The First: Windows ((link))

For all its failures, Windows 1.0 planted seeds that would change the world.

When Windows 1.0 finally shipped, it was not an operating system in the modern sense. It was a "shell"—a graphical layer that ran on top of MS-DOS. You still had to install DOS first, type WIN at the command line, and then, slowly, a new world would appear. the first windows

Bill Gates watched the Macintosh’s launch with a mixture of awe and anxiety. Microsoft had been developing its own GUI, initially called "Interface Manager," for the more popular and open IBM PC platform. Gates knew that the future belonged to graphical interfaces. He famously told his team, "We need to get this out the door. We need to be first." For all its failures, Windows 1

The story of Windows begins not in Redmond, Washington, but at Xerox’s legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). There, in the 1970s, researchers developed the first graphical user interface (GUI) with windows, icons, menus, and a pointing device—the mouse. Apple’s Steve Jobs famously visited PARC and, in a moment of visionary theft, absorbed these ideas. The result was the Apple Lisa (1983) and, more importantly, the revolutionary Macintosh (1984). You still had to install DOS first, type