Developer Nick Lee has managed to hack a working version of Windows 95 onto his Apple Watch. The utility of this is close to zero — but it is hilarious to watch. It highlights how smart wristwatches like Apple Watch are now as powerful as (if not more than) desktop computers from the turn of the century. Watch the full video of the ‘microsoftOS’ Apple Watch in action after the jump …
Obviously, it isn’t normally possible to run arbitrary code on an Apple Watch; the developer explains the necessary steps and workarounds he had to use in the blog post.
The process is based off a method well-known Apple developer Steven Troughton Smith found to run native UIKit apps on Apple Watch, escaping the numerous limitations of Apple’s public sanctioned WatchKit framework.
As the OS is running in emulation, it is a lot slower than if the Watch ran the Windows kernel natively. Lee says it takes about an hour for the device to boot into a usable state. When Windows 95 was new, nobody was thinking of tablets or touchscreen iPhones apart from in sci-fi movies. Now, the same power is available on your wrist.
