X-bit labs

Started by: ta152h | Date 08/25/05

Comments: 6 | Last Comment:  08/25/05

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1. Oh my, what an exaggeration. Windows 95 ignited tremendous growth in PC sales? Windows 95 was user friendly?

OK, first of all, OS/2 had a vastly superior interface, and was a more secure operating system. The internet was out well before Windows 95, actually, in a lesser form since pretty much since microcomputers in one sense. There were early ones like online services like Compuserve, and Prodigy came a bit later (a weird joint project between IBM and Sears), and of course the BBS was very popular earlier on. Windows 95 spurring the internet is roughly as accurate as saying Al Gore invented it.

Saying Windows 95, with its primitive interface that was still carried over until Windows 2K (Windows XP seems a bit more feminized) , was the first user friendly interface is even less accurate than saying Al Gore invented the Internet. As mentioned, OS/2 was around before then, and actually selling in the millions. The interface, The Workplace Shell, was much more powerful and intuitive than the rubbish Microsoft uses. Of course, then there was Apple with the MacIntosh. While not the most powerful interface, it was certainly intuitive.

Windows 95 was a bridge technology, and always intended to be one. It was around the same time other things happened, but it was not the cause. Windows 3.0/3.1 were wildly successful before that, too successful in fact since it caused IBM and Microsoft to split ways on OS/2. Microsoft was also working on Windows NT, but knew this OS was not compatible enough with DOS and Windows 3.x apps to become mainstream. So, they made a Mickey Mouse operating system called Windows 95 that was less reliable than Windows NT, and more compatible. Windows NT could never become compatible and secure, since DOS apps were given full access to the hardware and NT could not allow this. After all, if an application crashed the system on a DOS machine, who cared? It only crashed itself. If you do it on a multitasking operating system, you crashed the entire system; every other application was crashed too. NT and OS/2 were intended to protect applications from each other, and did with varying degrees of success. Windows 95/98/ME were less stable but more compatible, so people would buy this to run their apps. Microsoft then created a proper way to create apps by using APIs and not writing directly to hardware. By making the APIs the same, the Apps would run on both 95 and NT. So, 95 bridged people to NT; it was compatible enough to get people to use it, which caused developers to write applications for it. Of course, these applications would work for NT as well, as I mentioned, so NT developed a solid software base. When Microsoft finally killed Windows 95/98/ME, no one really cared because by this time compatibility was not an issue for Windows NT/2K/XP.

That is all Windows 95 was, a bridging operating system. It was not the greatest invention since the Atom Bomb, did not profoundly change the world or even computing. Everything that happened would have happened with or without that lousy OS. It did with OS/2, Apple and Windows NT. Even WFW 3.11 could access the internet.

Ahahaha, sounds like someone carries a 10 year old grudge.
I don't know if you noticed, but OS/2 was pretty much dead in the water, even then.
Not because it was a bad OS, but because people didn't buy it. Plain and simple. For that reason, it could never "change the world" like Win95 did.
The entire point of the article is that Win95 actually made things easier for the average consumer. Apple or OS/2 didn't do that, because your average consumer does not have OS/2 or an Apple computer.

What they say is true. Win95 made it easier for *average* (stupid) people to get online. That means it sparked the explosion of the internet by giving more people access to it, *whether or not* some people were already online with other OS'es. Same goes for the user interface. Win95 made it easier for people to use computers, because unlike OS/2, Win95 actually gained widespread use.

And of course Win95 ignited growth in PC sales. Suddenly a lot of people scared of DOS had a simple alternative. OS/2 was not an alternative, because people scared of DOS had never heard of OS/2.

Of course Win95 sucks compared to, well, anything. That is not the point. The point is that it became popular, and it introduced a lot of features to normal people's computers.

It is not a 10 year grudge at all, it is more annoyance at revisionist history.

OS/2 was not dead in the water at that time, and actually sold quite well. The Mac sold fairly well at that time too. The biggest seller, by far, was WFW. It used DOS, but by that time very few people used the DOS prompt at all. Most people used the WFW interface, which was perfectly adequate for launching an internet application, or any application for that matter. Was Windows 95 prettier? Yes. Did it break any new ground? No. If you could not figure out how to launch a browser in prior releases of Windows, Windows 95 was not going to make it happen for you. Windows 95 was better than WFW, for sure. It was prettier, and it was a bit more stable, but it was nothing even close to revolutionary.

Your comparison with DOS is what I find objectionable. Back then, no one was using DOS, or I should say very few people were. You were either using OS/2 (roughly 15%) or Windows 3.1 or Workgroup for Windows 3.11, or a MacIntosh. The old DOS prompt had long ago become passe for the mainstream, a trend that started in the late 80s. In fact, starting with DOS 4.0, they put a very remedial GUI interface on that DOS and continued that trend until it died (6.22 for Microsoft, DOS 2000 for IBM).

The internet was as inevitable as the microprocessor. I still remember Yahoo back when it first started out, it was just a list of text links with no graphics of any kind. This was before Windows 95, by the way. So, the internet had started well before Windows 95, but Windows 95 was the cause? No way. It was inevitable. It was also inevitable, given Microsoft's dominant position in the OS industry, that their next operating system would be the biggest seller. They were just two mutually occurring events.

In fact, early on, which company had the dominant browser? Hmmm, Netscape ring a bell? So, how did Windows 95 make it easier than WFW 3.11 when they both used Netscape?

Now, I am not saying Windows 95 was purely bad. It was a definite improvement over WFW 3.11 and did a good job bridging people to Windows NT. I am only saying it was not the impetus behind much more important things like the Internet, which ironically is OS independent. I still remember that a lot of companies thought they would usurp Microsoft's position because of this, and platform non-specific technologies like Java. That sure did not happen, now Microsoft's biggest competitor is a freebie remake of a lousy 1960s OS. About the only reason this even gets any customers is the widespread antipathy toward Microsoft.

Ok, so most people used Win3.1, so what? That's hardly better than DOS. The fact is that average consumers had never even heard of OS/2.
Win95 did what OS/2 never managed to do. It managed to reach people and become a standard. That is all the article states, and it is absolute fact.

And I don't think *anyone* said Win95 was the "cause" of the internet. The article states that it helped it grow, and that, once again, is a plain fact. Winth Win95 more people got access to an OS that allowed *easy* internet access. Win3.1 or Dos didn't do that.

Feel free to continue your little crusade, but you are totally missing the point. The article didn't say a single word about Windows 95 being the best OS out there, or inventing user-friendliness or the internet. The article simply points out that Win95 managed to get these things out to the public, which no OS had managed before. Yes, OS/2 had both userfriendlinesss and easy internet access, but it failed at the "bringing it out to the public" part.

I don't recall *anyone* talking about browsers, so why you feel like bringing up Netscape is beyond me...
But if you want to rant and rave about how Win95 sucked, feel free. I'm not disagreeing, just saying it has nothing to do with the article.

You seem very confused about the word fact. It is a fact Windows 95 helped the internet grow? Huh? This is not a fact, this is pure speculation.

A fact is something like the Earth is round. Or, Intel makes the Pentium 4 processor. An opinion is the Athlon 64 is faster than the Pentium 4 is most applications. Even if it is probably true, it is not a fact.

Now, obviously were not too aware of what was going on at that time, otherwise I can not make any sense out of what you are saying. You have the tail wagging the dog. The internet helped sell computers, not the reverse. Software applications sell operating systems, not the reverse. Software sells hardware, not the reverse. This has been true forever.

But, beyond that, we can look at individual points. OS/2 was very well known by the general public, because Microsoft and IBM were both touting it as the next OS since 1987. People knew about it, and it actually sold pretty well. But, that is not really the point anyway. The point is Workgroup for Windows had a GUI interface that people used and could launch a browser.

Why mention a browser when we are talking about the internet? Why would you even ask the question, it is completely pertinent to the discussion. You could run Netscape on Windows 95 or WFW 3.11. This is what people used to access the internet. So, of course it is what matters. It illustrates the point there was not a Windows 95 browers, initially, that would not run on WFW, so it illustrates the differences between internet experiences between the two platforms was minimal. Did I really have to point that out?

How was Windows 95 so much easier to use, within the context of running a browser, than WFW 3.11? You clicked on an icon to start a browser either way. Windows 95 was prettier, sure. But, it is significantly the same. My guess is you have never used WFW 3.11 so have no idea what I am talking about. If you did, I doubt you would have the same remarks you do, because it was essentially the same thing. The layout was little different, and it was ugly, but it was just a GUI where you pointed and clicked to start an application. If you could do it with Windows 95, you could do it with WFW 3.11.

I still remember when Windows 95 was being released, all the excitement it generated. Then when it came out, everyone was thinking "this is it"? It was a big disappointment because it was such a trivial upgrade over WFW 3.11. Now it is being touted as being responsible for making the internet more popular. You have it totally reversed, the internet made people buy machines for the home. Since those machines came preloaded with Windows 95 (although a lot still sold with WFW initially, since a lot of people did not want to change over), naturally it became ubiquitous.

Incidentally, in the earlier years of computers, a lot of people would always ask me if they should get a computer. They assumed I would say yes, based on my occupation and the fact I loved them. I would almost always say no, because people did not use them much. I mean, you could, for things like money management, games, educational stuff, etc..., but most people simply did not and after recommending a few, I realized I was wasting people's money. In the early nineties, with the continued growth of online services, mainly BBS's, Compuserve, and Prodigy (which had lowered their fees to make them less prohibitive), and the internet coming around, my opinion changed completely and I saw that people would find real use of computers at home. Now I read this was catalyzed by Windows 95. Pure rubbish. Amazing how people make this garbage up by using faulty reasoning; revising coincidences into cause and effect relationships.

2. I notice that some folks STILL use Win95!

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