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“GEOS did not pioneer the GUI; most of its features were already present in the larger OSes of the day, like the classic Mac (albeit, not Windows). What GEOS di
by weinzierl 5y ago
“GEOS did not pioneer the GUI; most of its features were already present in the larger OSes of the day, like the classic Mac (albeit, not Windows). What GEOS did show is that cheap, low-power, commodity hardware and simple office productivity software worked. You did not need a $2000 machine to type a simple letter and print it.”
To me, GEOS was a tech demo - an incredible tech demo - but I did not, and don't know anyone, who ever used it productively. Not even to type a simple letter and print it. There were much more efficient ways to do that.
My caveat is that I say this from the "cheap, low-power, commodity hardware" home computer perspective. That GEOS ran on my C64 was mind-blowing, but not particularly useful.
- gilmore606 5y agoI did! At age 14 I used it to make newsletters for my church. It was a big step up for me from Newsroom, which could only layout in a 2x3 grid -- I could finally do WYSIWYG column-flows with embedded clip art! GeOS felt like the future to me, because it was (or seemed to be) treating the screen as an arbitrary pixel grid, free from the constraints of a 40x24 char array and 8 sprites.
- reaperducer 5y agoI did not, and don't know anyone, who ever used it productively. Not even to type a simple letter and print it. There were much more efficient ways to do that. I knew an east coast limousine company that ran its whole business on it.
- themadturk 5y agoSee my other comment; it was highly usable and I was productive with it creating newsletters.
- svachalek 5y agoLikewise, I used it for letters and school papers. Its time was brief but it was fully functional, not just a demo.