It’s always interesting to hear former Microsoft engineers and managers share their thoughts and stories about subjects related to the company, primarily Windows. However, some of these types of incidents that have occurred recently have not been necessarily positive for Microsoft.
One of them slammed Windows 11’s “comically bad” performance and sought to draw the tech giant’s attention to the OS’ seemingly “unfinished” state. Another former Windows chief made some sarcastic comments about the company shortly after Windows 11. Start He began testing more advertising and promotions on the menu.
Veterans may also share interesting stories about the various components of Windows and how they came to be. Last month, Dave William Plummer, the creator of several key Windows components and features such as the Task Manager and his Zip support, talked about how he bought a Corvette at the time and how it was related to his work with the Corvette. Ta. You can read about it here.
But as Plummer reveals in a new behind-the-scenes post, the Corvette was no fluke. A luxury sports car was one thing that motivated him when he coded at night.At the time, there was a man in the Microsoft neighborhood who owned a 3,000-square-foot house with a Corvette parked in his driveway, and Plummer said he liked it so much that he plastered images of it on his monitor. It was about drive to him so that he can someday drive Corvette too.
For those wondering why he ended up working nights, the ZIPFolders project was a side hustle that Plummer worked on outside of his day job at Microsoft. Inspired by the magazine sample “Big GAK” from MSJ (Microsoft Systems Journal).
If you’re wondering about the moonlighting clause, Plummer says Microsoft has had no problem working with managers with their approval, as long as the product doesn’t compete with the company. That was standard.
The conflict began when Microsoft noticed that Plummer had begun selling the shell extension as shareware called “Visual Zip,” and someone at Microsoft took offense and complained to Human Resources. Ta.
What was interesting about this situation was that Microsoft apparently didn’t know at the time that Microsoft employees were doing this as a side hustle, so the company was considering acquiring the Visual Zip developers.
Eventually, things settled down when Dave Plummer realized that there was no point in rejecting Microsoft’s deal to add the Zip component to Windows. Not only would he lose his job at Microsoft, but he would also have to compete with the company. He was working on a competitive product.
So, initial Zip support is finally coming to Microsoft Plus. 95 is an enhanced version of Windows 95, which was further improved in Windows 98 and 2000.
If you’re interested in the old days of Windows and its apps, read this article we recently covered. In this article, a talented geek painstakingly ported “thousands of apps” to Windows 95.
Source: Dave Plummer (X / Twitter)
