The History of Windows 98 Development

Inspired by the $5 Windows 98 PC, I had actually picked up a $10 Windows 98 PC, did a fresh install and it is blazing fast!

Bedankt

Windows 98 Beta 2 had an identity crisis.

MJD: Features that windows users still enjoys.
MJD: Windows Update💀

I remember growing up with Windows 95 SE and then later Windows 98. My mom hated the Windows 98 OS environment claiming there's lack of freedom on what to do compared to 95 according to her. Then she wanted to restrict my access to my PC cause of school stuff, she sets a password on Windows 95 to "lock" access. Only for us to discover you can press the ESCAPE key to still gain access to Windows 95 environment making the username and password worthless.

She was forced to adapt onto Windows 98 to gain that real locked environment over user credentials. Great times.

Great video as always. Some things I like to mention:

1) Win95 just like NT4 also can be upgraded with Active Desktop and the new Windows Explorer and Taskbar using IE4 ;)...

2) "In only 3 years"... I was a bit suprised of that, because actually that was quite a long time back in the time. Win3.11 to Win95 was just 2 years and defefinitely had far more drastic news and changes.

The waffle house Has found its new host

It kinda sucks that the show desktop button didn't survive the bets builds but did come back 12 years later in Windows 7. I use it all the time and I still use it to this day on Windows 10. This would have been a game changer for multitaskers.

The Welcome To Windows 98 song is forever ingrained in my brain

For anyone who's thinking about the Show Desktop shortcut in Quick Launch, no, it's not a hardcoded button.

explorer.exe for windows 95 still has the toolbar and the keep explorer in one tab, however it needs to be enabled in settings

No one watching this should be fooled: I was there at the time, Windows 95 was widely understood as a rip-off of Macintosh, and Microsoft was known as a soulless idea thief and destroyer of small tech companies. If you were forced to use any Microsoft products, you dreaded having to troubleshoot them because of the absolute impossibility of finding a simple answer.

It's important to note that the "single click" style still exists, but as an alternative rather than the default.

I have somewhere on a CD a Prototype called Windows 97, which maybe a very early windows 98 development, which was windows 95 with a new taskbar functions, I remember installing it once on a system, and it was just windows 95 from what i remember.

v1546 damn I 'member testing that. I 'member the boot screen with the black shroud.

I will never forget the bsod

I had my XP set to use only single clicks instead of double clicks for a few years as a kid. Surreal to use that computer these days

is there a download for a VM of the 98 beta builds?

microsoft building new windows versions in 1990's and 2000's for better usability
microsoft building new windows versions in 2012-present for worse optimization and worse usability

I love your Vids, keep it up ❤

i remember testing out build 1511 on Virtualbox back in April. i can't wait to test out build 1415 one of these days!

I think Memphis was going to be the final name because it seemed so ingrained in older builds of the is, and then as the release date was going to be in 98 they changed that.

Windows 98 se is better than windows 98. Also windows 98 se better than windows me.

you tell me im 87 versions behind? aw man...(obvious sarcasm)

omg what a good memories wow

This is completely random, but I wonder what someone from back then would think if you said that most modern PCs have no hard drive capacity, it's technically true cause we all use SSDs now.

Windows  M M     EEE
            M M M  EE
 EEE
we needed someting to
release while we
develop whistler

Watching this video made me feel like this was about: “Hey the new Windows 98 just got released, let's go to see the hard work behind it!”

I am glad to own a sealed copy of windows 98

I always assumed, (..and still assume today) the tight integration of Internet Explorer to Windows Explorer URL address bar, constantly makes me think Microsoft really wants you to use the default browser. I don't believe it had anything to do with "making it easy" and that's it... It was more "no, we really want you to do things this way"
Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense.. Why then give easy access to type the URL in the Windows Explorer address bar, and it automatically launches the default browser and takes you directly to the page?? Convenient btw :)

I reckon MS testing out the "one-click hyperlink" on files/folders, i believe that still exists, they just turned it off in release time. All this tight integration makes IE (now Edge), impossible to fully remove too if the user wish, and just demonstrates how far we've come in "breaking the OS"

I wish I grew up with this. 😞😞😞

You sound like that one text to speech voice. 🤔

Greatest start up sound of all times.

i thought windows 95 came in 1995 and windows 98 came in 1998

i installed RetroBar on my windows 7 laptop last week and thought the devs had created a show desktop button that looked incredibly authentic to how it would have actually looked in 98...
now I know why!!

dope beatsssss

I have a windows 98 computer and use it everyday

I had been running Memphis happily for a few months and was somehow unaware that 98 launch day was upon us. My young son and I were out for breakfast and drove past CompUSA rather early in the morning, well before they opened, and saw a small line of people out front. We stopped and quickly learned that at midnight the store would reopen to celebrate the release of Windows 98 and if you were one of the first ten people in line you could buy a Pentium 2/ Win 98 CompUSA brand PC for only $100. PCs back then typically sold for about a thousand bucks or about so $100 seemed like they were basically giving it away. I counted the people in the line and saw that we would be number 9! Thus began a 17 hour marathon wait. At some point an employee came out and took the names of the first ten in line and I supplied mine. By midnight the line was massive - it stretched all the way around the parking lot. Shortly before the doors opened another employee came out to confirm who the first ten were and when they got to me they asked to see some ID and would you know it, for some reason I had left my wallet at home that day! However, the other people in the line, all friends I knew by name after so many hours, came to our rescue and confirmed we were in fact the same people who had held that spot all day long. We got in and got our new PC!

I am now a channel member!

I remember the beta File Explorer theme as a screenshot in the Windows 98 manual and was always confused as to why my copy didn’t look like the manual said it would. Glad to know where that came from!

Clickbait in the thumbnail there's no Windows 98 in the thumbnail that's windows 3.1

Wait. Windows 98 was only 11 years before Windows 7? That’s so weird to think about.