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ajrosslast Tuesday at 6:26 PM2 repliesview on HN

(I remain amazed at how people even today will argue like this trying to avoid talking nice about MS. You're misconstruing the point, seemingly deliberately.)

Sure, on $15k ($30k in 2025 dollars) Mac II's. See also the answer elsewhere about NeXTSTEP being a player in this space.

No one was doing it in the consumer space, no consumer knew about that stuff, Linux consumers on their 14" 800x600 monitors sure hadn't see it. And to repeat yet again, Microsoft Windows 95 landed like a bomb in this community and changed everything. And it happened very fast.


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projektfulast Tuesday at 7:47 PM

A Radius two page display was just not that expensive. Neither was a Mac II. By 1992, you could buy a Mac IIci for $2900 and a TPD for $900-1100. You couldn't buy it on your allowance but it was reasonably common.

The finder was always a multi-window interface.

I just don't know where your memory is from.

LocalHlast Tuesday at 6:52 PM

Early GEM allowed arbitrary window sizing and positioning at least within the file manager, and Apple thus sued them, because they felt they had exclusive rights to ideas that they stole from Xerox

Also, the Amiga had the window management you refer to in its earliest versions, in 1984. Amigas cost a hell of a lot less than $15,000, even packed to the brim with expansions. I grew up with the Amiga, so your assertion that "No one was doing it in the consumer space, no consumer knew about that stuff, Linux consumers on their 14" 800x600 monitors sure hadn't see it." is anecdotally false.

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