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What the Hell Was the Microsoft Network? (2018)
- ncmncm 4y agoIt was... proprietary. The common "walled garden". Everybody thought they could make a walled garden people would like better than the open internet. IBM had SNA, DEC had DECnet, Compuserve, WELL, ... None lamented.
- jhbadger 4y agoThere seems to be some nostalgia/lamentation of the glory days around WELL at least. It even technically still exists today.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL
- koofdoof 4y agoI've always been curious about what lies behind the WELL's paywall nowadays. I fear the answer is likely not much, but searching through their archives could be fascinating.
- voidfunc 4y agoDefinitely a forgotten program. Another one from that era (that actually survived until Win 10 I just learned) is the "Briefcase". It was basically a primitive file syncing tool for multiple devices.
- nly 4y agoWinpopup checking in
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y agoThe Briefcase was a godsend back when removable storage was used to move files between computers and there was no other way to keep things synced. It's a shame they removed it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y agoYou could always just build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. ;)
- iso1631 4y agoCertainly more reliable than dropbox
- bzxcvbn 4y agoWhat could it do that onedrive cannot do?
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y agoWork offline. That's about it.
- jaywalk 4y agoOneDrive can work offline if you set it to actually sync all of your files.
- kolinko 4y ago“offline” as in - on a computer that has no internet conmection whatsoever and syncing with floppy drives etc
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y agoPrecisely. Also, no internal network. Employees shared data by passing floppies back and forth.
- dcist 4y agoNever used Briefcase. I just remember being confused by it as a kid. I did, however, use Iomega Zip Drives to move large (at the time) files.
- stuaxo 4y agoNever had a clue what that thing did.
- unethical_ban 4y agoAs a kid, I used the briefcase as a normal folder (I think) just because the icon looked cooler.
- garaetjjte 4y agoBriefcase also used shell extension madness, and allowed registration of merge handlers: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/lwef/briefcase-reconcilers https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/lwef/briefcas...
- IronWolve 4y agoNo yt videos showing it off? What I miss was comic chat.
- blibble 4y agoit was dead long before people started doing that there was a demo cd that had an offline example demo though (msn classic not 2.0)
- ungamedplayer 4y agoWhat was dead ? Comic Chat still worked in xp last time I tried.
- irusensei 4y agoI remember using it on Windows 98 SE. It looked fun but it didn't take me a lot to figure out the thing was filled to the brim with crackers (it wasn't very secure) and creepy people posting weird custom cartoon porn. I've quickly noped the hell out of it.
- ungamedplayer 4y agoI think that comes down to which IRC servers you were joining.
- twobitshifter 4y agoInstead they had a VHS showing it off. https://youtu.be/5DqJwmzG6Fk?t=1133 https://youtu.be/5DqJwmzG6Fk?t=1133
- threeseed 4y agoRich clients were all the rage back then: Apple eWorld, Compuserve, Pointcast etc. And then everything swung to the web and then back to rich clients i.e. mobile apps.
- gzer0 4y agohttps://youtu.be/5DqJwmzG6Fk?t=1133 https://youtu.be/5DqJwmzG6Fk?t=1133 This video was linked in the article. What a trip down memory lane. This is the most 90's thing that ever existed. Also, the explanation of what a "right click" is and how it is for "power users". Wow, how far we have come. (This is at 21:50 in the video).
- mavhc 4y agoYep, now with touch screens it's even more hidden
- kmeisthax 4y agoLong pressing[0] is the touchscreen equivalent of a right click. [0] Or, on very specific old iPhone models, force pressing
- mavhc 4y agoCan't say I've ever seen a non techy person do that
- shadowofneptune 4y agoDid anyone learn the double-click on their own? Inscrutable gestures can exist on any pointing device.
- feintruled 4y agoI worked with a older guy, a tester who had retrained from some other industry. He was pretty good, very thorough - but I noticed he had a strange habit - he double clicked everything, even web links. I guess he was just told that was the way of computers!
- throitallaway 4y agoI mean, macOS has pretty much ensured that their version of right clicking (cmd-click) is only used by power users.
- speed_spread 4y agoOne of the things that came from Microsoft Network that's still around is Expedia. Microsoft needed content to put on MSN and a few engineers got interested in the traveling business. Eventually the experiment turned into a website and then got spun off.
- agildehaus 4y agoI recall NetWits, a multiplayer 1950s-style quiz show game on MSN where you played as a contestant against other MSN subscribers in real-time (there was a scheduled "broadcast time" every weeknight -- couldn't play at any other time). There were real prizes, like trips from Expedia. Here's a video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyje8xlGc9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyje8xlGc9Q Truly a product of its time, but they really tried to experiment with multimedia (at least in MSN 2.0). I think there was an online version of Encarta and a bunch of other things that I've since forgotten.
- jthrowsitaway 4y agoThat's awesome! I have very fond memories of playing 1 vs 100 on Xbox Live and was sad when they canned it. https://youtu.be/ssWZhHBeNVQ https://youtu.be/ssWZhHBeNVQ
- NonNefarious 4y ago"The raw, unfiltered mess of the Internet was quickly becoming the New Cool Thing, and no-one wanted to sign up for yet another Stupid Proprietary Thing" Which is exactly what Microsoft is pushing today with their idiotic "Microsoft account," making it increasingly impossible to use Windows or their other products without signing on to this bullshit. They clearly didn't learn the first time around. Nobody wants another goddamned account, Microsoft.
- selcuka 4y agoPlaying devil's advocate here: For all practical purposes you need an account for macOS, iOS, and Android. What is so different with Windows?
- nerdponx 4y agoYou definitely don't need an iCloud account to use Apple hardware.
- ChikkaChiChi 4y agoYet. However you do have to deal with an unremovable red notification on your system preferences demanding you to sign in to use icloud.
- andai 4y agoI think you can't install anything on iOS without logging in, and the app store is the only way to get software (without rooting). I guess you could use the built in apps though, and the camera...
- simonh 4y agoThe iCloud service is separate from the App Store service, and you can be logged into one but not the other, however you log in to both using the same AppleID. You can actually be logged into iCloud using one AppleID and the App Store with a different one, at least a family member had their phone set up that way for a while, for reasons. If you set up a Mac without an AppleID you'll constantly get nagged every time anything that requires it tries to do anything, which is frequently.
- Shared404 4y ago> And so The Microsoft Network wasn't a program you loaded like CompuServe. It was part of the OS, with folder icons that looked just like real folders. It was a kind of version of the Web where you could browse online data the same way you browsed your file system. This is what made it cool. Microsoft <3 Plan 9?
- debugnik 4y agoWell, Windows now uses a 9P server and client to mount WSL drives in Windows and viceversa, so maybe it's time for round two?
- Bayart 4y agoI think the WSL uses 9P.
- pjc50 4y agoI believe it was "shell extensions". There's still a few of these lying around. You can even add your own ones: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/nse-implement https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/nse-imp... It's not so easy to add to the filesystem, but you can make things show up in Explorer that you can click on.
- wongarsu 4y agoModern NTFS (Win2000 and later) has "reparse points", which are basically file entries with some metadata that triggers special handling. It's the mechanism used to implement soft links (that are handled transparently by the file system, as opposed with the shortcuts you use e.g. on the desktop), or to mount an NTFS volume as a directory inside another NTFS volume, or by OneDrive to download files on the fly when you open them, or to implement unix domain sockets. You can add your own, though it requires adding a filter-driver. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/reparse-points https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/repars... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_reparse_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_reparse_point
- 4y ago
- 0des 4y agoMSN had an amazing Quake 2 and just general multiplayer games service for a while, I want to say it was called Games.com or something like that. The one day, poof it was gone.
- PakG1 4y agozone.com? I would play Warcraft 2 multiplayer on there. Warcraft 2 had no natural Internet-based multiplayer, zone.com made it easy.
- EGreg 4y agoI never used zone.com But heat.net — anyone remember that one !! War2 on heat.net meimei ^_^ ekulfx anyone? :) hehe
- thriftwy 4y agoZone was also where people played Heroes of Might & Magic III PvP, in early 00s, way before HoMM3 HD Lobby appeared.
- cgrealy 4y agoWasn’t Zone also used for Xwing vs Tie Fighter? Fun times
- 0des 4y agothats the one!
- discreditable 4y agoI spent a lot of my youth playing Age of Empires 2 multiplayer on zone.com. It was great for its time.
- david_allison 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Games (also known as Zone.com - formerly known as The Village, Internet Gaming Zone, MSN Gaming Zone, and MSN Games by Zone.com)
- hanslub42 4y agoKnoware (pun intended, probably), my first Internet provider, back in 1993, had a 9600 baud connection to the Internet, shared by all his customers. When I phoned the guy (late, as he worked at night and slept during the day) to get a login, his first question was: do you have a Mac? There was no TCP/IP stack for Windows back then (Trumpet Winsock only came out in 1994, and was not a Microsoft product). He had heard of linux, said that it probably would work, but I would be on my own. Fast forward to 1995: Windows 95 still didn't have TCP/IP (that only came with service pack 1). MSN was clearly intended as a Windows Internet, to eclipse and make irrelevant the existing one, leaving Mac and linux outside in the cold. Of course, the local pizza guy would have to pay to be on it. Win-win for Microsoft.
- tinus_hn 4y agoAlthough it was not installed by default, the original release of Windows 95 did feature tcp/ip as an option that could be installed from the cd: http://www.michusa.com/SupportFiles/win95ppp/win95.html http://www.michusa.com/SupportFiles/win95ppp/win95.html
- folsom 4y agoI started running a pre-release version in early 1995 and never had to install anything from the CD. Maybe it detected my off brand ne2000 network card and just installed it by default. Easy networking was my favorite part of windows 95 at the time.
- kolinko 4y agoMS was pushing information superhighway back then - a top down network done by big media players that was supposed to overcome Internet
- iso1631 4y agoIt's getting there
- tialaramex 4y ago
- Fomite 4y agolights a candle for eWorld
- watersb 4y agoApple didn't own the eWorld infrastructure, and at the time they couldn't afford the bill they were getting from GE Information Systems. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld In reading that Wikipedia article, I was reminded that another online service used by Apple morphed into AOL. I had an AppleLink dial up account as the tech support lead for all things Mac at work. It wasn't marketed as a consumer product. Another native-like front end for dialup service at the time was "First Class", which could be self-hosted by any provider. The Berkeley Mac User Group BMUG had a great FirstClass BBS.
- Fomite 4y agoI remember rather liking FirstClass.
- Underphil 4y agoI'm from the UK and in my forties, and I've never heard of 'Cix'. Just me?
- happymellon 4y agoI remember Cix, though I never had it. We had Demon giving me access to this incredible Internet thing, on the super fast 14.4kbps modem!
- iso1631 4y agoWith email delivered to you via SMTP when you dialed up
- Starwatcher2001 4y agoI'm an ex-demonite too. Had all the telehone numbers of the local pops (point of presence) in a file to copy to the moden after the ADT command. As the pops were heavily subscribed and would often just give engaged tones, I used to use the net at 6am. The phone rates were cheaper then too.
- denton-scratch 4y agoI was on Cix for several years. I can't remember what my username was. They had a really rather good mail and new client. A lot of the users were tech journalists and (oddly) airplane pilots. I originally connected using an acoustic coupler that ran at 9,600 baud. I later migrated to Demon, which was originally formed by members of the Cix "tenner-a-month club" - a group that banded together to get real internet, instead of using Cix's curated internet gateways. Demon was a great ISP, until they were taken over by Scottish Power.
- duncans 4y agoI'm a bit older than you and it passed me by along with CompuServe and other BBSs. It was mentioned in magazines such as PC Pro but I didn't get a modem until Windows 95 came out. After a quick play with the Microsoft Network the web took over for me.
- iso1631 4y ago
- sedan_baklazhan 4y agoThe article is unfair. "After all, these new directions brought the PC almost up to the same spec that other computers had been enjoying ten years ago." - this is simply not true. Apple, main competitor of PC's, still had years and years ahead to gain preemptive multitasking. Windows NT and even 95 were significantly ahead of competition.
- throwaway236324 4y agoThe article refers to Amiga, which came out in 1985 with a multi tasking OS (Workbench). That was a popular computer, at least in Europe. It was not as popular as IBM PCs, but it did show that it was possible at a reasonable price.
- tialaramex 4y agoAlthough the Amiga Workbench has pre-emptive multi-tasking it not only has but encourages use of a backdoor to switch off the pre-emption. As a result you don't gain as much as you might hope over systems with co-operative multi-tasking like Windows 3.x - Apps A, B and C may be getting along just fine, but if App D is selfish enough they're all screwed anyway. Together with lack of memory protection (for hardware cost reasons initially) this means Amigans don't end up making as much use of the multi tasking as you'd think - if I run A, B, C and D but then the system crashes, who do I blame? That backdoor is still there and causing problems in 2022. You can buy a 64-bit multi-core "modern" Amiga but it is still running an OS with a stop-the-world backdoor to switch off pre-emption, and so it only ends up using a single core in 32-bit mode. Or you could put Linux on it.
- feintruled 4y agoIt's not acceptable for 2022, it was bloody amazing in 1985. Obviously you pick the apps you run, so if you stuck to well behaving apps (and there were plenty) the multitasking was great. Crashes were a fact of life to be sure - one was wise to save often.
- sedan_baklazhan 4y ago
- Angostura 4y agoCIX is still going in the UK. https://www.cix.uk/forums/accessing-forums https://www.cix.uk/forums/accessing-forums Just had a quick poke about and my last post was 22 year ago. Which was a bit of a gut-punch
- wlindley 4y agoNever had cable but I still figure MSNBC is part of this long-abandoned system and wonder why it's still on the air, some kind of zombie?
- speed_spread 4y agoYeah, it was the result of a deal intended to provide NBC content on MSN, giving it news and stuff. As MSN failed, its most successful content got turned into websites.
- dcist 4y agoThe MSNBC website back in the 90s was actually pretty great. It had a menu system that would update with live headlines. It was really impressive (to me, at least) back then. I think MSNBC began as a joint effort between Microsoft and GE, but Microsoft sold its stake a long time ago at this point. It's bizarre that MSNBC has kept the name, but I guess it has branding value at this point.
- tibbydudeza 4y agoIt was called Project Blackbird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(online_platform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(online_platform) "It was later revealed that Blackbird had severe performance problems because of an over-complex architecture which made excessive use of multi-threading. When prototypes of the Trident HTML layout engine were completed, and it was shown that the goals of complex layout in Blackbird could be achieved in HTML at better performance, it led to executives to rethink the project."
- qwerty456127 4y ago> they gave you a number like you were Patrick McGoohan. It'd be like 71477,134 So nice. I bloody wish we still had numeric IDs instead of email addresses and nicknames.
- bluedino 4y agoThe dithering and fonts and the overall look of the MSN-inside Explorer really brings you back. MSN was one of those things that you played around with because it came with MSN and you used the free trial (like you did for every ISP you could find back then). But I didn't know anyone who really used it past that. There was a 'second' MSN, that was just a dial-up ISP. Very popular for including the $400 rebate when you bought a new computer at a retail store, you also got 2 years of a MSN dial-up contract to pay the $400 back.
- h0l0cube 4y ago> At least now I can happily use fopen to read data from a website, right? And backup my email just by dragging folders from Gmail to a local disk. Right guys? It would be nice to rsync to send/retrieve emails and manage my inbox. Maybe the original MSN concept needs to be revisited?
- bencollier49 4y agoI found it a bit jarring the way that the mass of regular BBSes go unmentioned in this piece. Fascinating though, I'm from the time (in the UK) and have no recollection of the Microsoft Network.
- mwexler 4y agoHaving worked at MSN during this time, I can tell you, the jealousy of AOL and the client-based walled garden they built was almost physically palpable. AOL was the onramp to the internet for so many folks, but many felt they didn't need to leave the garden. MSN was kind of a halfway spot: a bit more open, but also more integrated into Windows (standard embrace and extend approach). Yahoo! was the other big worry: also had a dialup option, but basically was the internet for many, in that, as a portal, it safely met many of their needs for info and communication. You saw some of this stuff live on as ActiveX objects in IE for a few years after the client wound down; MSN Money was the last big holdout with it's portfolio manager and charting engine, which also was released as part of a Quicken competitor for personal finance management called Microsoft Money.
- a-dub 4y ago> but also more integrated into Windows that's right. iirc the windows 95 ppp drivers were a separate package and msn included them along with a custom dialer that integrated directly into the shell as a tray application?
- mikestew 4y agoOne nitpick: Microsoft Money was around since the early '90s, long before MSN showed up. I also miss it very much.
- cecilpl2 4y agoMicrosoft Money Sunset Edition still works. I can still download all my credit card statements in OFX (MS Money format). I use it weekly and have nearly 20 years of transaction history stored there. I have no idea what I'll do if it ever stops working. The killer feature I would switch instantly for is a way to automatically set part ownership of a joint account. I want to download credit card transactions and mark them as being 1/2 mine, so it doesn't throw off my budget tracking. This feature does not exist in any financial software, sadly.
- danielodievich 4y ago
- havblue 4y agoAn associated question is, "why the hell would I want 12 months of msn with a new pc at Best Buy?!?", as I seem to remember most computers being bundled with walled garden isp deals in the late 90s.
- datavirtue 4y agoMy god, that code is horrid. I remember seeing code like that as a kid. Not being able to recognize any of the tokens was a huge turn-off for getting into Windows development.
- toddmorey 4y agoThe writing here is great. Extra points for The Prisoner reference. "They didn't even give you the decency of a username on CompuServe, they gave you a number like you were Patrick McGoohan"
- smm11 4y agoI could never get my head around Briefcase, with floppies, ZIP drives, USB drives, FTP sites, .zip files through email. And today I can't live without OneDrive. It's on all my computers, phones, tablets.
- reiichiroh 4y agoWhat was Mungo Park? Microsoft Sidewalk?