poor execution.
The CueCat.
I'd also add Network Computers and "push technology" e.g. Pointcast.
But it was a flop.
Also, The Microsoft Network. This was a competitor to AOL that came out just as the WWW was exploding. It gave us the "MSN" abbreviation that we still see today, but otherwise disappeared without a trace.
Well, almost without a trace. Unfortunately?
VAX 9000, OS/2 2.0, OS/2 Warp 3, OpenDoc, Kaleida, Apple Newton, Pippin, 3DO, Philips CD-i, Sega 32X, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar, Amiga CD32…
They borrowed features from HPFS.
- Virtual Boy, Atari Lynx,
Hardware:
- AMD Interwave. practically ruined Gravis and left us with years of Creative gobbling up any competitor i.e. Ensoniq, Aureal... FFS we had to wait for VIA to make something competitive to Creative's offerings, outside of 3-ish beautiful Cirrus Logic 4624/4630 cards, before the Envy24 became a thing.
- Speaking of Cirrus Logic, The Laguna CL-GD546X series of chips; those things used RDRAM in the mid-90s and it contributed to Cirrus exiting the video market.
- Speaking of Creative, the 3D Blaster VLB. They exist, (heck IDEK if the original rebel moon came any other way,) but they are rare as hell which means they probably flopped hard.
- (Kinda) the Matrox M3d (and the VideoLogic counterpart). It wasn't a terrible product in and of itself but a Riva 128 was faster (if uglier) for most cases and gave you 2D as well, and they came out around the same time. [0]
- Most 'cartridge disk' drives aside from the Zip[1]. You can possibly throw SuperDisk/HiFD into this category too.
- Intel i820 Chipset (It's 1999!). I'm not referring to the 'lemon' aspect (i.e. when an MTH was used for SDRAM, the RDRAM was reliable... AFAIK with two slots instead of 3) but in general there was almost zero uptake due to the cost of RDRAM and Intel's recalcitrance led to both AMD gaining ground as well as VIA/SiS getting opportunities to be more competitive in the chipset space (SiS 630 was cheaper than 810E and just as good for normal users, Via's Apollo Pro 133A both supported 133Mhz FSB and gave an AGP slot, as well as IDE corruption with an SBLive... I think i815 was 4-6 months after VIA stuff was selling, and remember back then 6 months was an eternity...)
Also I should note that the Saturn was mostly a flop in the US (Can't speak for EU.) but in Japan it held up well thanks to native publishers, the Saturn had a lot of great 2D games we never saw here, (thanks to the same guy that ironically caused the relative dearth of good RPGs for the PS1 before he moved from Sony to Sega...) also the ability to play CD+G (gotta have that karaoke) and I think? it could do VCDs which were bigger over there... all that stuff helped a lot and the Saturn outsold there till around 1997 IIRC.
[0] - That said, wow, remember when 3d processors didn't even need a heatsink? I feel old...
[1] - Zip had reliability problems, but certainly was not a flop.
I just had to check to see if you meant 3DO Blaster and not just 3D Blaster. I'd imagine both are very rare.
And we had VGA passthrough cables, because 2D rendering was still taken care of by a discrete card.
They were a company that thrived on a combination of clever mis-marketing [0] and poor reseller treatment [1]. Their actions likely hurt the evolution of computer audio due to the capture of various patents and companies that were actually innovating (Ensoniq being the big one.) I mean FFS it took VIA and and upstart to finally raise the bar [2] in a meaningful way, and the overall lack of competition left Creative ill-prepared to handle Azalia.
[0] - i.e. Audigy settlement.
[1] - When I worked at a computer shop, around 2001 we established a rule, 'no creative product under 50$ retail will be worth the cost of trying to RMA it'. If an SBLive or 52x CD drive came in bad we'd try but if it didn't get through on first go you'd wind up in a loop where the labor time wasn't worth replacing one. Which makes me extra disgusted because that's what everyone does now with actual end consumers.
[2] - That said, that VIA/IC Ensemble did the Envy24 thing when they did is interesting, at least in the context of the XBox 360 using an SIS 'Southbridge'. Makes me wonder if they were being bold to get the bid instead?
I'm willing to 'write-off' most early proprietary API cards, OTOH 3d Blaster VLB was so memory holed that if it wasn't for LGR I'd thought it was a Mandela effect hallucination...
I knew a couple people who had one and it was really handy, nothing comparable (except switching actual hard disks) existed, for a brief moment in time - must have been around 1998-99, no ubiquitous USB sticks, no CDRW yet (only CDR, at 5 bucks a piece).
Us plebs had to make do with 100MB parallel port zip drives.
> no CDRW yet (only CDR, at 5 bucks a piece).
IIRC Jaz cartridges were expensive back then, 100$ a pop. Launch price of 100$, back then 500$ could buy you a car that might last through an oil change or two. [1]
That said, The Castlewood Orb was a far more interesting piece of machinery due to capacity/cost. I have never seen one, but I do have a SyJet somewhere that I never hooked up to a PC [2]
[0] - FWIW the Jaz in question was a SCSI model with parallel port adapter. Not sure if it makes a difference...
[1] - It took a long time to fully reclaim my dad's confidence in purchase suggestions, wasn't finally conquered till a year after he ditched a problematic Chrysler Sebring for a Chevrolet Malibu (at which point he said I was glad I suggested it. Which I'm eternally grateful for...)
[2] - Got it used cheap way back when, I preferred SCSI CDRWs and thus had at least one competent Adaptec card for the task and a colleague was like 'hey since you can use it...'
> When General Magic finally shipped in 1994 — under the threat of Apple’s Newton — they hadn’t made the Pocket Crystal that Porat first dreamed of in 1989. Instead, they released something they called the Sony Magic Link. It weighed 1.5 lbs (0.68 kg) and was priced at US$800 (US$1560 in 2022 dollars). It offered futuristic features like a touchscreen, downloadable apps and animated emojis — the first of its kind. Fadell thought it would be revolutionary — people could now carry a personal computer with them wherever they went. But nobody bought it. In the end only three to four thousand Magic Link devices were sold, and mostly to family and friends.
There's a documentary too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTdyb-RWNKo
Of course DSL and other techs took over, but it was far from a failure.
WebTV might be up there, similar for Monorail PC.
Both fairly quickly got obsoleted and any 'volume' they hoped to reach in consumer space was quickly cannibalized by similar but more profitable models (i.e. E-Machines and their steep internet contract discounts.)
Nx586 was a bit of a flop as a product on its own (even funder Compaq didnt really ship many) but overall the R&D transformed AMD when they acquired NexGen and used the second iteration of the tech for the K6.
The remote viewing is coming back though. PlayStation Portal comes to mind which is just a remote controller and screen for a PS5. It’s considerably cheaper than the full device, of course, because that would be insane if it weren’t, _Microsoft_
It was slow over 802.11b (I beta tested two of the devices).
Windows is perfectly capable of hosting multiple sessions, Microsoft just wants to charge you double the cost of a Windows license per session on a separate server tier of OS license.
Of course, it wouldn't have saved the device if Microsoft had bent their rules for themselves...
Another interesting product from that era was Microsoft Comic Chat, an IRC client that rendered conversations as a comic.
We don’t necessarily need Bob. We just need an iOS 1 mode, skeuomorphic design and all. Back when the camera app only had a photo or video switch, a take photo button, and a gallery button.
But web developers have done their best to wreck this. Have you ever had to explain GDPR cookie dialogs to elderly parents? I've watched them Google recipes only to blame the chef when the site was broken or unusable, which was more often than not.
In many ways interfaces have remained pretty static since then.
The only real innovation was the iPhone, but it’s just a more responsive multi touch palm, to some degree.
We still use windowing computers with mice/trackpad and keyboard, have pocket computers with apps and touch screens, and interface with more less the same browser with URL bar.
We maybe are on cusp of VR and that will be a sea change in interfaces, if it ever comes to pass. And voice commands, but pretty limited function so far
That’s from the 90s to today.
Compare that to 60s to 90s, where you barely had desktop calculators, and used magnetic tape and maybe punch card inputs:
This is correct. Folks, VisiCalc was introduced in 1979, when today's ninety-year-olds were 44. They had not even lived half their current life.
You can’t just treat this as a throwaway line. Touch interfaces signal a fundamental shift in the way people interact with computers. You just take swipes and gestures for granted. Have you watched a senior try to interact with the modern web? The interface is not only the buttons of the browser, but the page itself. Today we have shifting interfaces that move because of lazy load ads. We have popups that one needs to understand how to close. We have essential functions buried behind an arbitrary “hamburger” menu icon. We have sites that hijack the back button. Sites that deliberately try to deceive. And lots of software (including Microsoft apps) has shifted to a cloud model. This becomes an inextricable aspect of the interface itself. Suddenly, there’s no means to “save” and old “digital paper” model/metaphors have given way to “infinite web page” documents.
I spend a lot of time with seniors and see firsthand the roadbumps and dead ends they face.
Seems like some aspects of the experiment survived and were hugely popular: folders, clipboard, cut, paste, etc..
I remember encountering them in an old Xerox system, in the early 1980s.
Bob was awful. However, I have to confess that I once tried designing UI like that, and learned painful lessons, in the process.
And what were the metaphors specifically, folders or cutting and pasting?
Thanks.
It had folders, a mouse, document icons, and a trash can.
I can't really remember much else. It was B&W.
You don’t open a file, you “walk” to a “filing cabinet”, “pull the drawer out”, and “reach in and pull out a specific piece of ‘paper’”.
You don’t make a phone call, you sit in virtual meeting space with virtual bodies while wearing a mocap suit.
Does anyone still remember why we got computers in the first place?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FGzE4endQ
(2015, so 4 years before Zuckerberg committed to the Metaverse enough to rename the whole company, and still 1 year before the first commercial new generation VR headset : Oculus Rift released.)
Uhhhh, to play videogames?
(That was the Beavis 'n Butthead voice.)
Rather that these metaphors were very present in 2000s Windows and Office programs, and were very successful in getting regular users to understand computers and bringing about the Personal Computer revolution.