6 MA XIMUMPC NOVEMBER 2005
1985 1986 1987 1988 1989
November 1985:
Microsoft ships Windows 1.0 December 1987: Microsoft releases Windows 2.01985 to 1989
WINDOWS 1.X
The face that today launches hundreds of millions
of computers was downright fugly in the begin-
ning. Launched from DOS, it provided graphical fi le
management and some basic productivity tools,
but third-party application support was virtually
nonexistent. Application windows couldn’t overlap,
they could only be tiled (some pop-up windows
and preferences would overlay on the main win-
dows). Multiple applications could be opened in
the Windows environment, but it wasn’t the “mul-
titasking” we use today. The “in focus” app, in
which you were working, locked the CPU. Much of
the core API hasn’t changed since 1.01, however...
with a little light hackery, Windows 1.x applications
can be loaded in XP!WINDOWS 2.X (AKA
WINDOWS/286,
WINDOWS/386)
The visual foundation of
Windows starts to take hold
here, as the File Manager
(back then known as MS-DOS
Executive) is fi nally augmented
by onscreen icons. Windows could overlap, and then the OS started to look like
a real GUI. For the fi rst time, application developers started to give Windows
a serious look—even as the primary environment to develop programs in. The
386 version meant that Windows could fi nally run 32-bit code and address
memory beyond the 640K DOS barrier, enabling more (and more interesting)
applications to be run.WINDOWS 3.0
By sloughing off the legacy of
the 286’s 16-bit architecture,
Windows 3.0 was poised
for success. Developers
embraced the fully 32-bit
platform: “It was a horrible
mess to try to do anything
before, when you had to
always be aware of prob-
lems dealing with data larger
than 64K,” says Michael Geary, designer of Adobe Type Manager and a
number of other Windows applications over the past 19 years. The introduc-
tion of the VxD driver system also made it possible to write more powerful
Windows applications.WINDOWS 3.1
Windows’ multitasking capabilities still weren’t
great, but in the 3.1 upgrade, they got bet-
ter. Support for much more hardware meant
that Windows would run on more computers.
Burgeoning developer support and the hundreds of
new apps that resulted made Windows 3.1 the fi rst
version Microsoft could get OEMs to package and
preinstall on new computers. When users needed a
GUI, they naturally turned to the one already sitting
on their machine. Windows 3.1 also marks the fi rst
time Windows could use a paging fi le on the hard
drive instead of system RAM.WINDOWS NT 3.1
Way back in 1988, Microsoft knew that running Windows on top of DOS was
not feasible in the long term, so it began development of Windows NT. First
released in July 1993, NT 3.1 looked like Windows 3.1 (right down to the still-
befuddling Program Manager “superwindow”), but under the hood was a stable
32-bit native kernel, although support for some 16-bit Windows applications
was still provided. During NT’s development, Intel hadn’t locked down the CPU
market, so Microsoft developed versions of NT for other CPU architectures,
most notably the
DEC Alpha, which at
the time was consid-
ered a serious rival
to the Pentium for
mainstream perfor-
mance computing.1990
1985 to 19891985 to 1989
Happy Birthday, Windows!
September 1987: Hilary Duff is born