The Microsoft Bob Experience: Was It Really THAT Bad?
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Martin
My gripe with Bob was the same gripe I had with Windows and to a lesser extent MS-DOS, Bob was just the extension of that peeve taken to outrageous limits: It was so hard to tell what your machine was really doing!
You could not (and probably still cannot) determine the source of an annoyance, problem, software lock, or crash from within the MS environment you operate, because they don't want you to know. They don't want you to understand what they are doing or how your computer works. How many cars have you owned that made the engine completely inaccessible?
Microsoft products in general have a de facto atmosphere of -man behind the curtain- and to understand any real aspect of the computer's performance or loading, you had to rely on third party products to tell you as much as MS allowed out of black boxes.
Bob was more of that obstification. The exact wrong direction for me.
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My gripe with Bob was the same gripe I had with Windows and to a lesser extent MS-DOS, Bob was just the extension of that peeve taken to outrageous limits: It was so hard to tell what your machine was really doing!
You could not (and probably still cannot) determine the source of an annoyance, problem, software lock, or crash from within the MS environment you operate, because they don't want you to know. They don't want you to understand what they are doing or how your computer works. How many cars have you owned that made the engine completely inaccessible?
Microsoft products in general have a de facto atmosphere of -man behind the curtain- and to understand any real aspect of the computer's performance or loading, you had to rely on third party products to tell you as much as MS allowed out of black boxes.
Bob was more of that obstification. The exact wrong direction for me.
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David
In all honesty. Microsoft Bob isn't all that different from PlayStation Home, or Second Life. Seems to me like Microsoft was on to something, but it was 20yrs early. I did infact have Bob installed on our family's Gateway 2000 computer running Windows 95. I was a kid and thought it was fun to explore the rooms, but now that I think about it, there are several people in my life today that would find an interface like this far more intuitive than Windows 10/11.
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In all honesty. Microsoft Bob isn't all that different from PlayStation Home, or Second Life. Seems to me like Microsoft was on to something, but it was 20yrs early. I did infact have Bob installed on our family's Gateway 2000 computer running Windows 95. I was a kid and thought it was fun to explore the rooms, but now that I think about it, there are several people in my life today that would find an interface like this far more intuitive than Windows 10/11.
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Wadmodder
In fact, the timing for Microsoft Bob couldn't have been any worse. (0: 18)
Microsoft Bob came out in 1995, the same year as Windows 95, so many people presumably waited for that operating system to be released rather than buying Microsoft Bob for their PCs. (2: 39)
And the hardware requirements of a 486 processor & 8 megabytes of RAM pretty much made people stick to their existing Windows 3. 1 installations, until Windows 95 was released. (14: 41)
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In fact, the timing for Microsoft Bob couldn't have been any worse. (0: 18)
Microsoft Bob came out in 1995, the same year as Windows 95, so many people presumably waited for that operating system to be released rather than buying Microsoft Bob for their PCs. (2: 39)
And the hardware requirements of a 486 processor & 8 megabytes of RAM pretty much made people stick to their existing Windows 3. 1 installations, until Windows 95 was released. (14: 41)
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EuphoricBloodLust
I actually didn't mind clippit when it was introduced (never did call them clippy, though I'd often customize it to show Links the cat when available. On another note, one microsoft program off the top of my head that did use comic sans was Comic Chat (oddware episode on that, one day) and I think Microsoft Creative Writer used it as well (would have to double check next time I drag out my old Win2K laptop)
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I actually didn't mind clippit when it was introduced (never did call them clippy, though I'd often customize it to show Links the cat when available. On another note, one microsoft program off the top of my head that did use comic sans was Comic Chat (oddware episode on that, one day) and I think Microsoft Creative Writer used it as well (would have to double check next time I drag out my old Win2K laptop)
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Mr
Idk about you guys but personally as a uni grad I actually like it. I think it's a break from boxy, -corporate- look of usual office-use apps. Especially after reading hundreds of research papers. Maybe I am just more visually-oriented but I do think it's really interesting. It's not minimalistically efficient but it's rather just interesting, graphically interesting and homey. Just an opinion tho.
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Idk about you guys but personally as a uni grad I actually like it. I think it's a break from boxy, -corporate- look of usual office-use apps. Especially after reading hundreds of research papers. Maybe I am just more visually-oriented but I do think it's really interesting. It's not minimalistically efficient but it's rather just interesting, graphically interesting and homey. Just an opinion tho.
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Bob
I'm a Hollywood screenwriter who was actually hired (with my partner Rob Muir) to write hundreds, if not thousands of little dialog bubbles filled with quips, questions, and suggestions for the Dog and Clippy, etc. Imagine coming up with 50 ways to say -Do you want to open the drawer? - LOL! Insanely fun to see this. I honestly had forgotten about our experiences on this assignment. Thanks!
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I'm a Hollywood screenwriter who was actually hired (with my partner Rob Muir) to write hundreds, if not thousands of little dialog bubbles filled with quips, questions, and suggestions for the Dog and Clippy, etc. Imagine coming up with 50 ways to say -Do you want to open the drawer? - LOL! Insanely fun to see this. I honestly had forgotten about our experiences on this assignment. Thanks!
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Axie
Can second the idea of this being a kid's setup. My brother and I were extremely young when this came out and we basically treated it similarly to World Explorer or similar games, since there were already plenty of kids' computer games that tended to be about having adventures linked up to some kind of hub like your room, your house, the rings of Saturn, etc.
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Can second the idea of this being a kid's setup. My brother and I were extremely young when this came out and we basically treated it similarly to World Explorer or similar games, since there were already plenty of kids' computer games that tended to be about having adventures linked up to some kind of hub like your room, your house, the rings of Saturn, etc.
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Mia
I have a vague memory of my preschool having Microsoft BOB. Maybe it was on a family member's computer. Anyways, what I do know for sure, is that I have definitely seen BOB sometime during my childhood. Enough to have it make a lasting impression on me. Watching this video unlocked a very old memory. Thank you.
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I have a vague memory of my preschool having Microsoft BOB. Maybe it was on a family member's computer. Anyways, what I do know for sure, is that I have definitely seen BOB sometime during my childhood. Enough to have it make a lasting impression on me. Watching this video unlocked a very old memory. Thank you.
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yarrow
Tbh I miss those suites with interactive environments for their menus (vs modern day where they just have a text list of the included apps. Clicking a greeting card on the table of a virtual art room to go to the greeting card app is sooo much cooler than clicking text that says -great greetings. -
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Tbh I miss those suites with interactive environments for their menus (vs modern day where they just have a text list of the included apps. Clicking a greeting card on the table of a virtual art room to go to the greeting card app is sooo much cooler than clicking text that says -great greetings. -
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T2rx6
Man I love MS bob. My friend got it on his gateway computer. I borrowed the disk and installed it on my 486 at the time. Then I would have different apps in different rooms of the house. I'd sit in my bedroom and move around my virtual home. MS bob was an awesome program when I was like 14!
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Man I love MS bob. My friend got it on his gateway computer. I borrowed the disk and installed it on my 486 at the time. Then I would have different apps in different rooms of the house. I'd sit in my bedroom and move around my virtual home. MS bob was an awesome program when I was like 14!
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