Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, everybody, Welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works and I love all things tech in. Today is
Speaker 1: another Friday classic episode of tech Stuff, and I alluded
Speaker 1: to this in an earlier episode that published this week.
Speaker 1: This is an episode that originally published on May nine,
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. It is titled What About Microsoft Bob?
Speaker 1: And in this episode, Lauren Voge Obama and I go
Speaker 1: and revisit a beloved, enormous trash fire of a piece
Speaker 1: of software called Microsoft Bob. It was an attempt at
Speaker 1: making a graphic user interface for the common person, something
Speaker 1: that anyone could grasp, and it was about as big
Speaker 1: a misstep as you can imagine. So enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 1: We're gonna tackle Bob and we're gonna wrestle him to
Speaker 1: the ground and probably give him noogies. But then so
Speaker 1: did the rest of the world. Yeah, if you don't
Speaker 1: know what Bob is, don't feel badly about it. It
Speaker 1: was one of the biggest flops in Microsoft history, I
Speaker 1: think one of the biggest flops and kind of history
Speaker 1: period Time did this list of the fifty worst inventions ever,
Speaker 1: Time magazine. Time magazine, Yeah, back in, back in, and
Speaker 1: Bob was on there. I mean along with like tanning
Speaker 1: beds and hydrogen blimps. Hydrogen blimps not such a great thing.
Speaker 1: Microsoft Bob possibly worse. It's killed killed fewer people, killed
Speaker 1: fewer people, But people dreams died that day when Microsoft
Speaker 1: Bob came out. Yes, that this was an interface for
Speaker 1: Windows three point one, and then later came out, Yeah
Speaker 1: it was. It was also for Windows in t So
Speaker 1: here's the thing, here's the thing. We're talking about era
Speaker 1: where the personal computer is starting to get some serious
Speaker 1: try action, but still is not in most homes. In fact,
Speaker 1: Microsoft when they were talking about designing Bob and the
Speaker 1: launch of Bob, they were predicting that by I think
Speaker 1: it was n that PCs would be in forty six
Speaker 1: percent of households, and and and this was that this
Speaker 1: was a forty six percent in the incredible future. The
Speaker 1: idea of being that is a really big number. That
Speaker 1: Microsoft's crazy to think that that many people would have computers. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem that Microsoft had identified as something that they
Speaker 1: needed to solve with brute force is that that someone
Speaker 1: who is unfamiliar with computers might find the operation of
Speaker 1: such a device to be intimidating and difficult, and the
Speaker 1: learning curve might be too too steep for your average
Speaker 1: person who was not already familiar with computers. And certainly
Speaker 1: before Windows three point one came out, when it was
Speaker 1: just doss on say, just doss operation, I'm simply saying
Speaker 1: that it was perhaps not the most friendly thing to
Speaker 1: greet a person just just lines of code on a screen.
Speaker 1: I didn't need a friend, I needed an operating system.
Speaker 1: That's what Does gave me. And that is kind of
Speaker 1: that is kind of what what McIntosh was doing at
Speaker 1: the time. And and and Apple was was kind of
Speaker 1: kicking a lot of button that arena because they were
Speaker 1: giving people something more friendly, more user friendly, and a
Speaker 1: little bit more intuitive, right, keep in minding, of course,
Speaker 1: Apple had a big jump on other computers because the
Speaker 1: Apple too was a very popular personal computer among mostly
Speaker 1: hobbyists and people who were interested in computers. Because again
Speaker 1: that was that was in the line command days, we
Speaker 1: had the type stuff in when Apple introduced the Macintosh
Speaker 1: and the graphics user interface, Apple of course was not
Speaker 1: the the company to invent the graphics user interface, but
Speaker 1: they were the first ones to really successfully implement it
Speaker 1: in a personal computer platform, and people liked it. It
Speaker 1: was one of those things where things just made more sense.
Speaker 1: It was it was it was a little more intuitive
Speaker 1: than having to type and memorize all these different commands
Speaker 1: that you would type into just get your computer to
Speaker 1: douce stuff. Well, Microsoft wanted to kind of um create
Speaker 1: its own graphic unit user interface, and that was the
Speaker 1: genesis of the Windows program. But even then they thought
Speaker 1: there's gotta be a way of making this simpler for
Speaker 1: the average person. Now, to really look at the development
Speaker 1: of Bob, you have to go back a few years
Speaker 1: before Bob was a thing. And so back in Microsoft
Speaker 1: launched a program called Microsoft Publisher. It's a desktop publishing program,
Speaker 1: and it was the first program from Microsoft that included wizards. Now,
Speaker 1: wizards are not you know, it's not Harry Potter coming
Speaker 1: out and waving a lawn saying regard en leviosa or
Speaker 1: a loha mora or uh avauta cadavera. It's instead a
Speaker 1: little a little help pop up. Yeah, that's supposed to
Speaker 1: guide you through a complicated process step by step. So
Speaker 1: This was a big help for someone who maybe was
Speaker 1: not familiar with this particular process or very rarely used it.
Speaker 1: And uh, and would just follow along on the directions
Speaker 1: as opposed to having to thumb through a four page manual.
Speaker 1: Right and and and Microsoft Publisher was was pretty popular.
Speaker 1: It was designed by Karen Fries and Barry Lynnette. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Karen Fries is going to become important in a
Speaker 1: little bit and uh and right when when they were
Speaker 1: you know, they had finished with Publisher, it was out
Speaker 1: in the world. It was doing great, and they were like,
Speaker 1: what else can we do? What is our next project?
Speaker 1: We want to keep helping newbs. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: news was a term. Yeah, no, but that's that's that's
Speaker 1: exactly you know, we're going to translate it for the
Speaker 1: kids of today. We're really the kids of about six
Speaker 1: seven years ago. But anyway, yes, uh. They wanted to
Speaker 1: continue to develop software that would help people who otherwise
Speaker 1: would be unfamiliar and maybe intimidated by software. So that's
Speaker 1: when they started to look into the possibility of developing
Speaker 1: a full graphics user interface designed with these nubes in mind.
Speaker 1: Originally they were calling it Data Wizard, and then that
Speaker 1: eventually had the code name Utopia, but by the time
Speaker 1: time it was finally going to launch, it had of
Speaker 1: course changed to Microsoft. Bob was designed as an alternative
Speaker 1: interface as as Lawrence said earlier for Windows three point
Speaker 1: one and even Windows and TU It's supported programs designed
Speaker 1: for BOB, So it supported its own programs designed for
Speaker 1: that operating system or rather that user interface. Uh. It
Speaker 1: also supported Windows programs and it supported DOSS programs. So
Speaker 1: the idea was that this would be able to support
Speaker 1: anything that a person would want to run on a PC.
Speaker 1: So but but you know, through through this filter that
Speaker 1: would allow people who are unfamiliar with computers to to
Speaker 1: set everything up the way they would want it, you know,
Speaker 1: with with minimum complication. Right. So, so Karen Fries became
Speaker 1: the the project lead for this particular project. The lead
Speaker 1: developer was a guy named Gabe Newell. Do you recognize
Speaker 1: that name? Gabe Newell. Newell was one of the co
Speaker 1: founders of Valve. Yeah. So Gabe Newell all, so, uh,
Speaker 1: someone who in his post Microsoft years, which are the
Speaker 1: last like two and a half decades, has been um, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I say last two decades has been more
Speaker 1: than a little critical of his old company. Uh, he's
Speaker 1: He's definitely leveled some pretty hefty criticisms against some major
Speaker 1: Microsoft releases. But he worked on on Microsoft Bob. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's what kind of left a certain bad taste in
Speaker 1: his mouth or something. I can see that. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the the person at Microsoft who was kind of overseeing
Speaker 1: the whole thing, who was guiding it was uh, well,
Speaker 1: when she first started working on the project, her name
Speaker 1: was Melinda French, but then kind of in the middle
Speaker 1: of it, she became Melinda Gates. Yes, so Bill Gates's wife.
Speaker 1: Melinda was the head of the whole marketing marketing side.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, she was essentially kind of like
Speaker 1: the face. She was a cheerleader, but certainly which which
Speaker 1: led some people to suggest, perhaps snarkily, maybe not even
Speaker 1: perhaps narctly, just definitely that the reason why Bob went
Speaker 1: as far as it did was because of who was
Speaker 1: behind it, as opposed to the merits of the operating system.
Speaker 1: But let's be fair, the idea behind Bob was solid.
Speaker 1: It was a solid idea of let's create something that
Speaker 1: is very accessible and intuitive and comforting, and and they
Speaker 1: tried to use some really hard data to support their
Speaker 1: design decisions. They actually uh contacted a couple of professors
Speaker 1: from Stanford to act as project consultants, Clifford Nas and
Speaker 1: Byron Reeves, and they their their area especially it was
Speaker 1: figuring out, well, how how do people communicate, how do
Speaker 1: they access information? How do they process information? And their
Speaker 1: point of view is that the more natural you can
Speaker 1: make an interaction, the more readily someone will understand it
Speaker 1: and adapt and want to interact with it. Exactly, So
Speaker 1: you have to create an environment that it just it
Speaker 1: feels natural and makes sense. Now that's obviously a very
Speaker 1: a very clear motivation. I mean, we we've seen that
Speaker 1: in products since I think the iPad is a great
Speaker 1: example of that. It was a design where it's very
Speaker 1: intuitive to use. You give an iPad to a kid,
Speaker 1: that kid masters the iPad and no time flat without
Speaker 1: ever having to ask how something works. Yeah, they've they've
Speaker 1: they've done those those great studies in in Africa with
Speaker 1: kids who can't even read, have never been exposed to
Speaker 1: anything like this before, and they just take off with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean that that's sort of the idea here.
Speaker 1: They wanted to design something they had that same sort
Speaker 1: of approach and appeal so that they could help people
Speaker 1: who otherwise wouldn't be intimidated by computers. So in January seven,
Speaker 1: Bill Gates took the stage at c E S and
Speaker 1: unveiled Bob. He showed off also a future project that
Speaker 1: was Bob related called p D, which was a c
Speaker 1: G I parrot that could respond to verbal requests. And
Speaker 1: then on March one, they released Microsoft Bob. Uh, the
Speaker 1: full retail price if you're buying the full thing, was
Speaker 1: as but it mostly sold that around which still pretty
Speaker 1: expensive software. Yeah yeah, and by comparison today due to inflation,
Speaker 1: that would be worth about a hundred and forty so
Speaker 1: whereas Windows eight costs about ninety on the market. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it definitely was a little expensive. It said on
Speaker 1: the box that did not come with a manual, but
Speaker 1: it came with a manual, or at least it was
Speaker 1: called Bob's Magazine, so it was trying to be packaged,
Speaker 1: not as manual, but it was a twenty nine page
Speaker 1: list of instructions. And uh, did you hear about Microsoft
Speaker 1: Press and the book that they published. I I did
Speaker 1: not what happened? They published a book called At Home
Speaker 1: with Bob. At Home with Bob, which was a companion
Speaker 1: guide and it was two hundred and ten pages long. Goodness,
Speaker 1: miss a lot guide for something that doesn't need a
Speaker 1: guy to Yeah, that's when you don't need a guide.
Speaker 1: You go wholeheartedly down to your Microsoft. I teased them,
Speaker 1: I certainly couldn't build a graphics user interface at all.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what Bob was really like, How,
Speaker 1: how how what kind of operating our user interface was it?
Speaker 1: Just for perspective, real quick, um, Bob was was dead
Speaker 1: in the water by early To give you an idea
Speaker 1: of how well this went. Microsoft pulled the plug in
Speaker 1: ninety six. So when it went less than a full
Speaker 1: year before, Microsoft said all right, this is this is
Speaker 1: not gonna work. And we'll get into why they made
Speaker 1: that decision. And some people might even argue that it
Speaker 1: was kind of a like the deck was stacked against them,
Speaker 1: that the Bob was not as horrible as it was
Speaker 1: given at it. I disagree for one major reason, but
Speaker 1: I'll get into that in the in a little bit
Speaker 1: later in the podcast. So, so here we have the idea.
Speaker 1: The whole idea is, let's create a graphics user interface.
Speaker 1: It's very relatable and easy to use and and intuitive.
Speaker 1: How did Microsoft go about it? What was Bob? Bob
Speaker 1: was a it was a house. It was it was you.
Speaker 1: You enter Bob's house, and in Bob's house, there are
Speaker 1: visual representations of everything that you would hypothetically want to
Speaker 1: do with your computer exactly, Like like there's a there's
Speaker 1: a living room that you're looking into, right, so and so.
Speaker 1: Instead of a desktop where you have icons that you
Speaker 1: click on, you're looking into a clip art living room.
Speaker 1: Vector graphics. Yes, two and fifty six colors, super fancy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If if you don't, if you've never seen pictures, link them,
Speaker 1: it's spectacular. Anyone who's used any of the old Microsoft
Speaker 1: Office products that had lots and lots of clip art
Speaker 1: in them, and you've looked through those clip arts and
Speaker 1: you thought, wow, that's what Bob was made up of.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of animation involved. Every everything
Speaker 1: was kind of cute. See yes, everything was very cartoonish.
Speaker 1: And you had a personal assistant, series of personal assistants,
Speaker 1: and the one that it came the standard one, the
Speaker 1: one that would just be there as soon as you
Speaker 1: started up, was Rover Retriever. The personal assistance would later
Speaker 1: come into play in versions of Microsoft Office, like Microsoft
Speaker 1: Office nineties seven. We'll get into that too. So, um, anyway,
Speaker 1: you're that your guide when you first start off as
Speaker 1: Rover Retriever, you could change him later, and I think
Speaker 1: that'll be fun to talk about when we get into
Speaker 1: the features. I've got a list exciting, Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: I got a couple of things I want to say
Speaker 1: about some of those those guys. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to talk about what it
Speaker 1: was like to first enter to just so, so I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna I'm gonna paint you a picture with words.
Speaker 1: So you activate Microsoft Bob. You know, you've installed it
Speaker 1: on your computer, assuming your computer could run it. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that too. And when it first starts, you
Speaker 1: are greeted by the sight of a big red door,
Speaker 1: and in the center of that big red door is
Speaker 1: a gold door knocker, and that door knocker says Microsoft
Speaker 1: Bob on it, So you have to click on the knocker,
Speaker 1: which then makes the knocker knock on the door. And
Speaker 1: you didn't have to have a sound card with Bob,
Speaker 1: but it was recommended because there were many noises, so
Speaker 1: many noises, including one such your personal assistant would occasionally
Speaker 1: make at you, but you would knock on the door
Speaker 1: and Rover Retriever shows up and says, uh, hey, I
Speaker 1: see you're trying to break into my house. Actually he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you're coming in. Uh click on who you
Speaker 1: are and a little list pops up. Now, on your
Speaker 1: first visit, there's no one. You can't select a name
Speaker 1: because you haven't gotten and registered one yet, so the
Speaker 1: only voice that's there is guest. So guest was there
Speaker 1: so that you could let a friend log in without
Speaker 1: having to create a full account and use your computer
Speaker 1: to do whatever the right, so you could click guests.
Speaker 1: But if you did click guests, then you would get
Speaker 1: another message from Rover, who would say, are you sure
Speaker 1: you don't want to go ahead and create a profile? Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't really see that option earlier, but sure, why not.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's make a profile. So Rover would then
Speaker 1: ask if you are new to the home or if
Speaker 1: you had once been on the list, but now can
Speaker 1: no longer find your name on the list because one
Speaker 1: of the things you can do is add and remove people,
Speaker 1: or really you can remove people from the list once
Speaker 1: you've joined it. So this would be something like, let's
Speaker 1: say that you know you've kicked your no good son
Speaker 1: out of the house because he's thirty four and really
Speaker 1: he needs to go and make his own way in
Speaker 1: the world. Now, I'm just using this as a hypothetical.
Speaker 1: I don't have a kid, and if I had a
Speaker 1: kid who was thirty four and have a lot of
Speaker 1: explained to do. Anyway, so you kicked your thirty four
Speaker 1: year old son out of the house, and you've changed it.
Speaker 1: You've removed him from Microsoft Bob. So if he does
Speaker 1: come back, he's not gonna be able to use the computer.
Speaker 1: That would be the reason for that, right, So you
Speaker 1: would have to answer that question like are you new
Speaker 1: or were you essentially kicked off? And so let's say
Speaker 1: that you're new. You know, this is your first time
Speaker 1: using Bob. You haven't alienated yourself from your friends and
Speaker 1: family yet. So you click on new. Then it asks
Speaker 1: you to enter in your first name, your preferred name,
Speaker 1: your last name, your hometown, your birthday, and your gender,
Speaker 1: which you could set to not telling. But every yeah,
Speaker 1: every single field required you gotta film and and this
Speaker 1: will come back later because these little these little cartoon
Speaker 1: guides needed to know things about you so that they
Speaker 1: could talk to you about stuff. Yeah, yeah, they did.
Speaker 1: So you filled this part out. Now are prompted to
Speaker 1: create a password for your account. And one of the
Speaker 1: funny things I thought about this was that it actually
Speaker 1: explains to you what the asterisks are as you type
Speaker 1: in your password. You know how the password field starts
Speaker 1: filling up with asterisks, because if it showed you in
Speaker 1: plain text what the password was, that wouldn't be very secure. Yes,
Speaker 1: someone staying behind you can see it, and so it
Speaker 1: actually explains that concept. And again, Bob's designed for people
Speaker 1: who are brand new to computer right, No, no, I
Speaker 1: I can see someone, um, you know, for example, my
Speaker 1: grandmother plays a lot of solitaire, but is mostly confused
Speaker 1: about other things on computers that could be useful. Right,
Speaker 1: So so yeah, if you're sitting there thinking, wait, I
Speaker 1: didn't hit the asterisk button, why is that popping up,
Speaker 1: it would actually explain it to me. It sounds silly
Speaker 1: simply because I've been using computers for so long it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to even imagine that. But then again,
Speaker 1: I was not the target market for Bob. Uh I'm
Speaker 1: not sure who was. So then after that point, after
Speaker 1: you created it, you had to type in your password
Speaker 1: a second time. Uh, and if you mistype the password
Speaker 1: the second time, you would get a prompt telling you
Speaker 1: that it did not match the first pass where and
Speaker 1: you had to try again. That's gonna become really important
Speaker 1: in a little while. So next you would then, once
Speaker 1: you get through the password creation process, you would enter
Speaker 1: in your actual address and time zone, so not just
Speaker 1: your hometown, your full address. And again it's required, so
Speaker 1: you have to put the whole thing in there and
Speaker 1: the time zone that you are in. Then you would
Speaker 1: have to create at least one private room. So remember
Speaker 1: Bob is a house. Most of those rooms in that
Speaker 1: house are public when it starts off, which means that
Speaker 1: anyone who joins on to your computer can access those
Speaker 1: public rooms. But if you wanted to create a private
Speaker 1: room where only your stuff would be, like you know,
Speaker 1: programs that you only want to have access to, you
Speaker 1: could do that. Um. So, if if you wanted to
Speaker 1: access a private room, you would have to be logged
Speaker 1: in under that I D so, uh, Lauren would not
Speaker 1: be able to go into my room because of that,
Speaker 1: except we'll talk about how she totally could do that
Speaker 1: pretty soon. And then finally, the last step would be
Speaker 1: that you would it would ask you if it wanted
Speaker 1: to import other programs besides the Bob programs that came
Speaker 1: standard with Microsoft Bob. So I would ask if you
Speaker 1: wanted to import Dawson Windows programs. Uh. That step is
Speaker 1: absolutely necessary. If you had completely lost your mind to
Speaker 1: decide to use Bob as your graphics user interface for
Speaker 1: everything and say I'm not using any other interface at all,
Speaker 1: just Bob, you would need to be able to import
Speaker 1: those other programs. So that's the that's the process of
Speaker 1: creating your Bob account. We're gonna talk about the the
Speaker 1: the different features of Bob, the software that came with it,
Speaker 1: some of these uh, some of these assistants everything once
Speaker 1: that door opens and uh, and I'll start off with
Speaker 1: the big security flaw right after we take a short break,
Speaker 1: all right back to Bob. So you know I mentioned
Speaker 1: that there was a big security flaw. So Lauren, UM,
Speaker 1: let's say that you you have got Microsoft Bob. I've
Speaker 1: got a profile on there, my password, You've created a profile,
Speaker 1: You've created a password. Whenever you need to log in,
Speaker 1: you have to put your password in, and you have
Speaker 1: one of the one of the pieces of software, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about them in a minute, but one
Speaker 1: of the pieces of software there's is Bob is Bob's Checkbook.
Speaker 1: The idea that's a financial software so that you can,
Speaker 1: you know, manage your home finances. So presumably there could
Speaker 1: be some pretty pretty private information in that. And let's
Speaker 1: say you've you've thought of that, and you've actually put
Speaker 1: that particular program in your private, private room. So yes,
Speaker 1: it's not in a public room, so I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: just have it across it stumble through it. Right. If
Speaker 1: it were in a public room, that would be bad. Um.
Speaker 1: But you've created your password and everything, and then I think, huh,
Speaker 1: I really want to learn what Lauren's bank account number is.
Speaker 1: So I try and log in as Lauren. When you
Speaker 1: try and log in, uh, and you don't have the
Speaker 1: right password. After three attempts, it says, I you know
Speaker 1: that's not the right password. Do you want to reset
Speaker 1: your password? And you say yes. Instead of it then
Speaker 1: taking you to like sending an email or linking you somehow,
Speaker 1: there's because it's looking for nubs. It's saying, well, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll just let you reset your password right now.
Speaker 1: So I could then reset Lawren's password, so not only
Speaker 1: would I have access to her account, I would lock
Speaker 1: her out have access to my account anymore. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: until you tried to enter the password three times and
Speaker 1: then you could reset yourself, and so would essentially just
Speaker 1: become the two of us resetting that password over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, until you gave up and said,
Speaker 1: I do not want this on my computer. Huge, huge
Speaker 1: security flaw. Nothing is private. Well yeah, that's uh, that's
Speaker 1: the idea. I had not heard about that part of it,
Speaker 1: and that is very special. And I wouldn't even need
Speaker 1: to have an account. I mean, all I would need
Speaker 1: is access to your computer because just going in as
Speaker 1: a guest, I could do that. And uh yeah, so
Speaker 1: there was no such thing as privacy or security with Bob.
Speaker 1: It had this just ridiculously massive vulnerability. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: might as well not even have a password system at
Speaker 1: that point, because if all it takes is three failed
Speaker 1: logins and then you can reset the password, that's that's
Speaker 1: like having no password at all. Yeah. Same sort of
Speaker 1: problems existed with removing people from a list. So let's
Speaker 1: say that, um, let's let's have an interesting hypothetical situation here.
Speaker 1: Let's say that for some reason how stuff works decides
Speaker 1: to switch completely over to Microsoft Bob and we all
Speaker 1: have a shared environment. That sounds like the worst thing.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about more reasons why they're forced in
Speaker 1: a second, But alright, so we have a shared environment.
Speaker 1: One of the things anyone can do, whether they are
Speaker 1: logged into Microsoft Bob or not, is remove someone from
Speaker 1: that list. So I could go in and say, Josh,
Speaker 1: creepy hands Clark, you do not get access to the
Speaker 1: computer anymore. Delete Josh, even as a guest could say,
Speaker 1: guess what, Jonathan, neither can you delete? Or guess what
Speaker 1: job that I'm can logging as you? Password? Password, password reset?
Speaker 1: You know, it's just ridiculous and um And part of
Speaker 1: the supposed appeal of Bob was that you could change
Speaker 1: the decor of any room. Right, you can make a
Speaker 1: room look the way you wanted based upon the clipward
Speaker 1: that you're unavailable. They had windows in these rooms, so
Speaker 1: you can change the scenery outside. Yeah, you can make
Speaker 1: it like a space or field, pretty sunset. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: keep in mind this is all clip art based stuff.
Speaker 1: But that meant that anyone else could do the same thing,
Speaker 1: especially especially in the public rooms. So public rooms, anyone
Speaker 1: could go in there, move stuff around, change the layout,
Speaker 1: delete things, putting new things in, which means that if
Speaker 1: Lauren lugs in and she says, oh, this doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense, I'm going to rearrange everything so that makes
Speaker 1: sense to to the way my brain works. And she
Speaker 1: lays it out and an eye glogg and I'm like,
Speaker 1: this doesn't make any sense, and I change it all
Speaker 1: around so it make says to me, Lauren lugs back in,
Speaker 1: it's changed completely from the last time she used it,
Speaker 1: and it's going every time someone uses it and changes it,
Speaker 1: it's going to be affective. Now in the example I'm using,
Speaker 1: I'm suggesting that somehow we all have a networked user
Speaker 1: interface that is as persistent across all our computers. In reality,
Speaker 1: we're talking about one machine, one PC in a home.
Speaker 1: But if it's a family PC and everyone logs into it,
Speaker 1: then the kids could sit there and say like, I
Speaker 1: don't like that chair, delete and uh. Same thing for
Speaker 1: the programs. The programs will be represented by various objects
Speaker 1: right right. Either the main ones were by objects in
Speaker 1: the room, and anything that you added in from Windows
Speaker 1: or daster, etcetera. Would be a little file box with
Speaker 1: an icon on the front of it. Right, so if
Speaker 1: you wanted to to activate any of those, uh, those
Speaker 1: main programs, you would have to click on the icon,
Speaker 1: but you could actually change the size of the icon.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you thought, you know, that checkbook
Speaker 1: needs to be three times the size that it currently is,
Speaker 1: you could totally do that. So it was chaos. You know,
Speaker 1: if you had more than one user using that computer,
Speaker 1: there was no guarantee that your experience was going to
Speaker 1: be remotely similar from one instance to the next, so
Speaker 1: that was a big issue as well. Um, that's also
Speaker 1: less intuitive. I mean, if you if you're designing this
Speaker 1: for someone who really doesn't know what they're doing, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that that would be helpful. Yeah. And uh
Speaker 1: and once you had that that profile created in your
Speaker 1: inside the home of Microsoft Bob, you had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to take the home tour. The home tour did not
Speaker 1: leave the room you were in, So whatever room you
Speaker 1: were in, you would stay in there for the home
Speaker 1: tour and it would get go through about sixteen prompts
Speaker 1: of information. Uh. So we had someone on Facebook ask
Speaker 1: us a question, specifically saying, is this where Clippy came from? Yes,
Speaker 1: and no, the assistance that you could get in Bob
Speaker 1: were acting very much in the same way that Clippy
Speaker 1: on Microsoft Office and seven and word would perform. You
Speaker 1: know that, Like, I see you're trying to write a resume?
Speaker 1: Would you like some help? Uh? The same sort of
Speaker 1: thing was in Bob. In fact, that was one of
Speaker 1: the few things to carry over into other Microsoft products. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: the dog from the Windows XP search function was basically
Speaker 1: retriever U there. When we talk about some of the
Speaker 1: other personal assistants, you'll recognize that at least one of
Speaker 1: them did make it into Microsoft Office. A Clippy was
Speaker 1: not in Bob, but he Clipping, in his own little way,
Speaker 1: was hated just as much as Bob was. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you could uh and and you would have to go
Speaker 1: from room to room inside Bob in order to access
Speaker 1: all the different programs, and that was not always the
Speaker 1: most intuitive thing to do, which was unfortunate considering that
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of Bob was to make using computers
Speaker 1: even easier. Um and so yeah, you could just sit
Speaker 1: there and change out clip art to your heart's content.
Speaker 1: So I guess we can talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: about the actual requirements, the software and and sort of
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the navigation that once you're
Speaker 1: in Bob. Um. I'm still reeling over the fact that
Speaker 1: essentially everyone had administrative rights on Bob no matter what,
Speaker 1: whether they were logged in or not. That's kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: all right, Okay, So, so the so the programs that
Speaker 1: came native to Bob included a household Manager UM, which
Speaker 1: was kind of kind of kind of life tips and
Speaker 1: home organizational kind of things like if we needed it
Speaker 1: to do list or something like that. I think that
Speaker 1: that was part of that function. Yeah, you could also
Speaker 1: do that of the calendar as well. Um. It did
Speaker 1: have a note on it that the textual information may
Speaker 1: not be accurate or complete, and it is not intended
Speaker 1: to replace consultation with a professional, which really entertains me
Speaker 1: because I'm like, yeah, we're just we just wrote some stuff. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there was the Bob letter Writer. Yes, one should help
Speaker 1: you write letter. I see you're trying to write a letter.
Speaker 1: And that was very much like Clippy to the point
Speaker 1: where you could tell Bob what sort of letter you
Speaker 1: were writing and to what sort of person you were writing,
Speaker 1: and it would fill out, it would auto fill out
Speaker 1: an entire letter that's so awful, might not at all
Speaker 1: related to what you want to say. Um. I almost
Speaker 1: only want to communicate in those now, just to see
Speaker 1: how how far I could get using only Bob created letters. Uh,
Speaker 1: and and just see if I could communicate my point
Speaker 1: across through auto film messages. So Lauren, you've got something
Speaker 1: to look forward to in the upcoming week. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you Microsoft for making this possible. Um. I'm sorry, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: Please don't please don't kill me. Um. There was a
Speaker 1: financial guide Bob Checkbook, which was also compatible with Microsoft's
Speaker 1: money software. Right Uh that calendar the Jonathan mentioned an
Speaker 1: address book. You could sign up for a Bob email account.
Speaker 1: I totally wish I had one of those. This was
Speaker 1: this was It was an extra charge at the time
Speaker 1: and went only through a proprietary email client. You couldn't
Speaker 1: just sign up any email client that you wanted to
Speaker 1: take through the system. Still want and then Geo Safari
Speaker 1: at the game. It was a little game with an education.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of There are a couple of
Speaker 1: of little assistance that would pop up for specific programs,
Speaker 1: and one of them was a little elephant guy who
Speaker 1: would pop up in Geo Safari. So while you're playing
Speaker 1: the game, this little elephant dude shows up and asks
Speaker 1: you questions about various areas or even not just geography,
Speaker 1: but also animals. So I actually watched a video of
Speaker 1: this demonstrated where a person was playing it, and it
Speaker 1: gave you pairs of animals and explained their relationship to
Speaker 1: each other. So shark and fish would be predator and prey, uh.
Speaker 1: And then a what was the one like a shark
Speaker 1: and a lamp prey would be a partner animal partnership,
Speaker 1: so a symbiotic relationship. And then like a deer and
Speaker 1: a tick, which would be a parasite parasitic relationship. And
Speaker 1: then what it would do is it would show you
Speaker 1: two animals and you had to figure out which of
Speaker 1: those three categories as two animals would would fall into
Speaker 1: that that pair would fall into. So that was an
Speaker 1: example of that geosph Are game. But most of the game,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, was really more of geography than
Speaker 1: uh than biology right right anyway, So that was one
Speaker 1: of those little assistances that would pop up for a
Speaker 1: specific instance, but there were other assistants as well. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had I've got a whole list here. We've got
Speaker 1: blithe the firefly, Hopper, the bunny, or be the globe ruby.
Speaker 1: Uh it was. It was basically an angry bird before
Speaker 1: before angry birds were a thing. Um Shelly the turtle, Speaker,
Speaker 1: the the speaker. It was a little little icon of
Speaker 1: a of a like a noise making computer speaker. Um Chaos,
Speaker 1: the cat, Java the dinosaur. I think Scus the rat
Speaker 1: because the mouse it was a mouse, not a rat.
Speaker 1: Hey goes a link to a blunt det digger the worm.
Speaker 1: Um and William Shakespeare are the ones you forgot. The
Speaker 1: most important one. It's the most important important ones. There's
Speaker 1: the dot. The dot was a giant red dot, the
Speaker 1: big smiley face. But the most important one was bodal
Speaker 1: Lair the French gargoyle. How could you leave out bode Lair,
Speaker 1: the French gargoyle. I had I had heard tell of
Speaker 1: a gargoyle, but I didn't have its name, and I
Speaker 1: didn't I didn't want to. His name was Bodelaire. Well
Speaker 1: he's a gargoyle. His French guys. Lauren and I have
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about Microsoft Bob. But before
Speaker 1: we get to that, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Each of these assistants had its own
Speaker 1: kind of personality in a way, in the sense that
Speaker 1: it would some of them would be a little more
Speaker 1: active than others. Some would would be faster to jump
Speaker 1: in and offer suggestions than others. Apparently, Scuzzie the mouse
Speaker 1: was really apathetic, just just didn't care. Bode Laire was
Speaker 1: supposedly very quiet unless you specifically clicked on bodel are
Speaker 1: to to get some help. Some of them were a
Speaker 1: little more proactive, right, And they all had different different
Speaker 1: words that they would use. They had a different vocabulary,
Speaker 1: and for example, one of the words that Rover really
Speaker 1: liked using the scrumptious as as in, I'm just one
Speaker 1: of a scrumptious gang of personal guides here to help
Speaker 1: you find your way in the home. Dog uh blythe
Speaker 1: would say, oi a lot, I'm not joking, that's wonderfully
Speaker 1: back off the things. Yeah, because I read up on
Speaker 1: these um Yeah. So so anyway, if you if this
Speaker 1: sounds to you like this would be even more obnoxious
Speaker 1: than Clippy, you're pretty much on the right track. That
Speaker 1: does the feedback in fact that many people well, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously Clippy didn't exist yet as a as a point
Speaker 1: of reference, but yeah, uh and uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: have that personal assistant going with you wherever, so you
Speaker 1: could actually there was one choice. There was invisible, and
Speaker 1: Invisible was essentially no personal assistant. You could still get
Speaker 1: help if you really needed it, but you didn't have
Speaker 1: that that little animated character who was almost always in
Speaker 1: the lower right hand corner of your screen. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and these were characters that also like if if you
Speaker 1: were idle for an extended time, characters like like Rover
Speaker 1: or Chaos would go to sleep. And yeah, and occasionally
Speaker 1: they would interact with other stuff in the room to
Speaker 1: kind of be amusing. But I think I would have
Speaker 1: considered it distracting personally, but absolutely I agreed. Uh And
Speaker 1: then uh, yeah, it also had a I thought it
Speaker 1: was nice that that Bob came with some productivity software
Speaker 1: like letter Writer, in the sense that you didn't already
Speaker 1: have to go out and buy other software suites. You
Speaker 1: can do some basic computing stuff in Bob. It's a
Speaker 1: it's unfortunate that most of the navigation looked pretty complex.
Speaker 1: Actually it would it would pull up these these dialogue
Speaker 1: windows with lots of different choices. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: mean like RPG level choice. I mean like like seven
Speaker 1: different choices on all these menus. Right, so you see,
Speaker 1: you know, basic menu design. You want to try and
Speaker 1: keep it as simple as possible. But some of these
Speaker 1: menus had seven or more choices on them. And and
Speaker 1: now all of them were intuitive, like you couldn't really
Speaker 1: be like one of them might be change something, well
Speaker 1: that's not specific at all. What does that mean? And
Speaker 1: if you clicked on it, it it would allow you to
Speaker 1: do things like change the the view of the room,
Speaker 1: so whatever is in the wind, whatever is appearing in
Speaker 1: the window, or change which programs are there, or or
Speaker 1: or move to a different room. Um, you could add doorways,
Speaker 1: you could add rooms. Uh and uh you might think this, uh, this,
Speaker 1: this program probably didn't meet with too much success or
Speaker 1: acclaim and you'd you'd be correct entirely. According to PC Data,
Speaker 1: retail research firm, only around fifty eight thousand copies of
Speaker 1: Bob were ever sold. Um, by contrast, uh moved like
Speaker 1: two point seven five million copies and retail the first month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so fifty eight thousand for the almost the year or
Speaker 1: that it existed and that's it. Um. Also, Microsoft kind
Speaker 1: of shot itself in the foot. They distributed copies review
Speaker 1: copies to journalists back in December, right with with an
Speaker 1: embargo on reviews until only until after CS and not
Speaker 1: until the product launched, right and so at CS, Bill
Speaker 1: Gates gets up talks about it. But at that point
Speaker 1: the embargo lifts, which means that the journalists are allowed
Speaker 1: to write their thoughts on Microsoft Bob. And they did
Speaker 1: and some of them were how they did, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: yeah one one. One guy said that much much of
Speaker 1: the behavior of these of these characters that are running
Speaker 1: around helping you out will be unappealing to people seriously
Speaker 1: bent on getting a lot of their PCs, or two
Speaker 1: adults of any kind for that matter, essentially saying that
Speaker 1: anyone who's not a kid is going to hate this, right,
Speaker 1: and that that is the thing. You know. That's I
Speaker 1: feel like, even if if I were completely new to
Speaker 1: computers had never used your scene one, if I had
Speaker 1: a cartoon talking to me about what I want to do,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It feels like it's a toy. It feels
Speaker 1: like it's it feels like it's a toy, and it
Speaker 1: feels like it's talking down to you. UM, and I
Speaker 1: mean to be fair. When Microsoft was showing off the
Speaker 1: assistance way back with publisher there were the response was
Speaker 1: very positive. People were saying, this is fantastic because these
Speaker 1: these programs are getting so complicated that I just don't
Speaker 1: know how to do some of the things that you know,
Speaker 1: I occasionally need to do, but I don't do so
Speaker 1: frequently that I've memorized the path to do this. And
Speaker 1: I want this for everything. And Microsoft heard those those
Speaker 1: cries and ran with it to the point where people
Speaker 1: realized they didn't really want it for everything. They wanted
Speaker 1: it for stuff that was beyond an easy couple of cliques, right,
Speaker 1: And and that's that is where a lot of the
Speaker 1: later Wizards came out of. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we still have that on computers and it can still
Speaker 1: be useful. UM, and I think that they were. Some
Speaker 1: of their test audiences supposedly reacted very well to it. UM.
Speaker 1: According to an article in PC World, UM Fries had
Speaker 1: Karen Fries had remembered one man's response early on to
Speaker 1: to a to a little duck helper quote. This guy
Speaker 1: was very emotional about it. He grabbed my arm. He said,
Speaker 1: save all the money on the manuals and just give
Speaker 1: me this duck to always be there and tell me
Speaker 1: what to do, right. Yeah. Which again they ran with that,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately I think they took it to too far
Speaker 1: of an extreme. Also, Bob was a bit of a
Speaker 1: resource hog. Keep in mind this. In order to run it,
Speaker 1: you were the suggested minimum system requirements were to have
Speaker 1: a forty six CPU. Well, I remember those days. I
Speaker 1: actually had a two eighty six way back in the day.
Speaker 1: If you had a three day six, yeah, oh, super fast.
Speaker 1: They had to have thirty megabytes of free disk space. Again,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like much, but it was no. I
Speaker 1: mean at the time a thirty two card drive was
Speaker 1: large and uh and eight megabytes of memory, which was
Speaker 1: about twice as much as what most of the computers had.
Speaker 1: So for the time, you had to have a very
Speaker 1: powerful machine to be able to just run this and
Speaker 1: so and so. Yeah, and so you're talking someone who's
Speaker 1: who's never used computers before but has a better one
Speaker 1: than most other people. They have to go and spend
Speaker 1: a good amount of money. Um. They it did come
Speaker 1: standard on one of the Gateway computers. Um. The Bob
Speaker 1: was the standard user in their face for that machine.
Speaker 1: It's also fortunate for that gateway it had a different
Speaker 1: layout to it looked more like a barn than a house.
Speaker 1: Um beyond that, it was the same stuff. I just
Speaker 1: I just face palmed at that very idea excellent. I
Speaker 1: don't really have anything more to say about about that
Speaker 1: part of it. But also they there's some other there's
Speaker 1: another legacy that Bob left us. Although it's interesting, it's
Speaker 1: not actually used in Bob, but it was created for
Speaker 1: Bob and it has lived on in infamy ever since.
Speaker 1: It's something that is perhaps even more hated than Bob itself,
Speaker 1: maybe only because it's been persistent. Right we are, we
Speaker 1: are talking about the font comics stands, comics sands. That
Speaker 1: was a funt that was designed specifically for Bob, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't used in Bob, but that was then incorporated
Speaker 1: in future Microsoft releases. And and this this funt has
Speaker 1: received a lot of hate, a lot of hate. Well
Speaker 1: it was it was created originally because Microsoft designer Vincent
Speaker 1: Connair saw a beta of Bob and thought that time's
Speaker 1: new room and was that was the font being used
Speaker 1: in it at the time. And he was like, there's
Speaker 1: a disconnect between this fun, bubbly image that we're presenting
Speaker 1: and very terse formal font and so let's make something
Speaker 1: that looks like it came straight out of a comic
Speaker 1: book and then reaping the rewards and accolades for generations
Speaker 1: to come. You know what, I don't hate comic sands.
Speaker 1: I'll come on say it. I don't but to really
Speaker 1: love it, but I don't hate it. I know people, though,
Speaker 1: who have a violent reaction to I hated. In business emails, yes,
Speaker 1: if I get a business email from someone, it's in
Speaker 1: comic sense. It's hard to take that email seriously. You know,
Speaker 1: if it starts off with hey bozo, I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and read it, though, because then I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: now you're on Now you're speaking my language. I got you.
Speaker 1: Now we're on the same page. There's some sort of weird, ironic,
Speaker 1: sarcastic email, and now I need to know what it says.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think. I don't think I
Speaker 1: want to become a kind of hipster who uses comic
Speaker 1: fans on on purpose in an ironic way. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't want your emails to have a giant mustache. Now
Speaker 1: I do not That's fair alright, So, um, do you
Speaker 1: have anything else you want to say about Bob before
Speaker 1: we wrap it up? I think I think that is
Speaker 1: the complete breadth and depth of the story. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's funny that we were even able to do an
Speaker 1: episode on this. When I first thought about I was thinking,
Speaker 1: am I really gonna be able to talk about a
Speaker 1: product that only was out on the market for less
Speaker 1: than a year? It turns out yes we were because
Speaker 1: there was a lot to There were a lot of
Speaker 1: good ideas that went into the development of Bob. They
Speaker 1: just didn't get implemented in a way that was really useful. Actually,
Speaker 1: I do have one more story. I'm sorry completely lied
Speaker 1: to second to go about about the legacy of Bob.
Speaker 1: According to Raymond Chen for tech Net magazine, I know
Speaker 1: this story when when when Windows XP came out, it
Speaker 1: came out on c D and there were maybe about
Speaker 1: thirty megabytes of capacity left over on the CD, so
Speaker 1: thirty megabytes of free space, free space, sure, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to fill it up with some encrypted data that
Speaker 1: would be checked by the set up program as part
Speaker 1: of the installation and verification process. Right, Um, just just
Speaker 1: to you know, make make it a little bit more
Speaker 1: difficult for pirates to download it, right by by adding
Speaker 1: thirty megabytes to the to the size of the file,
Speaker 1: you would increase the download time significantly. Because remember this
Speaker 1: is back in this is not broadband time. We're talking
Speaker 1: about using a dial up modem. So if you're using
Speaker 1: a dial up modem to try and pirate software, thirty
Speaker 1: megabytes might be the difference between I'll go and do
Speaker 1: it or no, I'm not gonna do it. Um but so,
Speaker 1: but so instead of putting just random gobbledygook into that
Speaker 1: extra thirty eggs he um whoever was doing it, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if it was. If it could have it
Speaker 1: could have been a brave woman in our in our
Speaker 1: technical industry. Um uh used used the entirety of Bob.
Speaker 1: And that concludes this classic episode of tech Stuff. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoyed revisiting this old topic. Hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: never see the likes of Microsoft Bob again, but if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future episodes, let me know.
Speaker 1: Send me an email. The address for the show is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter handle it. Both
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