KEY POINTS:
In this age of Apple dominated media hype, you'd be forgiven for overlooking Windows 25th birthday. Way back in 1983, when big hair, even bigger shoulder pads were the norm and the goodnight Kiwi and his cat made the nightly trek up that transmitter mast, Bill Gates unveiled
Windows 1.0 operating system for PCs.
On November 10th,1983 Bill Gates, Microsoft's president and CEO, announced Windows 1.0 at a event at a swanky New York Hotel.
Windows 1.0 was touted as giving PCs an easy-to-use veneer consisting of point and click navigation, dropdown menus, windows and most impressive of all, the ability to actually run several applications at once.
At the time, this was bigger than huge news. Prior to Bill Gate's announcement, things were very ugly in PC-land indeed. PCs had long been the exclusive domain of geeks, dweebs, hobbyist's and accountants (need I say any more?).
Powered by MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), saying that PCs were user-unfriendly implied a mastery of understatement bordering on black belt status.
Driving a PC involved using impossible to remember and cryptic DOS commands typed in via a clackety IBM keyboard. Being able to point, click promised to not only make PCs more productive, but could also finally make PCs accessible to the great washed (e.g. non geeks).
Looking back, little seems has changed, especially when it comes to promised Microsoft product release dates. Although Windows 1.0's official release was originally slated for April 1984, dates slipped and it wasn't until nearly an entire year later that that the first primitive (by today's standards) version of Windows finally shipped in Nov 1985, sporting a user interface even its own mother would struggle to love.
Work originally kicked off on what was originally called the Interface Manager in September 1981. Not long after, competitive pressure began to build and by mid 1983, a swathe of third party PC interface products were hitting the market. Not only did Microsoft face competition from the revolutionary Apple Lisa, but Digital's GEM interface and Quarterdeck's DESQView were also vying for a space in the then embryonic PC market.
Initial sales were not massive and Windows sported relatively few applications, many of which have managed to survive through to the present incarnation of Windows. These included MS-DOS prompt, Calendar, Cardfile, Notepad, Clipboard, Terminal, Calculator, Reversi, Windows Write and Windows Paint.
Ironically whilst the latest iteration of Windows, due next year, adds lots of new goodies, is said to have a dramatically improved interface and will run on the smell of an oil rag, many of the traditional goodies are that have been around since Windows 1.0 will be replaced by online versions or done away with completely.
