Growing up, Windows 95 was a revolutionary operating system. If you stuck a kid in front of a vintage PC running Windows 95 today, though, they’d probably complain that you can’t really do anything on it. Where’s YouTube? What, no Facebook? Not even Instagram? No, not even Instagram, but that didn’t stop Russian artist Misha Petrick from envisioning what the social media platform might look like on the antiquated operating system, and it’s pretty darn neat (via BOOOOOOOM).
Instagram for Win95, as Petrick calls the project, is a perfectly brutalistic marriage of modern technology and nostalgic software that really highlights the best of both. This throwback mock-up shows that Instagram’s simple and easy-to-use layout would be effective no matter when in computing history it was made. When you boil it down to its core, the thing just works. At the same time, the gray, blocky scroll bars and pop-up windows are a charming reminder of how different computers were just 25 years ago.
It’s charming to see the white cursor drag the scroll bar up and down to navigate the feed, or clicking out of a pop-up window notifying the user of new likes, followers, and comments. All in all, the project really shows how much differently we use technology now than we did when we were just kids.
Check out more GIFs here, and let us know in the comments below what other modern platforms you’d love to see mocked up for Windows 95.
Images: Misha Petrick
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