Microsoft's Bill Gates's dream was to create a personal computer for every citizen in the world. It might be true now, but his ambition was visionary and very high during the early 1980's.
With his ambition, Microsoft carries a great time line from the MS DOS of 1981 to the Windows 10 operating system of 2015. It was a technologically inspiring path to make his dream come true which is shown in the following timeline diagram:
Let us take a look at the smooth journey through Microsoft's major milestones and key deliverables to the industry. Microsoft launched its first operating system named Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) in August, 1981. In terms of user experience, it was not a sophisticated platform; instead, it was just a command-line interface. During this course, Microsoft bought an existing OS from Seattle Computer products for $75K.
Microsoft's first Graphics User Interface (GUI)-based operating system was launched in the name of Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985. It was built with a 16-bit multitasking shell on top of an existing MS-DOS installation. Windows 1.0 had the key features of limited multitasking. An interesting fact is that Bill Gates initiated the Windows development program after watching a demonstration of VisiCorp's VisiOn.
Later, Windows 2.0 was released on December 9, 1987, which allows application windows to overlap. Interestingly, it was the first version to integrate the control panel. On the flip side, on March 17, 1988, Apple filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and against HP on March 17, 1988. Apple accused Microsoft and HP of copying the Macintosh System, however, Apple lost the case.
On May 22, 1990, Windows 3.0 was launched with the key deliverable of the protected as well as enhanced mode to run the Windows application with reduced memory. The key improvement was better memory management on the Windows platform. This major contribution came from David Weise and Murray Sargent in 1989.
In the history of Windows OS development, Microsoft released the first major stable version on July 27, 1993-Windows NT. It had an added value of portability to multiple process architectures as well as higher security and stability. As a side note, Bill Gates hired David Cutler from DEC to design Windows NT.
The Start button is a revolutionary feature in the Windows platform. Windows 95 was launched on August 24, 1995 with the user methodology and interface to navigate into multitasked 32-bit architectures in addition to the support of 255-character mixed case long files names.
On June 25, 1998, Windows 98 was released with power and network management improvements and USB support. From the end user's point of view, standby and hibernate modes were introduced along with the windows driver model (WDM) to manage device drivers.
Windows 2000 was released on February 17, 2000 with the addition of New Technology File System (NTFS), Microsoft Management Console (MMC), and Encrypting File System (EFS) active directory along with new assistive technologies to support people with disabilities.
Windows ME (Millennium) was introduced on September 14, 2000 with the system restore feature and improved digital media and networking tools. The ME version had a tough time in the market, and it was heavily criticized for speed and stability issues. In alignment with this issue, a PC World article dubbed ME as Mistake Edition.
Microsoft came back with another stable OS named Windows XP on October 25, 2001. It had the stable improved task bar and Start menu along with better networking features. XP had a newly improved user interface from the end user's point of view. As the major highlight, XP was the first version of Windows to use product activation in order to reduce software piracy.
After the success of XP, Microsoft was not up to their benchmark by the release of Windows Vista on January 30, 2007. Though Vista was introduced with Windows search, sidebar, shadow copy, and integrated speech recognition, it was bombarded with many criticisms like high system requirements, more restrictive licensing, new digital rights management, and lack of compatibility with some pre-Vista hardware and software.
The world's most dominant (56%) desktop OS, Windows 7, was released on October 22, 2009 with support for virtual hard disks, multi-core processors performance, and an improved touch of handwriting recognition. The main intention was to respond with strong stable deliverables against the criticisms faced by Vista.
Windows 8 was launched on October 26, 2012 with heavier integration of online Microsoft services like SkyDrive and Xbox. In terms of performance, Windows 8 introduced a faster startup through UEFI integration. In terms of user experience, Metro design and a new start screen (no start button) was introduced in the product.
The latest production version of Microsoft Windows, Windows 10, was released on June 29, 2015. As its key features are the return of the Start button, integration with Windows Phone, and a device-dependent interface. In terms of the emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) space, Windows 10 incorporates the Microsoft intelligent personal assistant, Cortana. Take a look at the following diagram:
In spite of a long journey of three decades with so many ups and downs, Microsoft still leads the world's desktop OS market share with over 91%. Isn't that amazing?