The evolution of Windows

When Microsoft invited the computer press to a conference in November 1983, editors were confused to receive a squeegee and a washcloth along with invitations that promised “a clear view of what’s new in microcomputer software”. And so, with a rather weak play on words, Microsoft Windows was first shown to the world at the Plaza Hotel in New York and the first long wait for a final release date could begin.

Microsoft showed a graphical ‘shell’ for its MS-Dos operating system, designed to let users run multiple Dos applications side by side with each other and with newly written graphical applications using the new Windows Application Programming Interface (API).

Windows was not the first graphical environment for the relatively new IBM PC – Visicorp’s Vision had been demonstrated a year before – but it was promised that it would run on cheaper hardware and sell for a lot less than Vision’s basic $495.

Those were bold promises and holding to them led to a two-year wait before Windows 1.0 shipped in November 1985. The standard 1983 PC that was Windows’ target market had a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 processor, 128KB of Ram, twin floppy drives and an 80x25 text-only display; only big companies and the very rich could afford the PC/XT’s 10MB hard disk, and the pricy CGA colour monitor option had a maximum resolution of just 320x200 with 16 colours (4-bit colour depth).

The standard Dos applications were text-based packages like Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordstar, and graphical user interfaces and mice were reserved for high-end workstations such as the Xerox Star and Apple’s Lisa.

First steps
By 1985, though, the picture had changed slightly. Compaq and the other PC clone makers had started to cut system prices, third-party add-ons had made graphics cards and hard disks affordable, and Apple’s 1984 launch of the Macintosh had introduced the mass market to the concept of a graphical user interface. Windows 1 dropped into a much more favourable market than it would have done if it had launched on time.

But it still looks odd to modern eyes. Legal threats from Apple meant that big parts of the ‘desktop metaphor’, such as overlapping application and document windows – and even the trash can – had been abandoned. Windows could only be tiled and programs were launched from a file manager called the MS-Dos Executive.

Graphical programs like Windows Write and Paint looked like poor relations of their Macintosh equivalents and although multitasking was built in from the start, it only applied to those graphical programs, rather than to the much more common MS-Dos applications. You could watch multiple versions of the Windows Clock running side by side, but could only run Lotus 1-2-3 in a full-screen Dos session that looked just like a machine without Windows.

Microsoft did what it could. It bundled a mouse with the software and set up other package deals where it could, but there was a lot of resistance to a product that made PCs slower to use without offering any real benefits, apart from a graphical on-screen calculator and a game of Reversi. Windows had big problems to overcome.

One of the main problems was memory. The IBM PC could address only 1MB of Ram and because of its memory map – modelled on that of the Apple II – only 640KB of this was available to programs, with the rest reserved for screen graphics, device drivers and, in the world of 1981, Rom games cartridges.

Windows required 256KB to run and each program run on top of that needed its own memory space. There was no compelling reason for users to buy the package at all; no killer applications, and no advantages other than the kind of Dos memory switching already supplied by IBM’s Topview, Quarterdeck’s Desq, Software Carousel and Borland’s Sidekick.

But Microsoft was committed. It had launched the mouse-orientated Multitool Word for MS-Dos in 1983 and was a key developer for the Macintosh after its launch. The Excel spreadsheet had been released for the Macintosh before the Windows 1.0 release and was already regarded as better than Lotus 1-2-3; there was also a version of Word for the Macintosh.