Microsoft has spent four decades treating Windows as one of consumer software's largest public laboratories. Windows is the familiar storefront, but behind it sits a collection of experiments: interfaces that talked to you, wallpapers that browsed themselves, and locked-down operating systems that could not run traditional desktop programs. Some experiments graduate into features people use daily. Others are quietly retired once the market delivers its verdict.

Microsoft naturally celebrates the products that worked. The failures are more revealing because each one shows exactly what the company believed the future looked like moments before the market disagreed. Here are five specimens worth digging up, with the key facts that define each one.

Key facts at a glance

• Microsoft Bob (1995): A $99 desktop shell that turned Windows into a cartoon living room with animated guides. It failed within a year but spawned Comic Sans and the Rover assistant later used in Windows XP.
• Active Desktop (1997-1998): Allowed HTML content to live on the Windows wallpaper. It was crash-prone and highlighted how deeply Internet Explorer was wired into the OS, feeding antitrust scrutiny.
• Windows SideShow (2007): Secondary displays on laptop lids and remote controls for glanceable info. It worked but almost no hardware shipped, and support was removed in Windows 8.1.
• Windows RT (2012): An ARM-based Windows 8 that couldn't run traditional x86 software. Microsoft took a $900 million charge on unsold Surface RT inventory.
• Windows 10X (2019-2021): A simplified Windows for dual-screen and folding devices. It was shelved, but its centered taskbar and cleaner design language strongly influenced Windows 11.

Microsoft Bob: The talking dog outlived the home

Bob shipped in March 1995 as a $99 shell that replaced the Windows desktop with a cartoon living room. Programs were objects on shelves, the calendar hung on the wall, and a cast of animated guides, most famously Rover the dog, walked users through everything in speech bubbles. Melinda French, then a Microsoft marketing manager and later Melinda French Gates, led the product's marketing effort.

The software demanded 8MB of RAM at a time when many home PCs had considerably less, cost real money, and could feel patronizing to anyone already comfortable with a PC. It was dead within a year. But the laboratory notes escaped the building. Vincent Connare designed Comic Sans after deciding that Times New Roman looked absurd inside Bob's speech bubbles, although the typeface was completed too late to ship with the program. Rover, meanwhile, was exhumed six years later to front Windows XP's search assistant, where he annoyed a second generation. Bob died; his organs kept getting transplanted.

Active Desktop: The web on your wallpaper

In 1997, Microsoft decided the desktop should behave like a webpage. Active Desktop arrived first as an add-on for Windows 95, then became a built-in part of Windows 98. It allowed users to pin live HTML content to the wallpaper, including stock tickers, news channels, weather panels, and other widgets that refreshed automatically during the brief enthusiasm for push media.

The idea was sound, but the execution was not. It added another fragile web-rendering layer to modest PCs, often through slow dial-up connections that could be expensive to leave running. Many users recall the gray error screen offering to restore the desktop after a crash. Active Desktop also demonstrated how deeply Microsoft had wired Internet Explorer into Windows, an approach that became central to the company's much larger antitrust problem. The legal case was not about animated wallpapers, but Active Desktop made the technical integration behind it unusually visible.

Microsoft never abandoned the underlying idea. Live Tiles, taskbar news panels, and Windows 11's Widgets board all revived the concept of continuously updated information living alongside the desktop.

SideShow: A second screen stranded on the wrong hardware

Windows Vista shipped in 2007 with support for something called SideShow: tiny auxiliary displays, embedded in laptop lids and remote controls, that could show email, calendar, or music controls without requiring the user to open the main screen. Some implementations cached selected information, allowing it to remain available while the PC was asleep or switched off. Glance at the outside of a closed laptop and see your day.

At the time, that was genuinely forward-looking. Microsoft had sketched the same glanceable-information model now delivered through smartwatch features such as always-on displays and interactive notifications. But almost nobody built the hardware. Asus shipped the W5Fe with a 2.8-inch SideShow display embedded in its lid, while a few keyboards, remote controls, and other accessories experimented with the platform. The wider ecosystem never materialized, and Microsoft removed SideShow support in Windows 8.1.

Manufacturers had to add cost, thickness, power consumption, and software support to solve a problem few buyers knew they had. Today, a phone's lock screen and smartwatch face perform much of the same glanceable-information role. The concept had arrived before the hardware ecosystem existed to sustain it.

Windows RT: A $900 million lesson in reading the label

In October 2012, Microsoft launched the Surface RT, running Windows RT, an ARM-based edition of Windows 8. It had the desktop, and it came with a version of Office. What it could not do was run the familiar x86 Windows programs built for Intel and AMD PCs.

Its ARM processor used a different instruction set from an Intel processor, and Windows RT lacked the translation technology found in modern Windows-on-ARM machines. Later versions of Windows on ARM approached compatibility through x86 emulation, but RT had no equivalent escape hatch. Microsoft also reserved the recompiled desktop environment largely for its own bundled software, pushing third-party developers toward Windows Store apps instead. Users were largely confined to a Windows Store whose shelves remained conspicuously bare.

Customers bought a familiar product and got a stranger wearing its clothes. Nine months later, Microsoft recorded a $900 million charge related to unsold Surface RT inventory, one of the most expensive admissions in the company's hardware history. Yet RT's underlying thesis, that Windows could benefit from efficient ARM processors and longer battery life, was not wrong. Today's Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops revisit that ambition with far better compatibility, including support for native ARM apps and emulation for many x86 and x64 programs. RT failed because it arrived without the one thing that makes Windows difficult to replace: everything people already expect to run on it.

Windows 10X: The future for eighteen months

Announced in October 2019 alongside the dual-screen Surface Neo, Windows 10X was a simplified version of Windows designed for a new category of folding devices. Built around Microsoft's modernized Windows foundations, it was intended to reduce some of the complexity and legacy behavior associated with conventional PCs.

Microsoft later redirected it toward conventional single-screen devices as demand for familiar laptops surged during the pandemic. After further delays and strategy changes, the company shelved Windows 10X rather than releasing it as a separate product. In May 2021, Microsoft said parts of its technology would be incorporated elsewhere. The Surface Neo never shipped at all.

Except users may be looking at its influence right now. When Windows 11 appeared weeks later, its centered taskbar, simplified Start menu, rounded surfaces, and cleaner visual language strongly echoed the abandoned system. Microsoft never presented Windows 11 as a renamed version of 10X, but the family resemblance was difficult to miss. The product disappeared; parts of its design vocabulary escaped.

The backyard is full, and nothing stays buried

Place the five experiments side by side and a clear pattern emerges. Microsoft's failed experiments rarely disappear completely. The interface, hardware idea, or technical ambition is stripped for parts and returned later in a form the market is better prepared to accept. Bob's animated assistant came back as Rover; Active Desktop's live content became Widgets; SideShow's glanceable screens moved to phones and watches; RT's ARM ambition found a second life in Snapdragon laptops; and 10X's design language became Windows 11. The products failed, but their DNA kept showing up in the next generation of Windows.

Source: MakeUseOf News