2026-09-28
The product history of Windows, and why it ranks 11th
Before Windows 95 shipped, its team found SimCity crashing: the game used memory right after freeing it, which happened to work under DOS. Instead of asking the game's makers to fix it, they added code to Windows that checked whether SimCity was running and, if so, ran the memory allocator in a special mode where freed memory could still be used. Windows ranks 11th at 93.50, with scale 99 and business 99, but originality only 88. This is the product history in order, and what the score is measuring.
