The world of technology is a volatile one, and what’s a mega hit one year can be completely gone by the next. Whether it’s on smartphones or PCs, we’ve all had to say goodbye to apps we loved, many of which were cultural phenomenons. But as the years pass by, you probably hid memories of them deep in your mind, and today, we’re digging them back up.
I’ve collected just 10 programs that were once a big deal and have all but disappeared in the modern age. It’s time for a trip down memory lane.
10 SkiFree
One of the first iconic time wasters in Windows
Who doesn’t love games? All the way back in 1991, they didn’t look quite as fancy as they do today, but that didn’t make them any less memorable. I’d be lying if I said I have any childhood memories with SkiFreebut this game released as part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3 for Windows 3.0 is one that many still remember, and I did get to experience it many years later when I was in college (around 2015 or so) thanks to a teacher of mine.
SkiFree is very simple: you’re a skier going down a very 2D-looking mountain, and all you need to do is move left and right to avoid obstacles like trees, while using ledges as ramps to jump off for some extra points. It’s simple, straightforward fun, and a very cool time waster. You can easily find replicas of it online today (like the one pictured above), and Microsoft Edge’s Surf game is very much inspired by it.
9 Safari for Windows
Apple put Safari on competing platforms?
This one might not resonate with a lot of people, but I personally have a memory of Safari on Windows engraved in my brain. It actually took many years for me to realize that this was basically an offshoot before Apple became even more focused on its own ecosystem efforts. These days, Safari is exclusively available on Apple’s own operating systems but back in 2007, it was available for Windows XP and Vista, too.
In fact, Safari for Windows was supported until 2012, so it’s not even that old, but it sure feels like it. It was a little odd at the time seeing what was clearly a Mac OS-inspired window on a Windows PC, with the green, yellow, and red buttons, but it didn’t matter, I loved trying new pieces of software. I’m also not sure if these buttons were used for very long, as all the screenshots I could find of the browser use a different UI. It’s unlikely Safari will ever come outside of Apple platforms again, but at least I have the memory of it.
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8 Limewire
The golden age of torrents
Back in the early to mid-2000s, it really felt like the golden age for peer-to-peer file sharing (or torrents), which was especially used for piracy, with music being a very common use case. There were a few other options, but everyone knew about Limewire was the go-to program for downloading torrents, and as a kid, I saw my older brother do this a couple of times (though we also expertimented with other similar programs). In fact, a 2007 survey showed that Limewire was installed on one-third of all PCs in the world at one point.
Torrenting is far from dead (and so is piracy), but Limewire still feels like a relic of its time, even if its downfall was less than graceful, with multiple controversies surrounding the software. Its legacy lives on with the multiple peer-to-peer file transfer programs you can get today, though.
7 Napster
Speaking of illegally downloading music…
Limewire may have been the go-to place to pirate all kinds of things, including music, but if you really cared about listening to your favorite songs, you had other options. Napster was a music sharing service that allowed users to share their songs with others on the platform, but it obviously ran into legal trouble very quickly since it was being used to share copyrighted music illegally.
Napster launched in 199 ans was shut down in 2001, but it was around long enough for many people to remember it, and it was even mentioned in the movie The Social Network (frankly, this is my only personal experience with this app). But the name is so recognizable that the brand as a music streaming service. The name has been passed around from company to company, but technically, Napster still exists, which shows just how much of an impact it had during its short life.
6 Netscape Navigator
The original mainstream browser
Before Internet Explorer cemented its place as the most popular browser in the world, there was Netscape Navigator. One of the very first web browsers for the general public, Netscape Navigator was an instant success when it launched in 1994, becoming the most popular browser in the world. But it started to struggle when Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 3.0. Microsoft had some aggressive tactics on its side, being able to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows and pushing manufacturers to not even install Netscape on their machines.
Eventually, Microsoft was punished by its anti-competitive practices, but that wasn’t enough to save Netscape. The browser kept getting updates through 2008, having been bought by AOL, but at that point, it was far too late. However, the source code for Netscape Navigator eventually gave rise to Mozilla Firefox, which is alive and kicking to this very day. And the spirit of openness that allowed Firefox to exist is also still alive and well.
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5 Microsoft Bob
You remember this one… right?
Microsoft Bob is probably not the most iconic piece of software you can think of, but it is important in its own right. Despite living less than a year, many remember Bob for the absolutely disastrous reception it had. Bob was a whole new interface for Windows PCs that aimed to make PCs feel more familiar at a time when people really didn’t know computers all that well.
Bob contextualized programs on a PC as real-life objects, so you could write letters, see your calendar, or just look at the time by interacting with objects in a room. It was a commendable idea, especially for the time, to try and make computers more understandable, but the very colorful interface and the fact that in some cases it behaved in opposite ways of what users had come to expect from a PC resulted in very poor reviews. And because these reviews were accidentally published well before the product was available, most people weren’t even interested in trying it by the time it came out. It’s a piece of software that no one likely misses, but it’s interesting all the same.
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4 3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet
The best time waster of the early 2000s
I almost didn’t want to include this one because it’s ahrd to believe anyone would have forgotten about 3D Pinballbut it had to be here. Included in the Microsoft Plus! pack for some versions of Windows in the late 90s and then bundled into Windows outright, 3D Pinball for Windows was a stripped down version of the game Full Tilt! Pinball developed by Maxis, and it features the Space Cadet board from that game.
Honestly, this is one of my favorite time wasters from the Windows XP days. I loved trying to complete the missions and seeing the lights on the board turn on or change color. I’m not much of a fan of high-score games these days, but at the time, I had a ton of fun trying to beat other family members in 3D Pinballand I still have an affinity for pinball games in general because of it.
3 3D Movie Maker
Make your own animations
3D Movie Maker is one of those pieces of software you had to grow up with to really appreciate, and unfortunately, I didn’t. But I know many people have fond memories of creating their own 3D animations in this tool, which let you create a scene frame by frame using the included character models, voice clips, music, and backgrounds.
Even if 3D Movie Maker was something I got to experience, I suspect I wouldn’t have been smart enough to do anything interesting with it, but for 1995, it must have been amazing to be able to create your own 3D animations. Microsoft even went ahead and open-sourced the app back in 2022 if you’d like to tinker with it and make it functional somehow.
2 MSN Messenger (or Windows Live Messenger)
Still better than Skype
Microsoft has had a messy history with messaging app, but in the 90s and 2000s, the company had something great going with MSN Messenger, which would later be rebranded to WIndows Messenger and finally to Windows Live Messenger. The latter is the one I had the most experience with, and I never got over how it disappeared.
Microsoft acquired Skype and moved on to focus on that, but in my opinion, Windows Live Messenger was always more interesting. The way contacts were presented made it much easier to keep track of all your online friends, but having the chat window and contact list as separate interfaces was very usable. I also liked how video calls would just place your video feed where your profile picture was, and the fact it easily integrated with Windows’s Remote Assistance made it really easy to help a friend if they needed it.
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I’m definitely blinded by nostalgia, but even to this day I feel like Microsoft should have never killed off Windows Live Messenger. It was great. And of course, the number of messaging app s that have disappeared over the years is immense, with things like Yahoo! Messenger or AIM (AOL Instant Messenger).
1 Windows Movie Maker
It should never have disappeared to begin with
Probably the most painful of the apps we’ve lost over the years, Windows Movie Maker (later known as Windows Live Movie Maker) was a free video editor that basically introduced me to the idea of making my own videos. I remember at some point in 2009 or 2010, I saw my cousin making a video that was just a bunch of clips from a TV show with a song playing over it, and in general, we played with this tool a lot. I would be lying if I said I remember a lot of its features, but I adored this app.
The death of Windows Movie Maker was completely illogical too because it stripped Windows of a free, easy-to-use video editor whereas Apple kept investing in iMovie. For years after this, Windows laptops just had nothing of the sort, with only an extremely limited video editor built into the Photos app until Microsoft acquired Clipchamp in 2021. That’s still a web-based editor so I’d honestly say it’s not ideal, but at least we have something. I just miss Movie Maker, and it never made sense to me that it was removed.
There’s a lot more
Of course, these are just a few highlights, but the number of apps that have disappeared from Windows over the decades is immense, and I’m sure anyone reading these can think of an app that’s probably way more iconic to them than one of these.
As a bonus, I’ll throw in one that you probably never knew in the first place: the Rockmelt browser. This was a Chromium-based browser around 2012, but my favorite thing about it was how it integrated with Facebook Messenger. It wasn’t just some web version, either. It was a totally custom UI that still showed you who was online and let you open multiple chats while you browsed through other pages. It was very cool, and something you just don’t see much of these days. But you can probably think of many more relevant examples.