I don't really remember many Windows 95 firsts. One I remember is the ability to switch users without logging off. MacOS famously copied that (with a 3D cube look).
I think they made something really revolutionary at the IE3 time. Their News and Mail app was an Explorer extension that placed an e-mail reader as the presentation of a folder full of folders of mailboxes and messages. You wouldn't see the extension, as the apps launched as applications, but that's what the implementation looked like from what I investigated back then.
Unfortunately, the idea was seemingly abandoned almost immediately. I would love to have such views on top of a user-space file system keeping messages, address books, and calendars in sync.
At my first ISP job, I eventually started using mh for mail. It was based on an awesome concept of sorting everything into directories and having procmail and various helpers to pre-process, including upon receipt and reading. I remember little of the details, but it was truly for the gung-ho neckbeard crowd, and it was well-suited for processing "large amounts" of mail (1993 style). I think MMDF was the MTA trying to do similar things in that vein. Meanwhile my boss was in love with PINE...
Of course, working at an ISP I could also telnet to our NNTP server and read Usenet on the local filesystem. Ugh.
The use of recessed surfaces for displaying information and the rectangular buttons were very NeXT-like, but more compact because it needed to work at VGA resolutions, but I don't think they managed to capture the essence of their framework which is, impressively, still alive in every Mac sold.
I wonder how hard it would be to get NeXT source from the 1990's and compile it on macOS 26.
I don't really remember many Windows 95 firsts. One I remember is the ability to switch users without logging off. MacOS famously copied that (with a 3D cube look).
I think they made something really revolutionary at the IE3 time. Their News and Mail app was an Explorer extension that placed an e-mail reader as the presentation of a folder full of folders of mailboxes and messages. You wouldn't see the extension, as the apps launched as applications, but that's what the implementation looked like from what I investigated back then.
Unfortunately, the idea was seemingly abandoned almost immediately. I would love to have such views on top of a user-space file system keeping messages, address books, and calendars in sync.
At my first ISP job, I eventually started using mh for mail. It was based on an awesome concept of sorting everything into directories and having procmail and various helpers to pre-process, including upon receipt and reading. I remember little of the details, but it was truly for the gung-ho neckbeard crowd, and it was well-suited for processing "large amounts" of mail (1993 style). I think MMDF was the MTA trying to do similar things in that vein. Meanwhile my boss was in love with PINE...
Of course, working at an ISP I could also telnet to our NNTP server and read Usenet on the local filesystem. Ugh.
I think that’s right, but it’s fair to point out that Windows 95 was (if you believe Steven Sinofsky, who should know) heavily influenced by NeXT!
https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/009-passwo...
The use of recessed surfaces for displaying information and the rectangular buttons were very NeXT-like, but more compact because it needed to work at VGA resolutions, but I don't think they managed to capture the essence of their framework which is, impressively, still alive in every Mac sold.
I wonder how hard it would be to get NeXT source from the 1990's and compile it on macOS 26.