My Microsoft Turning Point (Premium)

I don’t remember the first time my life intersected with Microsoft, and it’s possible I wasn’t even aware of it: The Commodore 64, my first “real” computer, utilized a Commodore-branded version of Microsoft BASIC. I do recall Microsoft Multiplan for the C64 during my days at Toys ‘R Us as a college student. And then, when I got an Amiga, I knew that Microsoft was responsible for the terrible version of BASIC that came with that computer.

What’s interesting, to me, anyway, is that the Commodore 128 came with a Microsoft-branded version of BASIC that was pretty terrific. I never owned a C128—my friend Dave did—but I did buy a C64 cartridge called Super Expander that basically allowed C64 BASIC to work similarly to the superior C128 BASIC, with its high-resolution graphics capabilities. So where other teenage nerds would walk into a retail store, find an idle computer, and type in a silly BASIC program that displayed “Paul was here …” (or whatever) on a loop, I would do the same to a C128, but it would draw circles, squares, and other shapes all over the screen in random positions, sizes, and colors. I could make that thing sing.

My parents’ home burned down just after Christmas 1987, taking my Commodore 64C, 1541C disk drive, Okimate 20 color printer, and an incredible library of game and application disks with it. So I spent the early months of 1988 on the hunt for a new computer. What I wanted was an Amiga, but I didn’t have a credit card and they were only sold by local dealers that didn’t offer any form of credit themselves. So I turned to Apple, go figure.

The local Apple dealer—this was decades before there were actual Apple Stores—did offer Apple-branded financing at an exorbitant interest rate (hey, it was Apple). For about $3000, another exorbitant sum, especially in those days, I could get a basic Macintosh SE, with a tiny black and white screen, or I could get a fully decked-out Apple IIGS, with a 3.5-inch drive, a 5.25-inch drive, and a bigger color display. I foolishly went with the IIGS and then spent the next two years spending another few thousands of dollars I didn’t have trying to turn it into an Amiga.

The only reason I even mention the IIGS is that I was interested in learning to program the computer, and Apple had created a version of its incredible Mac developer documentation series, Inside Macintosh, for the IIGS. And in both cases, Apple used Pascal, not C or BASIC. I had barely learned Pascal in high school, thanks to one of my worst teachers of all time. But grabbed Pascal for the IIGS—I believe it was called TML Pascal—and dove in.

Eventually, I realized the error of my ways and purchased a used Commodore Amiga 500, which I then souped up even more than the IIGS; I even installed a hardware toggle switch on its top so I could switch between AmigaDOS 1.3 and 2.04, and it had a very early 20 MB internal PCMCIA hard drive. Here, again, I was very interested in learning how to write programs for the Amiga, and so I dove into that. Commodore’s own documentation, which was clearly a copy of the Inside Macintosh stuff, was all C language-based, as were all of the third party books. And I bought them all.

Which brings me to Microsoft BASIC for the Amiga. Obviously, I looked at it. Microsoft’s name was on it. And it was terrible, given the capabilities of the machine. Was this why I grew to disdain, if not hate, Microsoft?

Not exactly.

I think it was a number of things.

Back in 1983, I recall visiting my father’s workplace. He had purchased one of the first IBM PC models, if not the very first one, and as a seasoned pro with the Commodore 64, I started tooling around MS-DOS (OK, PC-DOS) to see what was up. I was not impressed.

By the time I got an Amiga—early 1990—it was clear from reading Byte and other industry magazines that Windows, the Mac, and other GUI-based systems were going to take over the world. By then, I had experienced GEOS on the C64, which was resource-constrained but proved a Mac-style UI didn’t have to cost thousands. I had used the first few Macs. I had owned an Apple IIGS. And then I had the Amiga. And the Amiga wasn’t as good as the rest of them, UI-wise. It was vastly superior technically. It was the first true multi-processor PC. It could do real multitasking, unlike any of those other systems, and it could do so on a floppy-based system. And the graphics, sound, and video capabilities were from another planet.

Concurrent to all this, I was very interested in the personal computing market and read everything I could. Not just developer books but magazines and general business books that outlined the history of the industry. There were lots of books about Apple back then, since it was undergoing a huge transformation with Steve Jobs leaving the company. And there were lots of books about Microsoft all of a sudden.

And Microsoft seemed to be taking over the world. As an enthusiast, this rankled me. Windows was the poorest-looking GUI of the lot, and it was the most inept technically. (I would later come to understand that this was even worse than I realized.) Here I was, seamlessly switching between apps and games on my Amiga, and PC users were hand-coding startup and configuration files using arcane codes just to get Windows, a sad joke, to run.

Finally, my wife—we were married in May 1990—wanted to get her own computer. She was a writer, and she worked in the corporate world, and I recall us discussing her getting an IBM PC. She eventually purchased an IBM PS/1 at Sears because it was much less expensive than a PS/2 but provided everything she needed. This was a low-end PC, even for the day: It had an Intel 80286 processor and a grayscale display with just four shades of gray. But all she needed was WordPerfect for DOS, so it was fine for her needs.

One day, she asked me to help her with the PS/1. She couldn’t figure out how to start WordPerfect. She explained that she would normally type wp at the DOS command line and the application would run. But it wasn’t working. Typing to start a program, how quaint.

So, I typed wp on her PS/1 and saw an error message. Then, I typed dir and saw that there was a WP51 (or whatever) directory. So I typed cd wp51 and then wp and WordPerfect ran fine. But it dawned on me that she didn’t understand how the file system worked and that, at her workplace, some IT people had probably added the WP51 directory to the path or whatever, so that the wp command would work from anywhere.

I figured that MS-DOS must have some kind of scripting environment to automate this, so I headed to the local bookstore—probably Booksmith at the Dedham Mall—and picked up a small book about writing MS-DOS batch files. Within a day or so I had created a neat little menu, using DOS-based graphics characters for the borders, that included all the applications she wanted to use. She could just type 1 from the menu to run WordPerfect, or whatever. When she exited WordPerfect or any other app, she would return to the menu and not to a DOS prompt.

(Fun aside. I shared this batch file with my few PC-using friends. One went on to work at a local PC dealer and, unbeknownst to me, they started giving out this batch to file to their customers, where they would configure it for their needs. When we moved to Phoenix in 1993, another friend coincidentally moved to Arizona as well, and he had purchased a PC from that company. So I was confused and a bit angry when I turned it on one day and saw my batch file come up when the PC booted.)

I wasn’t impressed by MS-DOS or its silly little batch file capabilities. Again, here I was using the world’s most advanced PC, and Microsoft was taking over the world with this little piece of crap. I couldn’t believe it.

1990, of course, coincided with the release of Windows 3.0, the version that really exploded in popularity and set Microsoft on its trajectory to dominance. I was friends with the owner of a local Amiga dealership, and was dismayed to discover that he had started selling PC compatibles. He explained that it was a necessity and then, besides, the flight simulator-type programs, which used analog joysticks that were useless for anything else, were curiously superior to the similar games on the Amiga. OK, whatever.

But with the release of Windows 3.0, I asked my friend for a copy so I could at least see what all the fuss was about, using my wife’s PS/1. He explained that Windows wasn’t free, and that if I wanted to use it, I’d have to pony up $80. “Dude, NOBODY pays for Windows,” I replied. Besides, I only wanted to test it, briefly, on a PC I’d never really use anyway. He copied the three disks for me and away I went.

How do I put this politely?

On my wife’s lowly 286-based PS/1—it was low-end even then—Windows was a f#$%ing joke. It ran SO slowly that you could literally watch it draw in real time. If I clicked on the File menu, the line that defined the menu would slowly draw, down on the left, and then to the right, and then up again back to the word File. And then individual menu items and divider lines would draw, slowly, and one at a time. It literally took a minute for the whole thing to complete.

Secure in the knowledge that Windows was a passing fad, I stopped worrying about it or Microsoft. But that only lasted a little while. During this time frame—1990 to 1993—Windows only got more and more popular, and better, too, though I didn’t really understand it—and Commodore imploded, taking the Amiga down with it. I had also decided to go back to college to study computer programming, and it was clear that there was a PC in my future too. Things were changing, and not in a way that I was totally happy about.

But there were positive signs.

Sometime before we moved to Phoenix in early 1993, I had heard about an incredible PC-based game called Castle Wolfenstein 3D. I don’t recall how I obtained the shareware version—the PS/1 did have a modem, and came with the Prodigy service, so maybe that way—but I installed it on my wife’s lowly computer. And it flew. The performance was incredible. And while the four shades of gray were not great, playing this game on a PC was an eye-opening experience. The Amiga did not have a game like this. First-person games on the Amiga, like Dungeon Master, didn’t offer smooth scrolling; instead, you lurched down virtual hallways one segment at a time.

This told me two things. First, that it was possible to do something truly sophisticated on the PC. And that Microsoft had clearly not figured that out. If a fast-action first-person shooter like Castle Wolfenstein 3D could exist, then Windows was Microsoft’s fault, not the fault of the hardware.

Anyway, we moved, and I went back to school. And while my experiences there are worth telling elsewhere, since they did lead directly to my career, I’ll just note a few other early eye-opening PC experiences. Turbo Pascal, for example.

And then the first Microsoft product that made me realize that this terrible, terrible company could get it right sometimes.

It wasn’t Windows.

My wife worked briefly at a computer training firm and they had received beta versions of Microsoft Word 6.0 for Windows and other Office applications in order to create new training documentation. She had brought it home so I could check it out.

At the time, I was still using an Amiga—an Amiga 600 by this point, don’t ask—but I knew the end was near and I was already plotting my move to the PC for later in 1993. (Fun aside: We were living in my father’s condominium in Scottsdale that year. And that original PC from 1993 was there, in a hideaway closet, like a time capsule. I loved its beautiful metal case and wanted badly to build a new PC and use that case. But it wasn’t compatible with the motherboards of the day.)

So I checked out Word for Windows 2.0. And. Oh. My. God.

Word was better than any word processor I had ever seen. Better than anything on the Amiga, and certainly better than WordPerfect for Windows, which was about as half-hearted an effort as I had ever seen. Word was just as eye-opening as was Castle Wolfenstein 3D before it. I couldn’t believe it.

And that’s when I knew. That I would have to suck it up and use Windows.

I did build my first PC that year—based on an AMD 386 chipset—and I eventually picked up Windows for Workgroups 3.1 for a networking class. Now, this was interesting. It looked and worked like normal Windows, but it offered 32-bit RAM and disk access, bypassing DOS. And it led the way to Windows 95, which was really just Windows for Workgroups with a new UI.

Coincident to all that, my career had started too, though I didn’t realize it at the time. A professor had asked me to help him out with a book about Visual Basic 3, and that led, in turn to getting on the betas for Windows 4.0 (95), Microsoft Office 95, Plus! 95, Visual Studio 1.0, and many others. Everything changed.

But that’s a story for another day.

First, there was Microsoft Word 6.0 for Windows. It was so good it got me past my Microsoft biases. And the subsequent releases of Windows 95, Office for Windows 95 cemented the deal. As did Visual Basic. Maybe Microsoft wasn’t so horrible after all.