Back in 2005 when i was a full time carer for my Grandmother who had dementia, i taught her how to use some of the computer by using Microsoft Bob. It was easier for her to use as she was 86 at the time and it did help her to keep her mind active. Thats why i will always be grateful for this program. So i might be one of the few people who actually praise Bob. As an objective view, yes its not that good to be honest, The other alternative shells you have shown would be far better than this, but for me personally, it was a wonderful program who helped my grandmother when she needed it at the time.
In fact, the timing couldn't have been any worse. (4:58) Microsoft Bob came out the same year as Windows 95, so many people presumably waited for that operating system to be released rather than buying Microsoft Bob for their PCs. (8:28) And the hardware requirements of a 486 processor & 8 megabytes of RAM pretty much made people stick to their existing Windows 3.1 installations, until Windows 95 was released. (14:34)
I really like the fact that you don’t simply install the software and talk about it; you always take the time to « look under the hood », be curious about hidden details and try to better understand how things work. Thank you for another great vid 😄
I know I would have loved this UI as a kid and especially back then I think easy to understand UIs made people get used to computers much easier. There's a reason for why Macintosh machines were so popular especially for North America. Personally I remember using an UI later on 98SE or XP similar to Bob but that just launched installed programs and let you walk around in 3D environments. It was fun to me as a 12 or 13 years old albeit performance was really choppy with my machine back then.
The document file format looks like the generic OLE file format. You could try opening it with an OLE structured storage explorer app to at least see the information structure inside.
A solution looking for a problem. I just don't think it was as difficult as Microsoft thought for new users to get their heads around basic computer concepts like apps, icons, menu bars etc. Apple thought they could manage it back in the early 80s so why would people need to mess around with a cartoon and talk to a pretend dog when just a few hours of being shown how to use the PC by their children or grandchildren would work just as well and would involve human contact?
just noticed that creative writer basically introduced the ribbon bar! no joke, i would install it as part of my regular software toolbox for each setup. always loved the minimalistic, quirky, but tidy appearance. i guess i'll check soon how it behaves under ntvdmx64/otvdm/winevdm!
For 30 years I've been wondering why Microsoft, of all companies, has repeatedly violated the design guidelines of its own operating systems. e.g. also in the window decorations of office etc. (10:22)
design guidelines don't matter, they were foreshadowing what would happen to the web. every single web site is different and that's bad. designers can't stop trying to make things different, when all you want is boring win95 boxes and windows as apps. and nowadays everything is a stupid chromium "app"
That "ad" at 11:33 appears to have been completely made up, as not only does the date of 1996 not line up at all with when this product would've been initially sold, but also the fact that it uses "Start Me Up" well after the original Windows 95 ad campaign. The video in question was also uploaded on April 1st, and the channel has been known to create similar mockup commercial breaks.
TPC: *enters 3 letters password* me (thinking): I bet it was TPC he entered as a password. TPC (shows the contents of the database, namely the unencrypted password) me: I knew it!
I don't know if it can be found anymore but, there was a problem called Lightstep. There servers went down and they had no backup and thus thr project died.
Dunno if just me or audio mixing issues but the computer chronicles segments early on are so quiet I can't hear a thing unless I turn the volume up obscenely loud
I had to try different things until I was finally able to reproduce it using my mobile phone and a bluetooth speaker. It seems to be a mixing issues indeed. Although all segments have the same dB setting, the segments of the computer chronicles are in mono, whereas the rest is stereo. I can only guesswork that the bluetooth speaker, which in my case hase a 5.1 channel mode, seems to somehow mistake the mono signal as center signal, and thus reproduces these particular segments with a wrong volume. I'll have an eye on audio upmixes for any mono segments in the future. According to my tests, volume was ok after converting the mono segment to stereo. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
@@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR I appreciate the effort you went to to try to replicate my issue! Thanks for taking the time to reply to let me know too. mad respect for you as a creator, loving the content
I didn‘t check on Bob, TBH. There cerrainly was a hidden easter egg in Windows XP file search, I seem to remember by clicking Rover‘s dog tag, to bring up some new option like „show me a trick“.
@@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTORbasically it was a data harvester that used msagent to be a menial "desktop assistant". early versions were little more than asset flip (using the default peedy the parrot), but later versions had a custom model that was otherwise probably identical in terms of the underlying code - you could use any of the versions (v2-4?) and it would read from the same config, so i think they are mostly just carbon copies
Poor kids and poor grown-up kids, I installed Mandrake Linux 5.1 (the first edition, it was based on Red Hat 5.1) the other day and I didn't have to answer as many questions to get it set up 🙄
