4 ms·

Windows 93 is what became Windows 95.

roelschroeven 7y ago
Nah, I don't think so, Windows 95 was codenamed Chicago before it was released. I can't remember ever having seen the name "Windows 93" mentioned in that time.
- chungy 7y ago
  You wouldn't have. It was still being called "Windows 4.0" until very close to its release in 1995.
- anticensor 7y ago
  See The Old New Thing, by Raymond Chen: https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=wYrCitbs5PQC https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=wYrCitbs5PQC , where he says "Windows 95 was originally Windows 93, after all."
  - roelschroeven 7y ago
    You're right, apparently, and I was wrong. Wikipedia says so too: > So the development of Windows "Chicago" was started and, as it was planned for a late 1993 release, became known as Windows 93 which was also known as Windows 4.0.
asveikau 7y ago
Source? I thought they had some design ideas in a later cancelled OS called Cairo, then they had a release codenamed Chicago which ported some ideas but dramatically scaled back, and that was Win95.
- fcbrooklyn 7y ago
  At the time there were two branches, the win 3.1 branch, which was consumery, and the NT branch which was for servers / developers, etc. Cairo was an OS based on the NT branch, which was ultimately cancelled. Chicago was the project name for win95, which came off the 3.1 branch. Eventually the NT/3.1 branches merged, in the release called XP. And yeah, there's no such thing as windows 93. Source: worked at msft from 92-97.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    But I thought the Chicago UI was also present in some form in cairo, and that is where some of it originated. Is that true? I know the history of NT based windows much better, I was at MS later, and in Windows.
    - fcbrooklyn 7y ago
      There may have been some overlap, but as I remember it the main thrust of Cairo wasn't really about UI. It was an object based filesystem, and some other fancy shit going on under the covers. (I was on Apps, and we never targetted Cairo, never got a chance to play with it directly, but I saw it demoed a few times, and I remember the UI looking more like NT/3.11. Could easily be misremembering that part though) EDIT: Yeah, you're right, there was some UI that made it to 95. From wikipedia: "The Windows 95 user interface was based on the initial design work that was done on the Cairo user interface."
  - numpad0 7y ago
    Wow, never thought of 98/98SE as 4.x point releases, or Me as 5.0, or XP Home and Pro as descendant SKUs for 3.1 and NT 3.1.
    - fcbrooklyn 7y ago
      Heh, yeah, I remember when they switched to labelling everything by year. Those of us on the development teams thought that was seriously tempting fate given our track record of routinely shipping things a year late.
      - reflectiv 7y ago
        to that point, wasn't 95 actually released in '96? I was like 13 but thats what I remember...
        fcbrooklyn 7y ago
        Heh, no, but it was a close call. Shipped in August of 95. I was working on Office "95" at the time, and we were seriously under the gun, for a few reasons. Firstly, it came down from on high that all Office apps needed to be ported to 32-bit, as opposed to running in Win95's 16 bit subsystem (this was a massive job, and introduced numerous bugs). And to make matters worse, this was a time when software was delivered in boxes, which contained CDRoms, or 3.25" floppies, as the customer desired. Win95 had completely reserved all of msft's manufacturing capacity for like 6-7 weeks, so in order to ship in 95, we had to ship like 2 months earlier than a normal release.
LocalH 7y ago
To counter the downvotes from people who are certain there was no “Win93”, here are two internal MSFT emails referring to the same, in clear reference to what ended up being Win95. http://www.windowswiki.info/wp-content/uploads/codenames/PX01263.pdf http://www.windowswiki.info/wp-content/uploads/codenames/PX0... http://www.windowswiki.info/wp-content/uploads/codenames/PX01308.pdf http://www.windowswiki.info/wp-content/uploads/codenames/PX0...
jdofaz 7y ago
I remember people talking about Windows 97 before 1998 rolled around.

Nah, I don't think so, Windows 95 was codenamed Chicago before it was released. I can't remember ever having seen the name "Windows 93" mentioned in that time.

chungy 7y ago
You wouldn't have. It was still being called "Windows 4.0" until very close to its release in 1995.
anticensor 7y ago
See The Old New Thing, by Raymond Chen: https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=wYrCitbs5PQC https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=wYrCitbs5PQC , where he says "Windows 95 was originally Windows 93, after all."
- roelschroeven 7y ago
  You're right, apparently, and I was wrong. Wikipedia says so too: > So the development of Windows "Chicago" was started and, as it was planned for a late 1993 release, became known as Windows 93 which was also known as Windows 4.0.

asveikau 7y ago

Source? I thought they had some design ideas in a later cancelled OS called Cairo, then they had a release codenamed Chicago which ported some ideas but dramatically scaled back, and that was Win95.

fcbrooklyn 7y ago
At the time there were two branches, the win 3.1 branch, which was consumery, and the NT branch which was for servers / developers, etc. Cairo was an OS based on the NT branch, which was ultimately cancelled. Chicago was the project name for win95, which came off the 3.1 branch. Eventually the NT/3.1 branches merged, in the release called XP. And yeah, there's no such thing as windows 93. Source: worked at msft from 92-97.
- asveikau 7y ago
  But I thought the Chicago UI was also present in some form in cairo, and that is where some of it originated. Is that true? I know the history of NT based windows much better, I was at MS later, and in Windows.
  - fcbrooklyn 7y ago
    There may have been some overlap, but as I remember it the main thrust of Cairo wasn't really about UI. It was an object based filesystem, and some other fancy shit going on under the covers. (I was on Apps, and we never targetted Cairo, never got a chance to play with it directly, but I saw it demoed a few times, and I remember the UI looking more like NT/3.11. Could easily be misremembering that part though) EDIT: Yeah, you're right, there was some UI that made it to 95. From wikipedia: "The Windows 95 user interface was based on the initial design work that was done on the Cairo user interface."
- numpad0 7y ago
  Wow, never thought of 98/98SE as 4.x point releases, or Me as 5.0, or XP Home and Pro as descendant SKUs for 3.1 and NT 3.1.
  - fcbrooklyn 7y ago
    Heh, yeah, I remember when they switched to labelling everything by year. Those of us on the development teams thought that was seriously tempting fate given our track record of routinely shipping things a year late.
    - reflectiv 7y ago
      to that point, wasn't 95 actually released in '96? I was like 13 but thats what I remember...
      - fcbrooklyn 7y ago
        Heh, no, but it was a close call. Shipped in August of 95. I was working on Office "95" at the time, and we were seriously under the gun, for a few reasons. Firstly, it came down from on high that all Office apps needed to be ported to 32-bit, as opposed to running in Win95's 16 bit subsystem (this was a massive job, and introduced numerous bugs). And to make matters worse, this was a time when software was delivered in boxes, which contained CDRoms, or 3.25" floppies, as the customer desired. Win95 had completely reserved all of msft's manufacturing capacity for like 6-7 weeks, so in order to ship in 95, we had to ship like 2 months earlier than a normal release.

LocalH 7y ago

To counter the downvotes from people who are certain there was no “Win93”, here are two internal MSFT emails referring to the same, in clear reference to what ended up being Win95. http://www.windowswiki.info/wp-content/uploads/codenames/PX01263.pdf http://www.windowswiki.info/wp-content/uploads/codenames/PX0... http://www.windowswiki.info/wp-content/uploads/codenames/PX01308.pdf http://www.windowswiki.info/wp-content/uploads/codenames/PX0...

jdofaz 7y ago

I remember people talking about Windows 97 before 1998 rolled around.