Reconsidering Windows 1.0: How did the first desktop from Microsoft fail safely

Editor’s note: Before Microsoft Fiftieth anniversary, we fixed the design in this story – which we originally published in 2012 at the launch of Windows 8. Now is the time to reconsider our perception of the operating system that helped form personal computing over the years.

Two years ago todayWhen Windows 1.0 celebrated its twenty -fifth birthday, we did not yet know what Windows will carry. Now that Windows 8 is on the market, the original is more important than ever. Today, the number of Windows 1.0 27, and although many ways that have changed computing since its first appearance, the operating system with them is some amazing similarities. Let’s take a look at the extent that we have reached since Windows 1.0 … and where Microsoft has restored it with the latest version of Windows.

On November 10, 1983Microsoft Windows announced. For $ 99, this came with a notebook, calendar, watch, CardFile, Permanent application, file manager, Rebervi, Windows Write and Windows Paint. the The original press materialsUsed using Windows Write, this quote was from Bill Gates:

“Windows provides an unprecedented power for users today and a foundation for devices and programs in the next few years. It is a unique program designed for a serious computer user, which puts a high value on the productivity that the personal computer can bring.”

Windows 1.0 looked like this:

As historian In the December 1983 issue of Byte MagazineWindows was an attempt to make the desktop operating system relatively reasonable. When most computers were still mainly based on the text, the requirements of the hardware operating system were expensive: Apple Lisa started about $ 10,000, and Competition for the system It requires an expensive hard disk with a free area of ​​2.2MB, as well as 512 km of RAM. Windows promise with the same features With a pair of flexible disk disk is cheaper instead, half of the memory.

It took two years for another for Windows to be released – for a long time enough for the industry to delete it as “Vaporware”, which is a paradoxical term Made a year ago By Microsoft Engineer. (Tandy TROWER, product manager who recently shipped the operating system, He tells his story here.) Microsoft knew how to laugh at itself. On November 20, 1985, the company shipped the operating system, and the next next evening, Microsoft held grilled for itself At the Comdex exhibition at Las Vegas. Infoworld Editor Stewart Bill Gates presented a golden steam prize, distinguishing the dates of the missed release. John C. Davurc that when Microsoft Windows announced, Steve Palmer still feels hair. Microsoft Dry ice In a failed attempt (looking at the dry Las Vegas air) to provide some genuine steam.

However, shipping windows was not enough. As you can see, Windows 1.0 was trying to sell companies and customers in a radical new model – graphic user interface (graphical user interface) – at a time when it was only one company, Apple, has made progress in that environment. You should. Now Microsoft is trying to enter the touchboard space with Windows 8 and Surface RT, at a time when IPAD has not only been able to from Apple about more than just a market in the market.

This barely is the only parallel. Like Windows 8, the original Windows try to simplify computing without giving up old applications. Where Windows 8 has the familiar desktop awaiting the bottom of its user interface, Windows 1.0 has been turned on the famous MS-DOS head. In fact, you need to install Windows 1.0 above the installation of MS-DOS 2.0. Microsoft It is planned to summon the operating system “The Facade Director” Until a short time before the 1983 announcement.

Like Windows 8, too, the original version of the Microsoft operating system had a possible problem in making software developers for the new model. In November 1983, shortly after windows detection, Infoworld John Marcov A problem has been removed immediately: a large number of “misconduct” programs would be in windows, and take the entire screen. New York Times Doubts about the value of environments with windows, period, In the 1984 editorial. when Infoworld He asked information technology managers in a number of companies about whether they would adopt Windows in February 1986, and this was The responses they received.

After that now, the companies seemed happy enough with what they have, anxious about how Windows tried a fragmented user if software manufacturers did not follow standards. Then, as now, critics suggested that users really want Additional devices (Then, mouse; now, a touch screen) in order to obtain the utmost benefit from the operating system. After 27 years, Windows 8 face a challenge to sell live tiles and touch screens to people who do not necessarily need to maintain competition. After that, Microsoft promised that Windows sales be “slow burning”. We may be there again.

Sufficiently enjoyable, part of this new user interface is a tiled interface that hears directly to its ancestors. It is possible that you are aware of how to withdraw window programs on top of each other until they overlap, yes? That job was Removed From Windows 1.0 by the time it is shipped. Instead, tiled applications will appear, each one changes themselves automatically to suit the available space. Stories differ if that Conscious decision By microsoft or if it is A secret agreement with Apple They caused them to remove overwhelming windows, but overlapped in Windows 2.0 and the effects of Apple suit along the way. However, Windows 8 returns the interface tiled with Windows Snap, not all functional applications when changing their size to smaller proportions. No wonder the Windows logo returned to one box.

Windows 1.0 I released Optimistic but Center ReviewsAnd the matter did not end with its promise to be a strong operating system at reasonable prices. Popular science I loved the idea, but called it relatively slow, noting that “it takes up to 15 seconds to switch from one program to another.” Multiple tasks were a memory pig, also: “The 640 -km computer was unable to keep more than two medium -sized programs in the same time,” the post complained. Creative computing Anxiety about the scarcity of compatible graphics cards, and it was not certain whether Windows was a valuable upgrade on DOS. Infoworld LED with “Windows requires a lot of energy” and gives it 4.5 degrees (from 10). “It offers such intense demands on the power of computer processing so that it is not only suitable for an IBM computer or compatible with 8088 or compatible.” and New York Times He said that “Windows operating on a computer with 512 km of memory is similar to sugar molasses in the Arctic.” It turns out that you really need this additional memory and that the hard drive is expensive to run Windows at a reasonable pace, and some have suggested a RAM like the Intel panel above.

It took two other versions of Windows for the operating system to arrest him.

We should not adhere to ourselves: in the eighties of the last century, the personal computer industry was a wild west, and those days were long ago. Windows 1.0 problems when Microsoft Young will not necessarily prevent the operating system today from success, and not when each major computer company offers compatible Windows 8 devices and has already been proven by touch screens. In 1985, the Windows 1.0 operating system was launched in a market on the verge of the mutation, and it is only awaiting the appropriate operating system to unify a group of different computers. There were many competing platforms, and one of them could stand.

But if Windows 8 fails, there will remain a large number of computers that are waiting for the next version of the familiar operating system now. Unless you think that the personal computer itself will give way to mobile devices, of course.

_{*She was the Xerox star, Visicorp’s Visi on, IBM’s TopView, and Digital Research GEM as well. It is claimed that Bill Gates has witnessed a trial show of Visi in Comdex 1982, and was originally inspired by Windows’s development for fear of losing IBM’s business to Visi instead.}