In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

> Yet now the company that Gates and Allen founded is selling operating systems like Gillette sells razor blades. New releases of operating systems are launched as if they were Hollywood blockbusters, with celebrity endorsements, talk show appearances, and world tours.

I was a kid at the time, but did many people actually buy windows? I know about the ad-thing where the cast of Friends or whatever bought windows 95, but as I recall even back then the OS just came with the device. The only exception was OSX, which was a “Big Deal,” even non-technical people downloaded it.

Anyway, it is funny to see this in retrospect. Nowadays, operating systems have become so commoditized that you can’t even make a business selling them.

I love Linux but his description is quite optimistic.

> I was a kid at the time, but did many people actually buy windows?

Definitely. A new boxed OS version would often be the only updates anyone ever applied to their system. Even if you had Internet access, dial-up speeds and limited disk space meant downloading OS updates was often impractical. Even relatively small updates took forever to download.

There was also the relative costs of a computer. A $2,000 computer in 1995 would be about $4,000 in today dollars. Buying an OS update would be a relatively inexpensive way to upgrade the capabilities of your expensive computer without completely replacing it. Going from some Windows 3.1 release to Windows 95 would have been a nice upgrade in system stability for many people. Certainly not everyone but for many.