Talk:Microsoft Bob

message: Which idiot edited this article to suggest Bob was for Win95 and NT? It was made for Win 3.1, if it worked for Win95 it was because of Win31 compatibility built into that OS. Suggesting that such a thing would be made for NT is even more absurd.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.35.224.136 (talk) 00:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, Bob did not work on NT.  I know because I was at MS at the time, and I always ran NT on my desktop.  I installed Bob.  It would come up and you could kind of play with it, but its operations mostly did not work. DonPMitchell (talk) 01:38, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thinking about it, MS Bob came at the same year as NT 3.51 with the GINA support. I suspect that this is not a coincidence, right? - Yuhong (talk) 04:23, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Win 3.1 

message: Look closely at the logo - was this the first appearance of that godawful bane of typography known as Comic Sans MS? Slicing 21:48, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Comic Sans MS was originally made by Vincent Connare for Microsoft 3D Movie Maker in 1994.  It eventually made its way to Win95 OEM and the Plus Pack, but didn't make it into Bob.  Comic Sans has more info on it.  Jkonrath 14:56, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

text: My understanding is that Comic Sans was designed for Bob, but wasn't completed in time for it's release. This seems to be what it says on Comic sans page. --81.136.206.155 (talk) 15:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comic Sans MS 

message: That's a stretch! How about Microsoft Trains (the railroad simulator)- (unsigned)
:Microsoft Bob was supposed to lead to a revolution in computing. They spent years and millions of dollars developing it. It has 2 notable spinoffs, Office Assistant and the Comic Sans font, both of which are arguably disasters of their own. Microsoft Trains was just a little game. --81.136.206.155 (talk) 15:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Least Successful Product

message: This article was cited by the Brazilian language Terra Tecnologia article. See this link. Regards, Carioca 05:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It was also cited as a source for this CNet article.--SeizureDog 03:47, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which as it turns out, is the same article in English. --SeizureDog 03:48, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Microsoft Bob article cited at Brazilian Terra Tecnologia website 

message: Was that really the cats name? --Trusader 20:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, Chaos was her name. She is a girl.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.28.78.143 (talk) 22:26, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chaos? 

message: This quote, [Microsoft Bob was one application] "we [had] undertaken ... where we decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop."[1] was taken from, "We've been fortunate. There is nothing that we have undertaken -- with a couple of exceptions like Microsoft Bob that I'll cop to in advance -- where we have decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop,"I think that's forcing the quote to take on a different meaning than what was originally meant to; the speaker was using the quote to praise Microsoft of it's achievements, save a few failures, not to call Microsoft Bob a failure. I'm not disputing that it was a failure, I just think this is an unethical use of a quotation. JRNorbergé 13:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Near Misquoting

message: It looks like the image is running Bob on Windows XP (notice the XP taskbar at the bottom). Can't anyone get a screenshot of it running in it's natural environment? C'mon all you computer geeks... :) 69.95.238.85 (talk) 20:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image 

message: What about Paul and Java the Dinosaur(/Dragon?)?  It maybe could be at the end.  Also what about a article about him?  168.103.172.60 (talk) 21:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Paul Fitzgerald

message: "In 2007, Microsoft Bob was voted by the readers of PC Magazine as one of the ten biggest software failures in the new millennium."
How is this possible if the interface was released in 1995, which was in the previous millenium?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by PearlTheater (talk • contribs) 19:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New millenium 

message: Gary McGraw in Software Security (Kindle location 952) says the “oft-repeated story that may be apocryphal… Bob would pop up and proclaim: ‘I see you have forgotten your password, please enter a new password.’”  
http://www.d2ca.org/ms-bob-sign-in.html has a supposed screenshot of something similar, but with very different phrasing: “Pardon me…Have you forgotten your password.”  (Next screen) “What password would you like?”  Is the screenshot real, and does anyone know a non-self-published source for the alleged vulnerability?
—FlashSheridan (talk) 22:50, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  “What password would you like?” apocryphal? 

message: This article mentions that Bob 2.0 was never released, should it be mentioned in the article? 114.76.74.210 (talk) 10:16, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Never Released Bob 2.0 

message: Article states that Melinda French was "at one point ... a marketing manager".  This is incorrect and understates her role.  For as long as I was associated with the product (several months in late 94, early 95 including v1 release) she was the Business Unit Manager, basically the top person for the project.  We all reported up through her.  Prior to Utopia, she was a Product Manager for other Consumer Division products.
Charles Oppermann (talk) 11:24, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Melinda French 

message: Bill Gates says Microsoft Bob will make a comeback
"Speaking Monday at the Microsoft Research event, the chairman said Microsoft Bob didn't get it right, but he thinks the personal assistant feature will reemerge with a bit more sophistication."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57593736-75/bill-gates-says-microsoft-bob-will-make-a-comeback/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.107.240.36 (talk) 20:51, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You must be thinking of the Siri clone Cortana, a personal assistant added to Windows Phone. 67.165.116.17 (talk) 04:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comeback? 

message: * Neither Win95 or NT4 were targets for Bob 1.0 which was a Windows 3.x program exclusively. Text should be corrected to indicate that Bob was discontinued before Windows 95 (not 98) launch. It is not on the Win95 software compatibility list.
* Microsoft Bob 1.0 was a response to Packard Bell "Navigator" program which predated Bob and used the "different rooms in the house" analogy to organize user programs, clicking on the "desk" "blotter" in the "study" opened a word processor. Packard Bell was the best selling retail computer in the 1990's thru ~1997, and Navigator was designed for the computer illiterate (think "Beverly Hillbillies"). Was the simpleton interface what sold the computers to the consumer market? Of course the fact that it undercut other manufacturers' prices in part due to Intel funding (Intel manufactured for them then Intel forgave PB debts; also manufactured same designs for Gateway; note Bob for Gateway on www.danielsays.com). At that time every major retail computer company had some type of cutesy user interface (Windows 8?), shielding the user from Windows 3.11: IBM, Compaq, AST, HP, et al. 
* Bob was a response to "Navigator envy" of Microsoft's other OEM customers.
* Bob was originally envisioned with AI (like Microsoft Agent in Office trying to second guess the user) and having Voice control (for the mouse averse?)a la Microsoft Agent Development Kit. Many retail consumer computers were underpowered to be able to do those tasks (average computer was 486DX2/66 and 4MB Ram).
* Navigator, Bob, et al replaced the Windows shell which prevented many programs from launching. Assisting customers to disable these shells to allow Win95 setup to complete was a common Win95 support call.
* Bob 2.0 was a Windows 95 compatible internal Beta. MS Win95 Support had hand-me-down computers from Testing (e.g. 386DX33 8MB Ram) that could barely run the application.
* For a list of Bob's influence on other programs see http://www.danielsays.com/ms-bob-16-bob-lives.html
* Should be a reference to "Church of Slack" as tied to Bob.
* There was a rumor that Microsoft copyrighted the name Bob.
Shjacks45 (talk) 11:52, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Cite your sources. Otherwise everything you say is original research. Some guy (talk) 19:06, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inaccurate article. Lacks temporal grounding. 

message: This article was linked to by a popular Reddit thread (4195 upvotes, 1325 comments as of right now) in mid-July 2014 that drove significant traffic to the page. Look for it on the next WP:TOP25 report as a result.--Milowent • hasspoken 20:56, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reddit view spike - fyi. 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Let's not be silly. Not even the cited Engadget article makes the claim that Windows 10 is the successor of Microsoft Bob, especially as that article was released two years before Windows 10 was a thing.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:42, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep i think so too. 174.27.4.51 (talk) 18:57, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Windows 10 

message: Why is the template there? It shouldn't be part of the article 166.70.171.120 (talk) 01:39, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template