I will say Windows feels 40 years old. macOS does not feel anywhere near as old.
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Windows is 40 years old
- Thread starter maflynn
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Windows 7 in no way, shape, or form removed Aero. Windows 8 is where the glass was mostly dropped. If anything Windows 7 had more glass effects than Vista. Also to call Vista, an entire re-write of the OS from the kernal up, as a "rebanded XP" is a huge exaggeration.
question: do we date Mac OS from the original Mac (say 1984) or os 10.0 (say ca 2000) ?
I'd consider it OS X. If you wanted to you could go back to NextStep as modern MacOS is based off of that.
I think you're right. I remember back in the "good old days", Microsoft would announce a new version of Windows and enthusiasts like me would fall over ourselves to find out what's new, we'd pay for the public preview (sent out by post!) and get really excited about it.
Now? Microsoft announces a new version and my first thought is "oh no, how are they ruining it this time?"
My first encounter with Windows was when Windows NT 3.1 was released.
My first PC was an Apricot, then a Mac 128k, and an Amiga 2000. I worked on SGI (Indigo) IRIX 1990 before my first „Contact“ with Windows. It was just, some customers wanted it, so I had to deal with it…
Unix was always "the Thing" for me and i love the change to BSD under the Hood in MacOS till this Day because i can Manage Server and have all the Mac features as well.
I feel no Pain using Windows since it runs mostly stable these Days and to be honest, also Mac´s had Problems in the Past with stability but to Use MacOS with the Unix under the Hood is un Beatable.
My Daughters are Using Windows because of the Games......and subsequently now as 3D Artist as they are used to it but hey there is no Mac with the Grafik Power a PC can have now...
Full Parallel Timeline 1985–2005
My first PC was an Apricot, then a Mac 128k, and an Amiga 2000. I worked on SGI (Indigo) IRIX 1990 before my first „Contact“ with Windows. It was just, some customers wanted it, so I had to deal with it…
Unix was always "the Thing" for me and i love the change to BSD under the Hood in MacOS till this Day because i can Manage Server and have all the Mac features as well.
I feel no Pain using Windows since it runs mostly stable these Days and to be honest, also Mac´s had Problems in the Past with stability but to Use MacOS with the Unix under the Hood is un Beatable.
My Daughters are Using Windows because of the Games......and subsequently now as 3D Artist as they are used to it but hey there is no Mac with the Grafik Power a PC can have now...
Full Parallel Timeline 1985–2005
| Year | Amiga (Commodore) | Macintosh (Apple) | Windows (Microsoft) | SGI (Silicon Graphics) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Original Macintosh 128K | SGI founded (1982), IRIS 4D workstations | ||
| 1985 | Amiga 1000 (July) | Windows 1.0 (Nov) | IRIS 3130 – first with Geometry Engine | |
| 1987 | Amiga 500 & 2000 | Mac II (first color Mac) | Windows 2.0 | |
| 1990 | Amiga 3000 + Video Toaster | Windows 3.0 (huge success) | Indigo (R4000), first “pizza box” | |
| 1991 | System 7 | Indy announced (your first SGI!) | ||
| 1992 | Amiga 600 & 1200 | Windows 3.1 | Indy released (1993) – built-in camera, Cosmo Compress, $5k 3D powerhouse | |
| 1993 | Windows NT 3.1 | Onyx released – 250 MHz R4400, RealityEngine² graphics (used in Jurassic Park) | ||
| 1994 | Commodore bankruptcy | Power Macintosh (first PowerPC) | Windows 3.11 | Indy + Indigo² dominate video/TV/FX houses |
| 1995 | Amiga dead in mainstream | Windows 95 | Onyx² & InfiniteReality (1996) – 4K textures, 1990s Hollywood standard | |
| 1996 | Windows NT 4.0 | IRIX 6.2 + OpenGL dominance | ||
| 1997 | Mac OS 8 | O2 released – successor to Indy, single R10000/R12000 CPU, unified memory | ||
| 1998 | iMac G3 | Windows 98 | Visual Workstation 320/540 (Windows NT version of O2) | |
| 1999 | Windows 2000 | SGI financial crisis begins | ||
| 2000 | AmigaOne / OS4 (niche) | Mac OS 9 (last classic) | Last high-end Onyx (Obsidian) | |
| 2001 | Mac OS X 10.0 | Windows XP | ||
| 2006 | AmigaOS 4 continues | macOS continues | Windows Vista → 7 → 10 → 11 | SGI bankrupt (2006), assets sold; IRIX dead |
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I like how Microsoft make (almost) every version mature enough for few years before releasing new major version. This is what Apple very weak - in my opinion.
Apple should stop releasing macOS yearly. Simple as that.
I disagree. I think Windows 11 is very modern. Works very well too, at least the Enterprise edition.
Its definitely improved over windows 10, making small but important tweaks to the UI, and the continue too. What has turned me off of windows is the advertisements, telemetry, the continued push of AI, including recall which I feel is a privacy nightmare, forcing users to their online/cloud based services requiring an online account when setting up windows.
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Wow, now I feel Old!
My first experience experience of computers after my apprenticeship was a very large and very heavy laptop with dual floppy drives and DOS.
After that Windows seemed pretty impressive and laptops have certainly got smaller and lighter.
As the OP said Windows got better with most iterations, just a few major missteps. Vista anyone?🤦♂️
I find Windows 11 a bit less intuitive than Windows 10, but that could be just me.
Personally I prefer my Mac but have to use windows for work and find it ok.
My first experience experience of computers after my apprenticeship was a very large and very heavy laptop with dual floppy drives and DOS.
After that Windows seemed pretty impressive and laptops have certainly got smaller and lighter.
As the OP said Windows got better with most iterations, just a few major missteps. Vista anyone?🤦♂️
I find Windows 11 a bit less intuitive than Windows 10, but that could be just me.
Personally I prefer my Mac but have to use windows for work and find it ok.
That's right; a lot of manufacturers had Windows 3.1 (or 3.11) start automatically via the autoexec.bat file, but DOS will still fully running. 95 took it over.
My great-grandmother bought all the great-grandkids a PC around '94, which was my first real computer at 14. It was a fly-by-night Comtrade build-to-order deal, with windows 3.11. The hardware was fine and generic, but the company was gone within a couple years.
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I had forgotten about autoexec.bat . oddly enough, many viruses required win32 to work (poor virus writing or taking advantage of most users and ignoring the outliers - I disassembled many of those jewels, mostly amused at the assumptions they made about users and the Microsoft file structure. developed an event stronger hatred for technical monostructures (or monocultures if you wish), generally at war with the it guys (apparently they all from the Mordor 'one ring to rule them all' academy)
I only use Windows on my work PC, so I don't see any ads and might have a better experience.
Definitely not cool with all that, but the enterprise releases of 11 don't have all that. My work PC has no telemetry, ads, or copilot.
My wife uses a Windows 11 desktop and a Surface Tablet for her work, and I disabled/removed as much of that as I could. She's a self-employed attorney and doesn't want cloud storage or anything even remotely connected to AI to be on her machines, and with what is happening in the legal world with AI, I can't blame her.
Windows for home users is obnoxious, but at least most of the nonsense can be disabled.
I still vividly remember the excitement when installing Windows 3.1 and, of course, Windows 95
START ME UP baby!
START ME UP baby!
I still vividly remember the excitement when installing Windows 3.1 and, of course, Windows 95
START ME UP baby!
Forgot about that!!! Haha, that weird Gates dance. I heard that the licensing cost to the Stones to use that song was over $10 million.
I got Win 95 on floppies, for some reason (probably thinking I could copy them and hand them to friends).. There was like 20, and they were a weird proprietary 1.7mb'ish size, I guess as copy protection? They kept failing and Microsoft kept shipping me new complete packs of disks. I ended up collecting enough working ones to have two sets, and gave one to my buddy.
Was super excited to install it, but annoyed that it took over DOS.
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Everyone copies everyone, including Apple with Xerox. I just can't be bothered enough to care.
Like everyone, I hated Vista back in the day...for being the slowest OS possible...unnecessarily bloated and the like...in retrospective, of course, this was rather due to the weak hardware one had (something like an AMD Duron 600MHz and a GPU with a few MBs of RAM, way too little for Aero).
Just for the sake of it, I installed Vista on a mostly stock iMac 2011 21,5 a few days ago (8GB RAM and an SSD, but Vista boots from the 500GB HDD. Most BootCamp W7 drivers work). You can still get some recent security updates for it and use a Chromium fork called Supermium. Sure I wouldn't recommend doing something security-related with it. But it is a nice retro experience with Winamp and some games from the time.
From the Windows Companion CD, not part of the regular Windows 95 install floppies/CD. I remember the Weezer video as well, Buddy Holly. Thought it was so cool that it looked just like a Happy Days episode. Had to look it up, but the other song was Good Times by Edie Brickell off her solo album (her band Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians had a single “What I Am” which was played often on my college radio station when I was a freshman). Random, non-related, fun fact: she’s married to Paul Simon (since 1992).