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>From: PZapf@aol.com
>Message-Id: <950907181847_93719894@mail02.mail.aol.com>
>To: BOGGS.J@applelink.apple.com
>
>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 crap.
>
>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.