> The fact remains that while DOS was an essential component for bootstrapping Windows 9x, Windows did still manage it's own memory, resources, etc independently of DOS.
Windows 95 would round-trip some calls through DOS so that it was possible to use DOS device drivers in Windows 95. There were also many 32bit applications for DOS that used DOS extenders (which Windows 95 also was) to manage memory and resources and call back into DOS as necessary. They would also do their own hardware calls, etc. If those are 32bit DOS applications than I would still argue is accurate (but a stretch) to call Windows 95 one as well.
> Not to mention a whole boat load of better home computers than IBM-clones, such as Acorn Archimedes, Apple Mac, Atari ST, Amigas (funny how they all begin with 'A').
In this era, many of these machines didn't even use protected memory. There is no comparison -- these proprietary systems didn't stand a chance.
Well yeah, DOS drivers are clearly going to be run through a DOS subsystem. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. But you could easily run Windows 95 without DOS drivers (and particularly if you don’t plan on running DOS applications).
You have to bare in mind that Windows 95 was the first time Microsoft had asked desktop developers to switch away from DOS and given Windows graphics and sound API calls were still pretty unoptimised and that the platform as a whole was new, it’s understandable that it took some developers a few years to turn their backs on DOS (particularly games developers). But please don’t mistake developer pragmatism for Windows being a DOS shell. Windows 95 was actually a very clever design evolution and an OS in its own right.
And yeah some of the early 90s competitors didn’t have protected memory, but neither did Windows 3.x. Some did have preemptive multitasking back when Windows didn’t (Win 95 introduced that), and other features Windows sorely missed too. I’ll agree with Windows 95 did up the game somewhat but frankly Microsoft needed to.
Windows 95 would round-trip some calls through DOS so that it was possible to use DOS device drivers in Windows 95. There were also many 32bit applications for DOS that used DOS extenders (which Windows 95 also was) to manage memory and resources and call back into DOS as necessary. They would also do their own hardware calls, etc. If those are 32bit DOS applications than I would still argue is accurate (but a stretch) to call Windows 95 one as well.
> Not to mention a whole boat load of better home computers than IBM-clones, such as Acorn Archimedes, Apple Mac, Atari ST, Amigas (funny how they all begin with 'A').
In this era, many of these machines didn't even use protected memory. There is no comparison -- these proprietary systems didn't stand a chance.