@JustinsBigIdea
@ThatsMauvelous
It’s true. The Stones tried to substitute another version at the last second. It was a heated discussion but we got the right version, just in time to launch the TV ad.
Happy Win 95 launch day! 29 years ago we launched Windows 95 in Redmond, WA. A very memorable day for all of us involved in Win 95.
Thanks to
@MisterMorrill
for the reminder.
@dandrezner
@BoomRossted
@maggieNYT
I read the article. Thoroughly unconvincing defense of her behavior, which if disclosed in real time, might have had a major impact on preventing the mess we’re in. Sure she might have then lost access but at the same time prevented egregious abuses and crimes.
Good description by
@anildash
. We thought of Win 95 as a mass consumer product more than "just" an os. Right time, right technology was available, right product, right message. The world was ready for computers to be widely adopted by everyday people around the world.
25 years ago today, Microsoft released Windows 95. Lots of other people can talk about why it was technologically interesting, but I want to share a bit about why it was so *culturally* interesting.
The Last Dance is one of the best documentaries ever. I really enjoyed seeing the Sonics in tonight’s episode 8 for the 95-96 Finals. Payton, Kemp,
@Dschrempf
et al brought so much joy to Seattle. We miss the Sonics so much here in Seattle.
@dandrezner
@BoomRossted
@maggieNYT
Vitally important information at the center of major crimes against the US including sedition - that she holds back to make $$$ with her book, the country be damned in service of her grift.
@adamdavidson
As it did for the 2016 election, for which it is completely unapologetic. The Dean Baquet interview in the New Yorker was illuminatingly horrifying.
@TrungTPhan
I was thinking about this just the other day as I was hiking. Mind blowing athletic achievement. 4:35/mi pace for >26 miles.
Is there a more impressive athletic achievement? This may be
#1
.
@Kasparov63
@EnesKanter
@NYDailyNews
Now that was a combination I never thought I’d see: Garry Kasparov, chess champion, and Enes Kanter, NBA player. Both champions for freedom and anti authoritarianism.
Holy crap, what an arm! Her name is Kelsey Plum and she plays in the WNBA. She was the number one draft pick two years ago. She is the highest scoring Div I NCAA woman’s basketball player.
Marjorie Three Names and Matt Gaetz are Republican sideshows to distract us from the real game plan: voter suppression and taking the House in 2024 (and statehouses) so they can refused to elected Democrats (including President).
@benedictevans
The UX for Google Maps has gotten so bad, so overloaded with Google monetization crap, I’ve mostly switched to Apple Maps, which has greatly improved.
@cbrennansports
@inafried
Is there an organization with less moral credibility than the IOC? Let’s “ban” a country for doping but let them compete as “ROC”.
@davepl1968
I have the first copy on Windows 95 that came off the production line.
I've kept very few mementos from my years at Microsoft. But I kept that one. Priceless.
@chrisfralic
Ok it looks like $MSFT has split 288 times. 3500 shares would now be 1,008,000 shares. Which would be worth $335m. Had Mike kept them all.
@ljin18
@nbashaw
Bill Gates once said, “A platform is when the economic value of the people who use the platform exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.” Ben Thompson calls it the Bill Gates Line.
@dandrezner
@BoomRossted
@maggieNYT
This is a perfect example of why the MSM loves Trump so much — he’s good for business. Putting exploiting the public ahead of country.
@danieloran
@jlantunez
@Microsoft
Thanks, Danny. The people most involved with the design of the Windows 95 were
@danieloran
and
@joebelfiore
. I led the Win 95 team and worked very closely with Joe and Danny. I am very proud of how the product turned out :) Happy birthday, Win 95!
@IsForAt
Developers! Developers! Developers!
Seriously, Microsoft has developers in its DNA the way no other big tech company has. It became freed to embrace heterogeneous systems. World class teams studied, listened, learned lessons and delivered.
@stevesi
@jangray
@sethhaberman
The Borland C++ “team” was one guy, Peter Kukol (later, msft, vmw, goog, etc). He locked himself in a room for a year and out came Borland C++. He (and Anders) are 2 of the most amazing developers I’ve ever had the honor of knowing.
@aheyn01
@TechEmails
Yes of course I was. And as Nathan mentions in his reply, I was focused on web efforts which were making excellent progress. My group also built the JVM which was 5-10 years ahead of Sun’s. That was a big factor in their suing us; our JVM was incomparably better than theirs.
@lessin
Hot take for me: mountain biking is incredibly fun and worth the risk. I am speaking as someone in my late 60s who had a compound fracture of my radius and ulna 5 years ago and still at it. I rode today. Giving up mtb would definitely decrease the joy in my life.
@AshaRangappa_
The tragic fact is that it doesn’t matter. The Republicans aren’t going to convict him. The video the Dems showed should have been enough. Trump is getting away with murder of American justice.
@apartovi
Similarly, if one tried to bullshit BillG in a BillG meeting, he would rip you apart in a way you’d not forget. It was tough to watch sometimes but it taught intellectual honesty. If you don’t know the answer, say “I don’t know.”
@theCLWill
@_ahoskins
@paulg
As you are quite aware, Chris, it's not just a change in strategy (eg cloud) but also how Satya has changed the culture (which creates a positive feedback loop between improved strategy <-> improved culture)
@wowstartsnow
FWIW we developed Win95 to be lang / localization independent. The particular localization was in a text file; no code needed to be changed. It was a crazy ambitious goal at the time. We called it "EJAL" - English is just another lang. We released 8 langs simul at initial ship
@abarrallen
100%. I took a huge pay cut to join Microsoft in 1990 to lead the Windows group. I got a big increase in responsibility and stock options, which worked out well. Sometimes you have to go down big in short term comp to win big.
@pjbryant
@stevesi
@sriramk
@DavidSacks
@JonErlichman
2/2: We were both so blown away that it was the perfect ad for the launch that I decided we’d go with Start - to tie in with Start Me Up. And that’s how the Start button became the Start button.
@dadiomov
One of BillG’s great innovations was to give generous stock options very widely in the company, even to new college hires who had no idea what options were. At a time when most tech companies gave options only to the top execs. It created a lot of motivation and wealth.
Re the msft move to Chromium: one of the things that distinguishes the current era at msft is the ability to recognize and accept reality, vs what it used to be or what it wished it were. And then come up with appropriate strategies to create value.
@Carnage4Life
A corollary is that as you become an exec, reasons don’t matter. No excuses. What matters are results. No matter what. There’s a good Steve Jobs story telling the difference between a janitor and a VP.
@rquandt
@davepl1968
Dennis Adler spraying me with whipped cream at the RTM party. In one hand I had Dom for drinking. The other hand had cheap champagne for spraying
@Carnage4Life
It’s not just the Internet. Car companies are going subscription too. BMW in some parts of the world sells heated seats as a subscription service. Cadillac sells an acceleration boost as a subscription service. Jeep sells updated maps as a subscription.
@sriramk
This is really good. I would add: at the end of each day for the first weeks, sit alone and reflect on today. Write down what you observed, what’s working, what’s not. The first impressions are extremely valuable.
@GergelyOrosz
Similar reasons why the big cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) can provide better security than an on prem system. They can make the investments individual companies can't.
@andrewchen
I was at Borland in 1989. I didn’t think much of OS/2 but was impressed by the beta of Win 3.0. I thought, Windows could be big. No tweet to prove. But I took the job to lead the Windows team when offered and started right after Win 3 shipped, thru Win 95. Windows got big.
@Carnage4Life
Microsoft may not have been the first but it certainly pioneered the idea of giving stock options broadly and generously. New college grads joined in the 80s and 90s who had no idea was a stock option was, yet they got generous ones. Further they continued to grant more
I hope that if Joe Biden is elected, one of the top 5 things on his agenda (after Covid and a few others) is a Voting Rights Act of 2021. What’s going on with voter and votes suppression in the USA is utterly undemocratic and shameful.
@pjbryant
@stevesi
@sriramk
@DavidSacks
@JonErlichman
1/2: One interesting, little known product detail is that we had been debating whether to label the button on the taskbar “Start” or “Go”. It was still undecided when Brad and I saw the WK presentation for Start Me Up ad.
@Carnage4Life
In a growing company, if you're dependable, deliver consistently, keep taking on more responsibility and continuing to deliver -- more responsibility will come looking for you faster than you go look for it.
@andrewchen
Remember when people thought social media was all locked up by FB, Twitter, Instagram, and Snap? That they had sucked all the oxygen and no room left for newcomers? Then came TikTok and Clubhouse....
@danieloran
@jlantunez
@Microsoft
@joebelfiore
Danny, the taskbar and the Start button have stood the test of time as brilliant designs. When you and Joe showed me the first design, I knew immediately it was going to be a huge winner. There was a user revolt, indeed, when the Start button was removed for a version.
@wowstartsnow
@TOMYSSHADOW
@Windows
@PaulaScher_Arch
@Microsoft
The Win 3.1 logo was designed to be the official Windows logo. Prior to that there were numerous logos being used by various groups (particularly marketing and sales groups). I commissioned a logo to be designed and this was the one I liked the most. Looks great!
@anildash
@SwiftOnSecurity
WfW 3.11 was the baddest ass .01 upgrade I've ever shipped. It also had the underlying 32 protect mode kernel that was part of Win 95. The idea was to get road miles on the 32 bit protect mode kernel and fs in WfW 3.11 in prep for Win 95.
I propose Four Season Total Landscape be made a national historical site so its memory can be preserved. And a wax statue or Rudy standing at the lectern, his pants zipped (this time).
@benedictevans
It’s true for Delta, too. You can have a first class domestic ticket, but you can’t get in their lounge. It has to be an international flight.
@harriepw
Out of grad school, I interviewed with Xerox ASD, the advanced dev arm of PARC. My dream job. I thoroughly screwed up the interviews. End of day waiting for my host, I saw on his desk a note from one of my heroes, “This is exact kind of person we don’t want to hire.” Life goes on
@ianzelbo
I prefer the 4th gen iPad Air (2020). Imo, TouchID works better on an iPad than FaceID. iPad Air with Magic Keyboard is my go to device around the house and when traveling.
Thank you to
@DangeRussWilson
for the best decade of Seahawks football ever. You will forever be a Seahawk no matter where you play and your name will be on the Ring of Honor.
@abarrallen
Mostly but not always true. Today’s M1 chip is a good example of building something special in a big company. So was the iPhone. Win 95, which I know well, is another.
Congrats to Kate Courtney who yesterday won the overall elite women's cross country World Cup championship. Eight races in the season, she WON the overall. First American in 22 years.