Do you remember Windows 95? How about Windows 96?
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That’s not a typo. Windows 96 promised to build on the success of Windows 95, yet it never materialized as originally intended.
I only learned about this a few months ago. To me, this was an incredibly fascinating discovery and wanted to write about & share it.
This is a very good article, but this part peeved me on a petty level (as well as explaining why there's precious little in the way of screenshots):
While I can't find any uploads that are set to run on their website in a virtual computing session, the files are available to download if you felt like spinning up a piece of computing history.
The opportunity to do a little investigative journalism is right there, and the blog author didn't take it
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This is a very good article, but this part peeved me on a petty level (as well as explaining why there's precious little in the way of screenshots):
While I can't find any uploads that are set to run on their website in a virtual computing session, the files are available to download if you felt like spinning up a piece of computing history.
The opportunity to do a little investigative journalism is right there, and the blog author didn't take it
Hi, author here
. Thanks for the feedback. If the Internet Archive had it on their own VM to run, I would've tried playing with it and taken some screenshots. However, I simply did not have the time to get it running locally on my machine, especially because I'm all Mac and Virtual Box doesn't run on M-series hardware.I agree it's a missed opportunity, but I chose to go a little bit of an easier route.
Thanks for reading and enjoying the other 99% of the article.
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Hi, author here
. Thanks for the feedback. If the Internet Archive had it on their own VM to run, I would've tried playing with it and taken some screenshots. However, I simply did not have the time to get it running locally on my machine, especially because I'm all Mac and Virtual Box doesn't run on M-series hardware.I agree it's a missed opportunity, but I chose to go a little bit of an easier route.
Thanks for reading and enjoying the other 99% of the article.
Based on your descriptions of the integration between Windows 96 and Office, I did get the feeling you might run into even more issues if more software wasn't installed alongside Windows as well.
I'm all Mac and Virtual Box doesn't run on M-series hardware.
I had no idea!
And hopefully my comment didn't come across as a dig against your article - it just promises to be a potentially fascinating follow-up. Especially when, even today, Windows Explorer feels like it added previews of files as little more than an afterthought (and occasionally as a PowerToy).
BTW I enjoyed 100% of your article, I think it's a good sign when it leaves the reader wanting more!
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That’s not a typo. Windows 96 promised to build on the success of Windows 95, yet it never materialized as originally intended.
I only learned about this a few months ago. To me, this was an incredibly fascinating discovery and wanted to write about & share it.
Was that codename Memphis? Cuz if so, absolutely. Ran it for a while
Edit: article talks about Nashville. Ran that one, too!
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That’s not a typo. Windows 96 promised to build on the success of Windows 95, yet it never materialized as originally intended.
I only learned about this a few months ago. To me, this was an incredibly fascinating discovery and wanted to write about & share it.
I was actually part of the beta test group for Windows Nashville. It was an improvement over Windows 95, but Windows 98 really brought home a lot of good UI design improvements that began in Windows Nashville. Sadly, it was so buggy that they delayed for several years and, instead, just released Windows 98 when it was finally ready.
Windows Longhorn was a similar failure a few years later
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Hi, author here
. Thanks for the feedback. If the Internet Archive had it on their own VM to run, I would've tried playing with it and taken some screenshots. However, I simply did not have the time to get it running locally on my machine, especially because I'm all Mac and Virtual Box doesn't run on M-series hardware.I agree it's a missed opportunity, but I chose to go a little bit of an easier route.
Thanks for reading and enjoying the other 99% of the article.
UTM is your friend in lieu of Virtualbox
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Hi, author here
. Thanks for the feedback. If the Internet Archive had it on their own VM to run, I would've tried playing with it and taken some screenshots. However, I simply did not have the time to get it running locally on my machine, especially because I'm all Mac and Virtual Box doesn't run on M-series hardware.I agree it's a missed opportunity, but I chose to go a little bit of an easier route.
Thanks for reading and enjoying the other 99% of the article.
UTM is the way to go on modern Macs, and even iOS/iPadOS too! Free, built on QEMU and super easy to spin up virtual machines with any architecture.
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I was actually part of the beta test group for Windows Nashville. It was an improvement over Windows 95, but Windows 98 really brought home a lot of good UI design improvements that began in Windows Nashville. Sadly, it was so buggy that they delayed for several years and, instead, just released Windows 98 when it was finally ready.
Windows Longhorn was a similar failure a few years later
Windows Vista is Microsoft's greatest success, because it's main purpose was to make people forget the promises made for Longhorn.
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Was that codename Memphis? Cuz if so, absolutely. Ran it for a while
Edit: article talks about Nashville. Ran that one, too!
Memphis was the code name for Windows 98. The code name for Windows 96 was Nashville.
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That’s not a typo. Windows 96 promised to build on the success of Windows 95, yet it never materialized as originally intended.
I only learned about this a few months ago. To me, this was an incredibly fascinating discovery and wanted to write about & share it.
I was trained on making repairs to Windows 95, there was never a 96. There was a Windows ME which was fucking horrible! My step mom had it on a laptop. Then Windows 2000, which was the best, once you install the other disc that fixed the 250,000 bugs that Windows 2000 came with the original disc.
Man those were the days that I could distribute those operating systems on as many computers I wanted with the one disc. -
I was actually part of the beta test group for Windows Nashville. It was an improvement over Windows 95, but Windows 98 really brought home a lot of good UI design improvements that began in Windows Nashville. Sadly, it was so buggy that they delayed for several years and, instead, just released Windows 98 when it was finally ready.
Windows Longhorn was a similar failure a few years later
Wow, that's a cool story! Thanks for sharing it! I had no clue there was even a beta test group back then. Was that outside of Microsoft?
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Windows Vista is Microsoft's greatest success, because it's main purpose was to make people forget the promises made for Longhorn.
I do kinda wish we had gotten WinFS. All the "ideas" of it seemed cool, just impossible to implement without breaking every existing application.
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I do kinda wish we had gotten WinFS. All the "ideas" of it seemed cool, just impossible to implement without breaking every existing application.
If Windows is (was) good at anything, it's maintaining backwards compatibility for longer than anyone expects them to. Never mind revolutionizing their entire file system, Windows 11 is still backwards-compatible with batch files written before we had folders.
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Windows Vista is Microsoft's greatest success, because it's main purpose was to make people forget the promises made for Longhorn.
Longhorn... the hype was strong with that one. I don't even remember what the hype was about, just that Longhorn was supposed to be amazing.
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I was actually part of the beta test group for Windows Nashville. It was an improvement over Windows 95, but Windows 98 really brought home a lot of good UI design improvements that began in Windows Nashville. Sadly, it was so buggy that they delayed for several years and, instead, just released Windows 98 when it was finally ready.
Windows Longhorn was a similar failure a few years later
Oh, the name Longhorn unlocked some memories just now...
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I do kinda wish we had gotten WinFS. All the "ideas" of it seemed cool, just impossible to implement without breaking every existing application.
FS?
As in "F'ing Shit"?
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That’s not a typo. Windows 96 promised to build on the success of Windows 95, yet it never materialized as originally intended.
I only learned about this a few months ago. To me, this was an incredibly fascinating discovery and wanted to write about & share it.
So much nostalgia for the Windows 95/98 era.
Playing Descent with musicmatch jukebox running in the background. (Probably a 98 memory).
Bouncing sheep...
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Wow, that's a cool story! Thanks for sharing it! I had no clue there was even a beta test group back then. Was that outside of Microsoft?
No, I actually worked for Microsoft. I was 15. It was a sort of contract gig for bug hunters, especially if you were able to fix the code at all. Otherwise, you just had access to download it from Microsoft servers and submit feedback.
Back then, these betas were tested by the Microsoft user interface group, maybe that’s where I did contractor work for Longhorn. It was a very long time ago.
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FS?
As in "F'ing Shit"?
If I recall, it was a new file system. So instead if folders, every file would just kind of have tags and could be dynamically grouped like that. I could very well be wrong, but I remember being excited for it.
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Longhorn... the hype was strong with that one. I don't even remember what the hype was about, just that Longhorn was supposed to be amazing.
WinFS was yuuge part of that hype. Windows Future Storage was supposed to be a relational database based storage that would operate on metadata first.
I remember some demos and beta versions, but it was scrapped before Vista was released.
