The Thirsty Robot

 Here's some of what you missed at The Thirsty Robot: Technical Musings Technology Topic - Nostalgia & Alternative Universes Maybe it was the recent Summer Solstice, or the change of weather from 'too hot' to 'unsettled', or the leak of Windows 11 , but The Thirsty Robot attendees were in a nostalgic mood. Microsoft's 'Bob' user interface was mentioned, because it is one of those fascinating 'roads almost travelled' that is probably dominant in an alternative universe - but not this one. The idea of making a computer a 'simple to use' device is an old idea, but there are few good implementations...  So, Bob was the classic 'use simple, familiar metaphors' approach. In this case, the inside of a house, where rooms were devoted to various tasks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob   This was back in 1995, and so high resolution, lots of colours and many other 2020's 'standards' just didn't exist then. To ...