- Happy birthday Windows 95.
You introduced the world to the Start menu
and so much more.
Man, they grow up so fast.
So today to celebrate
this amazing occasion,
we're gonna time travel and
take a look at the history
and some of the features
of one of the greatest
OS releases in history.
Hey guys, how are you all doing?
Really, that's just great.
You know, I'm doing
pretty great today too,
because we're gonna time travel back
to the hype days of Windows 95.
Microsoft spent over $300 million
on the marketing for Windows 95.
It clearly paid off, so good for them.
Part of this marketing
effort was a commercial
featuring the Rolling
Stones "Start Me Up" song
omitted for copyright reasons and lighting
up the Empire State building
in the Windows' flag colors.
And that's it.
- [Man] Wait, what about the-
- Nope, nope.
That's all there was to it.
- But you forgot to mention the Cyber-
- Nope.
We're not gonna talk about that.
- [Man] Come on, Ken.
- Okay.
The cyber sit-com featuring Matt Perry
and Jennifer Aniston.
- Taskbar.
Is that anything like a Snickers bar?
Okay, honestly, I thought
it was kind of funny.
I mean, hey, it's better than this.
- But don't worry William,
just hand the disk to me.
I've got several applications
looking mighty slick.
Running under Windows 386.
- Yeah.
That was a real thing.
Then on August 24th, 1995,
Microsoft held a launch
party with Jay Leno,
500 journalists, 2,000 guests
and 9,000 Microsoft employees.
And of course Bill Gates himself.
So with the marketing efforts
and the hype building up
when the launch officially happened,
Microsoft sold 4 million copies
slash licenses of Windows 95
in one day and in the
first year 40 million.
So now that we know that
stuff, let's go back in time,
even further, back to the
beta days of Windows 95
with code name Chicago.
One of the earliest builds
of Windows 95 to leak
was Windows Chicago build 58s.
And as you can see the task bar
and the start menu were present,
they were just very primitive.
The file cabinet program was
the replacement for the file
manager we had in Windows 3
and in later builds the file
cabinet became Windows Explorer,
which we'll take a look at later.
It's also worth noting that the
minimize and maximize button
started to take shape with the icons
we're familiar with today,
but the close button has not
been implemented quite yet.
To close a window,
you could still use the
menu in the upper left.
Next to the start menu, which
wasn't officially labeled
the start menu yet, there
was a search feature
and a help feature,
which were eventually
unified into the start menu
in later builds.
And the rest of the task bar
wasn't fully fleshed out yet in
this particular build.
Today we're used to seeing
running applications
show up in the task bar so we could
easily switch between them.
And while that feature was
introduced in Windows 95,
this particular build
did not support that.
And when you minimized windows,
they wouldn't shrink into the task bar
like we're used to,
instead, they would transform
into blocks that you could
actually drag around the desktop.
Oh, and in case you were
wondering, the Dr. Watson program
was the debugger for this
particular beta system.
In a later build,
running programs would
appear in the task bar.
And later the start menu
was actually labeled start.
And the three buttons we
saw earlier were combined
into one simple menu.
And if you wanted to
drag the task bar around,
go nuts, put it wherever you want.
Build 189 was the first leaked build
to be branded as Windows 95.
Other Windows 95 branded
builds likely existed,
maybe even out in the public somewhere,
but to the general public
build 189 was the first well
known beta version of Windows to actually
call itself Windows 95.
And by this time the visual
details of the system
are nearly complete,
but the start menu still
looked a bit different
than in the retail release.
Keep in mind that this
particular build was compiled on
September 21st, 1994 and Windows 95
didn't come out until August 24th, 1995.
So we still had 11 months to go.
And over that time,
there were plenty of other beta builds
and test releases compiled.
And before we move on,
I just want to thank Michael
MJD for providing some of the
footage for this episode.
He does a much bigger,
deep dive into the Chicago build
so definitely go check those out.
But for now enough beta talk.
Let's hop into the 95 retail release
and talk about some of its features.
And my favorite thing about
the Windows 95 release is so
many of the features in it
were kind of like the origin
stories of features we still
use today in Windows
10, let's take a look.
The biggest feature was the
introduction of the start menu.
Documents and programs could
be easily accessed from a
simple menu instead of having
to deal with the file manager
and the program manager
in the previous systems.
The task bar was another new feature,
something we'll use today
all the time in Windows.
And it allowed you to easily
switch between open programs.
And nowadays we use the stuff
without even thinking about it.
So we might take it for granted,
but this was a pretty big deal back then.
Windows Explorer was also
first introduced in Windows 95.
And this file browser
replaced the File Manager
from previous systems,
the Windows Explorer featured
some new right-click shortcuts
for power users, which
included a Quick View feature,
which will let you preview
contents of a file without
opening that file in a program.
Also introduced for the first
time was the, My Computer shortcut,
which allowed users to see
connected devices and information
about their computer.
For example, they could
look at their printers
and although the My
Computer shortcut stuck
around for a long time in Windows,
we don't really use it or
see it much more today,
but I'll tell you what we do
see still... the Recycle Bin.
This feature was also
introduced in Windows 95.
If a user deletes a file,
it would simply move to the
Recycle Bin just in case they
wanted to undelete the file later.
And here's another big change
something we probably still
take for granted today, long file names.
Previous to Windows 95,
unless you were using
certain Windows NT releases
in the Windows' world you
could only have file names
with eight characters
before the file extension.
So you had to find creative ways
to abbreviate your
documents and everything.
But with Windows 95,
the character limit
expanded to 255 characters.
So good.
That was pretty convenient.
And even though you didn't
need to use DOS to start up
Windows 95 anymore,
like you had to with the
previous Windows systems,
you could still run DOS
programs inside of Windows,
either in full screen mode or in a window.
So kudos to Microsoft for
keeping that compatibility.
I think that's something
they do really well
in the PC space.
They seem to pay attention a
lot to backward compatibility.
but in addition to that
Windows 95 also paved the way
for 32-bit applications on Windows.
In addition to Windows NT,
which already had that.
But in the more consumer space,
Windows 95 helped push
32-bit apps out to users,
which would potentially run much faster
than their 16-bit counterparts.
And you probably already saw this,
but the close minimize and
maximize buttons are now present
in the upper right of the windows,
laid out in a very similar fashion
to what we're used to today.
And even though Internet Explorer
wasn't initially bundled with Windows 95.
It was available in Windows
95 with Microsoft Plus
and in some other bundles,
depending on where you
bought your computer from.
So this marked at the beginning
of the Internet Explorer era,
which lasted quite a long time, I mean,
it's still used today, not a ton.
It's starting to get phased out more
and we have a Microsoft
Edge to replace it too.
But man, still, kudos to you
Internet Explorer, you
lasted a very long time,
maybe a little longer
than you should have,
but that's none of my business.
And I know I haven't covered
all of the new features in
Windows 95, but if I missed
any that you really liked,
feel free to let me know
about those in the comments.
Now, some could argue that these
Windows 95 features weren't
anything new because other
operating systems were already
doing this stuff.
Heck even the Macintosh had a
trash feature in version one
that was back in 1984,
but most of the time that
doesn't really matter.
And Apple would even defend that.
On the iPhone, they weren't the first
with cut, copy, paste
or with multitasking,
but they still took their
time to make it right.
They did it well and people loved it,
but they weren't the
first and that's okay.
So even though some of these
features did come into Windows
a little bit later compared
to other operating systems,
it didn't matter because Microsoft
was making their way into
the homes of millions of people.
And they were spreading
around like wildfire.
And with Windows 95, they
just helped push the ease
of use into the personal
computing space even further.
Windows 95 wasn't perfect, no
operating system is of course,
but I think it should still
be remembered as an imperative
piece of personal computing history.
And for me, it'll always have
a special place right here.
(Windows fanfare)
Happy birthday, Windows 95.
Feel free to share your own nostalgic
Windows 95 memories and subscribe
and stay tuned for more
great tech videos every week.
Thanks for sticking with me.
Catch the crazy and pass it on.
(upbeat music)
