You guys remember Windows 95 – That DOS based Windows system that took the world by storm in errr… 1995!? Well, that’s back … And in some style as well!
A developer named Nick Lee has successfully rewritten the code for Windows 95 in such a way that he was able to run it on an Apple Watch! Which, if you ask us, is sheer joblessness genius. It’s genius.
What’s the use of this? Yeah, you may well ask that question and, in doing so, join a million others who are echoing a similar sentiment.
The answer to that … well, that’s a tad bit more difficult to figure out. It has to be something. Wait, we know this. World Peace? No that’s not right. Achche din!! Nope? Camaraderie between Windows and Apple? Yeah, right!
Let’s just move on, shall we?
Coming back to the Apple Watch, Lee said it’s running an “emulation” of Windows 95. What this means is that it behaves like an ‘app’ rather than a natively installed OS. Which is a bit obvious given that Apple is kind of an over-possessive psycho nut case when it comes to allowing people to mess with their kernel code (core software).
Understandably, the operating system wasn’t in the best of shape. It took almost an hour to boot and come to a working position. Even then, the OS was sluggish and slow to respond to touch. Of course, that might also be because Windows 95 was never designed to have any touch input.
Interestingly, when Windows 95 was launched (August 24, 1995), touch screens and portable computers were exclusive to only sci-fi movies. People thought these devices were a possibility, but nobody imagined they would become a reality so soon.
But now, just two decades since the world’s first mass-produced interactive UI, we have watches that are more powerful than mainstream computers of the mid 90’s. Point in case — the Windows 95 software ran on a Pentium 166MHz processor with 16MB RAM. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, runs on an 800MHz CPU and 512MB RAM.
So if you took the most recent iPad Pro back to 1995, it would be nothing less than a supercomputer! Makes you wonder where we will be in another twenty year’s time, doesn’t it?
But, we digress with our philosophical train of thought. Needless as this experiment might be, it is a pretty interesting one. Whether it will have any far reaching implication remains to be seen. In the meanwhile, watch this video and let us know what you think of this wonderful coming together of two completely different worlds!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nas7hQQHDLs]
Source: 9to5Mac
