And rememember that windowing option in DOS, on a 8088? What was it
called?
On Wed, 19 Nov 2025, Christian Groessler via cctalk wrote:
GEM
"Graphics Environment Manager was from Digital Research, in 1985. Xerox
Ventura 2.0 bundled and used it!
Apple sued DRI, over the "look and feel" [and taste and smell] as being
too close a copy of Lisa and Mac OS. Replacing the greeting splash
screen "Hello" with "Hi" was not considered to be enough difference.
That encouraged Apple to sue lots nore people, including Microsoft
GEM 2.0 made "MAJOR" changes, such as replacing the trash-can icon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment)
PCTools (from Central Point (CopyII)) did text mode windows.
BUT, to keep from disrupting the screen display with "Abort, Retry,
Ignore" messages, it took over the critical error handler, and set it for
IGNORE for all errors! That meant, that any hard error would result in
loss of data, without notification!
and, cetainly NO discussion of alternatives could be complete without
remembering "BOB"!
Microsoft released it as a "more user friendly" interface, optionally
supplanting program manager on win 3.1, Win95, and even WinNT. They
releasede it on March 10 1995.
It was widely ridiculed, and quietly discontinued it in early 1996.
BUT, it gave rise to "Clippy", an annoying animated paper-clip "office
assistant" in Microsoft Office, and later "Rover", an animated "search
companion" in WinXP's file-search.
"#1 worst product of the decade" - CNET
#7 of "25 worst products of all time" - PCWorld
"Microsoft's Steve Ballmer mentioned Bob as an example in which "we
decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop [now]."[19]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
want more? or have I already bored y'all enough?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred [email protected]
