Techstuff Classic: What about (Microsoft) Bob

And in this episode, Lauren Voge Obama and I go and revisit a beloved, enormous trash fire of a piece of software called Microsoft Bob. It was an attempt at making a graphic user interface for the common person, something that anyone could grasp, and it was about as big a misstep as you can imagine. So enjoy this classic episode. We're gonna tackle Bob and we're gonna wrestle him to the ground and probably give him noogies. But then so did the rest of the world. Yeah, if you don't

know what Bob is, don't feel badly about it. It was one of the biggest flops in Microsoft history, I think one of the biggest flops and kind of history period Time did this list of the fifty worst inventions ever, Time magazine. Time magazine, Yeah, back in, back in, and Bob was on there. I mean along with like tanning beds and hydrogen blimps. Hydrogen blimps not such a great thing.

Microsoft Bob possibly worse. It's killed killed fewer people, killed fewer people, But people dreams died that day when Microsoft Bob came out. Yes, that this was an interface for Windows three point one, and then later came out, Yeah it was. It was also for Windows in t So here's the thing, here's the thing. We're talking about era where the personal computer is starting to get some serious

try action, but still is not in most homes. In fact, Microsoft when they were talking about designing Bob and the launch of Bob, they were predicting that by I think it was n that PCs would be in forty six percent of households, and and and this was that this was a forty six percent in the incredible future. The idea of being that is a really big number. That

Microsoft's crazy to think that that many people would have computers. Well, the problem that Microsoft had identified as something that they needed to solve with brute force is that that someone who is unfamiliar with computers might find the operation of such a device to be intimidating and difficult, and the learning curve might be too too steep for your average

person who was not already familiar with computers. And certainly before Windows three point one came out, when it was just doss on say, just doss operation, I'm simply saying that it was perhaps not the most friendly thing to greet a person just just lines of code on a screen. I didn't need a friend, I needed an operating system. That's what Does gave me. And that is kind of that is kind of what what McIntosh was doing at

the time. And and and Apple was was kind of kicking a lot of button that arena because they were giving people something more friendly, more user friendly, and a little bit more intuitive, right, keep in minding, of course, Apple had a big jump on other computers because the Apple too was a very popular personal computer among mostly

hobbyists and people who were interested in computers. Because again that was that was in the line command days, we had the type stuff in when Apple introduced the Macintosh and the graphics user interface, Apple of course was not the the company to invent the graphics user interface, but they were the first ones to really successfully implement it in a personal computer platform, and people liked it. It was one of those things where things just made more sense.

It was it was it was a little more intuitive than having to type and memorize all these different commands that you would type into just get your computer to douce stuff. Well, Microsoft wanted to kind of um create its own graphic unit user interface, and that was the genesis of the Windows program. But even then they thought there's gotta be a way of making this simpler for the average person. Now, to really look at the development of Bob, you have to go back a few years

before Bob was a thing. And so back in Microsoft launched a program called Microsoft Publisher. It's a desktop publishing program, and it was the first program from Microsoft that included wizards. Now, wizards are not you know, it's not Harry Potter coming out and waving a lawn saying regard en leviosa or a loha mora or uh avauta cadavera. It's instead a little a little help pop up. Yeah, that's supposed to

guide you through a complicated process step by step. So This was a big help for someone who maybe was not familiar with this particular process or very rarely used it. And uh, and would just follow along on the directions as opposed to having to thumb through a four page manual. Right and and and Microsoft Publisher was was pretty popular.

It was designed by Karen Fries and Barry Lynnette. Yeah, and Karen Fries is going to become important in a little bit and uh and right when when they were you know, they had finished with Publisher, it was out in the world. It was doing great, and they were like, what else can we do? What is our next project? We want to keep helping newbs. I'm not sure if news was a term. Yeah, no, but that's that's that's exactly you know, we're going to translate it for the

kids of today. We're really the kids of about six seven years ago. But anyway, yes, uh. They wanted to continue to develop software that would help people who otherwise would be unfamiliar and maybe intimidated by software. So that's when they started to look into the possibility of developing a full graphics user interface designed with these nubes in mind.

Originally they were calling it Data Wizard, and then that eventually had the code name Utopia, but by the time time it was finally going to launch, it had of course changed to Microsoft. Bob was designed as an alternative interface as as Lawrence said earlier for Windows three point one and even Windows and TU It's supported programs designed for BOB, So it supported its own programs designed for that operating system or rather that user interface. Uh. It

also supported Windows programs and it supported DOSS programs. So the idea was that this would be able to support anything that a person would want to run on a PC. So but but you know, through through this filter that would allow people who are unfamiliar with computers to to set everything up the way they would want it, you know, with with minimum complication. Right. So, so Karen Fries became the the project lead for this particular project. The lead

developer was a guy named Gabe Newell. Do you recognize that name? Gabe Newell. Newell was one of the co founders of Valve. Yeah. So Gabe Newell all, so, uh, someone who in his post Microsoft years, which are the last like two and a half decades, has been um, well, I guess I say last two decades has been more than a little critical of his old company. Uh, he's He's definitely leveled some pretty hefty criticisms against some major

Microsoft releases. But he worked on on Microsoft Bob. Maybe that's what kind of left a certain bad taste in his mouth or something. I can see that. Uh. And the the person at Microsoft who was kind of overseeing the whole thing, who was guiding it was uh, well, when she first started working on the project, her name was Melinda French, but then kind of in the middle of it, she became Melinda Gates. Yes, so Bill Gates's wife. Melinda was the head of the whole marketing marketing side.

But also, you know, she was essentially kind of like the face. She was a cheerleader, but certainly which which led some people to suggest, perhaps snarkily, maybe not even perhaps narctly, just definitely that the reason why Bob went as far as it did was because of who was behind it, as opposed to the merits of the operating system. But let's be fair, the idea behind Bob was solid.

It was a solid idea of let's create something that is very accessible and intuitive and comforting, and and they tried to use some really hard data to support their design decisions. They actually uh contacted a couple of professors from Stanford to act as project consultants, Clifford Nas and Byron Reeves, and they their their area especially it was figuring out, well, how how do people communicate, how do

they access information? How do they process information? And their point of view is that the more natural you can make an interaction, the more readily someone will understand it and adapt and want to interact with it. Exactly, So you have to create an environment that it just it feels natural and makes sense. Now that's obviously a very a very clear motivation. I mean, we we've seen that in products since I think the iPad is a great example of that. It was a design where it's very

intuitive to use. You give an iPad to a kid, that kid masters the iPad and no time flat without ever having to ask how something works. Yeah, they've they've they've done those those great studies in in Africa with kids who can't even read, have never been exposed to anything like this before, and they just take off with it. Yeah, So I mean that that's sort of the idea here. They wanted to design something they had that same sort of approach and appeal so that they could help people

who otherwise wouldn't be intimidated by computers. So in January seven, Bill Gates took the stage at c E S and unveiled Bob. He showed off also a future project that was Bob related called p D, which was a c G I parrot that could respond to verbal requests. And then on March one, they released Microsoft Bob. Uh, the full retail price if you're buying the full thing, was as but it mostly sold that around which still pretty

expensive software. Yeah yeah, and by comparison today due to inflation, that would be worth about a hundred and forty so whereas Windows eight costs about ninety on the market. Yeah. Yeah, so it definitely was a little expensive. It said on the box that did not come with a manual, but it came with a manual, or at least it was called Bob's Magazine, so it was trying to be packaged, not as manual, but it was a twenty nine page list of instructions. And uh, did you hear about Microsoft

Press and the book that they published. I I did not what happened? They published a book called At Home with Bob. At Home with Bob, which was a companion guide and it was two hundred and ten pages long. Goodness, miss a lot guide for something that doesn't need a guy to Yeah, that's when you don't need a guide. You go wholeheartedly down to your Microsoft. I teased them, I certainly couldn't build a graphics user interface at all.

So let's talk about what Bob was really like, How, how how what kind of operating our user interface was it? Just for perspective, real quick, um, Bob was was dead in the water by early To give you an idea of how well this went. Microsoft pulled the plug in ninety six. So when it went less than a full year before, Microsoft said all right, this is this is not gonna work. And we'll get into why they made

that decision. And some people might even argue that it was kind of a like the deck was stacked against them, that the Bob was not as horrible as it was given at it. I disagree for one major reason, but I'll get into that in the in a little bit later in the podcast. So, so here we have the idea. The whole idea is, let's create a graphics user interface. It's very relatable and easy to use and and intuitive. How did Microsoft go about it? What was Bob? Bob was a it was a house. It was it was you.

You enter Bob's house, and in Bob's house, there are visual representations of everything that you would hypothetically want to do with your computer exactly, Like like there's a there's a living room that you're looking into, right, so and so. Instead of a desktop where you have icons that you click on, you're looking into a clip art living room. Vector graphics. Yes, two and fifty six colors, super fancy. Yeah. If if you don't, if you've never seen pictures, link them,

it's spectacular. Anyone who's used any of the old Microsoft Office products that had lots and lots of clip art in them, and you've looked through those clip arts and you thought, wow, that's what Bob was made up of. And there was a lot of animation involved. Every everything was kind of cute. See yes, everything was very cartoonish. And you had a personal assistant, series of personal assistants, and the one that it came the standard one, the one that would just be there as soon as you

started up, was Rover Retriever. The personal assistance would later come into play in versions of Microsoft Office, like Microsoft Office nineties seven. We'll get into that too. So, um, anyway, you're that your guide when you first start off as Rover Retriever, you could change him later, and I think that'll be fun to talk about when we get into the features. I've got a list exciting, Yeah, I got I got a couple of things I want to say

about some of those those guys. But before we do that, I want to I want to talk about what it was like to first enter to just so, so I'm just gonna I'm gonna paint you a picture with words. So you activate Microsoft Bob. You know, you've installed it on your computer, assuming your computer could run it. We'll

get into that too. And when it first starts, you are greeted by the sight of a big red door, and in the center of that big red door is a gold door knocker, and that door knocker says Microsoft Bob on it, So you have to click on the knocker,

which then makes the knocker knock on the door. And you didn't have to have a sound card with Bob, but it was recommended because there were many noises, so many noises, including one such your personal assistant would occasionally make at you, but you would knock on the door and Rover Retriever shows up and says, uh, hey, I see you're trying to break into my house. Actually he says, yeah, I know you're coming in. Uh click on who you are and a little list pops up. Now, on your

first visit, there's no one. You can't select a name because you haven't gotten and registered one yet, so the only voice that's there is guest. So guest was there so that you could let a friend log in without having to create a full account and use your computer to do whatever the right, so you could click guests. But if you did click guests, then you would get another message from Rover, who would say, are you sure

you don't want to go ahead and create a profile? Well, I didn't really see that option earlier, but sure, why not. Let's let's let's make a profile. So Rover would then ask if you are new to the home or if you had once been on the list, but now can no longer find your name on the list because one of the things you can do is add and remove people, or really you can remove people from the list once

you've joined it. So this would be something like, let's say that you know you've kicked your no good son out of the house because he's thirty four and really he needs to go and make his own way in the world. Now, I'm just using this as a hypothetical. I don't have a kid, and if I had a kid who was thirty four and have a lot of explained to do. Anyway, so you kicked your thirty four year old son out of the house, and you've changed it.

You've removed him from Microsoft Bob. So if he does come back, he's not gonna be able to use the computer. That would be the reason for that, right, So you would have to answer that question like are you new or were you essentially kicked off? And so let's say that you're new. You know, this is your first time using Bob. You haven't alienated yourself from your friends and

family yet. So you click on new. Then it asks you to enter in your first name, your preferred name, your last name, your hometown, your birthday, and your gender, which you could set to not telling. But every yeah, every single field required you gotta film and and this will come back later because these little these little cartoon guides needed to know things about you so that they could talk to you about stuff. Yeah, yeah, they did. So you filled this part out. Now are prompted to

create a password for your account. And one of the funny things I thought about this was that it actually explains to you what the asterisks are as you type in your password. You know how the password field starts filling up with asterisks, because if it showed you in plain text what the password was, that wouldn't be very secure. Yes, someone staying behind you can see it, and so it

actually explains that concept. And again, Bob's designed for people who are brand new to computer right, No, no, I I can see someone, um, you know, for example, my grandmother plays a lot of solitaire, but is mostly confused about other things on computers that could be useful. Right, So so yeah, if you're sitting there thinking, wait, I didn't hit the asterisk button, why is that popping up,

it would actually explain it to me. It sounds silly simply because I've been using computers for so long it's hard for me to even imagine that. But then again, I was not the target market for Bob. Uh I'm not sure who was. So then after that point, after you created it, you had to type in your password a second time. Uh, and if you mistype the password the second time, you would get a prompt telling you that it did not match the first pass where and

you had to try again. That's gonna become really important in a little while. So next you would then, once you get through the password creation process, you would enter in your actual address and time zone, so not just your hometown, your full address. And again it's required, so you have to put the whole thing in there and the time zone that you are in. Then you would have to create at least one private room. So remember

Bob is a house. Most of those rooms in that house are public when it starts off, which means that anyone who joins on to your computer can access those public rooms. But if you wanted to create a private room where only your stuff would be, like you know, programs that you only want to have access to, you

could do that. Um. So, if if you wanted to access a private room, you would have to be logged in under that I D so, uh, Lauren would not be able to go into my room because of that, except we'll talk about how she totally could do that pretty soon. And then finally, the last step would be that you would it would ask you if it wanted to import other programs besides the Bob programs that came standard with Microsoft Bob. So I would ask if you

wanted to import Dawson Windows programs. Uh. That step is absolutely necessary. If you had completely lost your mind to decide to use Bob as your graphics user interface for everything and say I'm not using any other interface at all, just Bob, you would need to be able to import those other programs. So that's the that's the process of

creating your Bob account. We're gonna talk about the the the different features of Bob, the software that came with it, some of these uh, some of these assistants everything once that door opens and uh, and I'll start off with the big security flaw right after we take a short break, all right back to Bob. So you know I mentioned that there was a big security flaw. So Lauren, UM, let's say that you you have got Microsoft Bob. I've got a profile on there, my password, You've created a profile,

You've created a password. Whenever you need to log in, you have to put your password in, and you have one of the one of the pieces of software, and we'll talk more about them in a minute, but one of the pieces of software there's is Bob is Bob's Checkbook. The idea that's a financial software so that you can, you know, manage your home finances. So presumably there could be some pretty pretty private information in that. And let's say you've you've thought of that, and you've actually put

that particular program in your private, private room. So yes, it's not in a public room, so I'm not gonna just have it across it stumble through it. Right. If it were in a public room, that would be bad. Um. But you've created your password and everything, and then I think, huh, I really want to learn what Lauren's bank account number is. So I try and log in as Lauren. When you try and log in, uh, and you don't have the right password. After three attempts, it says, I you know

that's not the right password. Do you want to reset your password? And you say yes. Instead of it then taking you to like sending an email or linking you somehow, there's because it's looking for nubs. It's saying, well, I guess I'll just let you reset your password right now. So I could then reset Lawren's password, so not only would I have access to her account, I would lock

her out have access to my account anymore. Wow, that's until you tried to enter the password three times and then you could reset yourself, and so would essentially just become the two of us resetting that password over and over and over again, until you gave up and said, I do not want this on my computer. Huge, huge security flaw. Nothing is private. Well yeah, that's uh, that's the idea. I had not heard about that part of it, and that is very special. And I wouldn't even need

to have an account. I mean, all I would need is access to your computer because just going in as a guest, I could do that. And uh yeah, so there was no such thing as privacy or security with Bob. It had this just ridiculously massive vulnerability. Uh. And you might as well not even have a password system at that point, because if all it takes is three failed logins and then you can reset the password, that's that's like having no password at all. Yeah. Same sort of

problems existed with removing people from a list. So let's say that, um, let's let's have an interesting hypothetical situation here. Let's say that for some reason how stuff works decides to switch completely over to Microsoft Bob and we all have a shared environment. That sounds like the worst thing. And we'll talk about more reasons why they're forced in a second, But alright, so we have a shared environment.

One of the things anyone can do, whether they are logged into Microsoft Bob or not, is remove someone from that list. So I could go in and say, Josh, creepy hands Clark, you do not get access to the computer anymore. Delete Josh, even as a guest could say, guess what, Jonathan, neither can you delete? Or guess what job that I'm can logging as you? Password? Password, password reset? You know, it's just ridiculous and um And part of the supposed appeal of Bob was that you could change

the decor of any room. Right, you can make a room look the way you wanted based upon the clipward that you're unavailable. They had windows in these rooms, so you can change the scenery outside. Yeah, you can make it like a space or field, pretty sunset. Yeah. Again, keep in mind this is all clip art based stuff. But that meant that anyone else could do the same thing,

especially especially in the public rooms. So public rooms, anyone could go in there, move stuff around, change the layout, delete things, putting new things in, which means that if Lauren lugs in and she says, oh, this doesn't make any sense, I'm going to rearrange everything so that makes

sense to to the way my brain works. And she lays it out and an eye glogg and I'm like, this doesn't make any sense, and I change it all around so it make says to me, Lauren lugs back in, it's changed completely from the last time she used it, and it's going every time someone uses it and changes it, it's going to be affective. Now in the example I'm using, I'm suggesting that somehow we all have a networked user

interface that is as persistent across all our computers. In reality, we're talking about one machine, one PC in a home. But if it's a family PC and everyone logs into it, then the kids could sit there and say like, I don't like that chair, delete and uh. Same thing for the programs. The programs will be represented by various objects right right. Either the main ones were by objects in the room, and anything that you added in from Windows or daster, etcetera. Would be a little file box with

an icon on the front of it. Right, so if you wanted to to activate any of those, uh, those main programs, you would have to click on the icon, but you could actually change the size of the icon. So if you're if you thought, you know, that checkbook needs to be three times the size that it currently is,

you could totally do that. So it was chaos. You know, if you had more than one user using that computer, there was no guarantee that your experience was going to be remotely similar from one instance to the next, so that was a big issue as well. Um, that's also less intuitive. I mean, if you if you're designing this for someone who really doesn't know what they're doing, I

can't imagine that that would be helpful. Yeah. And uh and once you had that that profile created in your inside the home of Microsoft Bob, you had the opportunity to take the home tour. The home tour did not leave the room you were in, So whatever room you were in, you would stay in there for the home tour and it would get go through about sixteen prompts of information. Uh. So we had someone on Facebook ask

us a question, specifically saying, is this where Clippy came from? Yes, and no, the assistance that you could get in Bob were acting very much in the same way that Clippy on Microsoft Office and seven and word would perform. You know that, Like, I see you're trying to write a resume? Would you like some help? Uh? The same sort of thing was in Bob. In fact, that was one of

the few things to carry over into other Microsoft products. Yeah. Also, the dog from the Windows XP search function was basically retriever U there. When we talk about some of the other personal assistants, you'll recognize that at least one of them did make it into Microsoft Office. A Clippy was not in Bob, but he Clipping, in his own little way,

was hated just as much as Bob was. Um. So yeah, you could uh and and you would have to go from room to room inside Bob in order to access all the different programs, and that was not always the most intuitive thing to do, which was unfortunate considering that the whole purpose of Bob was to make using computers even easier. Um and so yeah, you could just sit there and change out clip art to your heart's content.

So I guess we can talk a little bit about about the actual requirements, the software and and sort of a little bit more about the navigation that once you're in Bob. Um. I'm still reeling over the fact that essentially everyone had administrative rights on Bob no matter what,

whether they were logged in or not. That's kind of crazy, all right, Okay, So, so the so the programs that came native to Bob included a household Manager UM, which was kind of kind of kind of life tips and home organizational kind of things like if we needed it to do list or something like that. I think that that was part of that function. Yeah, you could also

do that of the calendar as well. Um. It did have a note on it that the textual information may not be accurate or complete, and it is not intended to replace consultation with a professional, which really entertains me because I'm like, yeah, we're just we just wrote some stuff. Anyway, there was the Bob letter Writer. Yes, one should help you write letter. I see you're trying to write a letter.

And that was very much like Clippy to the point where you could tell Bob what sort of letter you were writing and to what sort of person you were writing, and it would fill out, it would auto fill out an entire letter that's so awful, might not at all related to what you want to say. Um. I almost only want to communicate in those now, just to see how how far I could get using only Bob created letters. Uh, and and just see if I could communicate my point

across through auto film messages. So Lauren, you've got something to look forward to in the upcoming week. Thank you, Thank you Microsoft for making this possible. Um. I'm sorry, Microsoft, Please don't please don't kill me. Um. There was a financial guide Bob Checkbook, which was also compatible with Microsoft's money software. Right Uh that calendar the Jonathan mentioned an address book. You could sign up for a Bob email account.

I totally wish I had one of those. This was this was It was an extra charge at the time and went only through a proprietary email client. You couldn't just sign up any email client that you wanted to take through the system. Still want and then Geo Safari at the game. It was a little game with an education. There were a couple of There are a couple of of little assistance that would pop up for specific programs, and one of them was a little elephant guy who

would pop up in Geo Safari. So while you're playing the game, this little elephant dude shows up and asks you questions about various areas or even not just geography, but also animals. So I actually watched a video of this demonstrated where a person was playing it, and it gave you pairs of animals and explained their relationship to each other. So shark and fish would be predator and prey, uh. And then a what was the one like a shark and a lamp prey would be a partner animal partnership,

so a symbiotic relationship. And then like a deer and a tick, which would be a parasite parasitic relationship. And then what it would do is it would show you two animals and you had to figure out which of those three categories as two animals would would fall into that that pair would fall into. So that was an

example of that geosph Are game. But most of the game, from what I understand, was really more of geography than uh than biology right right anyway, So that was one of those little assistances that would pop up for a specific instance, but there were other assistants as well. Right, yeah, we had I've got a whole list here. We've got blithe the firefly, Hopper, the bunny, or be the globe ruby. Uh it was. It was basically an angry bird before

before angry birds were a thing. Um Shelly the turtle, Speaker, the the speaker. It was a little little icon of a of a like a noise making computer speaker. Um Chaos, the cat, Java the dinosaur. I think Scus the rat because the mouse it was a mouse, not a rat. Hey goes a link to a blunt det digger the worm. Um and William Shakespeare are the ones you forgot. The most important one. It's the most important important ones. There's the dot. The dot was a giant red dot, the

big smiley face. But the most important one was bodal Lair the French gargoyle. How could you leave out bode Lair, the French gargoyle. I had I had heard tell of a gargoyle, but I didn't have its name, and I didn't I didn't want to. His name was Bodelaire. Well he's a gargoyle. His French guys. Lauren and I have a lot more to say about Microsoft Bob. But before we get to that, let's take a quick break to

thank our sponsor. Each of these assistants had its own kind of personality in a way, in the sense that it would some of them would be a little more active than others. Some would would be faster to jump in and offer suggestions than others. Apparently, Scuzzie the mouse was really apathetic, just just didn't care. Bode Laire was supposedly very quiet unless you specifically clicked on bodel are

to to get some help. Some of them were a little more proactive, right, And they all had different different words that they would use. They had a different vocabulary, and for example, one of the words that Rover really liked using the scrumptious as as in, I'm just one of a scrumptious gang of personal guides here to help you find your way in the home. Dog uh blythe would say, oi a lot, I'm not joking, that's wonderfully back off the things. Yeah, because I read up on

these um Yeah. So so anyway, if you if this sounds to you like this would be even more obnoxious than Clippy, you're pretty much on the right track. That does the feedback in fact that many people well, I mean, obviously Clippy didn't exist yet as a as a point of reference, but yeah, uh and uh, you know, you have that personal assistant going with you wherever, so you could actually there was one choice. There was invisible, and

Invisible was essentially no personal assistant. You could still get help if you really needed it, but you didn't have that that little animated character who was almost always in the lower right hand corner of your screen. Uh. And and these were characters that also like if if you were idle for an extended time, characters like like Rover or Chaos would go to sleep. And yeah, and occasionally they would interact with other stuff in the room to kind of be amusing. But I think I would have

considered it distracting personally, but absolutely I agreed. Uh And then uh, yeah, it also had a I thought it was nice that that Bob came with some productivity software like letter Writer, in the sense that you didn't already have to go out and buy other software suites. You can do some basic computing stuff in Bob. It's a it's unfortunate that most of the navigation looked pretty complex. Actually it would it would pull up these these dialogue

windows with lots of different choices. Yeah, I mean I mean like RPG level choice. I mean like like seven different choices on all these menus. Right, so you see, you know, basic menu design. You want to try and keep it as simple as possible. But some of these menus had seven or more choices on them. And and now all of them were intuitive, like you couldn't really be like one of them might be change something, well

that's not specific at all. What does that mean? And if you clicked on it, it it would allow you to do things like change the the view of the room, so whatever is in the wind, whatever is appearing in the window, or change which programs are there, or or or move to a different room. Um, you could add doorways, you could add rooms. Uh and uh you might think this, uh, this, this program probably didn't meet with too much success or

acclaim and you'd you'd be correct entirely. According to PC Data, retail research firm, only around fifty eight thousand copies of Bob were ever sold. Um, by contrast, uh moved like two point seven five million copies and retail the first month. Yeah, so fifty eight thousand for the almost the year or that it existed and that's it. Um. Also, Microsoft kind

of shot itself in the foot. They distributed copies review copies to journalists back in December, right with with an embargo on reviews until only until after CS and not until the product launched, right and so at CS, Bill Gates gets up talks about it. But at that point the embargo lifts, which means that the journalists are allowed to write their thoughts on Microsoft Bob. And they did and some of them were how they did, Yeah, there's

yeah one one. One guy said that much much of the behavior of these of these characters that are running around helping you out will be unappealing to people seriously bent on getting a lot of their PCs, or two adults of any kind for that matter, essentially saying that anyone who's not a kid is going to hate this, right,

and that that is the thing. You know. That's I feel like, even if if I were completely new to computers had never used your scene one, if I had a cartoon talking to me about what I want to do, it doesn't. It feels like it's a toy. It feels like it's it feels like it's a toy, and it feels like it's talking down to you. UM, and I mean to be fair. When Microsoft was showing off the assistance way back with publisher there were the response was

very positive. People were saying, this is fantastic because these these programs are getting so complicated that I just don't know how to do some of the things that you know, I occasionally need to do, but I don't do so frequently that I've memorized the path to do this. And I want this for everything. And Microsoft heard those those cries and ran with it to the point where people

realized they didn't really want it for everything. They wanted it for stuff that was beyond an easy couple of cliques, right, And and that's that is where a lot of the later Wizards came out of. And you know, I mean, we still have that on computers and it can still be useful. UM, and I think that they were. Some of their test audiences supposedly reacted very well to it. UM. According to an article in PC World, UM Fries had Karen Fries had remembered one man's response early on to

to a to a little duck helper quote. This guy was very emotional about it. He grabbed my arm. He said, save all the money on the manuals and just give me this duck to always be there and tell me what to do, right. Yeah. Which again they ran with that, and unfortunately I think they took it to too far of an extreme. Also, Bob was a bit of a resource hog. Keep in mind this. In order to run it, you were the suggested minimum system requirements were to have

a forty six CPU. Well, I remember those days. I actually had a two eighty six way back in the day. If you had a three day six, yeah, oh, super fast. They had to have thirty megabytes of free disk space. Again, that doesn't sound like much, but it was no. I mean at the time a thirty two card drive was large and uh and eight megabytes of memory, which was about twice as much as what most of the computers had. So for the time, you had to have a very powerful machine to be able to just run this and

so and so. Yeah, and so you're talking someone who's who's never used computers before but has a better one than most other people. They have to go and spend a good amount of money. Um. They it did come standard on one of the Gateway computers. Um. The Bob was the standard user in their face for that machine. It's also fortunate for that gateway it had a different layout to it looked more like a barn than a house. Um beyond that, it was the same stuff. I just

I just face palmed at that very idea excellent. I don't really have anything more to say about about that part of it. But also they there's some other there's another legacy that Bob left us. Although it's interesting, it's not actually used in Bob, but it was created for Bob and it has lived on in infamy ever since. It's something that is perhaps even more hated than Bob itself, maybe only because it's been persistent. Right we are, we

are talking about the font comics stands, comics sands. That was a funt that was designed specifically for Bob, and it wasn't used in Bob, but that was then incorporated in future Microsoft releases. And and this this funt has received a lot of hate, a lot of hate. Well it was it was created originally because Microsoft designer Vincent Connair saw a beta of Bob and thought that time's new room and was that was the font being used

in it at the time. And he was like, there's a disconnect between this fun, bubbly image that we're presenting and very terse formal font and so let's make something that looks like it came straight out of a comic book and then reaping the rewards and accolades for generations to come. You know what, I don't hate comic sands. I'll come on say it. I don't but to really love it, but I don't hate it. I know people, though,

who have a violent reaction to I hated. In business emails, yes, if I get a business email from someone, it's in comic sense. It's hard to take that email seriously. You know, if it starts off with hey bozo, I'll go ahead and read it, though, because then I'm like, all right, now you're on Now you're speaking my language. I got you. Now we're on the same page. There's some sort of weird, ironic, sarcastic email, and now I need to know what it says.

I don't know. I don't think. I don't think I want to become a kind of hipster who uses comic fans on on purpose in an ironic way. Yeah, you don't want your emails to have a giant mustache. Now I do not That's fair alright, So, um, do you have anything else you want to say about Bob before we wrap it up? I think I think that is the complete breadth and depth of the story. It's it's it's funny that we were even able to do an

episode on this. When I first thought about I was thinking, am I really gonna be able to talk about a product that only was out on the market for less than a year? It turns out yes we were because there was a lot to There were a lot of good ideas that went into the development of Bob. They just didn't get implemented in a way that was really useful. Actually, I do have one more story. I'm sorry completely lied to second to go about about the legacy of Bob.

According to Raymond Chen for tech Net magazine, I know this story when when when Windows XP came out, it came out on c D and there were maybe about thirty megabytes of capacity left over on the CD, so thirty megabytes of free space, free space, sure, and they wanted to fill it up with some encrypted data that would be checked by the set up program as part

of the installation and verification process. Right, Um, just just to you know, make make it a little bit more difficult for pirates to download it, right by by adding thirty megabytes to the to the size of the file, you would increase the download time significantly. Because remember this is back in this is not broadband time. We're talking about using a dial up modem. So if you're using a dial up modem to try and pirate software, thirty megabytes might be the difference between I'll go and do

it or no, I'm not gonna do it. Um but so, but so instead of putting just random gobbledygook into that extra thirty eggs he um whoever was doing it, I'm not sure if it was. If it could have it could have been a brave woman in our in our technical industry. Um uh used used the entirety of Bob. And that concludes this classic episode of tech Stuff. I

hope you guys enjoyed revisiting this old topic. Hopefully we'll never see the likes of Microsoft Bob again, but if you have any suggestions for future episodes, let me know. Send me an email. The address for the show is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter handle it. Both

of those is tech stuff. Hs W. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram people, you're missing out on amazing content and I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff works dot com eight