Windows Turns 35 Years Old Today
The most prolific operating system in the world turns 35 years old today. On November 20th, 1985 the world was first introduced to Windows 1.0. While in reality not all that fantastic at the time, as it was more of a GUI add-on to MS-DOS rather than a true operating system it marked a turning point for Microsoft, and the start of what would prove to be the most enduring computing OS. While I wasn’t even born at the time of release, let alone have any memories or experience with version 1.0 I have used Windows extensively over my life.
The first version I extensively remember using is Windows XP, and it would be years before I eventually upgraded to Windows 7. Not every OS in the past 35 years has been popular or well received. In fact not even the 1.0 version was critically well received. Notable recent examples that come to mind when thinking of poorly received Windows OS’ are Windows Vista and Windows 8. In the case of Vista I think the biggest problem was making the minimum system specs too low resulting in it being installed on machines that should not have been upgraded. However with Windows 8, it was more disliked as a result of too much change too quickly. I’m of the opinion the actual OS was quite well optimized and efficient, and breathed new life into some old machines, my own included. I wasn’t a big fan of the touch friendly interface that was the default especially since initially the machine I was using it on was not a touch screen.
However there is no doubting that Windows 8 paved the way for Windows 10 which is truly the best version they’ve released and continues to be well supported and well received. They’ve hit their stride, and struck a good balance of being laptop and touchscreen friendly without sacrificing traditional ease of use for it. And clearly Windows is the dominant OS of choice when it comes to personal computing with over 1 Billion devices running Windows 10. While that might pale in comparison to the 2 Billion devices running Android globally, there’s no question that Windows will be around for years to come and remains the primary OS for traditional computer use. It’ll be interesting to see if Windows is still around in another 35 years, and if so what it will look like then. But there’s no doubt that over the past 35 years Windows has come to define what modern computing is, and how it works, and has done so for a large portion of the world. Happy birthday Windows!
