Finding an Easter Egg in Microsoft Bob(benstoneonline.com)
benstoneonline.com
Finding an Easter Egg in Microsoft Bob
https://benstoneonline.com/posts/microsoft-bob-easter-egg/
66 comments
An interesting thing that we forget with Bob and Clippy is the people reviewing/commenting on it are almost by definition NOT the people it was aimed at. Having sold 58k copies, there must be some people who actually used it.
It came pre-installed on my family's shiny new Gateway computer. As a kid I loved customizing my house and adding custom icons for things like games in my 'bedroom.'
It never replaced the actual desktop, but it was fun to go into my own 'house' on the family computer customized to my liking in the days before profiles and separate logins.
It never replaced the actual desktop, but it was fun to go into my own 'house' on the family computer customized to my liking in the days before profiles and separate logins.
Exactly. I'm curious how many sales were sales and how many were part of a PC bundle with other MS software. This is how we had it as well, with a Gateway 2000 PC purchase in 1995 (and I similarly enjoyed customizing my house in it).
Same here as well, got it with a Gateway 2000.
It was an interesting idea. I get the OP's point that a lot of the critics were not the target audience, but for the most part the target audience didn't take to it either. I guess I don't see that as a preordained conclusion, and I don't think of Bob as an obviously bad idea from the start, it was just one of the many new ideas PC developers were trying in the mid-90s as computers were rapidly expanding their reach.
It was an interesting idea. I get the OP's point that a lot of the critics were not the target audience, but for the most part the target audience didn't take to it either. I guess I don't see that as a preordained conclusion, and I don't think of Bob as an obviously bad idea from the start, it was just one of the many new ideas PC developers were trying in the mid-90s as computers were rapidly expanding their reach.
A lot of people tend to forget too that while Bob was ostensibly the last in the category [1], it was not the first. In the 90s there were a lot of people researching/experimenting with "alternative" family/kid-friendly desktops. I recall even a late 80s Mac OS one in elementary school that was my first precocious "hacking" experience jail breaking out of to run other Mac apps. Especially for DOS and Windows 3.1, family/kid-friendly launchers seemed a huge need because they weren't always the friendliest.
My parents were deep involved in a franchise of computer learning centers for kids in the 90s, so we wound up evaluating a number of them over the years. Probably the most successful and one we used the most was KidDesk. Bob came out right at the end of that era (near the end of the business) and there was a lot of interesting hope for it. The business bought a bunch of copies (at a steep Microsoft Education partner discount, IIRC) and had high hopes for it as a "starter desktop"/teaching tool. It had good ideas from that perspective, and if they technically solved a few more "launcher" problems like Windows 3.1 transition to DOS full screen app then back (which KidDesk had a hacky version of) it might have filled some key niches if it had launched 3 or 4 years earlier.
Ironically, I think the real thing that killed Bob was Windows 95, even for the users that were the target audience. Windows 95 fixed a lot of those Windows 3.1/DOS transition states, was much easier to teach and generally more kid/family-friendly, and there was a lot less need for an "alternative" desktop.
(My experience with Bob makes me sad that the Cliff House for Windows MR still is too chilly and cold and "professional" and needs Rover or Links walking around and/or offering advice.)
[1] And not even really the last when you look at for instance what's going on with "Kid versions" of Amazon Tablets as one extension of the legacy. Or the continued explorations of virtual agents in Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa/Cortana as another fork in the evolutionary tree.
My parents were deep involved in a franchise of computer learning centers for kids in the 90s, so we wound up evaluating a number of them over the years. Probably the most successful and one we used the most was KidDesk. Bob came out right at the end of that era (near the end of the business) and there was a lot of interesting hope for it. The business bought a bunch of copies (at a steep Microsoft Education partner discount, IIRC) and had high hopes for it as a "starter desktop"/teaching tool. It had good ideas from that perspective, and if they technically solved a few more "launcher" problems like Windows 3.1 transition to DOS full screen app then back (which KidDesk had a hacky version of) it might have filled some key niches if it had launched 3 or 4 years earlier.
Ironically, I think the real thing that killed Bob was Windows 95, even for the users that were the target audience. Windows 95 fixed a lot of those Windows 3.1/DOS transition states, was much easier to teach and generally more kid/family-friendly, and there was a lot less need for an "alternative" desktop.
(My experience with Bob makes me sad that the Cliff House for Windows MR still is too chilly and cold and "professional" and needs Rover or Links walking around and/or offering advice.)
[1] And not even really the last when you look at for instance what's going on with "Kid versions" of Amazon Tablets as one extension of the legacy. Or the continued explorations of virtual agents in Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa/Cortana as another fork in the evolutionary tree.
I didn't realize for a long time that there was an interface beyond KidDesk because it was installed on all the computers at my elementary school.
I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
The thing that interested me most about the video was how similar the interface is to a "touch" interface you might find on a tablet.
While Xerox and Mac helped shape the current "desktop metaphor" GUI it was still an open question how to migrate those used to DOS-style command line tooling to a GUI, and it wasn't really "solved" until Windows 95 (where the Start Menu became "Bob" in a way).
While Xerox and Mac helped shape the current "desktop metaphor" GUI it was still an open question how to migrate those used to DOS-style command line tooling to a GUI, and it wasn't really "solved" until Windows 95 (where the Start Menu became "Bob" in a way).
Bob was also a part of the long debates around skeumorphism. Bob was extremely (cartoonishly) skeumorphic: to get to word processing you clicked a typewriter, to get to contacts you clicked an antique rolodex, and so forth. It used a talking dog (by default) to explain things to the user rather than "faceless" dialog boxes asking questions "out of nowhere".
We're probably always going to fight skeumorphism debates on where the right balance is for user ease of learning/discovery ("I know what a typewriter is, if I click can I type a document?") versus the density compaction (both in physical space and arguably in mental space) of reducing "skeumorphic clutter". (The typewriter in Bob was thousands of pixels to display even its simplified cartoonish form; the [W] logo of Word fits as small as dozens of pixels. Similarly too, once you know Word exists does "I need Word, and its a word processing app, so I should think of a typewriter and click the typewriter" get in the way of "use Word"?)
We're probably always going to fight skeumorphism debates on where the right balance is for user ease of learning/discovery ("I know what a typewriter is, if I click can I type a document?") versus the density compaction (both in physical space and arguably in mental space) of reducing "skeumorphic clutter". (The typewriter in Bob was thousands of pixels to display even its simplified cartoonish form; the [W] logo of Word fits as small as dozens of pixels. Similarly too, once you know Word exists does "I need Word, and its a word processing app, so I should think of a typewriter and click the typewriter" get in the way of "use Word"?)
Even more of a tangent: that's one of the things that Office got wrong with Assistants versus "Bob's principles". They had both tons of "faceless" dialog boxes and status indicators and a face for some of them. You never knew if the thing you needed was an Assistant "chat" dialog or an older dialog or some weird mix of the two. Complain all you want about the inconsistencies in Windows 10's settings versus getting dropped back into classic Win32 control panels, that's nothing on the worse inconsistencies of the Office Assistant era.
You could turn off the office assistant. You are however stuck with the brain damage that is windows 10.
What's interesting about the skeuomorphism is that as tech progresses it becomes skeuomorphic to older tech - a perfect example is seeing a Floppy Disk as a Save Icon in an iPad program. It's likely a significant number of people don't know what it is beyond "save".
Apocryphal or not I still love the meme story of a kid finding a floppy disk and asking why someone would bother to 3D print a "save icon".
Other examples I included even in my above comment. Whoever "Bob" was, his home/office made him seem a curious luddite or eccentric throwback. He used what seemed a 1930s typewriter and his style of rolodex was from at least the 1950s, IIRC. On the one hand it was kind of cozy like visiting the home of a loving grandparent (perhaps Bob was always meant to evoke everyone's collective eccentric grandpa?), but on the other hand there was some "ludic dissonance" in that it was supposed to be "your house" and you were encouraged to customize and play with it. Why would I keep a typewriter so prominently? Are we sure we want a massive metal rolodex that's more likely to injure people (if not also be a tetanus risk) than be useful in a house with (talking) pets? Bob's skeumorphism was already dated in the 1990s that it launched into, and that's a fascinating reflection of it as well.
Other examples I included even in my above comment. Whoever "Bob" was, his home/office made him seem a curious luddite or eccentric throwback. He used what seemed a 1930s typewriter and his style of rolodex was from at least the 1950s, IIRC. On the one hand it was kind of cozy like visiting the home of a loving grandparent (perhaps Bob was always meant to evoke everyone's collective eccentric grandpa?), but on the other hand there was some "ludic dissonance" in that it was supposed to be "your house" and you were encouraged to customize and play with it. Why would I keep a typewriter so prominently? Are we sure we want a massive metal rolodex that's more likely to injure people (if not also be a tetanus risk) than be useful in a house with (talking) pets? Bob's skeumorphism was already dated in the 1990s that it launched into, and that's a fascinating reflection of it as well.
I was also one of these kids. I even made a secret room under the rug where I put my games.
In 1995 I was five years old, and the computer my Grandparents had bought us came with Microsoft Bob, and it was the only way I used the computer for a while.
I also remember an encyclopedia program that was wrapped in a virtual spaceship interface. For a bit, I just thought that these sort of graphical interfaces were what computing was.
I also remember an encyclopedia program that was wrapped in a virtual spaceship interface. For a bit, I just thought that these sort of graphical interfaces were what computing was.
as a kid I spent a lot of time customizing the house and sometimes playing the weird geography game in there. I think we had an irl one at school too.
It was kinda fun, even though it wasn't really a game.
It was kinda fun, even though it wasn't really a game.
It was aimed at computers with a VGA card when it was released sometime between 1993 and 1994, which wasn't a very large market when I was a teenager then. But at the Dallas Sidewalk Sale on the Third Saturday someone had a demo of this with their prebuilt computers from their small business always had a large crowd.
I was working in a large computer store in California when Bob came out. To my memory, I never sold a single copy. This is despite a large in-store promotion put on by Microsoft.
Some trivia ... Melinda French was the GM over Microsoft Bob. She later married Bill Gates and is now known as Melinda Gates.
She is listed in FINANCE.MDB as one of “Rover’s Awesome All Stars”.
If that had happened today Bill Gates would have had to step down as CEO and would have been disgraced for fraternizing with an underling.
IIRC, when she married Bill - she resigned from the company.
They dated for a long time before then and she actively had to meet with him in a work context for the famous BillG reviews. She's done interviews talking about how it was managed and how she wanted to be seen as still pulling her weight.
Right but it echoes the recent scandal at Intel, the details are different obviously but companies aren’t exactly known for their careful and thoughtful consideration of heavy-handed policies
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Intel-CEO-resig...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Intel-CEO-resig...
It echoes, but - while I don't know the details of either situation - they could be different enough that it would still be handled in the same way today. For example, I imagine it would depend on how quickly the people involved made the board and HR aware of their relationship. The CEO can then recuse themselves from converstaions about and with their partner.
Also, it seems like the knives were already out for Krzanich, and there are some for whom this would be a useful pretext.
Also, it seems like the knives were already out for Krzanich, and there are some for whom this would be a useful pretext.
When you see something like this, the board wanted him out anyways. This was the perfect opportunity. If Elon Musk has an affair with an employee the Tesla Board will release a solemnly worded statement and say that he’s being required to attend certain trainings and produce certain mea culpas.
I think Elon Musk would simply say ‘none of your business’. If he followed the rules he wouldn’t be tweeting about Tesla from his personal account.
I'm not aware of rules preventing the CEO from talking about the business from a personal account.
There are such rules in place for Elon Musk specifically as a result of a settlement with the SEC, but he ignores them.
(The rule he's ignoring is not that he's not allowed to tweet about Tesla from his personal accout, it's that he has to have such tweets vetted by a lawyer.)
(The rule he's ignoring is not that he's not allowed to tweet about Tesla from his personal accout, it's that he has to have such tweets vetted by a lawyer.)
I am aware of those specific rules. I have no evidence available to me that he is breaking them.
We make up rules to attack anyone we don't like. :)
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Well that says Intel has a non-fraternization policy and presumably Microsoft didn't when Bill and Melinda started dating.
Maybe we could view it is a case study in how to pull this off successfully instead of implying they did something wrong and actively spreading the current atmosphere of blight?
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Um... ok?
> Modern versions of Access refuse to open databases that were created with old versions, so I dusted off an old copy of Office 97.
Goodness gracious, Microsoft - why?
Goodness gracious, Microsoft - why?
Microsoft is notorious in the efforts they make to allow backward compatibility. But in this one case, they don't and are the villain? I can still run programs targeted at 16bit Microsoft Windows 3.x from 30 years ago.
Apple breaks background compatibility nearly every year on their products, yet they get a pass?
Apple breaks background compatibility nearly every year on their products, yet they get a pass?
I didn't see anyone giving Apple a pass, but yeah I'm OK with backwards compatiblity not being a thing for 20 year old desktop software.
I’m pretty sure you can’t run 16 bit programs on 64 bit Windows.
You can easily emulate a 16 bit computer though.
You can easily emulate a 16 bit computer though.
Apple breaks background compatibility nearly every year on their products, yet they get a pass?
That's why those who value backwards compatibility don't choose Apple or Google, they choose Microsoft.
Unfortunately these days Microsoft seems to wish it were and is starting to act more like the former two, but the difference is still there.
That's why those who value backwards compatibility don't choose Apple or Google, they choose Microsoft.
Unfortunately these days Microsoft seems to wish it were and is starting to act more like the former two, but the difference is still there.
Not directly or natively, but WineVDM is a thing and will usualky let you run old 16bit programs while looking like it's nearly native
I'm not sure I implied that, and I've been a PC since '97.
This just seemed like a particularly pointless restriction. It's database. How hard can it be to support and convert?
This just seemed like a particularly pointless restriction. It's database. How hard can it be to support and convert?
Access is not just a database, it allows for custom VBA code and controls. I can see why supporting old versions would be a burden (are you really going to ship all VBA engines ever shipped for 20 years, with all the inevitable security holes they likely still have...?)
Good point, I hadn't considered that. But the example here seems to be literally a spreadsheet's worth of content, in a database format.
At least ignore the code and allow importation of the content?
Anyway, I don't much care and am being downvoted to heck (!) - I just thought it an odd restriction.
At least ignore the code and allow importation of the content?
Anyway, I don't much care and am being downvoted to heck (!) - I just thought it an odd restriction.
The Wikipedia article on Jet ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Jet_Database_Engine ) talks a bit about the backwards compat strategy.
This is case where they broke backwards compatibility. At the time, they had an upgrade strategy, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn the tools that handle the upgrade are no longer supported at this point.
My understanding from the outside is it was an attempt to bring Jet Red (the desktop database, what Access used) and Jet Blue (the server database, used by things like Exchange) closer to be compatible with each other on some level, along with making Jet Red less of a "toy" database.
This is case where they broke backwards compatibility. At the time, they had an upgrade strategy, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn the tools that handle the upgrade are no longer supported at this point.
My understanding from the outside is it was an attempt to bring Jet Red (the desktop database, what Access used) and Jet Blue (the server database, used by things like Exchange) closer to be compatible with each other on some level, along with making Jet Red less of a "toy" database.
Because ACER2X.DLL (for Jet 2.x databases which Bob likely used) was removed in Access 2010. (Trivia: reading form, reports, macros, modules etc from Access 2.x databases required another 16-bit program that MS stopped shipping with Access 2003)
Edit: Actually, this also reminds me that I believe a compatibility pack was needed to use Access 2.x databases in VB3 which only supported Access 1.1 databases by default!
Edit: Actually, this also reminds me that I believe a compatibility pack was needed to use Access 2.x databases in VB3 which only supported Access 1.1 databases by default!
There are some Microsoft Bob easter eggs in other Microsoft products.
The nerd emote from MSN Messenger comes from MS Bob. The dog is an assistant in MS Office. There might be more too.
The nerd emote from MSN Messenger comes from MS Bob. The dog is an assistant in MS Office. There might be more too.
One of the credited artists, Leslie Patricelli, is now a children's book author/illustrator.
No Dave Plummer in contributors, odd
No but he did use it as padding for CDROM distro of Windows so that the discs had unique ID's
The Secret history of Microsoft BOB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHu9OmLd8Y
The Secret history of Microsoft BOB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHu9OmLd8Y
Sadly, that might be a bit of a joke/urban legend based on the fact that this is the only evidence I've found of anyone actually attempting to verify it:
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12476/did-the-w...
It mentions some interesting logic around OEMBIOS.BIN, which the OP or anyone else curious might want to investigate.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12476/did-the-w...
It mentions some interesting logic around OEMBIOS.BIN, which the OP or anyone else curious might want to investigate.
This was awesome video. Bob the blob. How to make sure crypto is correct. A mathematician who could not take calls after 5pm.
Oh he has many brilliantly told historical stories and on top, still gets his hands dirty and recently did benchmark of compilers. One of the few channels upon YT I'd recommend a sub.
This seems like as good a place as any to bring this up, if only to see if I'm the only one.
I want to watch Dave Plummer's videos but there's something eerily wrong about the amount his lips move (very little) versus his diction (which is very good). It sets off some instinctual discomfort I can't put my finger on. It feels like some kind of ventriloquism act.
That said, I've enjoyed his videos. I just wish his mouth movements didn't make my brain feel all funny.
I want to watch Dave Plummer's videos but there's something eerily wrong about the amount his lips move (very little) versus his diction (which is very good). It sets off some instinctual discomfort I can't put my finger on. It feels like some kind of ventriloquism act.
That said, I've enjoyed his videos. I just wish his mouth movements didn't make my brain feel all funny.
I do get a sorta de-sync with lips and words in many video's, but then the system I use to watch them is hitting the wall of its life (core2duo) and the autistic spectrum aspect and facial hair will also play into that. I know they do for me and if you think first hearing yourself back on a recording is odd sounding, wait until you see yourself speak on video. Some people are in their element, others, you will get that underlying sense of awkwardness. Which for some (like myself) will talk fast and any facial nuance will be an afterthought long past most attention spans as they race to keep up with the words being spoken.
That's a remarkable number of Davids in the Developers list. Was the hiring manager named David by any chance?
One of the commenters on the article remarks that there are more "Davids" on the team than women.
Names from the Bible (Adam, Michael, Paul, Peter, Matthew, David, etc) were and to some degree still are quite common among Americans.
These are the Daves I know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVzDIE0mr6A
They’re all hired by HALL
Isn't the most lasting legacy of MS Bob the Comic Sans font?
No. Bob predates Comic Sans by a year or two.
Comic Sans was originally released as part of Microsoft Plus, and then later used in Comic Chat (their take on IRC). Comic Chat is an interesting enough topic to warrant its own discussion though.
Comic Sans was originally released as part of Microsoft Plus, and then later used in Comic Chat (their take on IRC). Comic Chat is an interesting enough topic to warrant its own discussion though.
One quirky hack that no one asked for that I figured out in 1997: You can take the assistant files Rover, Skuz, Shelly, etc... and copy them into MS Office's assistant directory to get Bob assistants in Office!
Are their any 'toy office' apps for kids these days? Something between Bob and Outlook?