By contrast, the Macintosh Operating System, or
Mac OS, pioneered by Apple for its Macintosh line
of computers, used a graphical user interface, or
GUI, based on the metaphor of a desktop. Using a
mouse, the user pointed and clicked upon files and
folders to work on them. One of the reasons that
kept MS-DOS users from defecting to this simple, in-
tuitive interface was the high price point, main-
tained by Apple’s steadfast refusal to license their
technology to clone makers.
To protect their market share, Microsoft devel-
oped a shell program called Windows that would
give users a simplified interface. The earliest ver-
sion, released in 1985, gave the user a set of tiled win-
dows with buttons representing the options for
opening application software and working with files.
However, successive versions delivered a smoother
and more flexible interface, although Mac users still
lambasted Windows 3.1, released in 1990, as still not
up to Macintosh standards. This was in spite of a
1988 copyright suit by Apple alleging that Microsoft
had infringed upon the Mac OS with an earlier ver-
sion of Windows, which was settled only because the
judge knew that both Microsoft and Apple had
drawn upon the work of the Xerox Palo Alto Re-
search Center in creating their interfaces.
Throughout the first half of the 1990’s, Microsoft
continued to promise the successor to Windows 3.1
would be finished and shipped, yet the actual date
kept moving into the future. In 1995, the date finally
came, as Windows 95 was revealed to have under-
gone a complete revamping of the user interface to
make it more Mac-like. Yet again Apple made angry
noises about copyright infringement, but by this
time Apple was in serious financial trouble, having
become committed to multiple overambitious prod-
ucts and a muddled product line. However, their
complaints drew the attention of the United States
Department of Justice.
For years, rival software companies had been
complaining that Microsoft was taking unfair advan-
tage of its position as manufacturer of Windows to
promote their own office suite, Microsoft Office.
When Novell owned WordPerfect, they alleged that
Microsoft used their intimate knowledge of the in-
ner workings of Windows to tweak Microsoft Word
to perform better than any other company’s word-
processing software could hope to attain. Netscape
became annoyed when Microsoft not only released
its own Web browser, Internet Explorer, but also
made it the default browser in Windows. The final
straw was a licensing agreement Microsoft made
with a number of computer hardware manufactur-
ers that stipulated that, in order to license Windows
to be preinstalled on their computers, they had to
agree to have it preloaded with a startup screen that
identified several other Microsoft products as pre-
ferred options.
Throughout 1998, Microsoft fought the Depart-
ment of Justice suit with various tactics that many ob-
servers regarded as disingenuous. One of the most
memorable moments in the investigation was Bill
Gates’s testimony, in which he was cornered about
an aspect of his company’s activities and responded
that the answer depended upon the definition of the
word “is.”
In the end, Microsoft executives realized that al-
though they might win in the legal arena, the loss of
public goodwill would only ensure an endless series
of battles, until the company was exhausted by the le-
gal expenses and the drain of intellectual capital
away from the company’s real work of designing and
producing software. Gates transferred the day-to-day
responsibility of running Microsoft to Steve Ballmer
and concentrated on keeping Microsoft innovative.
He also worked on improving Microsoft’s image
with such gestures as a deal with Steve Jobs, which
saved Apple, and the creation of the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation to focus upon charitable
giving.
Impact The 1990’s marked the period in which
Microsoft solidified dominance in the personal com-
puter operating-system market. Although MS-DOS
and Windows were to be found on almost every desk-
top in the nation, resentment about the way in which
Microsoft did business began to solidify. Many peo-
ple regarded Microsoft as taking unfair advantage of
their position and treating its customers poorly. The
resulting efforts to bring legal judgment against
Microsoft for monopolistic practices led to a reori-
enting of Microsoft’s efforts, although even in the
first decade of the twenty-first century there were
complaints that the Vista operating system was
poorly designed and inordinately restricted users’
options to install and run non-Microsoft applica-
tions.
Further Reading
Bank, David.Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fum-
bled the Future of Microsoft. New York: Free Press,The Nineties in America Microsoft 567