Windows 1.0

Microsoft announced Windows in 1983 — two years before it actually shipped. The tech press was skeptical, nicknaming it "vaporware." When it finally arrived in November 1985, the reception was lukewarm at best.

Windows 1.0 ran on top of MS-DOS and required at least 256 KB of RAM and two floppy disk drives — which was a serious hardware investment at the time. The interface was primitive: windows couldn't even overlap each other, only tile side by side. There were no proportional fonts. No true multitasking.

Steve Jobs, who had already shipped the Macintosh with a far more refined GUI a year earlier, was furious. Apple had licensed some of its interface concepts to Microsoft, but Gates had interpreted that license very broadly. The resulting lawsuit dragged on for years.

And yet, Windows persisted. Version 2.0 allowed overlapping windows. Version 3.0 sold 10 million copies. By the time Windows 95 arrived — with its Start button, taskbar, and that iconic Rolling Stones commercial — Microsoft had won the desktop war entirely.

The early versions included a handful of built-in apps: a calculator, a calendar, a notepad, and — most importantly — Microsoft Word and Excel, which cemented Office as the killer app for business computing.