11 ms·

Finding an Easter Egg in Microsoft Bob

176 points by elvis70 5y ago

bombcar 5y ago
An interesting thing that we forget with Bob and Clippy is the people reviewing/commenting on it are almost by definition NOT the people it was aimed at. Having sold 58k copies, there must be some people who actually used it.
- wombat-man 5y ago
  as a kid I spent a lot of time customizing the house and sometimes playing the weird geography game in there. I think we had an irl one at school too. It was kinda fun, even though it wasn't really a game.
- eysquared 5y ago
  It came pre-installed on my family's shiny new Gateway computer. As a kid I loved customizing my house and adding custom icons for things like games in my 'bedroom.' It never replaced the actual desktop, but it was fun to go into my own 'house' on the family computer customized to my liking in the days before profiles and separate logins.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    Exactly. I'm curious how many sales were sales and how many were part of a PC bundle with other MS software. This is how we had it as well, with a Gateway 2000 PC purchase in 1995 (and I similarly enjoyed customizing my house in it).
    - acheron 5y ago
      Same here as well, got it with a Gateway 2000. It was an interesting idea. I get the OP's point that a lot of the critics were not the target audience, but for the most part the target audience didn't take to it either. I guess I don't see that as a preordained conclusion, and I don't think of Bob as an obviously bad idea from the start, it was just one of the many new ideas PC developers were trying in the mid-90s as computers were rapidly expanding their reach.
      - WorldMaker 5y ago
        A lot of people tend to forget too that while Bob was ostensibly the last in the category [1], it was not the first. In the 90s there were a lot of people researching/experimenting with "alternative" family/kid-friendly desktops. I recall even a late 80s Mac OS one in elementary school that was my first precocious "hacking" experience jail breaking out of to run other Mac apps. Especially for DOS and Windows 3.1, family/kid-friendly launchers seemed a huge need because they weren't always the friendliest. My parents were deep involved in a franchise of computer learning centers for kids in the 90s, so we wound up evaluating a number of them over the years. Probably the most successful and one we used the most was KidDesk. Bob came out right at the end of that era (near the end of the business) and there was a lot of interesting hope for it. The business bought a bunch of copies (at a steep Microsoft Education partner discount, IIRC) and had high hopes for it as a "starter desktop"/teaching tool. It had good ideas from that perspective, and if they technically solved a few more "launcher" problems like Windows 3.1 transition to DOS full screen app then back (which KidDesk had a hacky version of) it might have filled some key niches if it had launched 3 or 4 years earlier. Ironically, I think the real thing that killed Bob was Windows 95, even for the users that were the target audience. Windows 95 fixed a lot of those Windows 3.1/DOS transition states, was much easier to teach and generally more kid/family-friendly, and there was a lot less need for an "alternative" desktop. (My experience with Bob makes me sad that the Cliff House for Windows MR still is too chilly and cold and "professional" and needs Rover or Links walking around and/or offering advice.) [1] And not even really the last when you look at for instance what's going on with "Kid versions" of Amazon Tablets as one extension of the legacy. Or the continued explorations of virtual agents in Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa/Cortana as another fork in the evolutionary tree.
        bombcar 5y ago
        The thing that interested me most about the video was how similar the interface is to a "touch" interface you might find on a tablet. While Xerox and Mac helped shape the current "desktop metaphor" GUI it was still an open question how to migrate those used to DOS-style command line tooling to a GUI, and it wasn't really "solved" until Windows 95 (where the Start Menu became "Bob" in a way).
  - rthomas6 5y ago
    I was also one of these kids. I even made a secret room under the rug where I put my games.
- guessbest 5y ago
  It was aimed at computers with a VGA card when it was released sometime between 1993 and 1994, which wasn't a very large market when I was a teenager then. But at the Dallas Sidewalk Sale on the Third Saturday someone had a demo of this with their prebuilt computers from their small business always had a large crowd.
- fooblat 5y ago
  I was working in a large computer store in California when Bob came out. To my memory, I never sold a single copy. This is despite a large in-store promotion put on by Microsoft.
- Talanes 5y ago
  In 1995 I was five years old, and the computer my Grandparents had bought us came with Microsoft Bob, and it was the only way I used the computer for a while. I also remember an encyclopedia program that was wrapped in a virtual spaceship interface. For a bit, I just thought that these sort of graphical interfaces were what computing was.
alberth 5y ago
Some trivia ... Melinda French was the GM over Microsoft Bob. She later married Bill Gates and is now known as Melinda Gates.
- wincy 5y ago
  If that had happened today Bill Gates would have had to step down as CEO and would have been disgraced for fraternizing with an underling.
  - alberth 5y ago
    IIRC, when she married Bill - she resigned from the company.
    - wincy 5y ago
      Right but it echoes the recent scandal at Intel, the details are different obviously but companies aren’t exactly known for their careful and thoughtful consideration of heavy-handed policies https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Intel-CEO-resigns-after-past-consensual-affair-13013838.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Intel-CEO-resig...
      - blowski 5y ago
        It echoes, but - while I don't know the details of either situation - they could be different enough that it would still be handled in the same way today. For example, I imagine it would depend on how quickly the people involved made the board and HR aware of their relationship. The CEO can then recuse themselves from converstaions about and with their partner. Also, it seems like the knives were already out for Krzanich, and there are some for whom this would be a useful pretext.
      - spoonjim 5y ago
        When you see something like this, the board wanted him out anyways. This was the perfect opportunity. If Elon Musk has an affair with an employee the Tesla Board will release a solemnly worded statement and say that he’s being required to attend certain trainings and produce certain mea culpas.
detritus 5y ago
> Modern versions of Access refuse to open databases that were created with old versions, so I dusted off an old copy of Office 97. Goodness gracious, Microsoft - why?
- alberth 5y ago
  Microsoft is notorious in the efforts they make to allow backward compatibility. But in this one case, they don't and are the villain? I can still run programs targeted at 16bit Microsoft Windows 3.x from 30 years ago. Apple breaks background compatibility nearly every year on their products, yet they get a pass?
  - detritus 5y ago
    I'm not sure I implied that, and I've been a PC since '97. This just seemed like a particularly pointless restriction. It's database. How hard can it be to support and convert?
    - toyg 5y ago
      Access is not just a database, it allows for custom VBA code and controls. I can see why supporting old versions would be a burden (are you really going to ship all VBA engines ever shipped for 20 years, with all the inevitable security holes they likely still have...?)
      - detritus 5y ago
        Good point, I hadn't considered that. But the example here seems to be literally a spreadsheet's worth of content, in a database format. At least ignore the code and allow importation of the content? Anyway, I don't much care and am being downvoted to heck (!) - I just thought it an odd restriction.
  - blowski 5y ago
    I didn't see anyone giving Apple a pass, but yeah I'm OK with backwards compatiblity not being a thing for 20 year old desktop software.
29athrowaway 5y ago
There are some Microsoft Bob easter eggs in other Microsoft products. The nerd emote from MSN Messenger comes from MS Bob. The dog is an assistant in MS Office. There might be more too.
msarnoff 5y ago
One of the credited artists, Leslie Patricelli, is now a children's book author/illustrator.
tuckerpo 5y ago
No Dave Plummer in contributors, odd
- Zenst 5y ago
  No but he did use it as padding for CDROM distro of Windows so that the discs had unique ID's The Secret history of Microsoft BOB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHu9OmLd8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHu9OmLd8Y
  - miohtama 5y ago
    This was awesome video. Bob the blob. How to make sure crypto is correct. A mathematician who could not take calls after 5pm.
    - Zenst 5y ago
      Oh he has many brilliantly told historical stories and on top, still gets his hands dirty and recently did benchmark of compilers. One of the few channels upon YT I'd recommend a sub.
      - EvanAnderson 5y ago
        This seems like as good a place as any to bring this up, if only to see if I'm the only one. I want to watch Dave Plummer's videos but there's something eerily wrong about the amount his lips move (very little) versus his diction (which is very good). It sets off some instinctual discomfort I can't put my finger on. It feels like some kind of ventriloquism act. That said, I've enjoyed his videos. I just wish his mouth movements didn't make my brain feel all funny.
        Zenst 5y ago
        I do get a sorta de-sync with lips and words in many video's, but then the system I use to watch them is hitting the wall of its life (core2duo) and the autistic spectrum aspect and facial hair will also play into that. I know they do for me and if you think first hearing yourself back on a recording is odd sounding, wait until you see yourself speak on video. Some people are in their element, others, you will get that underlying sense of awkwardness. Which for some (like myself) will talk fast and any facial nuance will be an afterthought long past most attention spans as they race to keep up with the words being spoken.
ehnto 5y ago
That's a remarkable number of Davids in the Developers list. Was the hiring manager named David by any chance?
- dclowd9901 5y ago
  One of the commenters on the article remarks that there are more "Davids" on the team than women.
- acheron 5y ago
  These are the Daves I know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVzDIE0mr6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVzDIE0mr6A
- prox 5y ago
  They’re all hired by HALL
- ac29 5y ago
  Names from the Bible (Adam, Michael, Paul, Peter, Matthew, David, etc) were and to some degree still are quite common among Americans.
moioci 5y ago
Isn't the most lasting legacy of MS Bob the Comic Sans font?
- laumars 5y ago
  No. Bob predates Comic Sans by a year or two. Comic Sans was originally released as part of Microsoft Plus, and then later used in Comic Chat (their take on IRC). Comic Chat is an interesting enough topic to warrant its own discussion though.
wcfields 5y ago
One quirky hack that no one asked for that I figured out in 1997: You can take the assistant files Rover, Skuz, Shelly, etc... and copy them into MS Office's assistant directory to get Bob assistants in Office!
guessbest 5y ago
Are their any 'toy office' apps for kids these days? Something between Bob and Outlook?

176 points by elvis70 5y ago

An interesting thing that we forget with Bob and Clippy is the people reviewing/commenting on it are almost by definition NOT the people it was aimed at. Having sold 58k copies, there must be some people who actually used it.

wombat-man 5y ago
as a kid I spent a lot of time customizing the house and sometimes playing the weird geography game in there. I think we had an irl one at school too. It was kinda fun, even though it wasn't really a game.
eysquared 5y ago
It came pre-installed on my family's shiny new Gateway computer. As a kid I loved customizing my house and adding custom icons for things like games in my 'bedroom.' It never replaced the actual desktop, but it was fun to go into my own 'house' on the family computer customized to my liking in the days before profiles and separate logins.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  Exactly. I'm curious how many sales were sales and how many were part of a PC bundle with other MS software. This is how we had it as well, with a Gateway 2000 PC purchase in 1995 (and I similarly enjoyed customizing my house in it).
  - acheron 5y ago
    Same here as well, got it with a Gateway 2000. It was an interesting idea. I get the OP's point that a lot of the critics were not the target audience, but for the most part the target audience didn't take to it either. I guess I don't see that as a preordained conclusion, and I don't think of Bob as an obviously bad idea from the start, it was just one of the many new ideas PC developers were trying in the mid-90s as computers were rapidly expanding their reach.
    - WorldMaker 5y ago
      A lot of people tend to forget too that while Bob was ostensibly the last in the category [1], it was not the first. In the 90s there were a lot of people researching/experimenting with "alternative" family/kid-friendly desktops. I recall even a late 80s Mac OS one in elementary school that was my first precocious "hacking" experience jail breaking out of to run other Mac apps. Especially for DOS and Windows 3.1, family/kid-friendly launchers seemed a huge need because they weren't always the friendliest. My parents were deep involved in a franchise of computer learning centers for kids in the 90s, so we wound up evaluating a number of them over the years. Probably the most successful and one we used the most was KidDesk. Bob came out right at the end of that era (near the end of the business) and there was a lot of interesting hope for it. The business bought a bunch of copies (at a steep Microsoft Education partner discount, IIRC) and had high hopes for it as a "starter desktop"/teaching tool. It had good ideas from that perspective, and if they technically solved a few more "launcher" problems like Windows 3.1 transition to DOS full screen app then back (which KidDesk had a hacky version of) it might have filled some key niches if it had launched 3 or 4 years earlier. Ironically, I think the real thing that killed Bob was Windows 95, even for the users that were the target audience. Windows 95 fixed a lot of those Windows 3.1/DOS transition states, was much easier to teach and generally more kid/family-friendly, and there was a lot less need for an "alternative" desktop. (My experience with Bob makes me sad that the Cliff House for Windows MR still is too chilly and cold and "professional" and needs Rover or Links walking around and/or offering advice.) [1] And not even really the last when you look at for instance what's going on with "Kid versions" of Amazon Tablets as one extension of the legacy. Or the continued explorations of virtual agents in Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa/Cortana as another fork in the evolutionary tree.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        The thing that interested me most about the video was how similar the interface is to a "touch" interface you might find on a tablet. While Xerox and Mac helped shape the current "desktop metaphor" GUI it was still an open question how to migrate those used to DOS-style command line tooling to a GUI, and it wasn't really "solved" until Windows 95 (where the Start Menu became "Bob" in a way).
- rthomas6 5y ago
  I was also one of these kids. I even made a secret room under the rug where I put my games.
guessbest 5y ago
It was aimed at computers with a VGA card when it was released sometime between 1993 and 1994, which wasn't a very large market when I was a teenager then. But at the Dallas Sidewalk Sale on the Third Saturday someone had a demo of this with their prebuilt computers from their small business always had a large crowd.
fooblat 5y ago
I was working in a large computer store in California when Bob came out. To my memory, I never sold a single copy. This is despite a large in-store promotion put on by Microsoft.
Talanes 5y ago
In 1995 I was five years old, and the computer my Grandparents had bought us came with Microsoft Bob, and it was the only way I used the computer for a while. I also remember an encyclopedia program that was wrapped in a virtual spaceship interface. For a bit, I just thought that these sort of graphical interfaces were what computing was.

alberth 5y ago

Some trivia ... Melinda French was the GM over Microsoft Bob. She later married Bill Gates and is now known as Melinda Gates.

wincy 5y ago
If that had happened today Bill Gates would have had to step down as CEO and would have been disgraced for fraternizing with an underling.
- alberth 5y ago
  IIRC, when she married Bill - she resigned from the company.
  - wincy 5y ago
    Right but it echoes the recent scandal at Intel, the details are different obviously but companies aren’t exactly known for their careful and thoughtful consideration of heavy-handed policies https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Intel-CEO-resigns-after-past-consensual-affair-13013838.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Intel-CEO-resig...
    - blowski 5y ago
      It echoes, but - while I don't know the details of either situation - they could be different enough that it would still be handled in the same way today. For example, I imagine it would depend on how quickly the people involved made the board and HR aware of their relationship. The CEO can then recuse themselves from converstaions about and with their partner. Also, it seems like the knives were already out for Krzanich, and there are some for whom this would be a useful pretext.
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      When you see something like this, the board wanted him out anyways. This was the perfect opportunity. If Elon Musk has an affair with an employee the Tesla Board will release a solemnly worded statement and say that he’s being required to attend certain trainings and produce certain mea culpas.

detritus 5y ago

> Modern versions of Access refuse to open databases that were created with old versions, so I dusted off an old copy of Office 97. Goodness gracious, Microsoft - why?

alberth 5y ago
Microsoft is notorious in the efforts they make to allow backward compatibility. But in this one case, they don't and are the villain? I can still run programs targeted at 16bit Microsoft Windows 3.x from 30 years ago. Apple breaks background compatibility nearly every year on their products, yet they get a pass?
- detritus 5y ago
  I'm not sure I implied that, and I've been a PC since '97. This just seemed like a particularly pointless restriction. It's database. How hard can it be to support and convert?
  - toyg 5y ago
    Access is not just a database, it allows for custom VBA code and controls. I can see why supporting old versions would be a burden (are you really going to ship all VBA engines ever shipped for 20 years, with all the inevitable security holes they likely still have...?)
    - detritus 5y ago
      Good point, I hadn't considered that. But the example here seems to be literally a spreadsheet's worth of content, in a database format. At least ignore the code and allow importation of the content? Anyway, I don't much care and am being downvoted to heck (!) - I just thought it an odd restriction.
- blowski 5y ago
  I didn't see anyone giving Apple a pass, but yeah I'm OK with backwards compatiblity not being a thing for 20 year old desktop software.

29athrowaway 5y ago

There are some Microsoft Bob easter eggs in other Microsoft products. The nerd emote from MSN Messenger comes from MS Bob. The dog is an assistant in MS Office. There might be more too.

msarnoff 5y ago

One of the credited artists, Leslie Patricelli, is now a children's book author/illustrator.

tuckerpo 5y ago

No Dave Plummer in contributors, odd

Zenst 5y ago
No but he did use it as padding for CDROM distro of Windows so that the discs had unique ID's The Secret history of Microsoft BOB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHu9OmLd8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHu9OmLd8Y
- miohtama 5y ago
  This was awesome video. Bob the blob. How to make sure crypto is correct. A mathematician who could not take calls after 5pm.
  - Zenst 5y ago
    Oh he has many brilliantly told historical stories and on top, still gets his hands dirty and recently did benchmark of compilers. One of the few channels upon YT I'd recommend a sub.
    - EvanAnderson 5y ago
      This seems like as good a place as any to bring this up, if only to see if I'm the only one. I want to watch Dave Plummer's videos but there's something eerily wrong about the amount his lips move (very little) versus his diction (which is very good). It sets off some instinctual discomfort I can't put my finger on. It feels like some kind of ventriloquism act. That said, I've enjoyed his videos. I just wish his mouth movements didn't make my brain feel all funny.
      - Zenst 5y ago
        I do get a sorta de-sync with lips and words in many video's, but then the system I use to watch them is hitting the wall of its life (core2duo) and the autistic spectrum aspect and facial hair will also play into that. I know they do for me and if you think first hearing yourself back on a recording is odd sounding, wait until you see yourself speak on video. Some people are in their element, others, you will get that underlying sense of awkwardness. Which for some (like myself) will talk fast and any facial nuance will be an afterthought long past most attention spans as they race to keep up with the words being spoken.

ehnto 5y ago

That's a remarkable number of Davids in the Developers list. Was the hiring manager named David by any chance?

dclowd9901 5y ago
One of the commenters on the article remarks that there are more "Davids" on the team than women.
acheron 5y ago
These are the Daves I know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVzDIE0mr6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVzDIE0mr6A
prox 5y ago
They’re all hired by HALL
ac29 5y ago
Names from the Bible (Adam, Michael, Paul, Peter, Matthew, David, etc) were and to some degree still are quite common among Americans.

moioci 5y ago

Isn't the most lasting legacy of MS Bob the Comic Sans font?

laumars 5y ago
No. Bob predates Comic Sans by a year or two. Comic Sans was originally released as part of Microsoft Plus, and then later used in Comic Chat (their take on IRC). Comic Chat is an interesting enough topic to warrant its own discussion though.

wcfields 5y ago

One quirky hack that no one asked for that I figured out in 1997: You can take the assistant files Rover, Skuz, Shelly, etc... and copy them into MS Office's assistant directory to get Bob assistants in Office!

guessbest 5y ago

Are their any 'toy office' apps for kids these days? Something between Bob and Outlook?