1995: WINDOWS 95 launch - is Microsoft too big? | Newsnight | Retro Tech | BBC Archive
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- Опубликовано: 31 дек 2021
- Windows 95 has been launched, to the strains of Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones. The operating system is Microsoft's most important software product to date, and is expected to find its way onto as much as 80% of all personal computers. Much has been made of the Microsoft Network, which sees Microsoft aggressively position Windows as an online service. BBC Newsnight's Graham Ingham visits Seattle, the home of the computer giant, to ask industry insiders whether Bill Gates' ambitions to be dominant in every sphere of PC software is good for the industry.
Clip taken from Newsnight, originally broadcast 24 August, 1995
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Legend says Microsoft asked the Rolling Stones how much to license Start Me Up. They said $10 million as a joke. Microsoft paid it.
One of the lines in that song is, "You make a grown man cry."
They were promoting Information Superhighway, an alternative to internet but owned by big corporations. If that had succeeded, there would be no Google Facebook Uber Twitter torrents VPN RUclips and so on
If information Superhighway had become successful, the progress of everything would have shifted by many decades
this was their second choice, i don't remember the first choice but they refused under any circumstances. They were hated, and should have been. At the time they still had quicktime code in windows.
@@amit4Bihar and yet here at are with most of the internet centralized to a handful of big tech companies. Not distributed as it was originally intended.
4:01 I remember in the 1990s surfing the information superhighway really was an event. You’d get dressed up turn off the lights put on some Kraftwerk…. and spin around. Now people just slobber over their phones and tablets all day and night without as much as a 180. Where’s the magic? Where’s the suspenders? Where’s the German techno? Where’s the dizziness induced vomiting?
I 'm old school- I can't use the Internet on my PC unless I'm bathed in magenta light, sitting at my computer on a rotating platform cut into the middle of the floor of an empty room, using a DOS-based Internet browser designed by someone at BBC Newsnight. The experimental-era techno, though? I can take it or leave it.
Ahh the days of only catching a glimpse of your blurry monitor per rotation
Personally, I miss the screeching 14.4k modem being part of the experience.
Lol sounds like you had quiet the experience back in the day
reddit
Start Me Up was a good pick, Windows 95 did make plenty of grown men cry.
I'm still not over all the illegal operations I performed back then. Feel so guilty.
2:50 might be the coolest news package ever filmed.
It's very similar to the style used in the 1995 movie Hackers.
I'M USING A COMPUTER!!!!!! LIKE IN TRON!!!!
Those celebrity impersonators were spot on! I thought that was actually Princess Diana and Jack Nickelson!
Jick Nickelson and Princess Diona*
Microsoft started to get big with Windows 3.1 (1991-ish?) but yeah Windows 1995 was a flagship in that Windows have looked similar layout-wise for the next couple of decades. Even Windows 10 / 11 is still visually similar, just the start menu placement is different
@@josehenriq90 lmao kid, they couldn’t even play video frames without dropping them without stealing QuickTime tech from apple. You have no idea
@@jessepatterson8897 but what is The relevance to the content you are responding to?
@@jessepatterson8897 stole? developing =/= stealing
if i develop something that someone else did before me does not mean i stole it from him xd
also defending Jobs saying that someone stole something from him is a little bit hypocritical considering how much money he basically stole from people with the prices of 'his products'... oh and what about stolen lifes and work camps? You forgot to mention about his cool work facilities where hundreds of thousands of people work 12-18h a day for a dogshit salary where in some of such places they even have to live there which basically makes them become a slaves. What about suicides which practically became part of the facilitie's normal daily rutine and everyone already used to them? Who cares, rotation is so big that there will always be someone to fill the empty 'space'.
Jobs was brillian, yes... but he cared more about the money than about lifes of the people he hired and that made him just cruel so saying 'ohohohoh poor Steavie got robbed' sounds just pathetically ridiculous
1990s Microsoft: Are they becoming too big?
2020s Google: Hold my keyboard...
I wish 2020s Google would do something as epoch defining and brilliant as windows 95.
Don't get me wrong, you're right. But windows 95s launch was such a unique moment in computing history
I'd say Google Earth/Maps and Android is their Windows 95. Those two products changed our world more than people realize. Before Google Maps, you would use the yellow pages to find what you wanted and then use Mapquest, or if you went back far enough, pull out a road map of your city.@@medes5597
Apple - hold my ecosystem
@@maximusg88That company being that overvalued is just stupid.
These days a new version of windows hardly even gets a mention on mainstream news it's become so ubiquitous.
Yup, exactly. They have market saturation, so they don't need to spend the big bucks marketing it anymore.
These days, most people don't want new Windows features. They just want good enough left alone, something MS has had trouble doing since XP. In the Windows 95 days on the other hand, it really upgraded the capability of your computer compared to Windows 3.1.
There hasnt been a huge jump in quality like since then so why would they bother
That company, Intuit, is still going. And it's become just like Microsoft, a big company buying up the competition, lobbying, defrauding and so on.
Google?
@@lordvader3697 ...was not around in 1995
This is competent journalism.
This was our first family computer. It was a family occasion to turn it on. It later got handed down to me. It had quite a nice aesthetic to it, and it really felt like you were using a tool, as opposed to PCs and laptops now.
Because back then, computers weren't filled with the junk, microtransactions, paid features, and loot boxes that modern computers have today.
Meanwhile, 2000's toolbars and viruses enter the chat... @@OctavioGaitan
🎉😂 We did the same. We got home internet as soon as it became available. No one we knew had it yet and people would come over to marvel over it.
I had the first Apple desktop computer as soon as it became available for market. Huge loud computer the fans were loud but it worked amazing for a first time computer to the masses.
I was working for an independent computer retailer at the time Win95 went on sale. The sudden popularity of people buying an OS in such high quantities was one of the most memorable recollections I have of the decade I spent working in it (87 to 97).
Look how sane and dignified people were back then
I wonder about that. The mention of the Ferryman as an example of monopolisation and the use of 'demon du jour', plus the way people took time to pause and think about what they were about to say, is all kinds of stunning to me. I don't feel like you get that level of thoughtfulness in today's news segments :\
No grotty tracksuits or kids screaming
XX century
"Windows 95 is only an operating system, and it is not where the future lies" - Right, computer is not the thing, it is a thing that gets us to the thing.
What is the thing it gets us to?
@@daithiocinnsealach3173 I'm pretty sure it's a quote stolen from a TV show called "Halt and Catch Fire", unless the show stole the quote from someone real. It is an extremely underrated drama loosely based on true events from the early computing industry.
Edit: The actual quote is "Computers aren’t the thing. They’re the thing that gets us to the thing" and it does seem to originate from HaCF. Seriously go watch it. It's my favourite TV show. Kinda like Madmen but better imo.
Nice use of "I miss you" by Björk at 2:51
At 4:27 anyone else hear a random Owen Wilson "Wow!"?
Microsoft ended up bailing out Apple in 1997 by making a $150 million investment and preventing them going bust, because of anti trust laws that prevent complete monopolies in an industry developing. They needed another business in the industry that was large enough but obviously not big enough to be a threat. They underestimated Apple though. While they both now have gargantuan $2 trillion+ market caps, Apple is worth around 20-25% more at the time of writing and makes some $100 billion net profit as opposed to Microsoft's 'modest' $73 billion.
ah yes. apple bigger, better and hah 'underestimated'...
why didn't you mention the prices of their products? maybe because it never makes you better if you charge more, huh? maybe because it makes you just... more expensive
@@godzilla928 I have no idea what your point is. I was talking about market caps and their relative penetration of the IT industry. I do not own any apple products at all. I personally feel they are over priced for what they are, but that has nothing to do with business success. That is largely down to effective marketing. So again, no idea what you're saying at all.
As Bill Gates said - Steve spent twenty years telling Gates and anyone who listened that Apple was going to be the first computer company that was also an aspirational lifestyle brand. They were going to sell millions of computers at prices that no one would expect because they were selling a lifestyle.
Gates thought that'd never happen. And it happened pretty much exactly as Steve told them it would and made them the premium brand of the computing world.
Win 95 was the start of Microsoft becoming aggressive & greedy. After the MSN thing came the Internet Explorer suits which only ended relatively recently by giving users the choice of their default browsers. But they still try crafty little tricks to take other choices away. And their contempt for the consumer can be measured in the quality of it's products and customer services in 2022.
MS were a predatory company from the very beginning. They screwed over Digital Research and CP/M when making the MS-DOS deal with IBM, amongst many other things.
Windows 10 is quite good. 11 needs work yet.
@@jondonnelly4831 I've been using 11 for a while now, I find nothing wrong with it. Also a couple of large updates in recent months have definitely improved it in many ways.
Get Linux
Nah they were doing some nasty stuff even during windows 3
Was the music licensed from Kraftwerk ? 😁. It is stunningly similar to one of their tracks...
We were so incredibly innocent back then, and so incredibly naiive about what the future would really hold for the computer and internet industry.
We wouldnt be able to handle the truth back then if we could see what has happened to the world because of the internet
@@TurboMintyFreshcall me stupid but what do you mean?
Sorry, what do you mean?
Windows95 had more bugs in it than a Malayan Jungle
examples?
@@godzilla928 counter wrapping bug
is this good opperating systam wndwos 95?? Please respond
Sent from Internet Explorer
They should have made the default background dark blue, given the amount of BSODs in that release.
Amiga 2000 on 04:00 spotted :)
Now there's a man who's keeping up with the Commmodore!
Hmmm, forced to used 95 until the revelation of XP and then I was sold.
I had windows 95 on mine form 97 when i got a pc to 2006 when I literally couldn't use it any more.
does anyone know what riff that guitarist is playing? i would really like to learn it.
but you have camera zoomed in at his very fingers which were doing this very chords?
@@godzilla928 I want to know the song he's playing, that's all.
Anyone know what the song is around 4:00 ?
Home Computer by Kraftwerk
@@lipanook Cheers David 👍 Great Tune.
Windows 95 is what got my Dad to buy a PC.m, even though we don't get internet until years later. Both felt like a huge event for a kid who was 14 at the time.
About Windows 95 - yet they use an Amiga 2000 at 2:49 and 3:56 to do the news story. :)
Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve? All relics of the past. As for the Microsoft Network as a walled garden like the others, that was dead on arrival. Back then, I was using the free FidoNet via BBS systems.
who asked
My brother still has an Aol email account! He complains he regularly gets hacked.....are the two connected?
In 1995 the Internet was still very young (Netscape only coming out at the end of 1994) and the services like Prodigy and Compuserve still were larger. They were offering Internet services as they saw the rapid rise of the Internet and their plan at the time was you'd get on the Internet through them as they would also be an ISP. AOL was the only one that managed this transition.
Windows 95, my first operating system I used in 2001 when I was 6 playing Stronghold crusader Kings
The Hegelian Di eclectic A real binopular monopular … I played Doom v3.1 on a win 95 Compaq Presario with a 100Meg processor, pre loaded with Magic Carpet not loading. (Why I bought the PC) Customer Service accidentally sent an Apple version disc of M.C. for my Windows computer and re-sent win95 version and even patched it with updated software via 9.6, 19.2 or 32 baud rate. Thanks, Billy Goat, goat, goat, goat, goat! 🐐
CD or vinyl.
Both and more!
There was this mod for Doom?…I never laughed so hard. Mr. Bridges kept telling me to put it in my pants as I picked up ammo…and what a big door that is.
Thank Q. Siriusly.
The Great Sag A in the Electric Sky.
Thank you, beat generation and beyond.🐢
Thank you, grandma & grandpa.
Thank goodness
When they kept shutting the computer labs down at uni to install windows 3.1 and 95, I did nothing but moan about it, little realising what historical times I was living through
knock knock Prodigy WHO
Is this the guy from grand designs
No, but he does sound a lot like him
LMAO ohhhh 90s, you had no idea that in a little over 25 years the world wouldn't be afraid of little ol' *mIcROsOFt* but would instead be afraid of giants like Facebook, Google, Apple and Tik Tok.
Microsoft is up there with them and is bigger than all but Apple.
Time has lost all the overlays for the names etc! Doh!
the PS/2 in the thumbnail would have run OS/2 which was far superior to 95 at the time
OS/2 users: "There are dozens of us! DOZENS!!!"
Most PS/2s ended up running DOS and Windows because IBM made the completely nonsensical decision to not bundle their OS with the PS/2 line.
Windows 95 had its issues at launch, but OSR1 fixed a lot of these issues. It was succeeded by Windows 98 which was succeeded by the dumpster fire of Windows ME.
Can we have a video where Bill says "I am the danger!"?
I miss my windows XP, it was the best for me.
5:19 Still can't understand how Apple have never been hit with that.
It'll never catch on.
Yo! the food services look exactly the same. The nerds are even drinking 'Talking Rain'
1:10 did I just saw a UFO or weather balloon?
I miss the name captions! Who is talking?
Me too,
This looks like a Newsnight report. Often name supers were put on live via the studio as the taped report was played out. Caption generators (Aston) were very expensive and required a specialist operator. Also there probably was not time to add these prior to tx.
Windows would not become reliable till Windows Me and Vista.
🤣
what!?!?!?!??
But you know that you just named two the most unreliable versions of Windows, right? ME was a total disaster and Vista was dquick cash grab just moments before the full Windows 7 was released :S
@@godzilla928 I'm pretty sure Pye was joking.
wtf is Christian Bale doing here
Where
@@lordvader3697 9:34 (he looks like that character from Big Short)
I like the introduction where they say that Microsoft wanted to catch up with an Apple Mac that was introduced over 10 years before, seems they are still playing catch up
Macos still lacks features in its gui that Microsoft and Linux have had since windows 7. Things like window snapping.
@@wistals3deniks What are we on 32 bit pc's still, The real question is who really needs any of those windows snapping gimmicks in this day and age? Its full-screen baby or nothing for me! 🍷
Macs are overpriced and only appeal to a niche market (they hover around 10-15% of all computer users). Windows overtook Macs decades ago.
Those 2 guys/experts from 0:33 to 1:04 are Dutch people. Just hearing that Thick Dutch accent lmao
Mister Corona himself in the days where he still was experiencing with computer virus instead of real life viruses lmao
Great report as how Win95 was launched. Could you share this great documental in another languages as Spanish? I understand, the English is the universal but not the unique language. Thanks in advance!
Who’s going to change the language? It was made by the bbc in the 90s, you want someone to dub this whole thing?? 😂😂
Edit : why don’t you do it yourself?
Its time people took some time and effort to learn linux. Been a lifetime windows user, adopted ubuntu recently, great os.
Yeah I'm giving serious thought to this. Still using 7 for now
@@Animal_lives_matter try a lts linux mint, the learning curve is not as steep, most of the things work out of the box, and it will help you ease into linux.
@Geo’s radio & musical stuff
But apple tho
@Geo’s radio & musical stuff I usually never ask and just look it up in search. There was a recent video by someone who tried to get DaVinci resolve working and failed and he received the same treatment from some bad apples in the linux community. So I can understand the frustration.
@@gesugao I switched from windows to ubuntu lts. It wasn't too different and felt like using an android tablet emulator
IT WILL NEVER CATCH ON !
I've got Windows 95
1995:Mummy mummy what's a PC?
2024:Mummy Mummy what's a PC!
?
Was this about Microsoft or APPLE ?!?
When Apple was only a few years away from hring steve jobs again because it was in big big trouble.
Imagine being today's apple at that antimonopolistic era
This is so negative. Starts off saying windows is only doing what apple done years ago, goes on to say windows is starting a monopoly with its new system. Hilarious.
Microsoft got greedy after XP as from then on you had to buy Microsoft word and now all office products. That's crazy and greedy, if you buy a Microsoft then all products should be included.
You always had to buy MS Word and other office software.
These days, all Windows computers come with the OS for free and they're letting you upgrade for free (I upgraded from 8.1 to 10 and then 10 to 11 for free). They make their money elsewhere (licensing OEM Windows to PC manufacturers, and of course subscriptions to Office 365, not to mention all the corporate level tools they create, like Microsoft Azure.
Windows and Office were always separate products.
And now it is crystal clear what he truly represents and the agenda he is part of.
Too big you say? HA...you have no idea. It is one of the Alphabet corps tthat run the world, but for now, it is just staring out. Look at how cute it is....awww.
Windows 95/98 was so unstable with daily crashes it pushed me to move to Linux.
who asked
Whoever shall mention windows must know they will hear the echo of Linux
I would need to reinstall Windows 95 and 98 every 4-6 months, it would start doing stupid action then get a digital paralysis. Window XP was much better, windows 11 seems solid once they work out what is hogging all the PCs resources.
ok
@@NateMusic-kg5ob Who permitted you to reply
0:40 Bill Gates invented Web3