Windows, every mention

227 scenes (said by Ben Gilbert), the whole family · ← back to Windows

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every year anyone Ben Gilbert 227David Rosenthal 121Steve Ballmer 19 Mark Zuckerberg 4 Eric Yuan 3 Ben Thompson 2 Brendan Eich 1

Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Windows comes up

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Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired Aug 26, 2025 · 2 mentions

▶ 1:55:21 Ben Gilbert And this is equivalent to Dave Cutler doing Windows NT.
▶ 2:31:46 Ben Gilbert Blackberry, Windows Mobile?

The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired Jun 2, 2025 · 3 mentions

▶ 1:57:55 Ben Gilbert And he's working on Longhorn at this point, because it's post XP.
▶ 1:57:55 Ben Gilbert And he's working on Longhorn at this point, because it's post XP.
▶ 1:59:09 Ben Gilbert Vista.

Epic Systems (MyChart) · Acquired Apr 21, 2025 · 1 mention

▶ 1:00:17 Ben Gilbert Had gone public and shipped Windows 95 and did six billion in revenue.

Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired Jul 22, 2024 · 94 mentions

▶ 0:51 Ben Gilbert The Internet, Windows XP, Xbox, the browser, search, and mobile.
▶ 5:53 Ben Gilbert It's so funny because we sort of intentionally left all the internet components out of Windows 95.
▶ 6:08 Ben Gilbert But in retrospect, the thing that mattered about Windows 95 all these years later is that's the platform that everyone started using the Internet on.
▶ 30:53 Ben Gilbert So, some of the Windows-ninety-five team in late-ninety-four, led by Thomas Riordan, is pulled off before it ships to start thinking about
▶ 31:01 Ben Gilbert What should we do after Windows 95 ships?
▶ 33:01 Ben Gilbert We should get this done as a part of Windows 95, not wait for the next big release.
▶ 37:11 Ben Gilbert If one of the things he's saying is Windows is a platform upon which independent software vendors
▶ 37:21 Ben Gilbert So Windows is the way that currently people write software for businesses and consumers to use.
▶ 37:28 Ben Gilbert And if we are going to reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers, what I'm implying is these crappy static web pages that get served right now, that is merely a step on our journey to enabling rich web applications.
▶ 37:55 Ben Gilbert And so when they're saying we're going to reduce Windows, blah, blah, blah, it's saying, okay, Windows has all this stuff right now for developers, but essentially you're going to use Windows or any operating system just to boot it up,…
▶ 39:47 Ben Gilbert It's an application platform of the future that is distributed as a Windows app.
▶ 39:53 Ben Gilbert I mean, Windows had huge market share at this point, I don't know, 80, 90%, eventually over 90% market share.
▶ 39:59 Ben Gilbert The way that Netscape could get to consumers was because Microsoft had all these computers out there running Windows.
▶ 44:41 Ben Gilbert They're still doing the same thing as ever, selling Windows licenses through OEMs and to consumers at retail.
▶ 49:59 Ben Gilbert We were talking about the web as a potential development platform of the future, even as far back as 1994, people building web applications, or, you know, Windows 95
▶ 1:17:56 Ben Gilbert Also, can we just say, this case is brought against Windows 95, Windows 98 comes out, and then before we have a resolution, Windows XP comes out.
▶ 1:17:56 Ben Gilbert Also, can we just say, this case is brought against Windows 95, Windows 98 comes out, and then before we have a resolution, Windows XP comes out.
▶ 1:33:38 Ben Gilbert And along with that, release XP, the most successful Windows operating system ever.
▶ 1:33:38 Ben Gilbert And along with that, release XP, the most successful Windows operating system ever.
▶ 1:33:44 Ben Gilbert And then we're gonna talk about Vista, and then we're gonna talk about Zune, and Search, and Bing, and Windows Mobile, and Windows Eight, and yeah, all that.
▶ 1:33:44 Ben Gilbert And then we're gonna talk about Vista, and then we're gonna talk about Zune, and Search, and Bing, and Windows Mobile, and Windows Eight, and yeah, all that.
▶ 1:33:44 Ben Gilbert And then we're gonna talk about Vista, and then we're gonna talk about Zune, and Search, and Bing, and Windows Mobile, and Windows Eight, and yeah, all that.
▶ 1:36:37 Ben Gilbert There's NT slash back office.
▶ 1:36:48 Ben Gilbert So you can think about it as Windows, and he said NT slash back office, but this is the enterprise, an office.
▶ 1:37:02 Ben Gilbert Bill was like, it's like this stuff that businesses buy, but I'm gonna refer to it by its Microsoft product name of one of the products we sell, which is NT.
▶ 1:37:22 Ben Gilbert So he's talking about the interesting thing, the server business, which is a different way he refers to NT slash back office.
▶ 1:38:13 Ben Gilbert NT basically was enterprise ready.
▶ 1:43:33 Ben Gilbert You then have NT as the operating system, SQL as the database, and then you've got all these other applications that basically run on that stack.
▶ 1:52:28 Ben Gilbert In 2007, you were using XP.
▶ 1:58:39 Ben Gilbert So, Windows XP.
▶ 1:58:42 Ben Gilbert Why was Windows XP such a big deal?
▶ 1:59:11 Ben Gilbert So what was Windows XP technically?
▶ 1:59:21 Ben Gilbert There was Windows NT for
▶ 1:59:25 Ben Gilbert The enterprise, and there was Windows nine X, you know, Windows 95, Windows 98 for consumers.
▶ 1:59:51 Ben Gilbert And so the knock against NT was always, well, you need really beefy enterprise grade PCs to run it, and it's not as nice and intuitive, and the knock against the Windows nine X, call it 95, was that, yeah, it looks pretty, but it's not…
▶ 1:59:51 Ben Gilbert And so the knock against NT was always, well, you need really beefy enterprise grade PCs to run it, and it's not as nice and intuitive, and the knock against the Windows nine X, call it 95, was that, yeah, it looks pretty, but it's not…
▶ 2:00:16 Ben Gilbert And so XP
▶ 2:00:18 Ben Gilbert Did the impossible where they figured out how to take the ease of use of the nine X interface and make it run on top of NT.
▶ 2:00:30 Ben Gilbert The whole thing is built on the NT kernel and it has the friendly, approachable ease of use that you are used to in windows.
▶ 2:00:38 Ben Gilbert 95 and 98.
▶ 2:00:41 Ben Gilbert So the lineage of that nine X code base that came all the way from windows three dot O or maybe even one or two, I don't know if
▶ 2:00:52 Ben Gilbert And so you had the NT lineage of, I guess, maybe even you could say it started with OS two, but Windows NT, Windows 2000, and then Windows XP.
▶ 2:00:52 Ben Gilbert And so you had the NT lineage of, I guess, maybe even you could say it started with OS two, but Windows NT, Windows 2000, and then Windows XP.
▶ 2:01:03 Ben Gilbert So everybody's running XP now.
▶ 2:01:42 Ben Gilbert But, you know, Windows XP, plenty of people were importing digital photos off their camera to Windows XP.
▶ 2:03:44 Ben Gilbert Another thing about Windows XP, there was a new release of Office right at the same time as XP.
▶ 2:06:01 Ben Gilbert And I think this XP time frame is
▶ 2:06:10 Ben Gilbert The other thing to know about this XP timeframe is, last episode we talked about the incredible secular growth trend of the PC.
▶ 2:06:37 Ben Gilbert The crazier thing is, even as late as 2001 with Windows XP, they were still riding this tailwind.
▶ 2:06:57 Ben Gilbert By 1997, 13 years later, it grew to 37%, and after a couple years of XP being in market, 2003, it had grown to 62%.
▶ 2:08:23 Ben Gilbert Windows 95, they shipped DirectX, that changed the world, they became a real gaming platform.
▶ 2:15:02 Ben Gilbert So, there's a little tail off of XP that'll lead to Vista.
▶ 2:15:02 Ben Gilbert So, there's a little tail off of XP that'll lead to Vista.
▶ 2:15:08 Ben Gilbert So the Windows XP codename, David, was what?
▶ 2:15:22 Ben Gilbert The ski mountain right next to Whistler is, yes, Blackcomb, which became the name for the theoretical release that they wanted to do, like, just a year or two after Vista.
▶ 2:15:42 Ben Gilbert Another reason they had to push the date out was Windows XP for all of its usability and reliability was very insecure, and so Microsoft had a whole thing where they thought they were gonna spend like three months putting out a service…
▶ 2:15:55 Ben Gilbert They spent the better part of two years iterating on Windows XP to come out with a release that really people and enterprises could trust as no viruses, you know, this is safe to deploy your enterprise.
▶ 2:16:37 Ben Gilbert That sounds like a great name for a modest release to follow XP before we get to the big hard changes that are gonna come in Blackcomb.
▶ 2:17:17 Ben Gilbert Well, this was part of the belief behind Longhorn.
▶ 2:17:33 Ben Gilbert And so everyone got really well versed in what was coming in Longhorn.
▶ 2:17:38 Ben Gilbert And then everyone was kind of sitting on their hands like, where's Longhorn?
▶ 2:17:42 Ben Gilbert They've been really telling us about Longhorn in a way that you would never see today.
▶ 2:18:21 Ben Gilbert Anyway, Longhorn is teased for five years.
▶ 2:18:35 Ben Gilbert David, what was the initial technical spark that was supposed to be the cornerstone of Longhorn?
▶ 2:19:18 Ben Gilbert All these code names ended up referring to multiple things because it was emblematic of the organizational disarray inside the Windows development team.
▶ 2:19:45 Ben Gilbert Saying the next new release of Windows, which is five years since Windows XP, they really, really are counting on a new version of Windows to drive PC sales, and the one that they're getting requires pretty good GPUs.
▶ 2:19:45 Ben Gilbert Saying the next new release of Windows, which is five years since Windows XP, they really, really are counting on a new version of Windows to drive PC sales, and the one that they're getting requires pretty good GPUs.
▶ 2:20:06 Ben Gilbert But, if you did buy a nice PC, and you did eventually end up with a copy of Windows Vista, this is why you got to see the new, what, ah,
▶ 2:21:06 Ben Gilbert If you remember from the last episode, we talked about Chicago, Windows, and Cairo, this theoretical thing
▶ 2:21:06 Ben Gilbert If you remember from the last episode, we talked about Chicago, Windows, and Cairo, this theoretical thing
▶ 2:23:24 Ben Gilbert They never built Longhorn.
▶ 2:23:32 Ben Gilbert And they ended up reforking from an old Windows Server version or something.
▶ 2:25:19 Ben Gilbert Even as late as 2009, so three and a half years after launch, something like that, three quarters of corporate PCs are still running XP and had never upgraded to Vista.
▶ 2:25:19 Ben Gilbert Even as late as 2009, so three and a half years after launch, something like that, three quarters of corporate PCs are still running XP and had never upgraded to Vista.
▶ 2:25:50 Ben Gilbert This was kind of the Windows culture at its worst.
▶ 2:28:48 Ben Gilbert And if he's only spending his time on technical decisions, he needs some introduction into that feedback loop, some governor on how deep to go in re-architecting Windows for re-architecting Windows's sake.
▶ 2:31:06 Ben Gilbert Market share is rising, and Microsoft comes out with Vista.
▶ 2:32:36 Ben Gilbert Who is writing Vista apps?
▶ 2:33:37 Ben Gilbert So, the biggest things to hurt Microsoft coming out of Vista are what we just talked about losing developers, what we just talked about losing users.
▶ 2:33:48 Ben Gilbert I mean, consumers who are excited to buy a computer, they're just not excited to buy a Windows Vista PC.
▶ 2:33:59 Ben Gilbert I mean, Vista was a black hole.
▶ 2:34:26 Ben Gilbert I mean, IE is peaking and about to start falling off a cliff and are completely consumed by Vista.
▶ 2:34:46 Ben Gilbert Vista consumed a bunch of the smartest people, even if they had the right vision to be chasing, and the DOJ had just crippled
▶ 3:02:12 Ben Gilbert No one would have been saying this about Microsoft in the Windows-ninety-five timeframe, but after the obsession with enterprise, the complete failure in consumer markets, but importantly,
▶ 3:05:01 Ben Gilbert One of which was Bill Gates was always talking about mobile computing, so much so that in the key slide in the Windows XP presentation, one of the big bullet points is mobile computing.
▶ 3:05:42 Ben Gilbert In the world of, I suppose they were early smartphones, Microsoft had developed Windows Mobile.
▶ 3:05:55 Ben Gilbert What Windows Mobile was, was an operating system for handset makers to adopt and put on their handsets, and, you know, these things kind of looked like Blackberries, or mostly keys with a little screen, and when you looked at it, it looked…
▶ 3:05:55 Ben Gilbert What Windows Mobile was, was an operating system for handset makers to adopt and put on their handsets, and, you know, these things kind of looked like Blackberries, or mostly keys with a little screen, and when you looked at it, it looked…
▶ 3:06:11 Ben Gilbert It had a little start menu, and it was much like the rest of the enterprise strategy, David, designed around all working seamlessly together with your Windows PC and Exchange and your corporate network.
▶ 3:06:58 Ben Gilbert You know, they, Dell could install some more stuff on top of Windows and customize the installation, but it was still
▶ 3:07:03 Ben Gilbert Windows XP.
▶ 3:07:09 Ben Gilbert That really wasn't the case with Windows Mobile phones.
▶ 3:07:13 Ben Gilbert The handset makers could modify the code of Windows Mobile.
▶ 3:08:00 Ben Gilbert Yes, they had Windows Mobile, but no, it was nothing like what smartphones would become because of the way that the iPhone reset everything.