This article was published on May 3, 2016

Your Apple Watch can run Windows 95, but don’t bother


If you’re the sort of person that bought into Apple’s device ecosystem for the simplicity its devices seem to offer, there’s almost no chance you should bother going ahead with the same hack as Nick Lee, who got Windows 95 to run on the device.

Lee says that unlike previous efforts to get the Mini vMac emulator working on the device, he wanted the Windows OS to actually run and be bootable. And it is, but it takes an hour to get there.

Obviously, with Windows 95 not built for touch input, a little code-wrangling is also required. Lee says that it’s possible to patch some files within a WatchKit app in order to load your own app code.

If you do decide to go ahead with this hack for yourself – again, really don’t bother – you’ll also need some way of keeping the screen awake during that hour-long boot. Lee glued a motor to a small prodding device to ensure it didn’t nap.

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That’s a whole lot of effort to undertake to see Clippy once again.

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