<html><head><title>An interface to your PC</title></head><!--(c) G.C. '97, '98 A.R.R.-->
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<center><h3>An interface to your PC</h3></center>
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<h4>DOS:</h4>
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 Well, as command line interfaces go, it's not bad, not that that really says much. Because of the need to maintain complete backwards compatibility, it does still use that strange, 16-bit CPU memory map, but at least (in my memory) it's never pretended to be a hugely brilliant user interface.
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 You might be interested in a little of the history surrounding how DOS came into being. For release with their planned PC product, in 1980, IBM began hunting for an operating system for it, which was provided by a company called Microsoft, after they had licensed it from Seattle Computer Products, who were using it on their mainframe, and after they had smartened it up a little. 86-DOS, otherwise known as QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), was sent to IBM, put through its paces and failed quality controls miserably, with IBM rewriting the product themselves, so bad was the original. Thus begins the illustrious history of Microsoft operating systems.
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Nothing changes.
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<h4>Windows:</h4>
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 Microsoft's Windows product was not the only such effort around: for example, Digital Research wrote GEM and Apple had already come out with their interface a year before even version 1 of Windows.
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 Windows continued to evolve. One of its spawnings was Windows NT, standing for <i>New Technology</i>, which, coming from Microsoft, it probably one of the greatest ironies of the planet. In many respects, IBM's OS2 was the precursor of this: both OS2 and Windows were meant to share the same programmer interface, but the two pulled away from each other as OS2 advanced and Windows... well, didn't.
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 Until several years ago, the best Microsoft could come up with was Windows 3.1. As with most everything else Microsoft writes, it was very well publicised and it had many features, but most of these have only novelty value; the idea of providing features in an interface that would, say, improve productivity and make computing easier didn't seem to filter into the Microsoft philosophy.
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 Although multiple applications can be loaded at a time, they don't multitask and there is little or no communications between tasks. Transfer of data is by use of a clipboard, a concept existing in RISC OS, but rarely used, simply because there are much better ways to transfer data.
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 Windows 3.1 <i>looks</i> very nice at a glance, but too many of the features are purely aesthetic (or is that pathetic?).
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<h4>Windows 4:</h4>
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 Microsoft's next attempt at user interface has been Windows 95, along with Windows NT 4.
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 Finally, they've got round to making a real multi-tasking system. This uses a proper user interface to the filer, by displaying the files and directories in a navigable window; why they still persist in shipping the operating system with something akin to their old File Manager beats me.
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 When you now load software, it puts an icon on a bar at the bottom of the screen to access it! However, everything still happens in only one window, which makes arranging multi-document software's windows on screen a real pain. Not to mention bringing windows to the front of their own accord...
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 Such new and amazing ideas couldn't stay within Microsoft for long, but no one expected them to travel back in time: interfaces using this kind of system have been around on Macs and Acorns for over eight years. Microsoft seems to enjoy making its programming team look... er, lame. Of course, if they tell everyone that Windows 95 is really good, people will start believing it.
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