Will it get another 25?
It was 25 years ago this week that Microsoft released Windows 1.0. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said at the time that Windows 1.0, which carried a suggested retail price of $99 in 1985, was “unique software” that would provide “unprecedented power to users today and a foundation for hardware and software advancements of the next few years.” (See the original launch date press kit here.)
It certainly changed the accounting business.
To be sure, the first Windows wasn’t really a full operating system. Mostly, it was a graphical user interface that ran on top of DOS.
It looked like this:
While Windows has dominated the PC world for two decades, computing now “seems to be undergoing a fundamental shift away from the PC paradigm and toward mobile and tablet-based interfaces,” according to one observer (here).
The graphic below, from ZDNet UK, illustrates the progression of Windows from November 20, 1985 to today.
