🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Glue (daveacg@interlog.com) wrote:
: english@primenet.com (Lawson English) wrote:


: >I don't criticize MS for taking so long to do WIndows 95. I DO criticize 
: >them for pretending that it would NOT take so long.

: And so do a lot of people.  But is slipping dates really MS's exlusive
: territory?  It's standard practice these days.  

: Apparently one of the reasons 95 shipped so late is due to Bill
: becoming "aware" of the profit in the gaming world.  A year ago, 95
: was shown to a bunch of game developers to see what they thought.  For
: them (source: PC Gamer) it was barely an improvement over 3.1 for
: fast-action games.  So Microsoft got the developers and hardware
: manufacturers together, pooled their resources, got what they wanted
: and improved 95's multimedia/gaming capabilities drastically to the
: point where developers actually wanted to write games under the
: platform, rather than being forced to.


Huh. One of the big complaints over on rec.game.programmer is the fact 
that the promised multi-media stuff won't ship on August 24. GIven that, 
your explanation sounds a tad hollow.

: This doesn't excuse the delay.  But there were sufficient reasons for
: it, I don't believe it was soley attributed to debunking the
: competition years in advance, although hype building (as with any
: software product) always plays a part.

There was a recent article in InfoWorld or PC Week or somesuch that 
pointed out that Gates had to have been aware of how long Windows 4.0 take 
due to well-known managerial principles of large software projects 
but he still hyped it for two years before it could possible ship.


Don't you remember the illustrius Judge Sporkin's comments on Gates' 
reputation in this area. There is even a smoking gun: a memo that proves 
that a product was preanounced before it was even designed in order to 
prevent a rival company's shipping product from taking off.

: >OS/2 was a "from the ground up" solution. Windows 95 isn't all that great 
: >at multi-tasking if you are using 16-bit apps (can we say "P6"?) and 
: >COpland, the semi-smooth multitasking solution from Apple, will probably 
: >be out within 6 months of the current shipment projections (ie, Jan 
: >1997), whereas Windows 95 is how late?


: Copland shipping "on time" is irrelevant when 95 will have been out
: for almost a year, _if_ it even makes the early mid-96 date that most
: are saying it won't.  Do you not think there will be a slew of 32-bit
: apps by then for 95?

: Yes, the P6 performance is not great news with 95, but we'll have to
: see how much the 16-bit thunking affects 32-bit apps- it will have an
: effect, but to what degree we don't know, I wasn't able to get any
: answers out of Intel (shock).   The difference is that Microsoft
: already has their next generation OS tested, tried, and ready to run
: 95 apps.  NT- and early next year, with the 95 interface.  Sans the
: heavy object-orientation, it's Microsoft's "Gershwin"- just available
: _now_.

: Anyways, with the PPC 615 finally proving to be a reality, maybe I'll
: just select "Windows 95- NT- Copland" upon bootup on my next machine-
: hopefully.  Now there's an interesting topic, this chip could blow it
: wide open, but it depends on how fast the Pentium section is.  If it's
: say, close to a 75mhz Pentium, and comes out in the expected
: second-half of 96, it may not be that exciting to PC owners.  At least
: it's an option.

I would far rather see the real estate go to enhancing the speed of the 
PowerPC, but apparently marketing forces suggest that this isn't what the 
masses want...


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Lawson English                            __  __     ____  ___       ___ ____
english@primenet.com                     /__)/__) / / / / /_  /\  / /_    /
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