[taysco]

Microsoft went crazy with Windows 95 marketing and release.

They also spent 3m (reported between 8m-15m at the time though -- which was massive for its day) on licensing Stones' Start Me Up.And they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist. Jerks.

The hype was real though. I can still remember installing the floppy version on one of my first PCs. The first start up was like Star Trek level awe. It was so radically different and cool. Imho, Windows 95 is probably one of, if not, the most important software release of all time. Shaped how PC technology was used for the next 4 decades and still going strong.

I miss the 90s where every next iteration or release of hardware/software was generally a huge improvement. Like going from a 120mb hard drive to 1.6gb disk. Or getting your first CD-ROM after only having floppies, or CD-Writer (parents bought a 1x SCSI CDR the first year consumer ones came out -- made lots of coasters). Dial up to cable internet. The feeling of experiencing those new technologies was unmatched. It created such a since of awe, inspiration and wild imagination of possibilities. I don't get that feeling much these days.

[WorkerBee28474]

> they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist.

Their old bassist did not make for good PR... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Smith

[snthpy]

> The story took another surprising turn in 1993, when Wyman's 30-year-old son from his first marriage, Stephen, married Smith's mother, Patsy, then aged 46, making Smith her own step-grandfather’s ex-wife.

[dudefeliciano]

that's a stroke inducing sentence right there

[ChrisRR]

Yeehaw

[taysco]

yikes. didn't know about any of that.

[wolvoleo]

It was pretty groundbreaking tbh. Many of the UI paradigms are still used today. Windows 95 introduced the start menu and the task bar, windows 3.11 didn't have them in that form. The start menu was just an applications folder (a bit like on Mac) and the task bar was some shortcuts on what was basically the desktop. I don't think windows 3 had a registry either. It really became what we still know as windows today.

Of course the architecture sucked deeply with its dos based heritage but they fixed that soon after when NT 4 came out. And 2000 made that a stable experience.

I remember it was a pretty exciting time. I was studying computer science and we tried early beta builds ("Chicago") that had leaked.

[Gravityloss]

For working with data, I certainly like lists and trees with automated layout and dislike 2d space with human drag-and-drop layouts.

I assume most people are like this, and the start menu was a huge improvement. Most people would have been lost if it was just windows and icons freely floating in a 2d space.

[lproven]

> Many of the UI paradigms are still used today.

True.

> Windows 95 introduced the start menu and the task bar,

True.

> windows 3.11 didn't have them in that form.

It didn't have them in _any_ form. It had the Program Manager and the File Manager, inherited from OS/2 1.1.

> The start menu was just an applications folder

No, it wasn't.

> (a bit like on Mac)

Again no. Not at all.

The Start menu is a hierarchical browser showing a tree constructed on-the-fly from the storage on disk. That storage is just a folder, yes, but it's a folder containing shortcuts and folders. It does not contain anything else: no binaries, no programs, no config. Just directories full of shortcuts.

(For hardcore Unix folks: "shortcuts" are Windows >= 95's version of symlinks, with more and richer metadata, but they are filer-GUI-level only and are not understood by the shell, because the shell predates them by a decade or more.)

> and the task bar was some shortcuts on what was basically the desktop.

Nope, not at all. It's a rich UI in its own right with half a dozen separate interacting components: in Win95, it contained the start menu, then a window switcher, then a notification area containing sub-controls (as separate applets) and the clock.

It is more complex and sophisticated than the only 2 limited bits of prior art: the icon bar in Acorn's RISC OS, and the Dock in NeXTstep, which was influenced by RISC OS.

> I don't think windows 3 had a registry either.

It did, but all it stored were file associations: the 3 letter extensions on the end of filenames, and what app opened what file extension.

> It really became what we still know as windows today.

True.

[tosti]

This is from and old post on a news group a long time ago and I can't find it anymore, so here's citing from my murky brain:

    Q: Did Microsoft really pay Mick Jagger $3M to license "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones during the Windows 95 product launch event?
    A: No. They paid $3M to license only a part of the song. They omitted the lines "You made a grown man cry" and "You made a dead man cum"

[lproven]

Good heavens. That I didn't notice.

[Agentlien]

I remember my father had installed Windows 3.10 (not 3.11) on our home pc (I must have been 6-7 at the time). I complained that it was just awkward to use compared to DOS and all games required you to reboot in DOS anyway. I didn't see the point with a graphical OS.

Then came Windows 95 and my mind was blown.

[reddalo]

I miss that kind of iteration. New OS releases actually meant new technology, better tools, a more refined UX.

How did we end up in a world with Windows 11 and Liquid Glass? So sad.

[breppp]

> How did we end up in a world with Windows 11 and Liquid Glass? So sad.

Nostalgic memories of daily BSODs ensue

[magic_hamster]

> experiencing those new technologies was unmatched

I think about this a lot and it feels like there's still massive advancements. Obviously AI is up there, but also smartphones, star link, autonomous (presumably) driving, noise canceling headphones, robotics.

I agree the 90s were way more exciting. The tech was moving fast but also the vibe was much more positive and optimistic. Today we might have massive breakthroughs in tech but we constantly feel like society is doomed and said tech might actually just destroy our jobs.

[taysco]

You could be right, I am much older and much more jaded than I was in those bright-eyed years. I could just simply have different perspective now.

Although, you made me think of the last time I felt that feeling was the first iPhone release. Going from our Nokia's with snake to the iPhone was also quite the experience. I remember my uncle getting one very, very early, maybe even pre-release and we went out for a big family dinner and there was like 15 of us just crowded around my uncle watching him use random apps. No one had ever seen anything like that before.

The problem/challenge w/ LLM's is we've been building interactive chat bots since the IRC days, probably earlier so the interface doesn't feel new. And no one really understand what's going on behind the scenes other than "it does stuff" and "sometimes it get's it right and sometimes... not so much". It's a weird technology lol

[randall]

The last 3 years of LLM progress, to me, feel like 1994-1998.

[vor_]

I don't know. The novelty of LLMs faded very quickly for me.

[extraduder_ire]

I think they're scaling down in novelty quicker than they're scaling up in capability.

Still easy to be surprised if you stop paying attention for a while though.

[beachy]

Agree! I've been computering for 50 years and for me the significant milestones have been:

- rdbms

- PC

- Internet and email

- SaaS

- Mobile

- social media

- LLMs

I doubt that LLMs will be anything like as significant to our futures as social media though. And not in an entirely good way.

[Gud]

Except this time there isn’t a strong hacker counter culture.

Where are the greybeards in their flip flops? Where are the teen prodigies?

Everyone is sucking corporate dick, myself included

[dxdm]

To me, the current AI boom is more like when McDonald's became available in my neck of the woods after '89. Amazing at first, but then you realize it's mostly sloppy grease that has its uses.

The wild technology race of the 90s, on the other hand, felt like a magical new dimension opening up. Maybe just because it took much longer to get thoroughly turned into a vector for BS.

[jader201]

The ad, for the curious:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P0AJM6HMYjM

[taftster]

I'm so grateful for flat LCD screens. Man, all those CRT boxes. Yikes.

The rest of this video, it doesn't look like the world has changed all that much since 1995. Computing just kind of looks the same. I guess minus the lack of phones in everyone's hands.

[stavros]

And the fact that the UIs are less responsive and have worse UX now.

[Krutonium]

My UI is pretty responsive. Of course, I also don't run MacOS or Windows, so...

[stavros]

I guess you also don't run any Electron apps?

[Krutonium]

If I can avoid it!

[leetrout]

> made lots of coasters

Haha we would leave the room and avoid walking near the computer when the burner was running. Thanks for bringing back a memory :)

[taysco]

lol, we also did that. And we a Cyrix chip so our computer was pretty slow (but fast for the time) and you had to shut down absolutely everything, even the screensaver, that damn thing coming on is probably responsible for at least 100 coasters haha. Any sort of PC stutter and you were presented with that damn buffer underrun error message.

I was like 12 or 13 and wanted to install linux, like slackware 2.0 or some shit lol. But I didn't know about iso's, just FTP. So I was trying to download every single file from a unpacked linux distro on a ftp site with a 14.4k modem. Then I'd burn them and try to install. I think it took me nearly 500 cds before I got a working install. The install would get like 60% and die on some corrupt package/file, I'd redownload that file, burn it again, run the install... 61% crash, repeat... I did get that sucker installed though. insanity lmao

[microtonal]

Didn't they also pay Brian Emo to make the little startup jingle?

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/how-brian-eno-created-the-micro...

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/brian-eno-donates...

[beering]

Is “Start Me Up” the song that goes, “you make a grown man cry”?

[bombcar]

Our group replaced the “dead man” at the end with Bill Gates.

[TylerE]

Amongst other bodily excretions

[yetihehe]

Progress is a little slower this days in hardware, but it's there. Last year I finally assembled a new PC after surviving almosta a decade on my old laptop. The hardware spec jump made me remember old days. 8x more memory, 10x faster disk, 4x more cores and each one 2x faster!!! Gpu has as much memory as my previous laptop after upgrading it! Seeing the cpu usage and temps, also seeing how much data now I can download from net (I also got fiber recently and lan in old laptop was not working) was exhilarating. I can now ask my computer a question and it will respond (but slowly, local llm)!

[anthk]

To me the jump from my GF's celeron laptop with 2GB to her current 8GB high end Celeron (i5-i7 speeds, almost) and a Intel UHD was as big as a Pentium III 500 with a TNT2 compared to a Pentium 4 with SSE2 and a Geforce 2ti/3. A big jump in very few years from the PIII, for 12 years the gap of the laptop and the current one it's nothing.

By comparison the El Cheapo laptop she bought should have been able to play RTX bound games, and yet we are stuck there. Remember, 12 years it's 2x the time. Except for the GL 2.1 ->Vulkan/GL 4.6 jump and videos from 1080p to 4k, the jump isn't that big. I would expect more. For young HNers, if the progress was like the 90s, in 12 you would buy a laptop for $300 and maybe play an RTX raytraced Quake... virtualized.

[throw__away7391]

There were stories floating around at the time of people who were interested in buying it, having no idea what it was, not owning a computer and not realizing you needed one to use it.

[Breza]

I completely agree with you. Our family's first computer ran Windows 3.1. Moving to Windows 95 was a huge revelation about the potential that a computer could unleash.

[fx1994]

and tweaking 95 with nlite so it was blazing fast after stripping all useless stuff, great era

[anthk]

Windows 98 too with IE remover where you could decouple it from the shell andd use Win95's shell on top. Yeah, libre software solved it with ease today with Classic Shell and back in the day under any Unix/GNU/BSD with FVWM+RXvt against boated DE's or environments (maybe people won't know, but FVWM despite its features and look it was actually lighter than TWM) did the same surprise to me. Cycles mattered even under an Athlon, and as I loved emulation every non related cycle for MAME, PCSX and some new emulators was a waste on resources. Ditto for multimedia and games.

Oh, and sometimes MPlayer can still be faster than MPV with legacy machines. And the same happens with some Mplayer ports (or MPCHC which should borrow lots of code) against WMP or VLC itself.

[lproven]

I mean, yes, true, but there wasn't much to strip out of Win95!

I know. I did it. PC Pro magazine paid me to fit it into a very early SSD, which only held 16MB.

There was only 24MB of installation files!

https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-95/rtm

It took more installed, obviously. 16MB was hard but I did it. No help, no fonts, not even Notepad, but it ran.

Nlite came into its own with Win98 and especially Win98SE. You could cut that down by half easily. No IE, for instance. I used Opera.

It is still around!

https://www.nliteos.com/