Why Windows 95 Was a BIG Deal!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2021
- It is the night of August 23, 1995. Everyone around you is excited for Windows 95. This is clearly a big deal! You got your JNCO jeans on, you brought your Game Boy with you because you have no idea how long this is going to take, and you and your friend are waiting in line at Best Buy with hundreds of other people, waiting for midnight to strike, because that is when the all-new Windows operating system will be available for purchase on store shelves. But do you even know why you’re here?
Microsoft got the whole world excited for Windows 95 with its retrospectively famous “Start Me Up” campaign. Its marketing was just incredible. It worked so well, thousands of people waited in line at many retail stores across the world to buy it, making it the most successful software launch in history. People knew that Windows 95 was an important milestone, but did they understand why? Yeah…but also, probably not. What’s really interesting about Microsoft’s product launch is that it was able to even mesmerize people that frankly didn’t really know what was going on. Today, we are going to look at the causes and effects of this great software phenomenon and explain “Why Windows 95 Was So Important.”
The seemingly everlasting influence of the Windows 95 operating system can really be boiled down to three things: brilliant marketing (arguably the biggest component), innovative features, and, just like many other incredibly successful things, timing. It’s honestly really easy to overlook Windows 95 as this revolutionary piece of software, even at the time. But keep in mind, that’s not the question this video is answering, but rather why Windows 95 was important. Being important and revolutionary are different things. But was Windows 95 revolutionary? Not really, or at least not as much as you’d think. Heck, its exorbitant amount of marketing actually brought it a lot of criticism, particularly from Apple users. Many of these people scoffed at the features that Windows 95 was boastfully advertising, and mockingly nicknamed it “Macintosh 87.” This is because they claimed that Macintosh did it first, almost a decade earlier, and they actually weren’t too far off. A new feature included in Windows 95 allowed users to name files up to 255 characters long, a huge improvement to the previous 11-character limit. But this was a feature the Macintosh had for over ten years, along with a similar looking GUI that used similar icons. I mean, if you really want to get technical Macintosh actually copied Xerox and Windows just copied it afterwards, but that’s a whole other video, but it didn’t stop Apple users at the time from giving Windows 95 some bad PR. Yeah, the whole “Mac vs PC” debate is a lot older than you might think. But Microsoft’s incredible advertising serves as a testament for why people still chose Windows 95 over the already existing Mac OS instead. Yeah, Windows 95 was similar to the Macintosh, but its marketing gave it a better personality.
Computing had an interesting role in the 90s, which was to be as relatable as possible, to transform from this niche community into something that everybody did. Computers were going to be as relatable and fun as cars or television, and Windows 95, in a lot of ways, was the one that took initiative on achieving this goal. Their commercials were upbeat, exciting, and appealed to the masses using pop culture references of the time. Their main focus was showing the operating system’s simplicity, and how much the user could do with such little effort. It was less of a convoluted piece of software and more like a person, when in reality, Windows 95 honestly wasn’t all that different from its previous version, Windows 3.1. With the way 3.1was marketed, people basically just saw it as DOS wearing a fancy outfit. Windows 95 also ran on top of DOS, only difference was DOS booted into Windows by default, so you didn’t notice it, and of course the ads wouldn’t tell you that. All this fun advertising excited people and encouraged them to go out and see what all the fuss was about, including those that were just getting into computers and had no prior experience with them. Consequently, many people weren’t even exactly sure why they were in line, but just knew that it was the start of something big, and that this product was going to soon enrich their lives in one way or another.
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haha, i do like it even though i'm not really into music
SHUT UP ABOUT BEATLES
@@MourningdovePlayerh412YT don't be salty to his opinion this is not twitter my guy
So i'm using a windows 95 virtual machine
I recently found out that Windows 95 "running on top of dos" was a misnomer. DOS was a boot loader of sorts. When WIN95 started it took control of everything and dos was demoted to a compatibility layer for things like old dos hardware drivers.
I remember when back in the 90s I would ask my father the permission to play with the delicate computer. Playing meant opening Microsoft Paint and drawing random sketches
I have similar memories as well haha! Thanks for watching! :)
Same with me in the early 2000s. Also went on the internet to play flash games on nick, cn and disney channel.
This channel is absolute garbage.
My favorite feature of Windows-95 was definitely the:
"files32.cat cannot be found. Insert the Windows 95 CD-ROM into the drive selected below, and click OK.
I'm pretty sure it's still there in the recent versions but it's an hidden feature. I don't remember using this since Windows XP...
:(
Same. Using Paint in 97-99 when I was in kindergarten.
Windows 95 and PS1 in the same year. It was absolutely colossal. You are spot on about 1995 being that specific point where everything changed. The zeitgeist shifted and everyone could really feel it. For me, no time period invokes as much nostalgia as the mid-nineties.
It is incredible how much changed in the 20th century. That is why it is, in my opinion, the most important time in history to study, and of course one of my favorites to study as well haha. Thank you for watching!! :)
NO YOU LIAR! PS1 release in 1994! Stop acting like a liar!
Around that time, Cartoon Channels thought that bringing over Cartoons from a certain country and then localizing them was a lot cheaper.
That was also a impactfull game changer.
@@javelinmaster2 They actually had been doing it for a long time before then, but yeah, the 90s was when it exploded.
Also Britpop and Oasis were at their peak
Your divide of the 90's is brilliant. I was born in the late 80's and remember growing up with a rotary phone, fast forward 5 years and I was playing Diablo on the internet on Dial-up with people across the world. I truly feel part of a blessed generation because I remember vividly my grandma telling me about having to ride horses to work and surviving the war whilst my dad showed me how to navigate the internet. Such a change.
I remember in Widows 95 you could access all the Internet plainly because there was no NAT or firewalls. For instance, you could setup printing on some unknown printer around the globe and print whatever you wanted on it. I for fun printed long texts like "Kapital" by Karl Marx or fringe scientific theories on some printers in the opposite hemisphere and imagined what would people think when they discovered big stacks of paper with these texts on their workplace.
It's also worth mentioning that games on Windows slowly started getting better from Windows 95-98, with the introduction of Direct-X and the beginnings of more complex 3D game titles.
Before that, most hardcore gamers still swore by DOS, since concerning Windows 3.x, Windows games were usually no more than point and click games for the most part.
"Features that likely never need to be changed because they were so convenient and timeless"
Modern Microsoft:
I am hoping for the very best for Windows 11! Thanks for watching! :)
To be fair Microsoft does seem to be the only corporation obsessed with backwards compatibility. The UI changes often and sometimes unnecessarily but generally they don't take away any features which is kind of cool.
@@geet9722 I guess widespread business usage of the OS has something to do with that.
@@geet9722 newer windows don't even come with basic office package, they are just changing essential tools for useless bloatware with monthly subscription.
@@nationsquid So you didn't learn your lesson then.
Back in 1998 we had the family first computer. I'm from Colombia so having a computer was a big deal and my dad worked extensive hours as a taxi driver to be able to buy one. It came with win95 because it was february and Win98 didn't lauch yet. For me, it was a life changing experience and shaped my future as a an IT/electronics technitian. I was 10 years old in 1996, and i felt the 90's change to something different because of the tech revolution.
Wow, those were great experiences! I was like 4 years old and I grew up first experiencing Windows 98 SE back then in 2001, at that time my country (Paraguay) had actually very few machines with windows 98 but luckily I was able to experience that beautiful moment because my cousin had that PC. He used to have the SNES emulator with Super Mario Bros. 3 as well as Sonic & Knuckles inside the Sega emulator. And he also got Half-Life: Opposing force, one of the greatest franchise ever.
@@FernandoCastillo-og7ze Emulators really were mindblowing. They also kept old games in people's minds, when before people just got rid of their old consoles to buy the new models and the games got forgotten. DOS games also running on Windows was a big deal.
No body cares....
same
@@miket3258 get busy figuring the monitor.
I pretty much started my IT career with Windows 95, but even today, with Windows 10, I'll ask users to click on their "Start Button" and I'll be asked either "What's that" or "Where can I find that" and I think to myself that this has been there for the last 26 years. Because Microsoft removed the work "Start", the user has no idea where it's at.
I just verified at the moment and at least they let the hint on it. If you're using a single screen on PC with a mouse, then indefinitelly moving left and down the cursor will inevitably bring the "Start" mention on the screen in a matter of seconds. So yeah, the start button is not entirely gone, thanks to some well thought UX.
Just say the Windows Button, and they will know. What's the matter?
You didn't mention the main reason why Win took over Mac - it was open hardware compatibility (and therefore much more variety and lower overall prices). Win 3.1 was already growing fast, heck even DOS was gaining momentum before that. Just when Win 95 got really user-friendly interface, it all burst, but potential was always there.
Mac and Linux models have their strong benefits, but when it comes to general public appeal PC/Win is just better.
Yup, that lower price and open upgradability was part of why my dad went PC rather than Mac. (Though another was a hand-me-down IBM PC that Dad's brother gave us in '93, that might've been a decade old even then. We replaced it with a 486 PC in '94.)
And I'm no stranger to DOS or Windows 3.1. I was not quite 13 when Windows 95 came out. Our 486 PC had been running Windows 3.1 and DOS 6 before then, and 95 seemed like a natural upgrade. And it _was_ a big deal -- easier to use than 3.1, somewhat less crashy, and you could still restart in DOS mode if a game ran better that way. We even had dial-up internet through Prodigy, though I think we'd been running that in 3.1 already.
And yah, Linux was barely a blip back then. Version 1.0 of the kernel had only just come out in '94, and the few distros available in '95 were largely aimed at enterprise users and a few techie power users. And lots of enterprises were still running other flavors of Unix.
Indeed. Enthusiats fail to understand a product is usually aimed at broad market and tend to think everybody has their predisposition to work around it.
I also remember that a Mac computer cost a fortune outside of US and Europe back then (in a sense it still does). You could build many computers for the price of a single one.
That changes very quickly. Linux matured well, and currently you can simply install many windows only games on steam, and play them on Linux with one click, like on Windows. I think it's already like 80+% of Windows games working natively under Linux in Steam. Those which don't work, in most cases have problems with their intrusive DRM protection, and Linux won't allow such intrusion by 3rd party software.
Yes and also apple was at the low ebb of an extremely hazardous race to the bottom with hapless management, a hopeless product line and bloated, unfocused strategic direction - as you say, timings everything - take 97 as the examination point and jobs comes back in as iCEO, draws that famous little cube with the product line up in it and apples journey back to profitability begins.
Also, this piece, in a good way, has anerica as the central focus. Over here in England there tended to be at least a lag of 12-18 months when developments stateside took hold in Europe. It’s not hard and fast, you just knew that “new stuff” over “there” would take a while to get bedded in over “here”!
@@ohio By 1995 the majority of Windows PCs were NOT made by IBM.
Man... imagine living in the 90s and having your copy of Windows 95... even if you had a greenish background and a basic UI with low color modes... it would be revolutionary to have a easy to use file explorer, a freaking browser to connect to the internet, damn you'd feel like in the top of the world...
In a lot of ways, it was a night and day difference from Windows 3.1. Thank you for watching! :)
yes... until... you goto a website that would be best browsed with a T1 connection! lol.... waiting.. waiting.. dial UPPP!
I went not only from a 3.11, but 3.11 on a 286 with no internet to Windows 95 on a Pentium with the internet. People underestimate how much of a paradigm shift it was, it didn't just change my life, but it felt like the entire world changed. Windows 95 brought computing and the internet to the masses.
I felt this way with Winsock on Windows 3.1 and a 386 with an external 9600 BPS modem :P
I had netscape and internet with win 3.1
“It’s from 1996 to 2002 that the 90’s started to solidify” - great quote, and so true.
Although I used Dos and Windows 3.1 as a kid, Windows 95 was what really broke me into the tech world at large, I learned the vast majority of my current tech knowledge through Windows 95 and 98.
That was definitely Windows 95 for a lot of people! For both experienced and inexperienced computer users, it deeply immersed them into the computer world. Thanks for watching! :)
@@nationsquid great video, keep up the good work!
1996', my favorite year. Return of the Mack, baby.
The "online '90s" was basically sandwiched between the release of Windows 95 and 9/11.
I was about to write your same comment, word for word.
The jump from the heavily dos-reliant 3.1 to 95 in terms of GUI (icons, start, and wallpaper) and user friendliess was much bigger than you are implying for people that experienced it at the time and played a very large role in its popularity. Also, that start up sound is still epic.
Yeah it's kinda crazy to downplay this.
I saw Win 3.11 and DOS in school. Getting a Win95 Desktop PC was so much different ans really a big leap in usability.
The whole thing about the transition in 1995 is quite interesting to me personally. Not only was it the year I got my first computer (including Windows 95) but I just so happened to turn 13, becoming a teenager, but that's also the year my family moved to a totally new state and home. Pretty much my childhood was in the analog era and my teen years the digital/internet era. So my life personally transitioned during that year in different ways.
Same here! Everything you said, that applied to me.
Man the 90s must've been an interesting time to be alive, so many technological advancements happening all at once. Was probably so hard to keep up with it.
Yes
It was definitely a huge decade for technology! Thank you for watching! :)
Yes but also a real busy time for your Mom.
@@nightstar3765 dude, you really got me gotdamn!!!!1!
@@xorcist6898 and got your Mother too.
Your observation about the 90s being split into two decades by the sudden mass adoption of the Internet is spot on. I graduated from high school in a world where most people had never even touched a computer, and my interest in them was considered strange. Four years later I graduated from college in a world where UPS had its website URL painted on their trucks....
Yeah not to mention the vast changes in graphics and game style from 1990 to 2000 where the difference was so radical. For me the win95 equivalent would be command and conquer
I'm a 96 baby and I totally agree with what you said about trends. I naturally have rose coloured glasses around growing up, but the computer to me then was amazing, even just to play Pinball or Minesweeper. I actually don't think my siblings and I even delved into the internet until later years, I mostly remember playing a lot of PC games. There's no one time that is perfect, but those memories of my siblings, cousin and I learning about using a computer and the internet in general are special to me. Honestly boggles my mind how far technology has come in so little time, from dial up to high speed internet, from landlines to portable mobile phones. Sorry if I went on a tangent at all 😅
Same! :)
Windows 95 was my first operating system, so I have fond memories of it. The start-up and shut-down noises are iconic. There were many children's activity packs that I have fond memories playing, but can't remember the names of. There was one Fisher Price Knights game I do remember playing, and it blew me away that I could play that without needing a floppy or CD back then. Now physical media isn't needed nearly as much as it once was. In the late 90's I would navigate to kids' sites and printed out colouring templates from my favourite shows, and I used MS Paint quite a bit. I know it's so dated now, but I think I may setup a VM to return to those days again sometime.
Me with Windows XP in early 2010s: "How do you do, fellow swaggers?"
Pretty sweet! Thank you for watching! :)
Me with Windows 7 in early 2010: "Doing alright man!"
@@javelinmaster2 me with both: Ha
@@javelinmaster2 i miss Vista/7
@@someguywithmtndew5691 I use 7 exclusively
My family understood the significance of Windows 95 right away: under the old OS, we could not connect to the Internet without being disconnected within seconds. With Windows 95, we could finally establish a stable connection and keep it indefinitely.
It is just incredible what technology could do in such a short amount of time. Thanks for watching! :)
1995 WAS the Year of the Internet.
You must have had a different ISP than AOL, lol! If I had $1 for every time AOL dropped on me, I'd be a multi-millionaire!
Win95 was groundbreaking: games looked great, the UX was fresh and I was a 16-yr old teen. It got me to decide to study computer science at a time "computers" were seen as the next big thing. "Study computers" was a recurrent term (though it makes no sense today for good reason) but it was enough to make me curious and I'm grateful for it. I'm also appreciative of how lucky I was with the timing of my birth: being a teen during the internet boom was probably one of the luckiest periods to be a teen. Akin to being a teen while blockchain tech is booming right now.
Anyone out there remember MS Encarta? :D
I started with Windows 3.1 and 95 just blew me away as a kid, the GUI was massively improved and it seemed to run all my games and programs much more efficiently overall. The startup and logoff sounds still hold nostalgia for me as is the whole aesthetic of the OS.
There's something funny I find about the contrasting enthusiasm people have towards Windows; People lined up in stores at night so they could be the first ones to buy their new version of Windows in 1995, and nowadays people cross their fingers hoping their computers wont get updated because it lost its charm and is given to you literally by force.
Yep, my stepfather at the local store at midnight picking it up at release (back when there was a full release or upgrade pack as separate purchases). I wasn't the greatest of fans of 95 since it broke so much stuff for DOS and Windows 3.1 gamers (WinG support under 95 was dicey and DirectX despite replacing it didn't have backwards support for its API calls). I was still primarily using DOS until nearly 98 as a result.
Of course then too 95 was the first to introduce the update system we still use today to consumers, especially since some of us stepped back from 98 because it was something of a buggy mess at release, that's not a new issue it's just easier to think those old versions were great out of the box because of nostalgia.
what an idiots in usa. i use only copy s of windows. 95 windows was not bad but to install drivers was a pain in the ass. For me 98 se was very good
Well when updates tend to break your system, people tend to hate it. I cant even count the amount of times Win10 updates broke something of my custom rig.
a n i m e
n
i
m
e
@@vikumwijekoon3166 havent had a single update that was breaking something. Not even once in my life.
In 1995 nobody cared about Apple Macintosh anymore.
Until the iMac G3 enters the picture three years later! :)
@@nationsquid in my neck of the woods.... mac was used for graphics and etc... pc was for gaming. At least how the argument went.
exactly..
@@nationsquid quite true, having lived through that era I remember this very well. Macintosh supporters back before that time can generally be described as zealots. You still run into some of them who are still around and are still the same way. Also, in the late 90s ordinary people became extremely excited about desktop computers. This is long before smart phones; lots of television advertisements trying to sell desktops to people that actually listed specifications. Never see that again
You very obviously have never worked in the print industry or else you'd know how stupid you sound making that statement. The majority of Mac business use has always been in the publishing industry, particularly magazines. What is now Adobe's creative suite has always been Mac's killer app (the app you buy a mac to use) and it wouldn't be until the mid 00's until the PC version of the software reached parity with the Mac. But by then macs were and still are well entrenched in that one niche.
u keep me entertained for hours man. recently they gave us tablets in school and in each break i take my headphones and listen to vid after vid... well done!
1998 was our first family computer. My god what an incredible time. It was installed with win95 and it was absolutely a game changer. It granted access to Internet. Our first email was sending an email to my uncle in Canada (we were from Pakistan). It was unreal to have instant communication and the future seemed so exciting!
Bro that was a time when my neighbors got a computer and they had PTCL phone. They bought a dial up modem and connected to the internet, we were chatting with random rooms in mirc. Nostalgic times.
Your description of how the 90's actually are two distinct eras is very accurate.
The 60s is another great example! The difference between 1961 and 1969 is just jaw-dropping. Thanks for watching! :)
Brilliant but you missed the rock
@@theforgottenera7145 I missed the Simpsons as well! D'oh! :(
It's like that in the '10s too!
But the placement of the eras is off. The grunge era is more like 1992-1996, while 1987-1991 is the late-80s hairband era. The shift after 1991 was very fast and noticeable. Of course, most decades are not really clearly defined eras so much as convenient numbers; the 80s could similarly be divided between the early-80s new-wave era and the late-80s hairband era (where more changed than just music).
"Do you even know why you're here? Does anyone, for that matter"
I wasn't expecting a philosophy exam
Better get studying.
Thanks for watching! :)
One often overlooked feature of windows 95 is that you could actually install (via the custom option in the windows 95 setup) the windows 3.1 program manager as opposed to the start menu.
Meaning you can have a 95 installation that looks like 3.1
Yes, you can do it but honestly no one used this feature because the new shell was so much better.
I remember all of this, exactly how you described it. Great video! I was a computer geek in high school and a graduated in 1995 so this was all very exciting. I have a had a very successful career in technology and it was really neat to grow up during this time period. I still marvel that I use that start button ever day all these years later.
The 90s were the best years of a lot of people's lives. Wish I could do it all over again. Great video. Windows 98 was my fav at the time. Miss these days.
It really is fascinating how certain decades have such a profound impact on certain people! Thanks for watching! :)
But the 80's were much more awesome with the music, big hair hotness, and Nintendo! lol
Win95 was my first OS too. So many good memories
Hey look, I am computing!
:D
I loved windows 98 second edition back in the day. But windows 95 really was when everything changed.
I miss the old windows look. Sure I can sort of simulate it with stuff like Windowblinds, but it just isn't the same.
I do miss the old Windows looks sometimes too, but then I remember just how much Windows has improved since then! Thanks for watching! :)
It's the nostalgia in me that sometimes wishes that companies would make the UI of these old operating systems a theme in their newer versions. (Here's looking at you modern MacOS and Windows 11.)
@Kenneth Rogers I would love a Snow Leopard theme on the new MacOS. :)
To me Windows 7 will always be the best looking Windows ever. More beautiful than XP and faster than Vista. Perfection. Then Win 8 started to ruin things with those stupid tiles nobody wanted. But the more revolutionary surely was Windows 95 (even though it was a rip off of IBM's OS/2 Warp operating system that Microsoft criticized years before for being too complicated before embracing those same concepts (the start menu logic, the design, etc). But there's no doubt about it, Windows 95 was a revolution. I remember we were all crazy about it. Myself included. I'm not a fan of the Rolling Stones music but I can't argue with the fact that the Start Me Up commercial was indeed very effective. Windows 95 was in everyone's lips (except for the Mac devotees). Windows was cool again. And Apple had a hard time competing with them... until the iMac came along. Then it was the time for the Macs to be cool again too.
7 and xp were the best
Met my future wife in January of 1995, Got married in November of 95, went on a honeymoon to Comdex in Las Vegas. Both of us were computer technician and had a love for Windows 95. It was a great OS and a great year.
I had windows 95 on my first pc. I have fond memories of playing games on it - I was only 6 or 7 and I was installing and uninstalling programmes. It absolutely influenced my childhood and I consider myself quite tech savvy now thanks to the early influence and ease of it.
Love how you put Sonic as a 90s icon alongside MTV, Michael Jackson, The Mask and Terminator. Take that, plumber boy!
Haha! Thanks for watching! :)
@@nationsquid thanks for uploading. These videos always tickle my nostalgia.
Mario was more '80s than '90s.
@@jmal mario was still popular but every cool kid focused on the cool gang
I’m now a teacher. Blows my mind that my students (elementary school) are growing up on Mario games much like how I grew up on Mario games as a kid. Of course, it’s on the Switch now but it’s still Mario. =)
I remember being a 8 year old and watching my brother in law installing Windows 95 from Windows 3.1. It blew my mind how much better it looked, worked, and the improvements in intuitive commands and options. To my 8 year old mind, Win3.1 was meh, and I could put it down. Win95 got me on the PC and I couldn't put it down.
That is certainly what mostly made Windows 95 the game changer in the PC world! Thanks for watching! :)
Yup, having used both 3.1 and 95 back in the day (I was 12, not quite 13 when Win95 came out), I can very much agree with that! Less crashy, much better UI, long filenames... Windows had finally caught up to the Mac, and you didn't have to pay the price of a Mac to get it! 🙂
On top of that, with 3.1, we always exited back to DOS to run our DOS games. In 95, we usually didn't need to -- though there were still a few games that ran better by restarting in DOS mode. And this was on the same 486 computer, too.
And yet you could still run 95 like Windows 3.1 if you _reallllly_ wanted to. I remember finding the 3.x Program Manager and File Manager in the Windows directory, after reading about them in _Windows 95 for Dummies._ 😜 (Win98 had them too; dunno about Me.)
I remember opening task manager and watching Windows 95 consume itself.
I am born in 81. Got my first computer in the beginning of the 90s. Me and a couple of other nerds ran a BBC in a friends basement and we all had modems. Internet really killed this. I remember when I saw internet for the first time realizing this will be the nail in the coffin for the BBC. But, we embraced it and never looked back. :)
Being born in the 90's this OS was my first ever experience on a computer at age 6. Just seeing the turquoise blue background and blocky windows logo is enough to fill me with nostalgia. Crazy to think I was born right when this total societal shift happened, no recollection of what life was like prior to the personal computer and world wide web.
Around the time Windows 95 was released, as a wee lad in preschool I played with DOS computers and thought it was a fad. Then my family got a brand new Windows 98 PC and that truly opened my eyes to the world of computers. So much so that it influenced my choice of career in the years to come.
That's amazing! It's incredible how much influence Windows 95 had on so many people. Thanks for watching! :)
Don't forget when netscape, aol and etc sued microsoft for bundling Internet Explorer making those paid for browsers obsolete.
I may just have a video on that coming out in the near future! :)
@@nationsquid lol silly antitrust laws
Well, as I recall, there was a point. Outlook Express was bad on many levels for email and internet explorer was likewise pretty bad. There wasn’t the means to “give away” software products and expect to stay in business. So, Microsoft including the applications in the OS that comes with a PC means a high bar to convince people to come over to your product. In time, IE and outlook were so problematic that freeware browsers and email programs started to gain a following.
@@qdllc well ya it was at first but my dad was so happy to not have AOL and paid minutes and bs... i remember people scalping from peoples mailboxes for aol disca
@@qdllc Why would OE been "bad" for email? It had good MIME and charset support, UTF-8, custom folders and rules to move the mail around them... and it was free.
What an excellent analysis. Superb editing as well. Keep it up💜
The nostalgia is real. Windows 95 and that whole era was my first dive into the internet as a kid and it was really exciting at the time. Access to so much more information, chatrooms to talk to people from all over the world, it was all new and cool. I miss a lot of things from the mid-to-late 90's.
As someone born in 2001, I am old enough to remember a time using Windows XP, before Vista was released. But too bad I'm too young to experience Windows 95, 98, or 2000 when they were new. Because I was either a baby ('cause XP was released just only 4 months after I was born), or I didn't exist yet. I really wish I lived in the 80's and 90's, to see technology evolve right before our eyes!
I used XP before Vista as well! I much preferred Vista at the time due to its brand new UI and Start search feature. Thanks for watching! :)
Me using dos and win 3.1 as a kid... whoa man, time flies :D Okay, these memories are from my father's PC... but my own first computer came with W95. I remember that "playing" that time means creating charts in excel, setting the screensaver, just exploring what a computer can do. Wrote my own stories in notepad/word, managed my files in folders, draw some awesome BMP in paint... Back in the day that was magic from the perspective of the analog world. Then the "advanced" games... like the first c&c was pure science fiction after tetris, prehistoric and stunt. And nowadays I'm working as an IT guy, making money from it. Sometimes still feels as magic, it amazed me as a kid and now I'm supporting my family from it. Also it's my hobby, got a bit old but still capable gaming PC that I use for work, serves me well in these covid home office times.
Just a fun fuct: Nowadays I love to play cities skylines and my son sits on my lap and laughs while we ride on one of the railway line of my city. So yeah, this W95 thing changed my life and still influences it every day.
@@luki8806 You've probably heard this from a lot of young music nerds, but I really feel like I'm born in the wrong generation! I really wish I was born in the late 80's or early 90's. I wish MS-DOS, 3.1 and 95 was a part of my childhood. The 90's really sounds like it was the best time being a kid.
But I'm still glad my childhood was good enough. As someone born in 2001, I still remember most of the late 2000's pretty well. I played games on my dad's XP machine, back in the days when Vista was still in development. Sid Meier's Civilization IV, (and later V when that came out) are games that me and my dad loved to play together when we just want to hang around. But I was really young back before Vista came out, like kindergarten days, so my memories are really fuzzy. But I do know it was XP, 'cause I remember all the sound effects it made, and that iconic blue Luna theme.
Windows XP is like the brother that was always with me, since we both came out in 2001. And of course, I was really upset back in 2014 when it was announced that Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP. But I still made my Windows 10 machine look like Windows XP, with a custom made Windows 10 version of the Luna theme. I wish it looked more accurate, because I really hate Windows 10's limitations when it comes to custom visual styles. But it's close enough to feel like home to me. Windows XP will never die to me!
@@Mickelraven I see no problem in here, I also wish sometimes to born 10 years earlier to be there when everything is started :) I was born in 1988, in the XP days I was in secondary school, still using W98 a lot. At the time I have a P2 machine that can technically run XP but it was a slow garbage compared to 98SE :) Games (and basically the full experience) was way smoother because of the lower requirements of the OS. Ahh civilization... I played the first on my cousin's playstation, but my father bought the second for me on PC :) Also 4 is a masterpiece but nowadays I love Civ6 :)
If you want to listen to great game music tunes, search for jazzjackrabbit 2 OST (back then music was the essential part of the development), also if you want some pure fun get the game as well. It's still a masterpiece ;) But yeah, the OS sounds are also in my head including W95, 98, 2000, XP and so on :)
I'm also glad with my childhood, we have an atari clone, a NES to play mega man and super mario (the original) and duck hunt with a light gun, but PS and PS2 was the high end gaming. Like just imagine playing devil may cry at 60FPS on PS2 on a CRT. Our mind was blown.
XP was cool, but as a usable OS it was after SP2. Before that it's really unstable and full of bugs, but after that it was a great OS.
Also the main difference that back in the days there was much more social interaction compared to nowadays. Not in the "real word" sense, but just imagine playing a game and copy save files to floppy disk (or zip them to fit on more disks) and move to my friend and just continue the game :) Or go into "console centers" where bunch of PS and sega megadrives and similar machines were piled up and you can play with your friends for your launch money... We spent all of our piggybank money on that, playing house of the dead coop with light guns and having local tekken 3 tournaments after school.
No smartphone, internet was only after 18:00 (because it was waaaaay cheaper), a phone call means instant disconnect, downloading an mp3 file was about 2-3 hours. Also if you have a friend who had a CD burner... he was the ultimate king. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I have clear memories from it and I loved every minute of it.
Also it's feels wierd that someone started on XP... makes me feel old as hell :) But still a gamer, go a PS4 pro and a switch as well, and now a money to buy every game I want to... just the time lost. Even to list my backlog could took up hours ;)
@@luki8806 I agree with you, because despite the internet existing by the time I was born, I still feel like I'm one of the last children to grow up in a pre-internet era! Probably because our parents were smart enough to think that the internet isn't the best place to hang around all day for 7-10 year old kids. Where I lived, none of my classmates had full internet access until the 2010's rolled around, when smartphones became more common. Of course, we could always use our parents' computers, but we still socialized on the school playground! And we still had a time limit for how long we get to play. I got to play for only one hour a day, but got extended to two hours the more I grew up. And the time limit just went away as soon as I reached my teen years. Online gaming was a luxury for kids my age back in the day. We still played multiplayer game locally. On the PS2, Wii and best of all, Pokémon on the Nintendo DS! Only the rich kids had an XBOX 360 or a PS3, and I didn't get my own PS3 until a year before the PS4 launched, 2012 that is.
In my early childhood, we had a VHS player, so I'm still old enough to know what that is. Lots of memories watching old Disney movies and other cartoons with my brother on that thing. My brother still has the same VHS player. I also remember having an .mp3 player, when my Nokia dumbphone didn't have enough storage to have more that a few .mp3's. I always had to ask my dad to get me more songs. And since he's a Gen X, he has definitely influenced my music taste, and I'm glad he did. Because pop music is full of shit in my opinion! Rock and metal all the way, baby! :D
But as someone who loves retro stuff, from eras before I even existed, I'm gonna become a gaming collector. And now that I'm 20 years old, I've moved out of my parents, and I received one of the best gifts I've ever got from my dad. It was his old Nintendo 64! I loved playing Mario Party on the N64 with my dad and brother, and since my dad knows how much I love old video game consoles, I was really thankful he gave me his old N64 when I moved out! My brother took the VHS player, and I took the N64.
This is my gaming hardware collection so far. I have a PS2 Fat (AKA, my favorite gaming console of all time), PS3 Super Slim, PS4 Slim, Nintendo 64 (with Expansion Pak), Nintendo Wii, New Nintendo 2DS XL, and a 2016 ASUS laptop (i5). I am gonna get a gaming PC eventually, but I have to get a job first (I've graduated vocational school), so I can save up for PC parts. And I'm also gonna hunt down a PS5. I used to an original XBOX, but my mom gave it away (without my consent). And I also had a Nintendo Switch, but gave it away since I barely ever played with it, and didn't find any games that interested me. It is said that SSB Ultimate is one of the best games on the console, yet I barely touched it. We have different tastes. I sold my Switch for a 2DS XL, because I wanted to play DS and 3DS games again. Proves newer doesn't mean better. 3DS > Switch. If there's a dream retro console I have right now, it's the SNES!
In the end, I had really fun talking to you! Talking to someone who is also a Gen Z is always nice small talk and relatable. But talking to someone who is a part of a different generation is always fascinating to me. Because I get to hear their point of views, and their side of the story. And Gen X'ers and Millennials are some of the most fun people to talk to. When my dad is telling something from his childhood, I'm always listening. According to him, he had a Magnavox Odyssey in the 70's. It is one of the coolest pieces of technology in gaming history!
Because I love retro stuff, my favorite video game of all time is Undertale! Despite releasing in 2015, I love its 8-bit/16-bit art style. And I didn't play it until March of this year. I remember it was a very popular game, and somehow I've managed to avoid any sorts of spoilers. Playing Undertale for the first time was an experience I'll never forget! Greatest video game of all time! :)
I remember the library at my high school having Windows 95 on it's computers and shortly before I graduated they upgraded computers to more modern machines... this was in 2011
I guess you grew up in a small town as well?
My doctor's office I used to go to had pretty much all Win95, Win98SE and Windows 2000 PCs until the softwares that they used were unsupported and they got newer machines
This was between May 2012 and November 2014
Without any doubt, this is one of the best videos explaining what Win95 was all about. The GUI was so awesome. I started to use computer wind DOS 3.3 was the dominant OS. I used W311 and suddenly the Win95 GUI and Netscape fired the computing lives of all of us. Thank again for this wonderful video!
I've been using Windows since I was a kid in the 90s and I was today years old when I learned that you can drag and drop desktop icons onto the Start button.
In DOS 6.1 and Win 3.1 you had to load memory management software at startup. I remember having to set up config.sys and autoexec.bat and tweak settings to get more than 640k to be recognised. Windows 95 ended all of that. It had it's issues but it was a massive improvement in user experience.
God I remember having to do that for several of the pc games I had, that and having to setup modem strings and irqs. At the time it didn't bother me that much because you HAD to do that, you had no choice. Looking back at it now though it was a colossal pain in the ass.
Omg. Yeah, I hated this.
Yeah you had to load the HIMEM driver and then make changes to the commands for your startup programs, such as your CD-ROM and sound card driver, to run in high memory instead of the base 640K. Windows 95 did this all for you. If you preferred to primarily use DOS, you could edit your MSDOS.sys file so that Windows wouldn't start the GUI and instead boot to a DOS prompt. DOS games did work under Windows 95 natively much better than they did under 3.1, so I only remember a few games that I had to start in MS-DOS mode to run.
My father and I used to compete to see who could squeeze the most free memory out of our config. With QEMM and messing with loading order, I was generally able to get between 628 and 634K.
Not sure what you mean by “get more than 640K recognized”. By loading HIMEM and enabling XMS/EMS, you were then able to access the top 384K and load device drivers high, but the only way to get “more than 640K” of free main ram was to take over lower video memory, which was incompatible with Windows.
My father and I used to compete to see who could squeeze the most free memory out of our config. With QEMM and messing with loading order, I was generally able to get between 628 and 634K.
Not sure what you mean by “get more than 640K recognized”. By loading HIMEM and enabling XMS/EMS, you were then able to access the top 384K and load device drivers high, but the only way to get “more than 640K” of free main ram was to take over lower video memory, which was incompatible with Windows.
This is pure nostalgia. I was 16 when it came out and SUPER excited about it! It was a really interesting time to be into computers. nothing ever worked easily, the internet was vast expanse of fascinating uselessness, and connection speeds were garbage, but I remember it all so fondly.
Nostalgia is so interesting. It makes us think of times fondly that we otherwise might have found difficult back then. Nostalgia is both the most satisfying and most painful feeling. Thanks for watching! :)
My recollection on the filename-length thing was finding out at the time that Windows 95 limited the entire file /path/ to 255 characters. Meanwhile, Mac OS was limiting you to 31 or 32 characters for /each component/ (file or folder) in the path. So in practice we never really ran into the 32-character limit on Mac OS the same we we had the 8.3 limit on Windows 3. But even with Windows 95, we still sometimes ran into the path-length limit, particularly if someone liked to be very organized and had folders within folders within folders, and liked long filenames. (Also, could you put spaces in filenames or folder names yet, with Windows 95? I don't remember.)
I just found your channel, This is a great video and fantastic channel!.
Thank you so much for your support!! More content to come! :)
Apple commercial: You don't have to be a genius to run a Macintosh.
Me: Yeah, you kinda need to read the manual to know how to operate a computer. even if that manual is a book or a page long.
Thankfully most of that changed with OS X! Thanks for watching! :)
Now: The "Genius bar" helps iOS users...
Apple SUCKS!
@@jonkeener50 an apple hater, what a surprise...
@@CarlosRuiz20 And you love everything, wow, you want a sticker or trophy?
The (gimmicky) ability to play two videos at the same time was mind blowing.
On the other hand, I played recently with a Windows 98 virtual machine and dealing with drivers and settings was an atrocious experience compared to Windows 2000/XP/7.
It is incredible the kind of technology many of us take for granted nowadays. Thanks for watching! :)
My PC in 1995 that I upgraded to Windows 95 was only *theoretically* capable of playing video. In reality, it was more like a slide show the size of a postage stamp. I don't miss the days of waiting half a minute for an Explorer window to finish opening.
@@Corrodias At the time I was using a Pentium Pro (if not a Pentium II) with at least 8MB od RAM (expensive as hell), so I never had any problem. 😁🤣
@@bufordmaddogtannen You mustve had a very expensive rig back in 1995, I remember the Pentium Pro costing about $1000 for the chip alone back then.
@@neoasura possible but unlickely. At the time I was buying the second best choice available, which means I was one CPU generation behind, carefully picking the sweet spot between money and Mhz. E.g. Instead of pushing for that 100 extra Mhz I'd spend the money on memory.
Great Video... I was pretty excited back then. From Windows 3.1 Shell-like interface 95 did really evolve to an OS, even still sitting on top of MS-DOS...
As a programmer, being able to get off of DOS Extenders and jumping into built-in multithreading and flat address space was a DREEEEAAAAAM. Then DirectX was released and I was in heaven.
Computing and the Internet was so exciting and full off possibilities back then. Great time to join tech and ride the wave. Things have got better and faster, but there hasn't really been anything new or ground breaking since then
Now we have something groundbreaking: the AI.
Moving to Windows 95 from a DOS/Windows combo was a revelation - consistent design for all apps as much as possible - plug and play hardware. Essentially an operating system for the wider community masses while also being a technical os client for enterprises.
The whole idea of a collision of eras really does encapsulate that part of the 90's. I was born in 1986 so I remember both eras fondly, but they were very different. My older sister was born in 82 and my younger sister was born in 98. Neither of them get it. Well done on this one.
I was in community College when it came out. I remember it rolled out in all of the computer labs there it was never the same. Everything changed radically when that happened
Apple: only rich nerds can use computers.
Microsoft: everyone can use computers.
Haha! Yeah the prices were not all that different back then. Thanks for watching! :)
Apple then: spend less, do more
Apple now: spend more, do less
@@dyna6448 Apple later: spend millions, do nothing
I disagree with this. HARD.
@@dyna6448 Just untrue. Find a machine with similar build quality and specifications for much less. You really can’t. Even Linus Tech Tips (no Apple fanboy) has admitted that they are competitively priced given specifications.
The main thing I miss from Windows 95? Hover.
That was a neat little game of early 3D, sad they didn't bring it back on Windows 98 on.
Or "the Hall of Tortured Souls" hidden in Excel 95. 👀
Thanks for watching! :)
Oh man, I love Hover!
Too bad it's only got 3 levels that repeat over and over again, but it was *3D!*
This channel is pure nostalgia bait…..
And I absolutely love it, you glorious bastard.
Wow the first OS I ever used. I was a kid back then and my mom thought I was a "cybernetic kid" for learning to use it. Lol, she never knew how to turn on a computer. We wanted one back in '96 just so we can study for school and my dad could work (he was the computer expert) and it included Win 95. There was MS-DOS too but never fully learned it, we used it for games. (computers back then were expensive and it was shared thru the family, way before having computers for each person) Great video! Takes me back.
I ascend to another plane of existence every time I hear that startup sound.
"It is now safe to shutdown your computer"
Thanks for watching! :)
My first experience of it was in college in 95. I loved how easy it was to use and find everything. I remember using the internet for the first time, I clicked on a photo of a guitar then waited about 15 minutes for it to load.
Great video, actually my wife and I first got into computers in 2003 when we shelled out the bucks and bought a MAC it's what I learned computers on. Then the gaming bug got me and since there were very few games that would run on a MAC at that time I bought myself a PC with Win 95 on it. Since that time I've built four computers and installed Win 98, Me, XP and 7. It's been a wild and hair pulling experience but one in which I'm still learning.
Ah windows 95, I remember my mum buying it for me to cheer me up as I’d just been dumped from my girl friend. I had the 3.5 disk version. Came with 13 disks and took forever to install. Ahh happy days.
How sweet of your mom! Thanks for watching! :)
Computer stuff is always a good thing to cheer someone up after getting dumped. I bought a PS4 after my ex wife dumped me, and a few years later I dumped my girlfriend and bought a Switch😂
Should of seen how many disks IBM's OS/2 came with. IBM really messed up with OS/2. It was a great operating system for it's time.
The full version had 29 floppies
Always turning out quality content!
Thank you so much Blake!! I have more content coming your way very soon!
Also, thank you for the Halt and Catch Fire recommendation! Binging it now! :)
@@nationsquid lol a friend has compared me to Cameron.
In 1995, I was 14 and I had been programming for a couple years in DOS, mostly in QBasic but I was experimenting with developing libraries in ASM and integrating them into QBasic for greater speed and power.
When Windows 95 came out, I became aware of windowing and operating system interfaces, and I became convinced that I would have to relearn programming essentially from scratch. I was very disillusioned by this impression.
In hindsight, I wish I had bought some book about making a windowed program and given that "relearning" idea a solid try. It wasn't until college that I gave up on developing in the awkward way I had been going and tried again, and by then it really did feel like the industry had left me behind.
I too was writing code in QBasic for fun around age 11. It was a great introduction language as a kid who did not really know (or care) about fundamental software design. I just enjoyed making silly games. When Windows 95 came out, somehow I transitioned to Visual Basic. This was a natural shift to GUI program, as the two languages both derive from BASIC. I tried to make "windowed" applications in QBasic without fundamental knowledge of object-oriented program, but failed miserably lol. I recently opened an old QBasic book to look through the pages, and the language is very reminiscent of my childhood.
@@jillthinksimabreakfasttaco4904 I made a very rudimentary windowing system in QBasic. Basically, I made a function with a gazillion options that let you describe a window and what interactive elements it had from a list of about six options.
I didn't use it for much. A GUI for a rudimentary RPG, I think.
10:58 I've always felt this way about the 90's. I've always said they could look dated but actual at the same time. Some late-90's stuff still feels fresh, whether it is music, films, photos, etc.
That's called 'classic'
Really enjoying your videos! I think you’ve got a good future ahead with this sort of content!
Thank you so much!! I have more content coming your way soon! :)
Another major accomplishment that Windows 95 succeeded in was the revolution of 3D accelorated graphics/gaming by being the first OS to introduce Direct X.
Absolutely! Before that, you mostly had the NeXT that did that, which was incredibly expensive at the time. Thanks for watching! :)
The first OS I ever used was Win98, which is basically just an incremental upgrade of 95. Some of my fondest memories involve Win98 machines. Gaming was the first big contributing factor. Then when we finally got a dial-up connection for our PC, it basically changed the way I went about life, for better or for worse.
"Macintosh 87"??? THE COMMODORE AMIGA was doing the Windows 95 thing back in 1985!!!!!
I was at University in '95 and remember a lecture where they were demonstrating Windows '95 in its pre-release form. Looked quite radical compared to 3.11. Growing up in New Zealand, we were the first place on Earth to sell Windows '95 simply because New Zealand was the first reasonably populated nation to see in the new day based on its time zone.
The Whitcoulls store at the start of the video is a New Zealand stationery/book store chain.
Tech bit:
That stupid 255 character file name limit is STILL a problem today because it includes the file path AND file name. If you map network drives from within a subfolder you can actually render files inaccessible from the top level down unless you robocopy a file out, or shorten the parent directories. I reckon that's one reason why MIcrosoft went from "Documents and Settings" to "Users" post XP.
Great video BTW. Thanks.
Yeah -- Bummer it didn't happen in December. We could've got the Whitcoull's Santa.
Wow to read the comments and see people say "oh the 90's must have been fun or whatever" makes me feel old because it doesn't seem long ago at all😢😢
Yes so true... feels like it was yesterday.
yeah... but on other hand it seems like entire different century now....
Although I was not near creation in 1995, it was definetly a great time, and I enjoy learning about how computers evolve. I think Windows has had many ups and downs in their existence, from successes like Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10, to ones that needed great improvement like Windows ME, Windows Vista, Windows 8 (8.1 too although it improved according to customer feedback so not too bad for 8.1), and our very recent one, Windows 11. These videos teach me more and more about our tech, and how lucky I am as a pretty late Gen Z to have access to such tech, along with its ups and downs (and also the ups and downs of of old tech). Thanks for the videos!
I was born in 1963. I grew up totally analogue until my last year of high school, when dad brought an Apple //e home from the office. My university had a UNIX mainframe, with terminals in most buildings, and the students got accounts. I got my first PC in 1992, a 386 from a friend, running Windows 3.11. A couple of years later I got a Pentium with Windows 95. I knew how important 95 was, but Norton Desktop on my 386 had already had many of the features, so not everything was new. (This was back when Norton was good. 😅) I've had PCs ever since.
I'm glad I grew up in analogue times though. In many ways, life was indeed better back then, and I still miss those times.
Yeah I remember going to the computer store at midnight on 8/24/95. I never forgot the date. I would have been there even without the hype. I was excited for the real desktop and having a maxlike experience on a pc running pc software. I remember how much I loved the green background and how fresh the UI looked. Pretty sure I installed it from floppies. I also remember becoming an MSN charter member that day.
And now the iconic start menu is being moved to the middle smh
Wait what? It is?
It's definitely a culture shock for me, but I am exciting to see what Microsoft has to offer! :)
You can change it back to the left I heard.
Ikr traitors
One of the big features that made Windows 95 a huge success was that dial-up networking and a native TCP/IP stack was built into Windows 95. In windows 3.1 or 3.11 you usually had to use separate software to dial up to the internet. Also, Windows 95 supported 32 bit.
my aunt was 14, when got her first computer. I was one at that time. My mom was working hard and had to leave maternity leave earlier. While she was working, my grandma, my aunt and my uncle took care of me. I would cry my eyes out while mom was leaving for work. They would put me on the computer and I learned how to play games. Super Mario dos was my first game ever. :) Later I played mini golf and ski game on Windows 95. It was hard for me, but at the same time, it was a great experience. The 90's were really a perfect time to live. You had enough technology to live and enjoy life, but also it did not interfere with your socializing or psyche
Plug and Play was the biggest game changer for me in Windows 95. Not having to edit the command line BIOS every time you installed something was a revelation! Running 32 bit was a huge upgrade, too. There were tons of DOS and Windows 3.xx ISP services. The main contributing factor to the internet explosion from 1996 on would have been AOL going from hourly to a flat monthly rate. Cool video!
Spot on! Thank you for watching! :)
OH yeah, no more having to set a network card jumpers, then edit a network card's files, then edit autoexec.bat and config.sys to read the drivers. Can I run the drivers to high memory??? Ah the good 'ol days.
Congratulations, your channel is now is certified as "Video i would totally watch when eating instant noodles, and Video i would totally choose in Family Room's TV"
I am so flattered to hear that!! Thank you so much for your support! I have more content coming your way soon!! :)
Great video, everything on point.
My parents told me (who didn't start using a computer until the XP era began) that Windows 95 was the only instance of a TV commercial convincing them to buy a product. Yes, maybe they wouldn't have been impressed if they were Apple users at the time, but they were using pure MS-DOS.
"256 character limit is needlessly high"
* looks at basically every single file name related to any internet process even in the 90s *
Uhuh...
Technology was rapidly changing so bigger demands had to be met for sure!
Thanks for watching! :)
It was a gimmick. An irrational feature to promote irrational usage. Windows continues to do similar things in other ways.
I grew up on this OS, still my favourite.
That's awesome! Thanks for watching! :)
I had zero idea what was going on but when I saw the "Start" button I figured out...start here.
Within a few months and no outside help I really got the hang of it.
Six months later i was on Usenet giving tech advice!
Thank you for this amazing video :)
Windows is more user friendly than Apple ever was. This is why Windows won.
I considered apple more user friendly up until windows 95. Pc having a lower entry price along with familiarity having already been popular with the office market and the first people to probably have a pc at home are what I credit MS success too
They never actualy compete, because they never could run on the same computer.
As a 16 year old I grew up mostly with Windows XP, but technology from the past always fascinated me since I was 8, in fact now I have two retro PCs, one with XP and one with 95, and they're both amazing, just like this video
Thank you so much for your support! Cool that you like older PC technology! I have more content coming your way soon. :)
Nice (also I like old technology in general lol)
I grew up poor, and my first computer was a hand me down windows 95 Compaq computer from my aunt circa 2001, I adored it and would always ask to play kids pix and doodle on paint or play old dos games. I still have this computer and I booted it up last year and it still makes me feel so happy. I got a windows 98 around 2005 or 2006 and I loved playing with the wallpaper editor all the time. I was late on the train but honestly growing up with the older os's really helped develop my love for computers
Again a great video. Well done
Speaking as an old-time Mac programmer, having programmed Macs since 1986 through to the present day, calling Win95 "Mac87" is absurd. Win95 had virtual memory, separate address spaces for each process, preemptive multitasking, and other features that more high-end OSes had (like Unix and VMS). Mac didn't get any of that until OSX in 2001.
Also, even Win3.x had a much superior API than the classic Mac API. I started programming Macs in 1986, and not Windows until 1991, but once I began Windows programming, I saw immediately that Windows 3.x blew away the Mac. The Mac had a better shell interface (Finder vs Win 3.x Program Manager) and it supposedly had more accurate color management (not that a normal user could tell the difference), and as the vid points out, Mac allowed longer file names than Win 3.x, but Win 3.x was superior to Mac in nearly every other way.
Win 3.x had better inter-process communication, better clipboard api, better memory management, better event manager, better window manager, etc. Oh, and GDI blew away QuickDraw. That's just Win3.x vs classic Mac OS. Win95 just extended the gap between Windows and Mac, since now Windows actually had the better shell, and long file names, and all that too, to go along with preemptive multitasking and virtual memory. Then NT extended the gap even more.
I love the Mac, and started using Macs in 86, and am typing this on a modern iMac, but sorry, Windows blew away the Mac from 1990-2001, and it's not even close.
(As for current Mac vs current Windows, there's not much difference from a technology or api perspective. Mac still looks like a UI from the 80s, since it still has that one menubar going across the top of the screen, but lots of folks like that. I think current Mac has a more coherent API than current Windows, as Windows has lots of API systems (e.g. Win32, WinForms, WPF, "classic" UWP, WinUI), whereas Apple prunes old APIs (like classic Mac API and Carbon) rather than carry multiple APIs forward. Though in the Swift era, Apple has introduced multiple UI frameworks (storyboards, and the more recent Mac UI framework that I've yet to play with), while still keeping the ancient classic Cocoa MVC Document/View/Controller framework).)
Thank you for this, the part about their not being much of a difference between Win 3.1 and Win95 is ignorance...
True 32 bit VM manager and preemptive multitasking were a big deal
People made that comparison because Windows 95 borrowed many GUI features that had been standard on MacOS since 1987. That was why they made that comparison. And it wasn't absurd. Those very GUI features, along with much cheaper hardware, is why it was successful. And MacOS 7 had virtual memory in 1991; an 'old-time' Mac programmer would know this ;)
@@kanicman Well, I'm more concerned with the internals and API, but even the UIs had many differences. For instance, Windows allowed resizing of windows from any side or corner of the window, while Mac OS only allowed resizing a window using one corner. Windows had app-modal dialog boxes, while Mac OS still only had system-modal dialog boxes (I don't think it got app-modal ones until Mac OS 8). Windows had right-click context menus, and Mac didn't. Windows had app menus, while Mac had (and still has) a global screen menu. That was all Windows 3.x. Windows 95 had a more Mac-like UI than Win 3.x as regard to Explorer vs Finder, and added the Recycle Bin which was similar (though not identical to) Mac's trash can. But Win95 still had the above mentioned Win3.x UI stuff that Mac lacked, and added a task bar to boot. lol
Among the things Mac OS 7 had that Windows didn't were balloon help and desktop accessories (which Mac had had from Mac OS 1, I think).
BTW, I don't remember Mac OS 7's "virtual memory", but I remember that it didn't have separate address spaces for each app, and that it still relied on "grow-zones" if an app ran low on memory. And in order for an app to perform "large memory operations", the user had to first manually increase the amount of memory an app could use via a setting in the app's preferences. (And didn't Mac OS 7 still have the concepts of "high memory" and "low memory"? I don't quite remember.)
Windows 3.x fortunately didn't have those issues (except for the shared address space issue), but it did have the pain of using Intel's old segmented addresses system (so had to deal with near ptrs, far ptrs, huge ptrs). But Win95 brought a flat address space (so caught up to Mac on that), and had a separate address space for each app. Mac OS didn't catch up on memory management until OSX.
@@BigSleepyOx True, but Mac had multitasking and VM much earlier and before Windows 95. System 7 did lack some advanced features like contextual menus for a while (they debut in 8), but was more of Steve Jobs philosophy thing than the OS handling such a feature. Yes, VM was handled via the Get Info command for each app. I remember doing this specifically to play Prince of Persia 2 on a Mac Plus -wouldn't run without it!
I was born in 97' so I'm hardly what you could call a 90's kid. With that said I remember Windows 95 fairly well. The fact that my dad has worked with computers since the start of the 90's probably is the reason why I remember an operating system so well even though it was replaced by Windows XP in 2001 and I was only 4 or 5.
You are on this council, but we do not grant you the rank of 90s kid
Umm, my phone is DEFINITELY listening to me, lol. Your description of the analog to digital transition of the 90s is something I was literally talking about like 2 days ago. I was mentioning how I'm a Millennial who grew up right before AND with the birth of the world wide web.
Love the video 👏
The white stickers at 2:17 are really user passwords covered up XD
Anyone notice the Y2K manifesto at around 6:43?
4:05 no, no, no. People didn't chose W95 over MacOs because of marketing. People chose PC or Mac first, then they chose an operating system. And W95 was much better looking than W3.1+
I still have a PC with Win95 and one with WinXP. I still have an AOL shirt. I liked the slogan they used. "AOL The More Windows You Open, The Cooler It Gets".
The first PC I ever used was the family computer, an IBM Aptiva 95 with Win95 and a software bundle in CD format that included Enciclopedia Encarta 96, games like Caesar II, a demo for Pitfall 3D, Netscape Navigator and more, for an 8 year old kid that was a great experience, it shaped me.