The most recent post is the end of "16 bit" era c. 1992-3. Join me as I learn about naming a product and reviews.
2/ PC sales had been slow due to global economic stuff, but the Mac had really slowed (you can see why in one of the magazines below). But recently sales had gone vertical with the success of Windows 3.x
At the same time developers all moved to focus on "Win32" the 32bit world.
3/ That's the market we launched Visual C++ into. Talk about tailwinds. We had a Windows-based development environment that was "object oriented" just in time for this massive uptick.
Windows NT was in beta. The successor to 3.x was under development. Momentum built.
4/ Tough to try to explain the amount of content that was out there in mass print for PCs: Byte, PC Magazine, PC Computing, PC World, + trade press + national business magazines. A press tour would easily mean the same demos/questions 20 times in 5 cities. A typical newsstand.
5/ Many on twitter will recall being subjected to tired and jetlagged people (like me) traveling in a group of marketing, PR, and PM. Every visit could be 2 hours and often be combined with pre and post calls.
This was how you reached people before the internet.
6/ My favorite visit might have always been to Byte Magazine in New Hampshire (really out of the way, fly to Logan, rent a car). Their offices were some sort of converted agriculture building with big "cow elevators". We stayed at the Jack Daniels Inn and ate at the diner. BRR
7/ Inside the building was an enormous test lab and that's what is so interesting.
Most software hardly worked. So much of the follow up was just getting installation working and untangling the "how to".
A typical review might be a couple of weeks of several people full time.
8/ It was always fun visiting if they had just finished something like a printer roundup where they tested 100 different laser printers that had not yet been returned to the companies. Racks and racks of printers (or cd rom drives, or modems, or monitors). As big as any we had.
9/ The output of these reviews were giant tables of features, scores, benchmarks. Note Editors Choice!
If you read ars technica reviews today, not unlike that, but across a dozen magazines, spread over 20+ pages. Just a huge amount of work (for all of us!)
10/ There was also deep qualitative opinion in these pieces as well. For example, here's the commentary on the part I worked on, Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC).
11/ These reviews would not hit all at once because of print publication schedules (and product availability). But a month or more after launch there would be huge summaries from PR. We'd score articles for tone and message. It was intense.
12/ The stronger teams and products poured over the reviews and looked for every place where we lost to competitors or lost in benchmarks. Almost never would there be a repeat. Products changed because of reviews, very directly.
13/ One thing these all had in common was how oriented towards the tech enthusiast the world was. While these magazines were all at the airport news stand the readership was not "mainstream". But that was changing.
Everything was changing.
14/ I'm starting off with a new job--working for Bill Gates as technical assistant. All powerful MS is under regulatory clouds. "Chicago" is being planned. Oh, and in a short time the internet arrives. All in1993.
Ever wonder when and how Microsoft made a big bet on Windows? Today’s Hardcore Software shares what it was like to have a bunch of existing confusion clarified by the CEO in a memo. 1/5 …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/011-a-strate…
2/ The memo was from Bill Gates and detailed a “A Strategy for the ‘90s Windows”. Seems kind of obvious now. But then the company was deep in a partnership with IBM to develop OS/2, the successor to MS-DOS. Windows was a side project.
3/ But Windows 3.0 was selling super well—sales of Windows 3.0 exceeded that if Macintosh by a huge amount, selling over 4M copies in the first year (2.5M Macs were sold that year). OS/2 was not selling well, nor was it making progress in product development that was needed.
In the most recent Hardcore Software substack post, I shared the "turning point" for learning how to ship software. It was a memo/presentation based on the work of Excel 5 that shipped 11 days late. Let's look at the first "massive" project to ship on exactly time, Office XP. 1/
2/ First a quick excerpt from hardcoresoftware.substack.com. This is the memo from 1990 on Shipping Software, written by the development manager for Excel (Microsoft legend Chris Peters). Cool Stuff.
3/ The key lesson is the most obvious which is actually having a ship date. It is amazing how many projects have dates that are "1st quarter" or "1st half". That's 90 or 180 dates. Second lesson, shipping is everything. It's all that matters.
Just before then Excel for Windows shipped in 1987—the first Windows version. Some fun Excel background 1/
2/ Excel for Mac shipped in 1985 and received very strong reviews and was quite successful. Between Mac Excel and Mac Word, Microsoft “Applications” had grown to be the leading Mac vendor and also about half of Microsoft!
3/ Windows Excel was built by creating a cross-platform layer (what it was called in code) enabling Windows and Mac to share the core engine for calculation/charting/etc. But it still needed Windows...but no one had Windows.
I ordered 4 accent pillows from a well-known home furnishings store. They shipped them in 8 packages. Each pillow ships individually and separately from cover. I received one today—the box that would easily fit all 4 pillows.
Gonna take me 3 weeks to recycle all the cardboard.
Update on my shipment. Part 2 of 8 scheduled to arrive today. But wait, what will arrive?
2/ Just finished a "blow out" year for PC sales, at 275 million. Sounds huge from a growth perspective, but that still doesn't approach estimates of 450 million or more from a decade ago.
3/ The underlying shift that started in 2010--towards low power, high reliability, "sealed case", app store, connected to phones, WWAN, and more computers epitomized by the iPad -- remains in full swing.
2/ Hardcore Software is my first-person account of Microsoft events from pre-Windows 3 through the rise of Office, building a new Windows, and disruption. Along the way came the internet, pivot to enterprise, antitrust trial, product quality crises, reorgs, Apple, …much more.
3/ My substack is a serialization of a book, or two, I wrote. I realized in working with a traditional publisher that I could tell a much better story for many more people by using Substack. So that’s what I chose to do. Here’s why: