I disagree with the author there to but for very different reasons than you. In the 90s we already had OS/2 (who's DOS emulation was so sophisticated that it co

I disagree with the author there to but for very different reasons than you. In the 90s we already had OS/2 (who's DOS emulation was so sophisticated that it could run Windows 3.1). Not to mention a whole boat load of better home computers than IBM-clones, such as Acorn Archimedes, Apple Mac, Atari ST, Amigas (funny how they all begin with 'A'). By the late 90s there was BeOS too. Windows 9x always felt like the shittiest desktop offering to pretty much anyone who'd used pretty much any other computer that wasn't an IBM-clone. I loved the ST and Amiga too but in fairness Windows 95 had to be able to run on any random PC whereas the superior systems tightly controlled the hardware. That’s why it needed the DOS underlay, almost like a HAL.