Submitted 16 hours ago by macstainless@discuss.tchncs.de to technology@lemmy.world
https://timemachiner.io/2025/06/18/the-windows-that-never-was/
That’s not a typo. Windows 96 promised to build on the success of Windows 95, yet it never materialized as originally intended.
I only learned about this a few months ago. To me, this was an incredibly fascinating discovery and wanted to write about & share it.
So much nostalgia for the Windows 95/98 era.
Playing Descent with musicmatch jukebox running in the background. (Probably a 98 memory).
Bouncing sheep…
I was actually part of the beta test group for Windows Nashville. It was an improvement over Windows 95, but Windows 98 really brought home a lot of good UI design improvements.
Windows Vista is Microsoft’s greatest success, because it’s main purpose was to make people forget the promises made for Longhorn.
I do kinda wish we had gotten WinFS. All the “ideas” of it seemed cool, just impossible to implement without breaking every existing application.
Longhorn… the hype was strong with that one. I don’t even remember what the hype was about, just that Longhorn was supposed to be amazing.
Wow, that’s a cool story! Thanks for sharing it! I had no clue there was even a beta test group back then. Was that outside of Microsoft?
No, I actually worked for Microsoft. It was a sort of contract gig for bug hunters, especially if you were able to fix the code at all. Otherwise, you just had access to download it from Microsoft servers and submit feedback.
Oh, the name Longhorn unlocked some memories just now…
I love windows 96
Back in 1997 I worked overnight at a bank running their backup software. Lots of sitting around being bored. I took it upon myself to change the Windows 95 startup logo to say Windows 96 on a number of computers. Someone out there remembers Windows 96.
I miss hover
Was that codename Memphis? Cuz if so, absolutely. Ran it for a while 😎
Memphis was the code name for Windows 98. The code name for Windows 96 was Nashville.
I borrowed Win 95 on floppy, from a friend at college. I dropped out shortly after and could not find him to give him back the disks before I left. So I ended up installing it during the summer of 96. I forget when I moved to 98.
I was trained on making repairs to Windows 95, there was never a 96. They Windows ME which was fucking horrible! My step mom had it on a laptop. Then Windows 2000, which was the best, once you install the other disc that fixed the 250,000 bugs that Windows 2000 came with the original disc. Man those were the days that I could distribute those operating systems on as many computers I wanted with the one disc.
not trained on reading tho?
try reading.
LWD@lemm.ee 16 hours ago
This is a very good article, but this part peeved me on a petty level (as well as explaining why there’s precious little in the way of screenshots):
The opportunity to do a little investigative journalism is right there, and the blog author didn’t take it
macstainless@discuss.tchncs.de 15 hours ago
Hi, author here 👋. Thanks for the feedback. If the Internet Archive had it on their own VM to run, I would’ve tried playing with it and taken some screenshots. However, I simply did not have the time to get it running locally on my machine, especially because I’m all Mac and Virtual Box doesn’t run on M-series hardware.
I agree it’s a missed opportunity, but I chose to go a little bit of an easier route.
Thanks for reading and enjoying the other 99% of the article. 😉
hietsu@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
UTM is the way to go on modern Macs, and even iOS/iPadOS too! Built on QEMU and super easy to spin up virtual machines with any architecture.
mac.getutm.app
LWD@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
Based on your descriptions of the integration between Windows 96 and Office, I did get the feeling you might run into even more issues if more software wasn’t installed alongside Windows as well.
I had no idea!
And hopefully my comment didn’t come across as a dig against your article - it just promises to be a potentially fascinating follow-up. Especially when, even today, Windows Explorer feels like it added previews of files as little more than an afterthought (and occasionally as a PowerToy).
Decipher0771@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
UTM is your friend in lieu of Virtualbox