Windows 1.0 The Beginning Of A New Era

Windows 1.0 – The Beginning of A New Era

The Release In late 1983, to stir attention and interest for an important upcoming media event, Microsoft's marketing/PR mavens cooked up a small "teaser" promo kit, which they presumably sent out to various movers and shakers in the computer trade press. At the November 10th, 1983 conference and luncheon it promoted, Microsoft's new software initiative was revealed: a product allowing PC users to "multi-task" several DOS programs simultaneously, and to interact with their computers via a "graphical user interface". Bill Gates had lobbied for the catchy sobriquet of "Interface Manager", but the genius of Microsoft's nascent marketing department, Rowland Hanson, had won a long internal battle, and the product was announced with his chosen name: "Microsoft Windows".

The Press Kit The press kit, as you can see in the photos, consisted of a cardboard box about 7" x 7" x 3". The outside, done up in the official Microsoft Forest Green corporate color scheme of the time, minces no words: "LOOK INSIDE FOR NEWS ABOUT A MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT ON THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE."

What’s Inside Once opened, what's revealed is a small brass squeegee and a cotton waffle-weave washcloth..

Press Release The blurb on the box's inside lid reads: FOR A CLEAR VIEW OF WHAT'S NEW IN MICROCOMPUTER SOFTWARE... ...please join Microsoft and 18 microcomputer manufacturers for a press conference to be held at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, November 10, 1983 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. A light lunch will be served and you will have an opportunity to interview each OEM and Microsoft throughout the rest of the day. Please plan to attend. We will be in touch to confirm. MICROSOFT ("blibbet"logo) For more information please call Pam Edstrom or Barbara Brubaker. (206) 828-8080.

Original Commercial For Windows 1.0

Box Art Windows 1.0 Box Art first released to the public. Same box art was used in the subsequent minor releases

History Windows 1.0 dates back to September 1981 under the project name “Interface Manager.” but was presented to the public on November 10, 1983 when it was renamed “Microsoft Windows” The two year delay from start of project until its introduction to the public led to charges that it was vaporware a term used to describe a product, usually software that has been announced by a developer during or before its development and, therefore, may never actually be released Though Microsoft promised the operating system would be on store shelves by April 1984, Windows 1.0 Release didn’t actually ship until mid-November 1985 – over two years after the press release. Windows 1.0 was supported by Microsoft until December 31, 2001, a total of sixteen years. It was one of the longest supported operating systems of the Microsoft Windows family It was superseded by the release of Windows 2.0 in November 1987

History Windows 1.01 - few people know that Windows 1.0 was actually never released. Windows 1.0 was the version of Windows that was demonstrated at the '83 Comdex. It would be 14 months until Microsoft eventually released Windows 1.01 - which included some minor bug fixes - to the general public. Microsoft Windows version 1.0 was considered buggy, crude, and slow. This rough start was made worse by a threatened lawsuit from Apple Computers. In September 1985, Apple lawyers warned Bill Gates that Windows 1.0 infringed on Apple copyrights and patents, and that his corporation stole Apple's trade secrets. Microsoft Windows had similar drop-down menus, tiled windows and mouse support.

Taking A Bite Out Of Apple Version 1.0 initially had features so much resembling the Macintosh interface that Microsoft had to change many of them, overlapping windows, although supported by the GUI engine weren’t allowed for exactly this reason No doubt, Bill Gates realized how profitable a successful GUI for IBM computers would be. He had seen Apple's Lisa computer and later the more successful Macintosh or Mac computer. Both Apple computers came with a stunning graphical user interface. As a new product, Microsoft Windows faced potential competition from IBM's own Top View, and others. VisiCorp's short-lived VisiOn, released in October 1983, was the official first PC-based GUI. It used more aspects from the Macintosh GUI, for example the trash can concept (which Microsoft would later employ in future Windows releases) and more generally the desktop interaction.

Taking A Bite Out Of Apple The second was GEM (Graphics Environment Manager), released by Digital Research in early 1985. Both GEM and VisiOn lacked support from the all-important third-party developers. Since, if nobody wanted to write software programs for an operating system, there would be no programs to use, and nobody would want to buy it GEM was eventually used as the standard GUI for the Atari's ST range of 68k-based computers, which were sometimes referred to as Jackintoshes (the company being run by Jack Tramiel). GEM's resemblance to the Macintosh OS later caused legal trouble for the manufacturer, Digital Research, who was obliged to seriously cripple the desktop's appearance and functionality (applications were not affected).

Competition Windows 1.0 market share grew very slowly as there was no killer app (market dominating software) that required the graphical shell Killer apps at the time were generally only available on the Apple Macintosh platform. The Macintosh remained the platform of choice especially for high-end graphics and desktop publishing (DTP) Microsoft finally shipped Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985, almost two years past the initially promised release date and aroused little interest

Deal of The Century Bill Gates and his head counsel Bill Neukom, decided to make an offer to license features of Apple's operating system. Apple agreed and a contract was drawn up. Here's the clincher: Microsoft wrote the licensing agreement to include use of Apple features in Microsoft Windows version 1.0 and all future Microsoft software programs. As it turned out, this move by Bill Gates was as brilliant as his decision to buy QDOS from Seattle Computer Products and his convincing IBM to let Microsoft keep the licensing rights to MS-DOS. “Microsoft became the top software vendor in 1988 and never looked back" - Microsoft Corporation

Windows 1.0 System Requirements Constituted CGA/Hercules/EGA (listed as “Monochrome or color monitor”), MS-DOS 3.1, 384K RAM (512KB recommended) and 2 double-sided disk drives or hard drive

Installation Media Windows 1.0 was only available on floppy disks. It required users to have DOS to install It was the same with all versions up to and including Windows 95, which was still available on diskettes but no longer required DOS to be installed first

Features Windows 1.0 offered limited multitasking of existing MS-DOS programs and concentrated on creating an interaction paradigm (message loop), an execution model and a stable API for native programs in the future Was often regarded as a “front end” to the DOS operating system, a description applied to subsequent versions of windows Windows 1.0 did not allow overlapping windows. Instead windows were tiled. Only dialog boxes could appear over other windows Originally designed to have the pull-up menus at the bottom of windows, as it was common with the DOS programs of the time, however this was changed before the first release.

Screen Shot of Installed Windows 1.0

Original Programs Calculator: It was first included with Windows 1.0 as a simple arithmetic calculator. (Still in Use) Calendar: Calendar is a personal organizer program that was distributed with Microsoft Windows from version 1.01 until Windows 3.11. It was superseded by the calendar in Microsoft Schedule+, which was included in Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT. Windows 95, Windows 2000 and their descendants did not include a calendar program until Windows Vista introduced Windows Calendar.

Original Programs Card file: Cardfile is a personal information manager that was distributed with Microsoft Windows starting from the original version 1.01 until Windows NT 4.0Server Clipboard Viewer: is a utility included in Microsoft Windows that allows users to view the contents of the local clipboard, clear the clipboard or save copied and cut items. It allows users to save the clipboard contents to a file and reuse them later and share them with other users.

Original Programs Reversi: A version of Othello Notepad: A simple text editor. Paint: A simple graphics painting program Clock: Still In Use Terminal: a program that emulates a "dumb" video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a command line shell or text terminal, the term terminal covers all remote terminals, including graphical interfaces. A terminal emulator inside a graphical user interface is often called a terminal window. Write: was a simple word processor that came with Microsoft Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, and the Windows 3.x series. Throughout its lifespan it was minimally updated, and is comparable to early versions of MacWrite. Early versions of Write only worked with Write (.wri) files, but with the modernization of Microsoft Word for Windows in 1989, and the introduction of Windows 3.0 the following year, Write became capable of reading and composing early Word (.doc) documents. With Windows 3.1, Write became OLE capable

Original Programs Control Panel: is a part of the Microsoft Windows graphical user interface which allows users to view and manipulate basic system settings and controls via applets, such as adding hardware, adding and removing software, controlling user accounts, and changing accessibility options. Additional applets can be provided by third party software The Control Panel has been an inherent part of the Microsoft Windows operating system since its first release (Windows 1.0), with many of the current applets being added in later versions.

TenThings About Windows You Might not have known 1. Bill Gates wanted to call Windows 1.0 "Interface Manager." Marketing exec Rowland Hanson persuaded him that Windows was a better name. 2. Microsoft began work on Interface Manager in 1981, though at that point, it lacked a GUI and many of the other features that would later come to be associated with Windows. 3. Microsoft sent out a press kit featuring a squeegee and washcloth to announce the launch of Windows 1.0. The press kit was sent out in November 1983, a full two years before the program was eventually released. 4. In 1983, Microsoft pitched Windows as a potential GUI for Atari's ST computer. Atari, however, didn't want to wait for the program, and settled on Digital Research's GEM instead 5. In addition to failing to get other companies to create apps for Windows 1.0, Microsoft was slow to port its own programs to Windows. Excel and Word were available for the Mac in 1985, but didn't bow on Windows until, respectively, 1987 and 1989. So few customers had purchased Windows that Microsoft had to include a runtime version of the GUI environment with the programs so that they could be used.

TenThings About Windows You Might Not Have Known 6. Among the applications featured in early ads was a terminal session used to retrieve stock quotes. The stocks listed on the screen were IBM, Compaq and Apple. Microsoft wasn't included for the simple reason that it was a private company at the time; it didn't go public until 1986. 7. Windows 1.0 was out for only about two weeks before Microsoft released version 1.01, in order to fix several bugs. This was the beginning of a long tradition of dot releases, service packs and other incremental fixes that continues to this day. 8. In 1984, PC World said that Windows "provides a simple, powerful, and inexpensive user interface that works with most popular programs. That alone is enough to guarantee consumer support to make it the de facto standard of the personal computer market." The magazine was right, of course, though its prediction took several years to come true. 9. An early PR photo for Windows 1.0 shows Bill Gates sprawled on a desk leaning on a computer monitor. Behind him are several other computers, including an IBM PC — and a Mac.

Ten Things About Windows You Might Not Have Known 10. The retail price for Windows 1.0 was $100. Adjusted for inflation, that's equivalent to $177 in today's dollars — roughly the same price you'd pay today (2003) for a full retail edition of Windows XP Home.

Where Do We Go From Here The Future of Information Technology

Comparing the Past With The Future

http://www.wikepedia.com http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/11/20/happy-birthday-windows/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk http//:inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/Windows.htm http://www.smbadance.com/squeegee http:www.waggeneredstrom.com http://musicremedy.com/b/brad-paisley/videos/welcome-to-the-future-36897.html Sources This has been a production of Whiskey Computer Services LLC; Ken Wisnewski Student, Introduction To Operating Systems Tallahassee Community College, Fall 2009, Juan Achurra Instructor

Windows 1.0 The Beginning Of A New Era

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