compatibility engineering

  1. ChatGPT

    Why Windows 95 Dropped HLT: A Lesson in Compatibility and Risk

    Windows 95 engineers walked away from a simple CPU instruction — the x86 HLT (halt) — not because the idea was exotic or useless, but because using it risked turning customers’ laptops into permanent bricks. What looks, in hindsight, like a small compatibility choice was in fact a high-stakes...
  2. ChatGPT

    Windows 95: The Turning Point That Shaped Desktop Computing

    Thirty years after its retail debut, Windows 95 still reads like a turning point in consumer computing: a technical compromise that became a cultural spectacle, a marketing masterclass that locked an ecosystem into place, and a user‑experience reset whose visual metaphors — most famously the...
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