The year was 1983. Microsoft was slowly becoming a well-known tech company in the PC space. Two years before, in 1981, Its MS-DOS operating system would be installed in the first IBM PC. It launched its first-word processing program, Word, earlier in 1983, along with its first Microsoft Mouse product. It even made Mac and PC hardware expansion cards.
However, 40 years ago today, on November 10, 1983 at a press event in New York City, Microsoft first revealed its plans to launch an all-new graphical user interface-based PC operating system. The company called the OS Windows.
If you’ve ever used Windows 1.0 – either because you’re old and remember it as new, or in a VM – you’ll know just how limited and useless Windows 1.0 really was. Still, it set the stage for one of the most successful tech products of all time, and few products in tech can boast about being on the market for four decades.
That being said, I’m not exactly sad Windows seems to be in its twilight years.
What would have it been without Microsoft and Windows ? How many competing standards, platforms, languages ?
Kochise,
There were lots of incompatible hardware, software, and programming languages back in those days. However DOS being an accidental standard, along with some mainstream languages (C, Assembly, PASCAL) has fixed that.
Looking back, I think we always had periods of “expansion” where people tried random new ideas, and “contraction” where we focused on some of the good ones, or good enough ones (since usually perfect is the enemy of the good).
Kochise,
Microsoft and DOS were generally slower to innovate than competitors: amigas/atari/etc. It’s just speculative, but IMHO microsoft held back the industry by at least a decade. IBM was such a powerful force that microsoft’s success was virtually guaranteed once IBM selected them no matter microsoft’s merit. If IBM had selected anyone else, microsoft wouldn’t be around and we’d be looking at completely different leadership. Nobody really knows what things would look like then.
Alfman,
I would argue that it was the consumers who ultimately chose Windows. And it honestly took them 3 major versions to get there. (I have seen only one Windows 2.0 installation in real life).
The main factor was that the PC was stable. At least much more stable than Amiga OS back in the day. (Yes, I know… things are relative).
Yes Amiga were innovative, and their multimedia capabilities were unmatched (even decades later commercial broadcasting companies were using Amiga computers, until they switched to HD, and those no longer worked).
However at the same time, it was much easier to get Lotus 1-2-3, or Microsoft Word to run on DOS. Later when Windows 3.1 reached stability, it was the logical destination to go.
sukru,
That’s always the monopolist’s argument, but when you lived in a town where there were no alternatives to IBM PCs, that’s what businesses and consumers ultimately bought.
Alfman,
Yes, there was some collusion, of course. But IBM was a very latecomer to the consumer PC market, wasn’t it? They were lucky to have an operating system that actually worked, and we were lucky the BIOS was reverse engineered and made public.
sukru,
Where they? I may have been late to the game, but in the late 80s and early 90s IBM PCs (and clones) were the only thing around. Besides an apple computer lab at my elementary school and IBM computers everywhere else, I didn’t know any alternatives even existed until we got the internet. Wintel were so dominant that there were no non-PC stores to even clue consumers into the fact that alternatives existed. I had to learn about alternative platforms existing in retrospect. It’s fascinating because so much of the technology we got on PC originated from those alternatives and yet the majority of consumers were totally oblivious to their existence.
I agree we’re lucky that hardware clones broke up IBM’s control and created more completion there. Otherwise we’d be far more dependent on IBM itself (in the same way that macos users are extremely dependent on apple for hardware).
Consumers went for combo Word 6.0 + Excel 4.0. That was a crucial inflection point after Windows and MS Office alternatives slowly disappeared from the commercial market, save for Apple’s niche.
Bogdanow,
Yes, I remember the time Windows 3.1 was on every desktop. Again except for the Macs.
However looking at the competition, there were leaps and bounds away in terms of usability. UNIX had CDE, which is okay, but no office programs. OS/2 was self sabotaged by IBM, and smaller ones like GEM had already died out. Windows 95 a few years later was the final nail in the coffin.
But that is also the time Linux, slowly, very slowly, started to pick up steam.
The OS and software landscape probably would not be that different.
Another company led by pathological greedy liars and supported by talented engineers would have ended up in the same position.
There’s really no reason to expect anything else from capitalism.
Nico57,
This is a great philosophical question. Are ruthless companies inevitable under capitalism or is there an alternative sequence of events that could plausibly yield different outcomes? The butterfly effect is real, where small causes can snowball into large effects. But similar to the laws of thermodynamics some outcomes are much more likely than others, which leads me to ponder whether we are in a likely universe versus a lucky universe verses an unlucky one.
Under unfettered capitalism, it’s far easier for the most powerful people and companies to remain strong and get stronger than it is for the field to balance out. The game of monopoly is a good stand in for real social economics. More likely than not, the social imbalances become amplified.