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
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.
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!
UTM is your friend in lieu of Virtualbox
So much nostalgia for the Windows 95/98 era.
Playing Descent with musicmatch jukebox running in the background. (Probably a 98 memory).
Bouncing sheep...
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.
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.
Oh, the name Longhorn unlocked some memories just now...
Back in 1997 I worked overnight at a bank running their backup software. Lots of sitting around being bored. I took it upon myself to change the Windows 95 startup logo to say Windows 96 on a number of computers. Someone out there remembers Windows 96.
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.
I love windows 96
I borrowed Win 95 on floppy, from a friend at college. I dropped out shortly after and could not find him to give him back the disks before I left. So I ended up installing it during the summer of 96. I forget when I moved to 98.
I miss hover
no windows has come close to winmate (yeah i know it was just a skin for windows 3.1 but still)
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.
not trained on reading tho?
try reading.