That's entirely accurate and scary.
The slightly insane thing is that there was nothing really stopping a 32 bit OS from using more than 4GB RAM, nor realistically any single application either (the limit is 4GB contiguous block of RAM).
Easier to just support a larger addressable space without messing around, however this was very common in early MS/PC systems with the "fun" of EMS/XMS memory management.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
