SuperSite Blog : Nostalgia

Visual Studio Documentary

pthurrott — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:55:32 GMT

Microsoft's Channel 9 has released a fascinating two-part video documentary of the history of Visual Studio, appropriately titled Visual Studio Documentary. It's an hour long (split into two 30-minute parts) and covers Microsoft's development efforts dating back to MS-DOS, OS/2, and the original version of Visual Basic:

Not only did we sift through hundreds of videos and assets but we sat down for an intimate conversation with those that were there since the very beginning: Scott Guthrie, Dan Fernandez, Jason Zander, Tim Huckaby, S. Somasegar, Dave Mendlen, Dee Dee Walsh, Mardi Brekke, Jeff Hadfield, Alan Cooper, Anders Hejlsberg, and Tony Goodhew.

Part One dives into MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows, Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual Basic 2.0, Visual Basic 3.0, Microsoft Visual C++, Visual Interdev, FoxPro, Visual Studio 97, ASP.NET and the early days of Microsoft's Dev community.

It's available for web viewing, of course, but also in various downloadable formats that are iPod, Zune, and Windows Media Player friendly.

Microsoft Softwear

pthurrott — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:05:19 GMT

Next week, Microsoft will begin selling a new line of retro clothing:

"Software by Microsoft is a clothing line that taps the nostalgia of when PCs were just starting to change our lives,” a Microsoft statement reads. "With retro logos, classic photos, and geek-chic iconography, these pieces showcase the DOS days of the software company that now connects over a billion people."

Here are some of the designs:

So, people will make fun of this stuff, but it looks like typical hipster menswear to me.

Forget About XP: Let's Save Windows for Workgroups 3.11!

pthurrott — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:47:10 GMT

VNU Net reports on a tragic loss:

Microsoft has announced plans to kill off Windows for Workgroups (WFW) 3.11 just weeks after ending the sale of Windows XP to consumers.

WFW has been unavailable to consumers for many years but certain software is licensed for use in embedded devices for much longer.

But a Microsoft employee has now revealed that it will be discontinued from 1 November 2008.

"For those that were not aware, we recently announced that effective November 1st 2008 OEMs will no longer be able to license WFW 3.11 in the embedded channel," said John Coyne, of Microsoft's OEM Embedded devices group, in his blog.

"We all know that it's been long gone in the standard (retail/OEM) channel, but one of the unique things in the embedded business is that we allow the classic OS products to be sold longer than the other channels. It's finally the end of an era."

WFW was initially released in November 1993 as the final English language operating system before Windows 95 ... It was the first Microsoft operating system to require the use of a 386 processor, along with 3Mb of RAM.

I'm waiting for the InfoWorld petition, of course.

I made a graphic to help them get started:

Return of the ’70s Weirdos

pthurrott — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:31:30 GMT

Classic! Everyone has seen that awful 1970's era Microsoft photo, well, Newsweek has got everyone from that picture to come back for a new group shot. Predictably, they're a lot less ... um ... unattractive than they used to be. :)

That photo of 11 weirdos in '70s clothes you may have seen on the Internet really is the original Microsoft team, snapped Dec. 7, 1978, on the eve of the company's move from Albuquerque, N.M., to Seattle. Almost 30 years later, a few weeks before Bill Gates's departure from Microsoft, the group (looking better) reconvened.

LOL. Wow.

Amiga Forever 2008 Released

pthurrott — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:51:49 GMT

For you Amiga fans in the audience, via email:

Remember when computers were fun? Thanks to your past support
we were able to spend two years developing Amiga Forever 2008.
More than ever, this new version brings back the beauty and
excellence of Amiga and the excitement of its software into
a new dimension of immediate accessibility and enjoyment.
Before delving into more details, here is a quick link to
the special upgrade offer (only $29.95 for the Plus Edition,
or $39.95 for the Premium Edition, and you get new full
versions, not upgrades):

http://www.amigaforever.com/go/2008/

When we released Amiga Forever 2005 three years ago, after
working for months on the DVDs alone, we thought there was not
much that could be improved. After that, the 2006 version was
an incremental update. Well, we now managed to surprise even
ourselves, because Amiga Forever 2008 is a revolutionary update
which makes all previous versions pale in comparison. The new
player is a labor of love down to the individual pixel, like in
the old Amiga days. And what it does is disrupting, for it is
changing the way people perceive emulation. The new 100+
demoscene productions are simply beautiful to watch and listen
to (and you keep wondering, "How did they do it, in real time,
on a 68000 CPU?"). Then there are 100+ games (all with short
instructions). And new gallery items (my favorite is the 1979
Tripos article, an Amiga Forever exclusive which shows more
similarities with AmigaDOS than most of us would have expected).
The new player for Windows feels as familiar and easy to use as
a media player, while providing easy access to a universe of
free downloads. It uses heuristic logic to autoconfigure
downloaded games, and supports features such as double clicks
on disk images (yes, you can download an ADF and "run" it!),
saved states, disk write undo and dual-monitor setups.

On the cross-platform front, the KX Light boot environment
features a new kernel and hard disk installation (with online
updates). The Gallery section includes the full and original
1979 Tripos (Amiga OS precursor) presentation, and new "top
secret" Amiga-Atari documents, while tons of new games and
demoscene productions are sure to deliver hours of enjoyment.
For the technically-minded, Amiga Forever 2008 also includes
new ROMs, new ADFs, new HDFs, and better support for WHDLoad,
AmiKit and AmigaSYS.

I could spend hours describing details of the new player, but
Amiga Forever 2008 is much more than a list of features, even
if they took exhaustingly longer than in the past to develop.
Amiga Forever is not about a player. Amiga Forever is about
emotions, about a direction, about extending our past
commitments into the future, and enjoying the relationship with
fellow Amiga friends like yourself along the way.

You may have heard that we cataloged more than ten-thousand
Amiga games. Two years ago we didn't even know the Amiga had so
many games! Why did we do this? See the link below for the
details. Let me just add that the Amiga Forever 2008 player
already features a button that goes beyond the local search
function, and taps into a free online system that we are
working on. More integration with the database will follow,
also via free updates.

For additional information:

New Features
http://www.amigaforever.com/whatsnew/

Screenshots
http://www.amigaforever.com/screenshots/

Quick Tips for Upgraders
http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/5-121.html

Amiga Forever Cataloging Effort Reaches 10K Milestone
http://www.amigaforever.com/news-events/20071214cataloging.html

And again the upgrade link, if you would like to enjoy the
many new features and support our effort:

http://www.amigaforever.com/go/2008/

The Plus Edition is only $29.95, while the Premium Edition
is $39.95.