Microsoft Windows 1.0 with Steve Ballmer (1986) | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Windows 1.0 with Steve Ballmer (1986)

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There aren't many pixels in that video.

Here's a high resolution version: https://youtu.be/DgJS2tQPGKQ

Much better. Maybe mods can update the link.

Wow, much better. Can see the display better as well (looks like an IBM 5153).

Just in case anyone missed it, this is an internal parody:

> This is the famous Windows 1.0 parody "advertisement" shown internally at Microsoft, now in glorious 60FPS and high-quality audio! Surreal to think this was only previously available in a highly compressed form for over a decade.

Congrats to Microsoft for Windows 1. But I still think Amiga/AmigaOS was superior. However, when Microsoft released Windows 3, you could start to see where the puck was going. So I skated toward the puck, like everyone else. Sorry Commodore. :(

Let's be real, Commodore has no one to blame but themselves for squandering their 5-year lead in hardware and OS. They were carried hard by the passion of their engineers, but irredeemably greedy and soulless at the top. At Microsoft and Apple, engineers were the lifeblood from the very beginning. At Commodore, they were a spreadsheet column.

It's all relative; Commodore sounds like it was nirvana compared to Atari!

Kind of wild to imagine an alternate universe where Commodore and Atari were still big names in computing. Would have loved to see the Amiga continue to grow, it seemed so ahead of its time.

Commodore probably got more pleasant after Jack Tramiel left to go run Atari. Unfortunately it got left in the hands of Irving Gould, who treated the company as his personal piggy bank and looted it til there was nothing left.

Imagine if Commodore had built ARM, or something like it it. A 16 register RISC in the 80s was basically an instant win. They would have been in the CPU lead for a couple of years.

And they had the resources. I mean hell, Acron was a tiny company and they pulled of building an absolutely incredibly machine in the Archimedes.

Its just what you dare to do. If they were as bold as the original Amiga team, with VSLI Technology 2nm CMOS in the late 80s they could have built an incredible machine. I think they held on to long trying to do their own semiconductors.

Acron didn't have the bandwidth to really innovate on the graphics side of things, and because of their problems with OS, they never managed to get enough software on the platform. And they just didn't have the market either.

Commodore on the other hand, actually had a pretty high quality OS with lots of software and users already.

I was an Amiga user from 1988 through 1994. AmigaOS was basically awful until 2.0 came out in 1990/1991. That was when they finally developed UI guidelines, got rid of the garish blue/orange yellow scheme, and made the platform much more stable. Sadly, it was too little, too late. You know what was also released in 1990? Windows 3.x.

it was amazing how good that was. 8-bit guy has some great videos on it.

I used to enjoy playing around with audio programs like Soundtracker/Protracker. Those programs were the first time I was blown away by what a computer could do.

Demoscene power still steers the industry today (particularly at Nvidia)

I have a brand new still shrink-wrapped box of Windows 1.0.0 My local museum (https://computerhistory.org) has one on loan, this remind me to go there and offer them mine

In the BillG era it was pretty common to produce these funny videos for internal events. In case anyone is wondering about the origin of this.

I am quite sure this was shown in one of the MS PDCs ? I am quite sure I saw it there -- I couldn't put my finger on which year. Doubt it ever was a real ad, but one of these parodies they used to do.

It's from the Windows 95 launch video. https://youtu.be/_JzfROUDsK0?t=263

of course this was an internal company joke. Microsoft don't have ads. it doesn't sell to consumers.

all windows sales in history were by strong arming OEM to preload it and pass the cost.

Especially in the 80s and 90s Microsoft sold tons to consumers, and advertised to them too. The OEM model didn't come later. And even then, it wasn't quite as black/white and still sold (and advertised) to consumers. "All windows sales in history were by strong arming OEM" is just making stuff up.

It is difficult to imagine in this day and age when nobody gives a shit about computers or what they run on but people really did stand in line to buy windows 95 and 98.

Why would it be difficult to imagine? People stand in line to buy iPhones.

Then what exactly do they sell in those Microsoft stores?

I was curious, because I had thought that all Microsoft stores had closed.

it appears that there is still at least one Microsoft store (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/locations) in the United States, but I think that might be it.

I guess the non-satirical answer would be "experiences"

> Then what exactly do they sell in those Microsoft stores?

Vacuum cleaners that doesn't suck. /s

No one has or had energy in software like ballmer!

USD 99 in 1986 would be $288 today. Indeed, if adjusted by the price of Coca Cola, it would be $590, according to this weird site https://moneynotmoney.com/historical-price-of-coca-cola-in-u...

What's special about Nebraska?

It’s a joke about an old Bell rule: https://www.networkworld.com/article/945570/replaying-ballme...

From the video's comments:

Comment from 9 years ago: "This man is worth 22.7 billion dollars"

Comment from 1 year ago: "112 billion now"

It's financial turtles all the way down, until it isn't.

I didn't know he's also profitted handsomely from MS, it's Bill Gates who's famously in the "list of richest people".

According to this list, Ballmer currently has more money than Gates: https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/

I think Gates tried to sell off most of his fortune at one point. It came raging back, if I’m not miss-remembering. Money begets money, or something.

He kept more of his MSFT stock.

Ballmer was clearly up to speed.

It was the 80's, so my educated guess is more likely coke.

it took them nine more years to ship Chicago aka Windows 95

Which was Windows 94 at some point, until it wasn't. At least one official alpha build had that name.

One could also try out the new shell, literally codenamed "NewShell" 2 months ahead of Chicago/95's release in July 1995 with an update to NT 3.51. I've been meaning to try it out on my 486 rig.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.51#NewShell

Or rather just under 2 years since Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

PO Box 286-DOS. Wonder if Microsoft still has that.

I thought it was funny he spelled it out, D-O-S. Wasn't it more common to say "DOS" back then too? Maybe it was because it was an address.

That made my day.

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