Revisiting Windows 1.0: how Microsoft’s first office failed graciously

Publisher’s note: Before Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, we corrected the layout of this story – which we initially published in 2012 when Windows 8 launched. This is the right time to review our overview of an operating system that has helped shape personal computers over the years.

Two years ago todayWhen Windows 1.0 celebrated its 25th anniversary, we did not yet know what the future of Windows would reserve. Now that Windows 8 is on the market, the original is more relevant than ever. Today, Windows 1.0 is 27 years old, and despite the many ways that IT has changed since its inception, the two operating systems have surprising similarities. Let’s take a look at the way from Windows 1.0… and where Microsoft traces its own steps with the latest version of Windows.

November 10, 1983Microsoft announced Windows. For $ 99, he came with a notebook, a calendar, a clock, a card file, a terminal application, a file manager, a transfer game, Windows Writing and Windows Paint. THE Original press materialsPrepared using Windows Write, had this quote from Bill Gates:

“Windows provides unprecedented power to users today and a base for hardware and software progress for the coming years. This is unique software designed for the serious PC user, which attaches great value to the productivity that a personal computer can provide. »»

Windows 1.0 looked like this:

As a chronic in the December 1983 issue of Byte magazineWindows was an attempt to make the office operating system relatively affordable. When most computers were still mainly based on text, the material requirements for an office operating system were expensive: the Apple Lisa started at $ 10,000 and A competing vision on the system Requires an expensive hard drive with a huge 2.2 MB of free space, as well as 512 KB of RAM. Windows has promised the same features With a pair of cheaper double -sided discs instead, and half of the memory.

It took two more years for Windows to be published – long enough for the industry to be cracked in the form of “vaporware”, an ironically term invented a year earlier by a Microsoft engineer. (Tandy Trower, the product manager who finally sent the operating system, Tell his story here.) Microsoft, however, knew how to laugh. On November 20, 1985, the company sent the operating system and the next evening, Microsoft was a roast at the Comdex Expo in Las Vegas. Infuworld The editor -in -chief Stewart Alsop has given Bill Gates a Golden Vaporware award, by pressing the missed version dates. John C. Dvorak joked that when Microsoft announced Windows, Steve Ballmer still had hair. Microsoft throw dry ice into buckets of water in an unsuccessful attempt (given the dry air of Las Vegas) to provide them authentic steam.

However, shipping windows were not enough. You see, Windows 1.0 was trying to sell businesses and customers on a new radical paradigm – the graphic user interface (GUI) – at a time when only one company, Apple, had made progress with this environment. * Do you seem familiar? This should. Now Microsoft is trying to enter the tablet space with a touchscreen with Windows 8 and the RT surface, at a time when only Apple’s iPad was more than a breach on the market.

And this is not the only parallel. Like Windows 8, the original windows tried to simplify computers without abandoning inherited applications. When Windows 8 has the familiar office waiting under its metro user interface, Windows 1.0 ran on the popular MS-DOS. In fact, you had to install Windows 1.0 at the top of an existing MS-DOS 2.0 installation. Microsoft planned to call the “interface manager” operating system Until a short time before the 1983 announcement.

Like Windows 8, the original version of Microsoft’s operating system has had a potential problem for obtaining software developers to create for the new paradigm. In November 1983, shortly after revealing the windows, Infuworld John Markoff Announced a problem immediately: a large number of programs “would behave badly” in the feverish mode and would take the whole whole screen. The New York Times has questioned the value of feverish environments, period, In an editorial of 1984. When Infuworld Questioned IT managers in a number of companies to find out if they would adopt Windows in February 1986, it was answers they received.

Then, as now, companies seemed quite satisfied with what they had, and worrying about how Windows could have fragmented user experience if software manufacturers do not follow standards. So as now, criticisms have suggested that users would really like additional equipment (Then, a mouse; now, a touch screen) in order to make the most of the operating system. 27 years later, Windows 8 has the challenge of selling living tiles and touching screens to people who do not necessarily need it to stay competitive. Then, Microsoft promised that Windows sales would be a “slow burn”. We can be there again.

And quite fun, part of this new user interface is a tiled interface that listens directly to its ancestor. You probably know how you can drag on fertile programs on top of each other so that they overlap, yes? This feature was deleted of Windows 1.0 when he shipped. Instead, applications would seem tiled, each resize automatically to adapt to the available space. The stories differ as to whether it was a conscious decision by Microsoft or if A secret agreement with Apple The overlapping windows deleted, but overlap returned to Windows 2.0 and triggered an Apple trial along the way. And yet, Windows 8 brings the tiled interface with Windows Snap, and not all applications are not functional when residged to smaller proportions. No wonder the Windows logo is Back to Square One.

Windows 1.0 launched optimistic but poor criticismAnd did not end up keeping its promise to be a powerful and powerful operating system. Popular science I liked the idea, but called it relatively slow, noting that “it takes up to 15 seconds to go from one program to another”. The multitasking was also a pork of memory: “My 640 -kilobytes computer could not contain more than two medium -sized programs in memory at a time,” complained about the publication. Creative IT Worried about the shortage of compatible graphics cards and did not know if Windows was a precious upgrade compared to back. Infuworld LED with the title “Windows requires too much power” and gave it a score of 4.5 (out of 10). “This makes such intense requirements on the processing power of the computer that it is simply not appropriate for an IBM Ordinary 8088 or compatible PC,” wrote publication. And The New York Times says it “Performing windows on a PC with 512K of memory is akin to the melasse flow in the Arctic.” It turned out that you really needed this additional memory and this expensive hard drive to run windows at a reasonable rate, and some even suggested a ram’s disk like Intel above the board.

It took two other Windows versions for the operating system to happen again.

We should not make fun, however: in the 1980s, the PC industry was a West West, and these days have been over. The problems that hampered Windows 1.0 when Microsoft was young will not necessarily block the operating system today, not when each large IT company turns off compatible Windows 8 machines and the appeal of touch screens has already been proven. In 1985, Windows 1.0 was launched in a market about to explode, which simply waited until the right operating system to unify a multitude of different computer equipment. There were several competing platforms, and one of them could have risen.

But if Windows 8 fails, there will always be a large number of computers awaiting the next version of the now familiar operating system. Unless you think that the PC itself will make room for mobile devices, of course.

_{* The Xerox star, Visiorp’s Visi on, TopView of IBM and the jewel of digital research were also rans. It would be allegedly, Bill Gates saw a Visi demo on Comdex 1982 and was initially inspired to develop windows for fear of losing the affairs of IBM in Visi instead.}