If you’ve got a Windows Phone, today is your lucky day. On April 1, Microsoft released DOS for mobile: “All the productivity you’ve come to expect from Microsoft in the simplest OS yet.” Update: There’s also a video ad.
If you’ve got a Windows Phone, today is your lucky day. On April 1, Microsoft released DOS for mobile: “All the productivity you’ve come to expect from Microsoft in the simplest OS yet.” Update: There’s also a video ad.
While it follows their monochromatic aesthetic, the font is weird looking.
There is always something off with Microsoft’s humor…
You mean Win8 TouchUI vs Mobile-DOS CLI ?
Heh, i was pondering giving FreeDOS a go a while back.
Just need a way to run Firefox and a torrent client.
Seriously. FreeDOS for the win.
Even more seriously, they didn’t specify the version of dos. If its full retail DOS 6.22 that would be awesome. If its the lame DOS from win95 days, forget about it. Not worth the cost of electricity.
April Fool surely?
UPDATE – it is: it says so at this time 117seconds https://youtu.be/irJQDGw8Ptk?t=117
Edited 2015-04-01 16:31 UTC
Does this actually run Heroes of Might and Magic for example like dosbox does ?
“People said it couldn’t be done, and questioned why it should be done, and they told us we shouldn’t do it. But you know what? We’ve done it anyway.”
I fail to see the joke. This sounds more like a succinct summary of Microsoft’s entire business mantra. Don’t listen to your customers’ feedback, and give them some kind of janky product that serves no real purpose.
Its not “knock knock …orange you glad I didn’t say banana” ha-ha isn’t this fun joke.
Its more of a “want to have fun? Here’s salt in your eyes! Isn’t that fun? No? Well it was for me. Here let me do it again and see if you enjoy it more this time” I’m funny because I hurt people kind of a joke.
Sad, but this would probably be far more useful than MS’s current mobile offerings.
yeah, it would have been even more fun if it was windows 1.0. With the tiling and everything it would have fit right in.
The scary part is the first versions of windows looks very much like metro today.
Yeah, flat design is what we had before computers were strong enough to process round edges and bevels.
Yeah, “flat design is enough for everybody”…
Composition ? Naaaah…
This DOS thing from Microsoft seemed a bit behind the times.
You don’t need to install anything on your device to be able to run DOS-programs. Supposedly you can even run Windows 3.1.
I think they’ll make this public soon enough, so you just run Windows 3.1 in Javascript in the browser:
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4546
I’ve been playing Wolfenstein 3D on my ARM device for a while now:
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Wolfenstein_3D_1992
It just works.
Just no save game yet.
MS DOS was behind the times when it was released. CP/M-86 was better.
Of course, it probably still offers better multi-tasking capabilities than iOS – and imposes fewer restrictions on end-users and third-party software developers (unless of course it forces you to use “APPSTOR.COM” for all software installation).
I thought something seriously effed up was going on… You got me good Thom.
You fell for that one? (it is still there btw, it is now April 2)
I think that this should be sold as “Windows 10 IoT for Small Devices”.
How many shades of gray are supported by this OS, maybe around 50?
Man, you guys are doing some hardcore bashing. I’m not saying that MS is innocent or that this app is super useful. But as someone who actually owns a Windows Phone and who installed this app, I have to say, it’s fun to play around with and I think they’ve done a really nice job with it. Just enjoy the whimsy and stop looking for the dark side of this act. Just my two cents.
I not only had a great few laughs, but was really surprised about how nicely this was done. Trying to start the game and going through the whole ordeal of select sound, video and getting no-mouse driver, finally highloading etc all brought back real memories, except this time a friendly voice guided you through all the DOS-error-messages. If only Cortana had existed 30 years ago
I’m amazed at how much work and time that they wasted in that app… But it is impressive in ways…
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; Windows Phone 8.1; Android 4.0; ARM; Trident/7.0; Touch; rv:11.0; IEMobile/11.0; NOKIA; Lumia 925) like iPhone OS 7_0_3 Mac OS X AppleWebKit/537 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile Safari/537
*Ring* *Ring*
C:\>echo ata>COM1:
C:\>copy con COM1:
::Conversation here::
^Z
C:\>echo ath>COM1:
I usually hate April day’s pranks on the net but this thing is genuinely funny. So many good in-jokes, including a reference to Bill G’s “640k should be enough for anyone” when you try and load a game after loading the touchscreen driver.
Kudos Microsoft.
Haha funny idea.
Android version would be nice, I`d like to try it!
The joke is on them! The rest of us all can just install DosBox on our Android devices and have full functionality.
Wanting to run DOS programs in 2015?
Are you sure the joke is on them?
I recently had tons of fun re-playing X-COM: Terror from the Deep (a DOS game from 1995). I’m not sure that would work well with a touch interface, but didn’t try that, DosBox works better on a PC.