ElI5: Why was so special about Windows 95, what made it a 90s pop culture touchstone?
In: Technology
It was not DOS.
MS-DOS was not easy to use, particularly in comparison to Apple computers. Win95 would run on most hardware that ran DOS, and it was much easier to use.
Because windows 95 was super easy to use compared to everything else at the time.
The closest easy to understand comparison would probably be windows 10 vs Linux today but even then I think Linux is way easier than alternatives were at the time.
It was the first version of Windows that even approached the usability of MacOS. If you look at productivity figures for the creative fields (artists, printers, and others) who used Macs, they had seen dramatic increases in productivity. Other fields did not see these productivity improvements from computing until Win95.
It was the first OS you didn’t need a book of command codes sitting next to your computer to figure out how to use. Any dummy could use W95. DOS required some amount of training/ practice.
A lot of posts are are implying that before Windows 95 everything was a DOS command line. This isn’t true. Windows existed before Win95, Windows 3.1 was very popular and pretty similar. However Windows 95 had a couple of new things that made it special. First is the “START” button. This was new in Windows 95. Before that you have to click through windows of icons to find what you wanted. Basically the whole experience was like using the File Explorer is today (just without any of the sidebars or previews).
The other thing people have touched on but not really gone into was the marketing. Microsoft paid huge money to use the Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” in their commercial. Just the fact that they paid a lot of money was news and itself free promotion. There was also the fact tha the OS came with a copy of the music video for Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” which was a huge hit at the time.
To put it into modern terms, it was like the leap that was made between cell phones and smartphones, like going from a flip phone to an iPhone.
It was a truly massive leap. Everything was just blasted wide open in terms of ease of use and capability. And I believe that with the Windows 95 “Plus Pack” which included Internet Explorer 1.0, it was the first time the internet was integrated into an operating system, which made things vastly easier for people who weren’t inclined towards tinkering with their computers.
It was one of the first decent graphical OSes that the wider market could get into pretty easily. It also existed at a time when every day people (basically non-tech nerds) were starting to get their first computers at home. It was also the start of the internet becoming more mainstream. Also Microsoft’s massive marketing budget for it really pushed it into the spotlight when it released. In the 3 years from 1995 to 1998 Windows 95 had 57% of the OS market. The majority of the alternatives were OSes that were either difficult to use for the everyday user or were oriented toward businesses.
Edit: I was thinking of Win3.1 when I wrote this comment. Sorry about that! Win95 is easier to use than Win3.1 but somehow I forgot Win3.1 even existed cause my family went from MS-DOS to Win95.
It basically brought home computers into the mainstream. IBM compatible computers were cheaper than Apple and Win95 was much easier to use. With MS-DOS you had to read instruction manuals and with Windows95 you could just.. click things.
Plus, Minesweeper and Solitaire came free with it and everyone loves to play a game on a new technology.
It was what brought mainstream people into using computers. It was not perfect but it was user friendly and happened at the same time of the multimedia explosion.
Honestly? They hired the cast of *Friends* to advertise it. Warp OS was more interesting, and compatible with a long list of established Microsoft products. Remember the time, this was before there was a computer and tablet at your reach. A lot of people didn’t know how to use a computer, and when they learned they learned DOS and UNIX, not exactly exciting stuff. Most people couldn’t afford a Mac. So here was a software that could help you use the PC to do tasks that were a huge pain before, like word processing, or relied on special business computers (i.e. an IBM running Lotus 1-2-3). Now you could run your spreadsheets at home, load up and Encarta disk at home and do your book report, and get your e-mail. It was just easy enough that parents who used terminals or IBM/DOS/UNIX at work could easily transition at home.
There was more going on, the ‘world wide web’ and the ‘information superhighway’ were on the news every night. They would run stories about how you can replace a whole conduit full of copper cabling with one fiber optic strand. Businesses started putting up websites so the tech saavy could find its address and phone number without digging through the yellow pages. Bill Gates / Microsoft greased the wheels of that phenomenon.
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