Microsoft Lucks Out

Nine months and $1 billion ago, Windows 95 was a software product. Now it’s a phenomenon.

So what happened? Why did the release of a simple operating system - one that mimics many ideas already on the market - become one of the biggest news events of the year Thursday?

More than anticipation or clever marketing, Windows 95 lucked out. After delays and government investigations, the program hit the market in the middle of one of the most extraordinary years in the history of computing.

It is the same year cyberpornography made the covers of Time and Newsweek. That hacker Kevin Mitnick made waves (and movie scripts) with computer piracy. That Netscape Communications Corp. had its stock triple on its first day of public trading. That Newt Gingrich and Al Gore went to news conferences with their laptops.

Nineteen ninety-five is the year personal computers hit critical mass. And Windows 95 was the chunk of code that tipped the scales.

“Computers have moved into the space of a microwave oven,” says Rob Enderle, an analyst at Dataquest Corp. in San Jose. It is an nonessential appliance that nonetheless captures the imagination and a place in the den, he adds.

Newspapers and television, eager to analyze this trend, found their hero in Windows 95, says Howard Kurtz, media critic for the Washington Post.

“Windows 95 is the flavor of the month,” he says. “It’s a way for journalists to write deep, insightful pieces about the future of technology with a brand-name hook.”

When Bill Gates is done lighting the Empire State Building and buying press runs of London newspapers, analysts estimate retailers will have pumped $700 million into promotion - Microsoft, another $200 million.

But does money and anticipation really explain the kind of groundswell Microsoft has garnered? Coverage of Windows 95 has gone far beyond full-page ads and front-page features - to the level of excitement normally reserved for Election Day, the Super Bowl or a new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

It even goes beyond what Windows 95 really means to computing. The program has generated four times the coverage than the step from Windows 2.0 to Windows 3.0 three years ago, a more dramatic technological upgrade, says Mike Elgin, executive editor of Windows Magazine.

Something has changed. “The world wasn’t ready for (Windows 3.0),” Elgin says. “But now, partly by Microsoft’s design, partly by evolution, we’re seeing two- and three-PC households.”

About 40 million households now have PCs, with about 35 million individual computers already sold this year in the U.S. In the last nine months especially, consumers, the media and investors have pushed that number higher, playing off each other with pressure and projections.

“People kept talking about the future,” says Keith Fox, Apple Computer vice president of home marketing. “But suddenly the future is here. What hit home is that the world is digital.”

The more the media cover computers, the more the public buys - and the more the public buys, the more the media cover. Here, now, computers are becoming commonplace, even cool, says Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review.

“Windows 95 is what computers have become - it’s rock ‘n’ roll, it’s sex,” he says. “It’s feeding on itself and the once nerdy computer is becoming hot.

“These things take on a life of their own.”

Computers also are being seen as a necessity, Fox says. Lawmakers and writers have convinced the public that to succeed, you must be computerliterate. Last Christmas was the first season in which computer sales outpaced televisions.

“All the social trends kicked in,” Fox says, adding that the first children raised on computers are coming of age. People have started to learn that computers can be useful, he adds.

But while the excitement may indicate an acceptance, it doesn’t necessarily indicate an understanding, says Neil Chase, an assistant professor of new media at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill.

“Everyone’s jumped on the bandwagon, but not everyone understands it,” he says. “There’s this paranoia that if you don’t understand what’s going on, you’re behind.”

The best thing to happen to Windows 95 is not being Windows 94, Chase adds. Now the product is the perfect catalyst and beneficiary - drawing in the millions who already own PCs and encouraging (with the help of a technology-happy society) non-users to plug in.

Yet as quickly as technology has jumped to the front page, it could soon settle in as commonplace appliances. Windows 95 may be the last bastion of hype before PCs become old hat.

“It’s comparable to cars and phones,” Elgin says of the coverage. “They permeated life and then became invisible.”

MEMO: Stephen Lynch can be E-mailed at: number6@ocr1.freedom.com

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Stephen Lynch Orange County Register