Microsoft released Windows 1.0, a graphical shell running atop MS-DOS that let users click on icons and windows rather than typing commands. Delayed nearly two years past its original announcement, the software was clunky and unpopular at launch, requiring a mouse most PC owners didn't own. Yet it planted the seed for an operating system franchise that would, within a decade, run on the overwhelming majority of the world's personal computers.
Bill Gates had announced Windows in November 1983 with characteristic confidence, promising a graphical interface that would make MS-DOS obsolete. The reality took two years longer than promised, delayed by the technical challenge of building a usable windowing system on top of DOS's primitive architecture, and by intense internal debate over how closely to imitate the graphical interfaces already shipping on the Apple Macintosh and Xerox's research systems.
When Windows 1.0 finally shipped on November 20, 1985, reviewers were underwhelmed. It required 256 kilobytes of memory and two floppy disk drives, ran painfully slowly on the hardware most consumers owned, and its tiled (not overlapping) windows felt clumsy next to competitors. Apple's lawyers took note of the visual similarities, planting seeds for a lawsuit years later.
Microsoft nonetheless kept investing, and doggedly. Windows 2.0 added overlapping windows in 1987; Windows 3.0 in 1990 became the breakout hit; Windows 95 turned it into a cultural event with midnight store openings and a Rolling Stones jingle. What began as an unloved, underpowered add-on for DOS became the software substrate for thirty years of personal computing, an origin story now almost quaint against its eventual dominance.