4 ms·
"The most obscure part of Microsoft's history." That's a pretty high bar. Here are a couple other candidates (restricted to stuff that actually shipped as prod
by mschaef 8y ago
"The most obscure part of Microsoft's history." That's a pretty high bar.
Here are a couple other candidates (restricted to stuff that actually shipped as products):
* QuickPascal - Microsoft's low end Pascal competitor to Turbo Pascal. (The full MS Pascal might be a reasonable candidate too.)
* MS Access, the communications package. (Predates the database of the same name.)
* Softcard - Z80 coprocessor board for the Apple ][. (The Mach 10 and Mach 20 PC accelerator oards arn't bad choices either. The Mach 20 was a plug in board for PC's that itself had expansion slots.)
* Multiplan - the spreadsheet precursor to Excel.
* The runtime-only version of MS Windows. (Bundled with Excel to let people that didn't have Windows run Excel.)
* Visual BASIC _for DOS_ - Exactly what it sounds like, but running in text mode DOS.
- mgkimsal 8y agoMS Bob?
- mschaef 8y agoI think that omission is mainly my own bias, which stems from my age... I had been paying attention to the industry then and at the time it got a bunch of press. Bob's also interesting in that Melinda Gates was involved in marketing that project, and she considers it her biggest flop: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/the-lesson-melinda-gates-learned-from-screwing-up-a-microsoft-project.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/the-lesson-melinda-gates-lea... MS Xenix is another one that might ought to be on that list. So much of Microsoft's image is built around Windows that the notion of a Microsoft without Windows and selling a 'Unix' has got to be startling to the vast majority of folks.
- acheron 8y agoBob was and is pretty famous. Obscure in the sense that few people used it (I did!) but it's well-known, probably moreso than anything on that list. Known as a failure, sure, but still well-known.