A good friend of mine just reminded me that this November should mark the 25th anniversary of Microsoft Windows. Since this sort of news is usually seen on timekeeping websites, I decided to take a look around and check to see if Windows did indeed turned 25, or Microsoft will have to wait until 2010 to mark the date.
Well, the answer is two-fold. Microsoft Windows can be viewed as 25-year old this month, if you calculate the announcements, or in November 2010, when the company finally shipped the product. The company announced Windows 1.0 operating system in November of 1983 . At that time, the company woke up from a bad dream, since the success of MS-DOS was great, but companies like Apple, VisiOn and TopView were pushing the company around. Microsoft was nowhere near today’s strengths, and the company decided to go and work with Apple.
During that time, Microsoft took a lot of ideas from Apple engineers (who then again, took those ideas from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center – aka. PARC), and found a way how to make their operating system to compete against Apple.
Order clockwise: Windows 1.0, 3.0, 95, NT 4.0, XP, Vista, 2000 and NT 3.1
Windows 1.0 finally entered production in September of 1985, and first system came from NEC, shipped right in November 1985. So, Windows is either 23 or 25 years old, but anyways, I wish to congratulate Microsoft on 25th birthday of the software platform that changed the world.
