In the meantime every Mac was running the hardware accelerated Aqua UI for years. Windows Vista was incredibly unoptimized.
Last edited:
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Windows is 40 years old
- Thread starter maflynn
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
in your dreams, I remember os 360/370 jcl . manual after manual coupled with manuals for deciphering error codes. macOS just does rise to that level of nonsense (that was old school)
I skipped Vista altogether and went straight to Windows 7.
Had a G4 iBook for a little while in grad school, around 2005 or 2006, but it wasn’t really useful for what I was doing. Don’t remember what macOS it ran, but I think it had Aqua?
my guess is 10.4 or so, my daughter was in grad school then with an iBook g4, she still has it, it is on macOS 10.4
Aqua got introduced in 2001, so yeah. In 2005-2006 Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was the latest release.
If I recall correctly, it needs about 16 floppy disks to install windows 3.11, and the joyful will started when disk 12 started reading error ha..ha..I still vividly remember the excitement when installing Windows 3.1 and, of course, Windows 95
START ME UP baby!
I still have my Windows 3.11 disks somewhere and there are eight. A standard install only used the first six disks, but to install the Workgroup additions, you needed the other two.
Windows 95 needed thirteen floppies if you received the 1.7mb DMF disks. OSR2.1 was 21 floppies.
Last edited:
Agreed. I'm not a heavy Windows user, but I do have Windows 11 on a gaming PC I built a few years ago. Every time I use Windows, I'm very aware of the ads, promotions, and other bloat that's all over the OS. macOS feels very "clean" by comparison, but even it isn't immune to pushing subscriptions on the Music or News or other apps.
First Windows I used was 3.0 on a 286 machine, with 12.5MHz speed and 1MB RAM, and a 40MB hard drive.
How did it run? I first used on a 386 something or other with 4mb ram, but my first computer was a 486 dx2 66 with 8mb and it ran great.
From what I remember it needed DOS 4.0 and some sort of extended memory manager. It ran OK, I remember using Word for Windows 2.0 for my high school work.
The biggest jump was to 3.1 for sure and with Trumpet Winsock now we had TCP/IP networking support, and the internet haha
Install an LTSC version and pick what you want or not.
I wouldn't use Windows any other way personally.
My first Windows usage goes back to Windows 3.1. It was pretty neat especially multimedia stuff that started appearing in the early to mid 90's as PC's were gaining widespread sound & cdrom support.
Browsing Microsoft Encarta was pretty wild as a teenager.
Browsing Microsoft Encarta was pretty wild as a teenager.
I remember a 1983 review of MASM, with many comments about how it came across as being written by a bunch of Pascal coders. From what I heard, MS was doing quite a bit of their development work in Pascal running on a VAX, hence the snide remark about Pascal coder. This was about the time that MS was starting to target the 8086 directly as opposed to translated 8080/Z-80 code used for the early 86-DOS/PC_DOS/MS-DOS software.
Yeh MASM was decent... Borland Assembler and C were far better (as was Paradox compared to dBase ][).
I nuked Windows use at home ~2000. Still use it at work (and even in Win 11, I explore.exe is still lurking under the hood and crashes sometimes).
).
You triggered memories... I ran a dedicated logistics system in my department between 97 and 2008 (+100 colleagues and clients used it). Wrote a complete application in Borland Delphi for logistics paperwork and labeling. First version used Paradox databases, but that proved to be unreliable - it got corrupted within a few weeks - it couldn't handle network clients. When Interbase 6 (later FirebirdSQL) was released as open source, I immediately implemented that in the software. From that moment it ran pretty stable for 8 years. Crucial note: the whole system with several client terminals and one server, all running Windows NT 4, had no connection to the internet. This was the only way to keep it stable and a 99,99% up time for production.
Personally, I migrated to Mac in 2001. MacOS X was a great relief compared to the previous 5 years of Windows crap. Sure, I had some fun with Windows 95, but slowly it and its succesors became a big annoyance. So many moments when a 5 minute task could change into hours of wasted time because something was broken again (drivers, updates, etc). Even Outlook for MacOS 9 worked faster than its Windows counterpart.
40 years of Windows: it has made rebooting machines the IT idiots standard of hiding bugs, instead of fixing them. Even in my current work, we have daily reboot schedule for production machines running Windows. Any other machine running Linux or MacOS, only need the occasional restart of an application.
My favourite was Win XP. The mouse and GUI was conceived by XEROX more the 40 years ago to broaden the adaptation of computers to new user groups. Touch, mobile phones, iPads etc are just a natural evolvement based on the same computer paradigm to yet again broaden the adaptation to be truly useful for all and nearly all usage patterns.
How do you earn money on an OS where updates for 7-8 years is "free" - data collection and advertisements. I think it would fine to pay for a yearly licence as a good OS needs development and maintenance. Rather that than data collection and advertisements.
macos is free, linux is free and we don't have this level of data collections and certainly not advertisements in the OS
Technically, windows is not free. You need to purchase a license if you want to use it. When you buy a PC, the manufacturer had to pay microsoft for the license. If you build a PC, you need to buy a license, you can transfer non-oem licenses to new PCs but overall its not really a free operating system - That makes Microsoft's actions all the more galling.
Hadn't realised W10 is now defunct, so little do I use my PC any more... I'm not sure if/ when I will bother replacing it as it still runs the Windows games I want to play and I now use it for exactly 0 else. Now having to use W11 for work it really feels like one of those change for the sake of change updates. I don't like the glyph reliant context menus, it makes at a glance info more difficult which is never a good move for an OS (ahem, Apple).
I had every version of Windows, including the DOS, before. I also had all the Tiny Windows and Micro Windows made by others. Unlike most, I actually liked Windows 8, especially on touch devices. However, it wasn't good on non-touch computers, and Microsoft dropped it after public protests against it.
One thing Microsoft does well is create one OS and stick with it for quite a while. They wouldn't have developed a special OS for Windows phones, even if they had succeeded. Microsoft still allows Windows to be used without a licence, which keeps the world hooked on it.
Windows is always present in our home; my wife uses it, so I’m constantly connected to Windows. She never has issues with it, and Microsoft doesn’t send ads. It is as an unmaintained OS. I also have a Ryzen 7 mini PC running Windows 11, which I update frequently.
When comparing macOS to Windows, macOS appears older, with the same familiar look. The glassy appearance doesn't give it a modern feel. I'd be looking forward to Windows 12.
One thing Microsoft does well is create one OS and stick with it for quite a while. They wouldn't have developed a special OS for Windows phones, even if they had succeeded. Microsoft still allows Windows to be used without a licence, which keeps the world hooked on it.
Windows is always present in our home; my wife uses it, so I’m constantly connected to Windows. She never has issues with it, and Microsoft doesn’t send ads. It is as an unmaintained OS. I also have a Ryzen 7 mini PC running Windows 11, which I update frequently.
When comparing macOS to Windows, macOS appears older, with the same familiar look. The glassy appearance doesn't give it a modern feel. I'd be looking forward to Windows 12.
Apple sells (comparably expensive) Macs and MacOS is bundled into that price. Likely Apple income from "services" covers OS development. Linux is community non for profit driven. Linux providers may sell services to cover the price of packaging Linux. Win is licensing because they cannot cover the cost from the hardware. OS is a commodity that is just difficult to earn (big) money from.
I always surprised that so few are willing to pay for good software/OS or avoid seeing that software development is costly.
We can talk about suitable profit margins which we do not know anything about unfortunately.
What does the relative price of the computer have to do with the fact that apple does not charge for the operating systems? Dell/HP/Lenovo/Razer/and others all have computer models that are just as expensive if not more then what Apple charges.
The fact remains is that MS gets licensing fees for every computer sold, they sell OEM licenses for computer builders and also retail copies of windows.
Why does MS feel compelled to collect so much of our information and usage data, along with forcing us to see recommended apps/advertisements? Its not because the OS is free, because that's simply not the case.
You can always refuse permissions from the settings. If you have the time and the inclination, you can go into the registry and disable anything you want without breaking the system. If you don't have the time, just get Chris Titus Win Utility to handle it in a few minutes. You can also use Revo Uninstaller Free to uninstall Windows applications. I wish I could find an app that would debloat macOS 26!
Yes, but there's still telemetry being sent to the mothership, even if you choose the most restrictive settings. There's also the advertisements and recommended apps, something that annoys me to no end.
Finally, the new AI feature Recall, I see that as a privacy nightmare (it seems you can disable it if you have a computer that's compatible to this feature)
Check what Chris Titus says, and look at what others are saying about his application on YouTube and the Internet. Open that application and read through it. I have a local account. Once, I cleaned it up and added a Microsoft account. I agree to provide feedback that would help the software maintainers at Microsoft, the same way as I do for Apple.