have you ever had a visit from the good idea ferry that you later regretted
maybe something like i'll just duct tape my bumper back onto my car what could go
wrong well microsoft had a moment like this back in 1997 when they introduced a
lovely feature called the office assistant as part of the office 97
productivity suite little animated characters were introduced to help the
user with common tasks although there were quite a few to
choose from everyone mostly remembers clipit better known as clippy that
painfully annoying paper clip that came to haunt the nightmares of cubicle
workers everywhere so why in the world did they think this was a good idea to
begin with well microsoft was moving away from the command line interface of
ms-dos in the mid-1990s and toward graphical user interfaces the company
wanted a way to make pcs as easy as possible to use for a wider customer
base after looking at a study from stanford that indicated that people feel
similar emotions towards computers as they do to actual people microsoft
decided to humanize their software as much as possible leading to the
development of microsoft bob a cartoonish interface that presented the
system as a house the user was guided around by an animal assistant such as a
dog for example clicking on a desk with a piece of paper on it would open up a
word processing program the general consensus though was that although
well-meaning bob was a terrible program
because it went too far the other way from the traditional command line it was
sickeningly cute and insulted the intelligence of the average computer
user and although microsoft quickly ditched bob after Windows 95 came out
its concept of cute cartoonish characters holding your hand to an
unnecessary degree did make it into office 97 with the idea again being to
make it easier to use even though the focus groups didn't like the office
assistant concept with many of the female participants saying that the
characters looked like they were leering at them through the screen microsoft
shoved clippy down our throats anyway but even within microsoft clippy was
still pretty unpopular his internal code name during development was tfc with the
c standing for clown but i'm gonna let y'all figure out what
the first two letters are for however partly due to the fact that microsoft's
bob was pushed by melinda french who later became bill gates wife
no one was too keen on dumping clippy completely meaning he became a fixture
in microsoft office for several years but why exactly was he so hated
well a huge part of the issue was not only that his offers to help seemed kind
of silly i mean who needs help writing a letter but also that he was designed to
help users become oriented with office once the user mastered the basics clippy
became mostly useless but he just kept on popping up with the
same suggestions no matter how long a person had been using the program for it
didn't take long for microsoft to no longer be able to ignore the tide of
voices asking for the feature to be turned off so the company finally did by
default in office xp which was released in 2001 and removed clippy and all other
office assistants completely in office 2007. however clippy has popped up
several times since he was fired microsoft itself commissioned a cartoon
based around the character's ouster to promote office xp as soon as i finished
this proposal i it looks like you're writing a letter ah would you like help
you you little metallic um try
rephrasing your query clippy appeared in a tutorial game called ribbon hero 2 in
2011. microsoft used it as an april fool's joke sticking him into office
online in 2014 and there are even clippy
related easter eggs integrated into cortana
so it's uh it's cool that microsoft can laugh at themselves a bit i guess but just
between you and me i keep a paper clip with googly eyes on my desk because i
actually i miss the good old days i love that little guy hello
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it looks like you're writing a letter would you like beat it