This one’s a throwback to a throwback.
Back in 2010, I was talking to someone about how, for one short period, there was a version of Windows — real Windows, not Windows Phone — that ran on non-Intel-compatible processors. He didn’t believe me, but I knew it to be true because around the turn of the millennium I actually used one of these weird devices, running Windows NT for PowerPC. I dug up an article that showed this screen capture:
and that didn’t end the argument since of course an image like that was easily faked. There was enough other evidence, however, and eventually my friend relented.
Here we are about twelve years later, and I happened to bump into the same article. I remember it because of the strange phrase “Microsoftian weirdness” that started it out. It’s a slideshow of some of the weirder twists and turns you’ll find in the history of Microsoft Windows, from beta versions that look nothing like the shipping versions to strange outliers like Windows 3.2, never available outside China.
If you look at this as a big picture, it’s proof that nothing on the internet ever really goes away, and that’s a fair warning to anyone who’s addicted to posting instagrams, tweets, or anything else that might be embarassing to one’s future self.
