By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
There was a time when everyone was trying to build a better GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the PC platform, including Microsoft. And on an oddly sunny day in Redmond back in 1995, I personally sat in on the demo of a strange but fascinating add-on to Windows 3.1 called: Microsoft Bob. The meeting was headed by a product manager named Melinda French who later went on to become Mrs. BillG, but the talk of that day was on her belief that using helpful cartoon characters and a comfortable “Home” interface to help the average Joe or Bob, navigate a computer was the future. Alas….
Meet Bob
After installing “Bob” the user is sent to a red front door with a knocker. The thing that personally cracked me up was when you clicked on the door knocker, a doorbell rang. I can’t remember if they fixed that by the final release. Anyway, here is more info on ill-fated GUI on this great site I found that covers the world of Bob.
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A few possible reasons that Bob flopped:
* Bob required a minimum of a 486 with 8 megs of ram, 30 megs of free disk space, and 256 color VGA. Many computers of the day did not meet these minimum requirements.
* It was too “cute” for the average PC users of the day.
* Most people at the time who wanted ease of use would just get a Macintosh.
* Bob was not useful enough to justify its initial sale price of almost $100.
* Windows 95, which was released later that year, had the new Windows Explorer user interface which wiped the floor with Bob.
And so Microsoft Bob disappeared in to obscurity.
There appear to be two releases of Bob. These screen shots are of version 1.00 which has a time stamp of 1/30/1995. Then there is a second release, version “1.00a” dated 8/14/95, which included some additional guides, rooms, and objects.
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Alice’s Note: The only survivor of the character concept was that annoying paper clip in Microsoft Office and he eventually bit the dust too. Anyone else remember Bob?
Inside the Strange but Failed World Of “Microsoft Bob”
There was a time when everyone was trying to build a better GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the PC platform, including Microsoft. And on a strangely sunny day in Redmond back in 1995, I personally sat in on the demo of a weird but fascinating add-on…
Although Clippee bit the dust…..it looks as though BOB’s dog survived as an assistant!
The dog also survived to “help” the user with searching in Explorer in WinXP…
It wasn’t such a horrible idea, but there were several mistakes made. Such as that you should ALWAYS be able to turn off the cute stuff. (There’s nothing wrong with having it, but there should have been ways around it as well, as MS also learned later with Clippy.)
I think they reacted a bit like Hollywood does: when a film of a genre fails spectacularly, they drop the genre. Which is too bad, because there was potential in Bob, such as the idea that when you would attach to another computer across the network or internet, it would look like another house. You would have to knock, and if you got in would probably find that most of the doors to private rooms were locked for security reasons. Another mistake was, who knocks at their own front door? It should have always started off in a living room or entrance room, and if you wanted private applications/data, you go to your own rooms. You could even have locked drawers (data) in cabinets in public rooms.
You know, we’re still not sharing data like we should, and one reason is that it’s still a bit too technical. Bob could have helped that, but because it didn’t succeed in MS’s poor incarnation, the whole idea has been killed as well.
Interestingly enough, I hit on your topic from my news feed just days after restoring my grandfather’s computer. The one application he was missing was MS BOB. Of course, the original disk was no where to be found. I
did some extensive research trying to locate a copy of the program and could not find anything, not even on Ebay. Finally, I went back through some old files he had backed up to floppy many years before and found the Grail. Order has been restored in my grandparent’s house.
Come to find out, he’s been using this application for years to store all his contacts, birthdays and other important dates. More impressive, it runs on Windows XP.
I remember this program but it came with our dell p150 which had win 95 preloaded on it.
I have been looking for a copy of this for months now. It seems like there is more and more discussion of it on the web. If anyone knows where I can get a copy, please email me @ o2sk8 (at) yahoo.com . Thanks.
I have a shrink wrapped copy!
available here:
from left column, select downloads, then from the next screen, scroll down to MS BOB. It’s a German site, so I’m not sure if this is a German lanuage program or not. Probably not.
I remember hearing about the login “security” feature in MS Bob, though it could have just been a rumour. Apparently if you typed in your password incorrectly 3 times, it gave you the opportunity to pick a password that was easier to remember.
Microsoft Bob
Microsoft Bob: Bit of computer history here… archive of material about a 1995 effort towards making computers more approachable. [via Real Tech News]…
Where can I get one for free? I want it real bad, and since it failed, It should be free
I had Bob on my old computre. I really liked it/ in fact i agree with “r”. It should be free since it failed. It was a strange program, but answer “r”’s question. “r” knows what hes talking bout
Maybe someone will upload it as abandonware. Or perhaps a very generous donation to this site will get the winner that shrink wrapped copy….
I don’t know if anybody else noticed, but it looks like the new “Shopping” tab for MSN Messenger is the Bob face.
yeh bob itrns out i always thought was the yellow dog he was my first experience ever on a p.c. at 43 yrs .by the way what is a blog?
I was also suckered on that useless MSFT add-on