[HN Gopher] Microsoft Bob: Microsoft's biggest flop of the 1990s
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft Bob: Microsoft's biggest flop of the 1990s
Author : rbanffy
Score : 26 points
Date : 2025-01-12 21:04 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dfarq.homeip.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dfarq.homeip.net)
| TZubiri wrote:
| "Microsoft Bob presented screens showing a house, with rooms that
| the user could visit containing familiar objects corresponding to
| computer applications, such as a desk with pen and paper and a
| checkbook. Clicking on the pen and paper would open the system's
| word processor"
|
| Seems like some aspects of the experiment survived and were
| hugely popular: folders, clipboard, cut, paste, etc..
| jph00 wrote:
| Those things were all totally standard and normal by the time
| Microsoft Bob came along
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Those predated Bob, by a long time.
|
| I remember encountering them in an old Xerox system, in the
| early 1980s.
|
| Bob was _awful_. However, I have to confess that I once tried
| designing UI like that, and learned painful lessons, in the
| process.
| rezmason wrote:
| Does anyone know of a paradigm original to Microsoft Bob that
| survived? Other than Rover the Windows XP search dog.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| Does marrying the CEO count?
| ra wrote:
| Those concepts were invented at Xerox PARC in the 1970s;
| certainly UNIX had them before MS windows, and "bob" was just a
| windows application anyway.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I think Bob was more (in)famous as the product which served as
| the origin story for Clippy in MS Office.
| bradgranath wrote:
| MS Bob didn't _invent_ those things. It just grafted them onto
| a crude gui metaphor that tech companies are _still_ trying to
| find a buyer for: "What if the UX was as close as possible to
| the physical world?"
|
| You don't open a file, you "walk" to a "filing cabinet", "pull
| the drawer out", and "reach in and pull out a specific piece of
| 'paper'".
|
| You don't make a phone call, you sit in virtual meeting space
| with virtual bodies while wearing a mocap suit.
|
| Does anyone still remember why we got computers in the first
| place?
| rezmason wrote:
| Let's use the clickbait title as a brainstorming prompt: what do
| other folks think is a better candidate for the biggest flop [in
| tech] of the 1990s?
|
| Also, I kind of wish Microsoft Bob failed a little harder-- the
| agentic stuff I'm hearing about these days sounds like the kind
| of software assistants they tried in the 90s, and I fear they
| have the same likelihood of poor execution.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| > what do other folks think is a better candidate for the
| biggest flop [in tech] of the 1990s?
|
| The CueCat.
| tssva wrote:
| What qualifies as being from the 90s? The CueCat was
| definitely underdevelopment in the 90s but wasn't publicly
| released until 2000.
| munchler wrote:
| Clippy the Office Assistant. Similar idea to Bob, but more
| irritating.
|
| Also, The Microsoft Network. This was a competitor to AOL that
| came out just as the WWW was exploding. It gave us the "MSN"
| abbreviation that we still see today, but otherwise disappeared
| without a trace.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| Clippy came _from_ Bob. The tech was called Microsoft Agent.
| munchler wrote:
| Ah, interesting. I didn't know that.
| mepian wrote:
| > what do other folks think is a better candidate for the
| biggest flop [in tech] of the 1990s?
|
| VAX 9000, OS/2 2.0, OS/2 Warp 3, OpenDoc, Kaleida, Apple
| Newton, Pippin, 3DO, Philips CD-i, Sega 32X, Sega Saturn, Atari
| Jaguar, Amiga CD32...
| rasz wrote:
| Bigger assistant/agent flop of the nineties was General Magic
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic Packed with
| smartest engineers and usability people from the valley. Idea
| was to use smart remote agents "working for the user". Burned
| $200mil of 1995 money developing absolutely nothing usable.
| ok123456 wrote:
| It gave us Comic Sans, which had a notable impact on culture. I
| wouldn't call that a flop.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It also gave us the world's greatest example of poorly thought
| through security practices.
|
| You can set a password on your Bob account. If you fail to
| enter the right password three times in a row, Microsoft Bob
| lets you reset the password, no further questions.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| >>It gave us Comic Sans, which had a notable impact on
| culture. I wouldn't call that a flop.
|
| >It also gave us the world's greatest example of poorly
| thought through security practices.
|
| Is this why OpenBSD ironically uses Comic Sans throughout?
| Most notably in httpd.
| notnaut wrote:
| What?? What was the point, even?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Comic Sans was from Microsoft Comic Chat [1], which was a
| separate product from Bob.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| We had Bob in an attempt to make my technophobic mother capable
| of using the computer.
|
| My main memory of it was that it allowed you to add shortcuts to
| other installed programs, so I added the few games on the
| computer to Bob. This used way too many resources, causing Bob to
| crash and me being unable to get into my profile to fix it. It
| may have broken the program for anyone else using it too, I can't
| recall. Relatively standard behavior crashing the program far
| beyond their target market's ability to fix it.
| whycome wrote:
| Bring back a version of this to help aging seniors deal with
| increasingly complex interfaces.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I remember when the first iPad came out, and the tech press
| marveled at how easily seniors could understand it. This no
| longer applies to modern iOS.
|
| We don't necessarily need Bob. We just need an iOS 1 mode,
| skeuomorphic design and all. Back when the camera app only had
| a photo or video switch, a take photo button, and a gallery
| button.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| > We don't necessarily need Bob. We just need an iOS 1 mode
|
| But web developers have done their best to wreck this. Have
| you ever had to explain GDPR cookie dialogs to elderly
| parents? I've watched them Google recipes only to blame the
| chef when the site was broken or unusable, which was more
| often than not.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Maybe not skeuomorphic design, but they have a simplified
| mode: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/assistive-access-
| iphon...
| exe34 wrote:
| that's an idea - a version of it on social media to remind them
| to go out and touch grass instead of believing every conspiracy
| theory.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Bob is always easily criticized but it was actually a fun and
| cute software that included the basic versions of what a lot of
| people needed, like a Word Processor that wasn't at the same
| level as Works (or Office). Almost everyone who makes fun of it
| never used it. But it was an early mash up of a few different
| things that all survive in various ways in other products. For
| example the home in Bob, which is often the main thing people
| make fun of, draws on the same fun people get when they're
| designing spaces in the sims or whatever else.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Melinda gates was more than just the product's marketing manager,
| she was in charge of the whole project.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/the-lesson-melinda-gates-lea...
| edgineer wrote:
| Us kids loved it. Spent a lot of time configuring rooms, theming
| them, exploring all the features. The most intriguing one was a
| mailroom, but that's because it asked to configure your modem and
| email server settings which I couldn't do. Had separate profiles
| for each of us in the family and our friends; but we soon learned
| you could reset anyone's password by saying you forgot it. Once
| the griefing started it lost some appeal, but I still have only
| fond memories of MS Bob.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-12 23:00 UTC)