4 years ago by alberth
Some trivia ... Melinda French was the GM over Microsoft Bob. She later married Bill Gates and is now known as Melinda Gates.
4 years ago by divbzero
She is listed in FINANCE.MDB as one of âRoverâs Awesome All Starsâ.
4 years ago by wincy
If that had happened today Bill Gates would have had to step down as CEO and would have been disgraced for fraternizing with an underling.
4 years ago by alberth
IIRC, when she married Bill - she resigned from the company.
4 years ago by jdsully
They dated for a long time before then and she actively had to meet with him in a work context for the famous BillG reviews. She's done interviews talking about how it was managed and how she wanted to be seen as still pulling her weight.
4 years ago by wincy
Right but it echoes the recent scandal at Intel, the details are different obviously but companies arenât exactly known for their careful and thoughtful consideration of heavy-handed policies
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Intel-CEO-resig...
4 years ago by DoreenMichele
Maybe we could view it is a case study in how to pull this off successfully instead of implying they did something wrong and actively spreading the current atmosphere of blight?
4 years ago by undefined
4 years ago by sp332
Um... ok?
4 years ago by wcfields
One quirky hack that no one asked for that I figured out in 1997: You can take the assistant files Rover, Skuz, Shelly, etc... and copy them into MS Office's assistant directory to get Bob assistants in Office!
4 years ago by bombcar
An interesting thing that we forget with Bob and Clippy is the people reviewing/commenting on it are almost by definition NOT the people it was aimed at. Having sold 58k copies, there must be some people who actually used it.
4 years ago by eysquared
It came pre-installed on my family's shiny new Gateway computer. As a kid I loved customizing my house and adding custom icons for things like games in my 'bedroom.'
It never replaced the actual desktop, but it was fun to go into my own 'house' on the family computer customized to my liking in the days before profiles and separate logins.
4 years ago by Jtsummers
Exactly. I'm curious how many sales were sales and how many were part of a PC bundle with other MS software. This is how we had it as well, with a Gateway 2000 PC purchase in 1995 (and I similarly enjoyed customizing my house in it).
4 years ago by acheron
Same here as well, got it with a Gateway 2000.
It was an interesting idea. I get the OP's point that a lot of the critics were not the target audience, but for the most part the target audience didn't take to it either. I guess I don't see that as a preordained conclusion, and I don't think of Bob as an obviously bad idea from the start, it was just one of the many new ideas PC developers were trying in the mid-90s as computers were rapidly expanding their reach.
4 years ago by rthomas6
I was also one of these kids. I even made a secret room under the rug where I put my games.
4 years ago by Talanes
In 1995 I was five years old, and the computer my Grandparents had bought us came with Microsoft Bob, and it was the only way I used the computer for a while.
I also remember an encyclopedia program that was wrapped in a virtual spaceship interface. For a bit, I just thought that these sort of graphical interfaces were what computing was.
4 years ago by wombat-man
as a kid I spent a lot of time customizing the house and sometimes playing the weird geography game in there. I think we had an irl one at school too.
It was kinda fun, even though it wasn't really a game.
4 years ago by guessbest
It was aimed at computers with a VGA card when it was released sometime between 1993 and 1994, which wasn't a very large market when I was a teenager then. But at the Dallas Sidewalk Sale on the Third Saturday someone had a demo of this with their prebuilt computers from their small business always had a large crowd.
4 years ago by msarnoff
One of the credited artists, Leslie Patricelli, is now a children's book author/illustrator.
4 years ago by ehnto
That's a remarkable number of Davids in the Developers list. Was the hiring manager named David by any chance?
4 years ago by dclowd9901
One of the commenters on the article remarks that there are more "Davids" on the team than women.
4 years ago by ac29
Names from the Bible (Adam, Michael, Paul, Peter, Matthew, David, etc) were and to some degree still are quite common among Americans.
4 years ago by acheron
These are the Daves I know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVzDIE0mr6A
4 years ago by prox
Theyâre all hired by HALL
4 years ago by moioci
Isn't the most lasting legacy of MS Bob the Comic Sans font?
4 years ago by laumars
No. Bob predates Comic Sans by a year or two.
Comic Sans was originally released as part of Microsoft Plus, and then later used in Comic Chat (their take on IRC). Comic Chat is an interesting enough topic to warrant its own discussion though.
4 years ago by 29athrowaway
There are some Microsoft Bob easter eggs in other Microsoft products.
The nerd emote from MSN Messenger comes from MS Bob. The dog is an assistant in MS Office. There might be more too.
4 years ago by tuckerpo
No Dave Plummer in contributors, odd
4 years ago by Zenst
No but he did use it as padding for CDROM distro of Windows so that the discs had unique ID's
The Secret history of Microsoft BOB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHu9OmLd8Y
4 years ago by userbinator
Sadly, that might be a bit of a joke/urban legend based on the fact that this is the only evidence I've found of anyone actually attempting to verify it:
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12476/did-the-w...
It mentions some interesting logic around OEMBIOS.BIN, which the OP or anyone else curious might want to investigate.
4 years ago by miohtama
This was awesome video. Bob the blob. How to make sure crypto is correct. A mathematician who could not take calls after 5pm.
4 years ago by Zenst
Oh he has many brilliantly told historical stories and on top, still gets his hands dirty and recently did benchmark of compilers. One of the few channels upon YT I'd recommend a sub.
4 years ago by LocalH
That means that teeeechnically, this easter egg exists on every such shipped copy of Windows XP
4 years ago by Zenst
Good point, one I shall raise with Dave next open chat. Fact he hates easter eggs as he does any hidden code. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't tell him.
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