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What a Highlight!

Entry 781, on 2008-05-29 at 21:09:41 (Rating 3, Computers)

According to Bill Gates Windows 95 was his greatest highlight while at Microsoft, or at least he said it was a "nice milestone". Many people regard Windows 95 with great disdain, but is that really fair? After all, it was Microsoft's first usable windows-based operating system, even though Apple had been using one for well over 10 years.

And looking back at the version of the Mac OS in use at the time I would have to say it wasn't that great either. In 1995 Apple was between Mac OS 7.5 and 7.6, both of which were usable without being spectacular. I think the consensus at the time was that Mac OS was more stable and more capable than Windows 95, but it still had many issues and suffered from the same inherent problems of lack of real multi-tasking and having programs running in unprotected memory space.

At first it seemed to me that Windows XP might be a better candidate for Microsoft's greatest achievement. Its fairly stable, moderately capable and not completely ugly. And after that they went downhill, didn't they? I recently saw in the urban dictionary this new definition: Vistaster: n. a giant cluster-f***; a colossal mistake; a turning point, inflection point, or event that, in retrospect, turns out to have led to the doom and demise of a once-powerful company, person or organization. Rumour has it this originated at Microsoft itself. At least they're realistic!

But Windows XP is probably only the high point for Microsoft because its successor is so bad. That means that XP probably doesn't rate highly on its own merits. I guess that's the problem when you specialise in making products that are "good enough". When you make the ultimate "good enough" program, Windows XP, there's nowhere else to go.

So maybe the buggy, slow, ugly Windows 95 really was Microsoft's greatest achievement. Sad but true.

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