Start Me Up: 25 years ago this week, Windows 95 launched and, for a brief moment, Microsoft was almost cool
- Reference: 1598335991
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/25/windows_95_25_years/
- Source link:
Bill Clinton was US president and the World-Wide-Web-era of the internet was in its infancy; there was war in Bosnia; Oasis and Blur were locked in a fierce battle of the bands in the UK; TV comedy Seinfeld was unstoppable; and newcomer Friends had just finished its somewhat disappointing first season.
Computers were very much with us, though less than a quarter of households in America, for one, had a PC. Computers were mostly for the tech savvy and for nerds, or for work; at home, most folks considered the machines clunky to use and turned to TV, magazines, and fresh air.
But something was bubbling: the web turned computers into worm holes into a growing galaxy of information; word processing and spreadsheets were increasingly a norm; and amid the arrival of the first Sony PlayStation, there was a renewed surge of interest in home video gaming. The time was right for an overhauled mass-market consumer-level operating system.
Microsoft knew its moment had come. It had shifted Windows from 16-bit to 32-bit – at least at the kernel-level with support for 32-bit applications – and rejigged its code with preemptive multitasking, long filenames, and other bits and bytes to smooth the ride for users.
[1]
Welcome to Windows 95. Image credit: [2]Microsoft
In a move that cemented its place in computing history and made Bill Gates the richest man on Earth, Microsoft stopped stealing its ideas from the likes of Xerox PARC and Apple – and came up with a few of its own, forming Windows 95. And the biggest was the Start button which, even a quarter of a century later still exists albeit after various redesigns and rethinks.
The Start button has informed pretty much everyone’s understanding of how to interact with a Microsoft OS and Redmond, to its credit, knew it had something good on its hands. (And yeah, we know [3]RISC OS , at least, had an icon bar before Windows 95 got its task bar; it didn't quite have a Start button, though, unless you installed [4]one of many third-party apps.)
There were a range of other Windows 95 features that were eventually added, most of which carry through to today – and were not all exclusive to Windows: right-clicked context menus; the desktop as a folder and the My Computer icon; shortcuts; the recycle bin; a better way to get at files and settings through Windows Explorer and Device Manager; and the much-touted Plug and Play which tried to automate the process of installing drivers and getting things like printers working without much fuss. And let’s not forget FreeCell.
Smithers, have the Rolling Stones killed
In a moment of marketing clarity, Microsoft went all-in on the Start button. It licensed The Rolling Stones’ hit single Start Me Up for a staggering $10m (give or take) and the song accompanied countless promotions in the lead-up to the big day.
Microsoft even went to the extraordinary length of commissioning the “world’s first cyber sitcom” starring soon-to-be megastars Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry, who were invited into Bill Gates’ office (but not really) to experience Windows 95 for themselves: the 30-minute [5]extravaganza (yes, 30 minutes) is not good but then it’s not excruciating either.
The longest card game in the world: Microsoft Solitaire is 30 [6]READ MORE
The launch of Windows 95 was huge, and for what felt like the first time in ages, computery news transcended the IT press and became a mainstream event. Long before Apple loyalists slept on sidewalks to buy the latest iPhone, nerds stayed up all night on August 24, 1995 in order to be first to get into a store and grab their copy of Windows 95 before anyone else.
Photos of crammed computer stores and triumphant purchasers hit the papers when normal people woke up several hours later. Microsoft used them extensively in its follow-up, massive, advertising campaign.
Those with CD-ROM drives gleefully inserted the shiny discs and embarked on the modern computing era; those still relying on 3.5-inch “floppy” disks got a hefty stack on them to run through, correctly and in order, before they could hear the [7]new startup jingle composed by Brian Eno himself.
And what was really great was that Windows 95 would do all the hard work behind the scenes: install it and it would take all the Windows 3.1 file systems and settings and automatically feed them into the new system. For many, it just worked. And the end result was worth it.
It felt like the future and Microsoft was very nearly cool.
And then Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, and all the spectacularly uncoordinated engineers that had designed Windows 95, took to a stage at a big live event, dancing to the Rolling Stones Start Me Up – and reality suddenly reimposed itself:
[8]Start Me Up? More like turn me off
Plug and Play quickly became known as “Plug and Pray” as its wildly inconsistent approach meant it sometimes worked wonderfully and sometimes just didn’t. Due to [9]compromises made in the operating system's 16-slash-32-bit design and memory protection choices, some applications had a tendency to crash the whole system if not themselves, and windows in the new Windows would stagger themselves all the way across the screen. USB support came in 1997 – a year after the first spec was released. And there were countless other small problems that somewhat undercut the excitement and hype.
And the truth was, despite all its advances and innovations, it wasn’t until Windows 98 that various problems were smoothed out and a world-class, for the time, consumer-grade operating system was born. At that point, Microsoft simply dominated everything.
And then it abused its position to such a ludicrous degree that the US government and Europe were forced to drag Redmond through antitrust investigations: something that free-market-loving America hates doing. That [10]famous trial the States only came after a dropped FTC probe and dozens of lawsuits that managed to build up a massive pile of evidence, and with Microsoft simply refusing to stop [11]screwing everyone .
Back to true form
Internet Explorer, initially an optional add-on, was later offered for free or bundled with every copy of Windows, triggering the [12]first browser war. And Microsoft used its market-dominant OS to ruthlessly steamroller those who stood in its way. The technical and design jump that Windows 95 represented became a double-edge sword for the world; its success gave Microsoft the power to pander to its worst instincts.
And that’s not forgetting that almost immediately after Windows 95 was released, Microsoft reverted to type: stealing rather than innovating; milking rather than continuing to push the boundaries; gobbling up small companies and kludging them into Windows; and so on.
Then we had the fiasco that was Windows ME before the software goliath found its feet in the consumer space again with Windows XP – built upon its actual proper operating system foundation, the Windows NT family – before producing the questionable Vista and Windows 8.
It wasn’t until Google arrived and Apple found a new lease of life that Microsoft was pushed off its greed-and-laziness default and driven back toward innovation. Whatever you say about Microsoft, you can’t deny the extraordinary impact Windows has had on virtually every person on the planet.
And it all really began or at least kicked into high gear, for better or worse, with the launch of Windows 95, a quarter of a century ago today. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/08/25/microsoft_windows_95_screenshot.png
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_95_at_first_run.png
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/23/risc_os_open_source/
[4] https://www.riscos.info/index.php/Director
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA4zoQHLhok
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/22/windows_30_and_solitaire/
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAkuJXGldrM
[9] https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/11903
[10] https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/20/microsoft_on_trial/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2000/04/03/ms_guilty_a_monopoly/
[12] https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/browser-wars/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Start me up!
Whereas these days it's "Hey - You!, Get off of my cloud"
Re: Start me up!
"Whereas these days it's "Hey - You!, Get off of my cloud""
What? You don't even have the smallest amount of Sympathy for the Devil?
Re: Start me up!
Well, you can't always get what you want...
Re: Start me up!
I was watching for this line in the article.
Never ever had an ounce of appreciation for μ$. What poor use they made of what was available.
Well, Douglas Adams was a Beatles fan ("it was hard... not only were parents and teachers against you, but you had to fight Rolling Stones fans, and they fought dirty and their knuckles were closer to the ground") and an Apple Computer fan. However, it's a logical fallacy to then claim all Rolling Stones fans are Windows fans, or that all Norwegian Death Metal fans are Linux users.
The stereotype that Linux users are also Norwegian Death Metal Fans is not nearly used enough. Can I recommend to the uninitiated, the use of Linux Mint is highly preferable to most of the commercial offerings at the moment. I would also highly Kvelertak as a first foray into the genre. Metallica didn't know how to follow them they put on such a good pre show a few years ago.
I’ll never forget that The Times was given away for free, as paid advertising, when Windows 95 launched - marking the final destruction of any remaining illusions that it was a quality paper.
The Telegraph, perhaps in a fit of pique that Microsoft had passed them over, described Windows 95 as “the latest in a long and sorry line of make do and mend operating systems”. Which was nicely put.
And I stuck with A/UX, which was just better, dabbled with Linux - and wondered if Apple could ever recover from its malaise and come up with another decent OS - and, if they didn’t, whether I could ever afford a Sun computer.
I'm pretty certain Windows 95 was still a co-operative multitasking OS.
Pre-emptive multitasking never made it to Windows 9x, it remained the preserve of Windows NT and it's descendants.
IIRC, and I'm not sure I do, I think the Windows 16 bit 'VM' might have been the only preemptively multitasked component in Win95.
Win95 does use pre-emptive multitasking for 32 bit protected-mode programs, I think only 16 bit ones were stuck with co-operative multitasking.
That’s my understanding too.
Happy memories
Having been a software developer for DOS for a number of years, Windows 95 was a breath of fresh air, a new age, things only got better with Windows 98, then ahem MS and Vista (cough). NT was pretty good and Windows 7 rocked. All downhill from there. I used to look forward to the latest MS operating system or major update. Now I don't use Windows at all - exclusively a Linux Mint user.
One account of the Windows 95 experience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOwQKWiRJAA
Macintosh 89 badge
Anyone else remember the "Windows 95 = Macintosh 89" badges given out at some Apple exhibition?
Re: Macintosh 89 badge
I've still got mine!
Christmas 1993. The Amiga 2000 is finally replaced by a 486-DX2 50MHz. DOOM, TIE Fighter, and a thousand other classics. DOS 6.22 & Win 3.1. 2 years later Win95 launches and that amazing PC was suddenly ruined with 5-min boot times and woeful performance; not to mention it's hard drive filled with bloat.
Upgraded "back" to DOS & 3.1 probably within just a few days of getting 95 booted.
98SE was the first one that I took seriously for gaming purposes; and even then it's infamous need to be rebuilt literally every couple of months was still utterly infuriating. 2000 was the first copy that impressed me as both a stable and capable system (with the odd dual-boot back to 98 for unsupported titles). It's been downhill since then.
To be fair, a 486 50 is quite a low spec for Win 95. I recall at the time you needed a 486 66 and 8MB of RAM for serviceable performance with 100Mhz (or a Pentium) being preferred. I ran it on my 586 133 system (16MB RAM) and it was fine there. Saying that, "Restart in MS-DOS mode" was a regularly used option for gaming at the time...
Yeah, the 486 was on the low-side for 95; though the minimum requirements were listed as a 386DX with 4MB RAM! I dread to think how awful that might have been. I had 12MB of RAM at the time.
A 2 year old system should not have been brought to a halt by what was ostensibly a OS Kernel that was supposed to make better use of the underlying hardware than 16-bit real mode could.
A couple years later (1997?) I got a Cyrix 200MHz which, to be honest, I still preferred that with Dos 6.22 too. Only resorting to 95 for a Voodoo 2 card. Being a Cyrix, of course it largely sucked at that too, but that's what happens with the budget option!
Oh, yes, the regular reinstall of Windows to keep it running well... Don't miss that at all, I wound up moving my profile to a Samba share simply to avoid the endless resetup of all the options every reinstall (please stop hiding file extensions....). Recently, the relative stability has meant the hassles of profiles outweigh the advantages. Doesn't help that a bunch of games store their save files there; took me a while to figure out why logins/logouts were running so slow until I found the 100s of MB of Skyrim save files stashed in there....
Re: it's infamous need to be rebuilt literally every couple of months
I counted. I have reinstalled Win98SE a grand total of 312 times. And that, only on my computer. I have also reinstalled it dozens of times on other people's computers.
XP was truly an Operating System. It worked for weeks at a time (well, my memories are mostly about SP3, so there may be some bias there), had one or two orders of magnitude less BSODs, and was fun to use (ie it didn't get in the way of what you wanted to do). Of course, it had the godawful Registry, but that was its worst point.
Win 7/64 is, for me, the best MS OS. It'll be Mint after that.
Re: it's infamous need to be rebuilt literally every couple of months
I skipped the 95 and 98 editions, and went from 3.1 directly to NT workstation edition on our home machine (in part so the missus wouldn't inadvertently "clean" some mess from the root directory (like config.sys or the like)). Rather liked its stability, even though it was quite resource hungry. Mostly used SUSE Linux on the machine, however.
Good summary of MSFT
Great summary, not only of Windows, but of MS in its entirety. Their approach was, until Azure, to just throw a random collection of poorly implemented functionality into Windows, all bundled together for whatever they charged (around $100 for the weakest tea, IIRC), cutting into the market for anyone who wanted to do a better version of whatever Windows threw in for free. I believe Ballmer called it 'cutting off the air supply' of their competitors, in an accurate turn of phrase that I believe he probably regretted.
Windows NT was the first system whose internals you could study without becoming ill, and that only if you didn't look at its VM or file system interfaces. I haven't dared look at it for years, but I have no reason to believe it's improved. SunOS did the file system / VM system much better than anyone else at the time (thanks, Steve).
MS definitely violated all sorts of anti-trust laws, but what really did them in was the Internet. They just didn't get it, and their browser's attempts at doing things proprietarily continued to hurt them, as their attempts to innovate were labeled, not incorrectly, as 'extend and extinguish'. It took Amazon's success with AWS to define the market well enough for MSFT to actually start competing again, with Azure, in an environment where, for the first time, they weren't leveraging their position in Windows to get an unfair advantage for mediocre technology.
Re: Good summary of MSFT
Now they throw their random collection of poorly implemented functionality into horrors like Teams or Sharepoint or whichever odd development environment they're trying to inflict on the world this week.
"... Windows XP – built upon its actual proper operating system foundation, the Windows NT family..."
Interesting that the author does not give credit to DEC for providing the "actual proper operating system foundation". Windows NT was essentially a somewhat downgraded version of VMS, with the unfortunate Windows GUI bolted on rather like a perpetual ball and chain.
Microsofts biggest invention...
In a move that cemented its place in computing history and made Bill Gates the richest man on Earth, Microsoft stopped stealing its ideas from the likes of Xerox PARC and Apple – and came up with a few of its own, forming Windows 95. And the biggest was the Start button which, even a quarter of a century later still exists albeit after various redesigns and rethinks.
Redmond Windows 8 Brilliant New Idea Taskforce: "That Start Button thing is useless, let's remove it."
And it's still almost impossible in the high street to buy a non Apple PC without an OS installed. How this is acceptable I will never understand.
MS and Anti-Trust
has never really been resolved. They are really a monopoly supplier and I'm in no doubt that they have abused their position for decades. Brown Envelopes perhaps?
"And the biggest [Microsoft idea] was the Start"
Or, to look at it another way, it consolidated the several menu buttons of CDE and its predecessor, VUE, into one. I'd been using Windows 3 to run VisionWare's X server to run VUE for since about '91.
In fact W95 had a lot of HP ideas in it. It directly incorporated stuff from HP New Era; it was right there in the copyright declarations if you looked.
MS repackaged stuff that had been going on for some time in the Unix world - X, Motif, VUE/CDE and others. The likes of Gnome and KDE picked up on the W95 interface PDQ and continued the evolution. Because of the way the GUI is layered on top of the kernel in Unix-like OSs it's been possible for them to develop in several different directions.
The aspect of the GUI that was a real innovation to my mind was an unwelcome one.: adding the X button to close a window. Previously an application was closed from the system button, the one at the left of the title bar. Now there was a button that did that right next to the maximise button, just waiting for a misplaced click. Previously closing an application couldn't be done accidentally like that so there was less need for a confirmatory dialog box so quite a few old Windows applications didn't have one. I'm sure every W95 user must have lost work when a mis-click closed the application immediately. And it still galls me that the buttons are in the wrong order - minimise, maximise, zeroise.
W95 was a pinacle
and it has mostly been downhill ever since.
W2000, Server 2008, Win 7 were good. The rest? Meh leading to the god awful Tiles in W8. W10 was the last straw for me. Now it is CentOS (server) and MacOS(laptop) with a few R-Pi's around the place as well.
Can't Believe...
it's been 25 years! Somehow we got invited to one of the pre-launch events. Forget all the hype, the Start Button, etc. all anybody talked about afterwards was the Telly Tubby Mound on the stock wallpaper!
Re: Can't Believe...
Surely that was Windows XP, so it's not been as long as you think.
(willing to be corrected -- ooer missus)
Win95 booklet
I rather liked the little Windows 95 booklet that came with the restore disk on the PC I bought a year or so after Win95 came out. It had a series of task oriented examples based on the use of the file manager, wordpad, paint &c. Very logical build up that was a tour round the features.
Some badge wearing microserf deep in Redmond must have had a clue about how to introduce ordinary punters to the system and managed to get it through the bureaucracy with all the dosh flying about.
Icon: at work things got sane with Windows 2000. Very few issues. ME was utter madness.
Start me up!
You make a grown man cry.
Couldn't resist.