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I grew up with an Apple Lisa, PowerBook 145 and 180 and later 180c, and then a Macintosh 638CD. Windows 95's release was during a pretty dark period for me as

I grew up with an Apple Lisa, PowerBook 145 and 180 and later 180c, and then a Macintosh 638CD. Windows 95's release was during a pretty dark period for me as a Mac user. System 7 was pretty unstable and crashed frequently. I don't remember it becoming particularly more stable until maybe 7.5.3 (1996). SCSI was slow and unreliable. My Performa had only SoftGPU and couldn't play the games I wanted. (Funny, an unsolved problem for the Mac in 2023!) I nearly gave in. I remember going to MicroCenter and leafing through a Windows 95 book that went over its UIs. Everything felt so different and that was exciting. But I hung in there as a Mac user. I eventually ended up with a PowerComputing Power Tower 225 (I think) and had never been so happy. It was remarkable being able to finally use the software I wanted to use. Then the iMac, Mac OS 8, and eventually OS X. Kudos to Windows 95. For all my insistence in the early 90s that Macs were better, for a time, they mostly weren't.

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timbit42 3y ago
Although Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, the Amiga was still better than the Macintosh and Windows in 1995. Also, the Amiga could multi-task Classic Mac OS and it was faster than a real Macintosh due to the Amiga's custom graphics chips. It could also multi-task DOS, Windows, OS/2 or Linux using a Bridgeboard, allowing Amiga OS, Mac OS and OS/2 to all run at the same time. That said, the Amiga OS could also crash due to a badly written app. At least if Mac OS crashed, you could just restart Mac OS as it didn't affect the Amiga OS or Bridgeboard. Quite a few Amiga users didn't replace their Amigas until Windows XP came out. As for the UI, the Amiga's Workbench 1.x was pretty ugly but later versions looked pretty good although quite minimalistic. Mac OS looked the best in color but not having pre-emptive multi-tasking was a major downgrade for Amiga and OS/2 users. I prefer the look of OS/2's Workplace Shell over Windows 95.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Weren't Amigas expensive? My only exposure was AV class at school. And they mostly used PCs by that point.
  - timbit42 3y ago
    They weren't as expensive as Macs but they were also much more powerful so they were well worth the money even if Macs were cheaper. Macs were pretty minimalist systems from a hardware standpoint with no graphics acceleration and little sound capability in the early days. The Amiga's graphics and sound chips relieved the CPU of a lot of work, allowing it more time to focus on other things. This is why running Mac OS as a task under Amiga OS on some CPU and at some MHz would ran faster than on real Mac hardware of the same CPU and MHz

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timbit42 3y ago

Although Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, the Amiga was still better than the Macintosh and Windows in 1995. Also, the Amiga could multi-task Classic Mac OS and it was faster than a real Macintosh due to the Amiga's custom graphics chips. It could also multi-task DOS, Windows, OS/2 or Linux using a Bridgeboard, allowing Amiga OS, Mac OS and OS/2 to all run at the same time. That said, the Amiga OS could also crash due to a badly written app. At least if Mac OS crashed, you could just restart Mac OS as it didn't affect the Amiga OS or Bridgeboard. Quite a few Amiga users didn't replace their Amigas until Windows XP came out. As for the UI, the Amiga's Workbench 1.x was pretty ugly but later versions looked pretty good although quite minimalistic. Mac OS looked the best in color but not having pre-emptive multi-tasking was a major downgrade for Amiga and OS/2 users. I prefer the look of OS/2's Workplace Shell over Windows 95.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Weren't Amigas expensive? My only exposure was AV class at school. And they mostly used PCs by that point.
- timbit42 3y ago
  They weren't as expensive as Macs but they were also much more powerful so they were well worth the money even if Macs were cheaper. Macs were pretty minimalist systems from a hardware standpoint with no graphics acceleration and little sound capability in the early days. The Amiga's graphics and sound chips relieved the CPU of a lot of work, allowing it more time to focus on other things. This is why running Mac OS as a task under Amiga OS on some CPU and at some MHz would ran faster than on real Mac hardware of the same CPU and MHz