The above was the headline in the Volkskrant almost 20 years ago after the introduction of Windows 95 on August 24, 1995. The media blitz around the year old operating system was unheard of at the time with the title of the Stones song ‘Start me up’ as a slogan.
‘Start me up’, or the advent of the start button to start programs, was where the whole campaign to be turned. That is not surprising: the OS comes out at a time when the computing world is very rapidly changing, both hardware and software. IBM’s OS/2 Warp is in the media is seen as a worthy opponent that may have significant market share, can obtain. Apple has made it difficult and can the head barely above water. As icing on the cake came also the zelfbeschrijfbare cd-rom and a cd-rom drive on the consumer market. For a few thousand guilders, everybody could own cds describe, a ‘disturbing development for software makers’ to write the AD in January 1995.
Two weeks before the introduction of the new OS was True then also: “Windows 95 is now illegal in the trade”. According to the message were illegal cd-roms for 65 guilders per mail order obtained. The official selling price would be 199 guilder.
Meanwhile, touch Apple ‘lost in the Windows hype’, is the headline in the NRC Handelsblad, two days before the day that people in tents for stores to the new operating system to get. The market share of the company from Cupertino is shrinking from 9.4 percent in 1993 to 8.1 in 1994. Earlier that year try is Apple a sales ban to enforce for Windows 95, because it is too much on the ‘graphic computermenu Apple’, writes Trouw, February 1995.
“Middernachtgekte in American stores” is the headline in the NRC Handelsblad in the avondeditie on August 24, 1995. It is part of a publicity stunt in which softwarewinkels in America the OS from 12 in the morning in the sale may throw. The total cost for the publicity be estimated around a billion dollars.
For which Microsoft wants us sweet love in 1995? The author of the Volkskrantartikel Peter van der Countries suggests that Microsoft, with Windows 95, the road would pave for the introduction of the superior Windows NT. “A strategic tour de force,” says Van der Countries.
In the first week of the steps many already on the new OS. According to a source in the Volkskrant of september 8, 1995 get even ten percent of the users over to Windows 95 in the first week. The operating system was made available on cd-rom or on 13 floppy disks.
Still, it was Windows 95 a game changer. It was for many people the first transition from MS-DOS to a graphical environment. Windows 3.1 and Apple Macintosh were used, but the average consumer started his Word-Perfectly by ‘wp’ to type inside the DOS-interface.