<aside> 🗒️ This essay complements a webpage made in Summer 2022 as a project in understanding the cultural legacy of Windows 95.
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By numbers, it was the largest initiation of computer users in history. (Source)
Yet the operating system presented few actual innovations: the features were actually more evolutionary than revolutionary.
Instead, the success of Windows 95 came largely as a result of Microsoft’s decisive timing.
Just as the internet began entering cultural consciousness, Microsoft came to market with this consolidated bundle of personal computing’s most powerful features to-date.
The release became a breakthrough moment for consumer computing. Windows 95 became the first product to eclipse technology and exist in the social mainstream.
<aside> 💬 "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products… Their products have no sort of spark of intuition or creativity… It's just nothing original." -Steve Jobs, 1996 Source
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Founded in 1975, Microsoft was the first true PC software company. In it’s first decade, the company shipped an operating system (DOS) and Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
Yet by the 90s, the company had grown colossally bloated and developed a reputation as unimaginative.
While other players (Xerox, Apple, Lotus) drove innovation, Microsoft gradually adopted the of riding in this wake and, instead of innovating, iterating on competitors’ PC features.
As unoriginal as this approach was, Microsoft played a central role in popularizing personal computing and shaping the landscape to this day.
Windows 95 stood on the shoulders of two innovations: The GUI of the 1980s and the Web of the early 90s.