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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.
> 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
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.
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"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.
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.
> 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.
The last 3 years of LLM progress, to me, feel like 1994-1998.
The ad, for the curious:
> 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 :)
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...
Is “Start Me Up” the song that goes, “you make a grown man cry”?
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)!
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.
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.
and tweaking 95 with nlite so it was blazing fast after stripping all useless stuff, great era
Always enjoy Raymond Chen's musings.
My sister and I were so excited to discover this on the CD as we were clicking through every folder. Awesome song that kicked off a love of the blue album, Pinkerton and the green album. (I had off-campus lunch privileges, so was sent to Borders to pick up copies of the green album on release day.)
We'd heard of Happy Days, but we didn't know if the show was like it was portrayed in the video. We may have thought the band was from Wisconsin. I don't think either of us ever became Happy Days fans.
> My sister and I were so excited to discover this on the CD as we were clicking through every folder.
This was a common experience back then, you got ahold of some new "piece of software" and you started discovering new stuff in it.
My fondest memory ever is one day in February 2001 browsing through the Windows 98 Add/Remove Windows Components dialog and realizing I could install the same Desktop Themes I remembered from like 1996 from my friend who had been lucky enough to have Plus! for Windows 95 (which had, years before, disappeared from his computer in that endless virus/reinstall cycle that characterized those times). Next day I showed the themes to said friend and we were speechless.
It was this promise of endless discovery that made me want to study CS.
> I had off-campus lunch privileges, so was sent to Borders to pick up copies of the green album on release day.
What kind of college doesn't allow students to leave for lunch? Lord.
Loosely related - Weezer’s lead singer writes code regularly
https://github.com/riverscuomo
He curates his own tags. I knew it. https://github.com/riverscuomo/mp3tagger
Rivers is a legend, for many reasons!
Decades later Apple put U2 on everyone's iPhone and people got mad... (/s, yeah the album was a gift on people's account, ready to download to the phone but not taking space otherwise, but I would've found it obnoxious too).
This video was also on the CD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc .. holy smokes, let's rewind time 30 years, where the presidential sex scandal was singular, consensual, and was actually a scandal!
Sony wasted several gigs of the very small (32g to 120g) and very expensive ssds of the time with 2 copies of a Spider Man 3 movie pre-loaded onto several different laptops. One copy in the normal installed fs, another copy in the recovery partition.
And you couldn't even watch the movie unless you also paid to unlock it.
You could delete the normal copy if you even knew it was there and then also used a disk usage util to FIND the actual file. But you couldn't do anything about the copy in the recovery image except delete the recovery partition and basically wipe & repartition the drive and do your own fresh install.
As a teenager I found this video on the Windows 95 CD without context and for some time after I thought that Weezer was a 60's band that just had a style way ahead of their time.
Crowding around our first ever computer, a 120mhz pentium with 16mb of RAM and a 1.6gb hard disk, watching that Weezer video on the CRT monitor with my whole family is a cherished memory.
Few months ago I learnt there's Edie Brickell's Good Times video on Win 95 CD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okt9GcWiWmE
There's also Weezer? Whoa. Of course I did experience Win 95. My 1st PC (96/97 ??) came with it. Never bother to mess with the instalation CD, though.
This is quite short and doesn't really contain any insights or details that aren't simply obvious or easily assumed.
Our family's Packard Bell in 1996 came with a full-motion video game called Silent Steel. Coming from a 486, FMV video games sure felt like the future.
It was pretty much Choose Your Own Adventure, but with video. You had to know the exact sequence of actions to get to a "good" ending, and apparently there were several endings. For the mid 90's, the script, acting, and sets (and CGI) were actually not half-bad. But mapping out all the choices that didn't kill you while watching the same set of clips over and over was not as much fun as it sounds.
I personally prefer Windows XP including David Byrne's "Like Humans Do" as the demo track for Windows Media Player
> Some time ago, I noted that the Windows 95 CD contained a variety of multimedia extras
That "some time ago" is 20 years ago. It is crazy that Raymond has been able to consistently write historical yet fun blog posts for decades. What a dedication.
Apple put Barenaked Ladies’ The Old Apartment video on the Mac OS 8 CD as a QuickTime demo
This music video was the reason we decided to upgrade the CD-ROM drive on our family computer, since it could not play without stuttering on our existing one.
Any time you get mad about a streaming service who seems to have changed music or a credits clip for a TV show or movie, this is basically why.
To get the rights to use things in technologies that didn't exist when the media was created, you often have to go back to everyone involved and get their permission. Sometimes they don't say yes, or they aren't findable, or just aren't alive, and it's not clear who owns the rights anymore.
This isn't as much of a problem with newer media, because contracts now specify what happens with new technologies, but old contracts were often limited to specific technologies.
IIRC there was also an Edie Brickell video.
The Weezer video was quirky, funny, creative, catchy and appealing to multiple generations. A stroke of genius by Microsoft.
"Hey, did anyone try the fish tonight?"
"It's not so good, Al"
IIRC, I was able to watch the videos on my 486. It was quite something being able to do that l, while in Windows 95 and switching between apps. Prior to that, I’d only seen FMV in a few video games.
Back in 1997 or so I bought an ATI video card that also had a Weezer video on the CD. I remember being amazed that it could play the video at 1024x768 with just a little bit of tearing.
Henry Winkler (the Fonz) went on to become a big-name Hollywood producer—he executive produced the original MacGyver—so he was probably one of the easiest to contact.
Licensing?
It's well known that Bill Gates's favorite band is Weezer, so this feels unsurprising.
It was so random finding that on the CD, I remember having no idea why it was there.
This is Edie Brickell erasure!
I got weezered by Raymond. what is going on?
The art of storytell—
I must confess that these kind of corporate storie make me throw up in my mouth.
(Yes, I have karma to burn, hit me)