Microsoft Windows debuted in
1985. And for the past two decades, it has been the
dominant PC operating system worldwide. In 2020, Windows had
almost 83% market share by unit shipments. While Google Chrome
OS had 10%. And Apple's Mac OS had 7%. Bill Gates, his vision was to
put a PC on every desk, in every home. We've struck a chord with
Windows where people feel like it's their product. It's their
operating system. From Solitaire to its iconic Start button and
startup sounds, productivity apps, gaming and corporate
computing. Windows changed the way we use computers. The
legendary Windows 95 help propel the company to dominate the
market in personal computing. Microsoft has introduced many
versions of Windows since its inception, with some more
memorable than others. Today, there are more than 1.3 billion
devices running Windows 10 worldwide on a monthly basis and
roughly 800 million users every day. Many of its deployments, if not
most are within corporations. Where it gets becomes part of a
corporate ecosystems, corporations manage it and
secure it and make it part of their own. Windows only makes up 14% of
Microsoft's business, but remains a critical part of it. Windows has been a key piece of
Microsoft's business almost from the beginning. It wasn't just
critical because it sold PCs. Windows was critical because it
sold office the graphical user interface programs Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, you know, that's why it's been critical to their
business and remains critical today. The company just announced the
latest version Windows 11, we take a look back over three
decades of Windows and how it came to dominate. Today, lots of
things have operating systems, computers, phones, TVs, even
cars. An operating system or OS allows users and applications to
work with hardware without the need to enter lines of code.
Back in the 1980s, using a computer It was very complex. The motivation for Windows from
the very beginning was to improve it to remove those
barriers to make it as effortless as possible to get
the most out of the technology that you had available to you. Windows was not the first OS
Microsoft made. When it was first getting started. It
developed MS-DOS 1.0., short for Microsoft disk operating system,
for computer maker IBM. Microsoft specified that IBM
would not have exclusive rights to the software, leaving open
the opportunity for the company to supply other hardware and
computer makers the same OS. Microsoft started to understand
that interface design was critical not just to Windows but
to all of its applications. Windows was not thought of as an
operating system in the early days, but a graphical user
interface or GUI that would run on top of MS-DOS. One of the
first personal computers that used a GUI was the Xerox star,
which would be very influential, according to Bill Gates, on both
Microsoft and Apple's GUI designs, Bill really believed that this
was the future for the company. So there was heavy pressure to
get this thing to market. Microsoft released Windows 1.0
in November 1985, it was a little bit clunky or
quirky. Plus Windows had the challenge that Jobs and Apple
didn't have. They just had to make it run on their hardware.
We had to make it run on all those different MS-DOS machines
that were in the market at the time. Apple's Lisa was the first
commercial PC to have a GUI and in 1984, the company unveiled
the Macintosh. At the time, Microsoft created software
specifically for new Macs, including the first version of
Microsoft Word. The two companies made a confidential
agreement in 1985 that allowed Microsoft to use any of Apple's
interface elements in its software. After Windows 2.0 was
released, Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement.
However, the court said Apple's copyrights were covered by the
existing agreement. Apple appealed several times, but the
court denied their petitions. At the time, Microsoft was building
another OSs in parallel with IBM, which was called OS/2. At that point from Steve's
perspective was destined to be the future in that Windows was
kind of stepping stone to that, but that Windows would not
continue once they had completed that joint project with IBM.
Bill didn't quite see it that way. But eventually the whole
thing got terminated. Then we really moved to the one
that kicked it all off. And that was Windows 3.0. That's when it
really became serious. Windows 3.0 was where users were
introduced to Solitaire, which was designed to help users learn
how to drag and drop using a mouse. It also could run
multiple applications on top of one another. Three months after
3.0 launched, 1 million copies had shipped worldwide. And by
1993, there were 25 million licensed users of Windows
globally and 60% of PCs came with Windows pre installed. The
way that Windows 3 took off and
captured the attention and people's excitement caused a
fundamental reckoning inside Microsoft of what our
applications and operating system strategy should be. Then came Windows 95. The
marketing campaign for Windows 95 is legendary. Microsoft paid
the Rolling Stones for the rights to use 'Start Me Up' to
roll out its new feature the Start button. People lined up
for hours at electronic stores to get their hands on it. When
Windows 95 launched, Microsoft had 75 million users of the
latest version of Windows 3. Microsoft generated $30 million
dollars in revenue on the first day it sold Windows 95. At the
time, Windows was used on 80% of all PCs with more than 100
million users worldwide. It was really Windows 95 that
solidified Windows and started the move towards Windows being a
dominant operating system. In the early 90s, PCs are really
just tools for using spreadsheets or databases that
wasn't something like an everyday person would ever think
what would I need a personal computer for. We wanted to
democratize computing, Microsoft was becoming a
dominant force in the PC industry. Its main competitors
at the time were Apple and IBM. And despite not abandoning OS/2,
IBM would sell computers with Windows 95 pre installed. You had two things occurring at
one time that affected Microsoft's revenue. Not only
did you have a new version of the operating system, but
hardware had changed significantly enough that
enterprises and consumers upgraded their hardware and
their OS's. You got to remember that every time a new PC is
purchased, a certain amount of money goes to Microsoft for that
operating system. Windows 95 offered lots of new
features like faxing, messaging and networking that previously
required separate programs to run. We also were committed to it
being worldwide, we were able to ship Windows 95 simultaneously
in eight languages. People thought we were crazy. But we
wanted to have that kind of worldwide impact. That was very
differentiated from the IBM more enterprise focused view of the
world, or the Apple, who we're focused on the creative people
in business. Never underestimate the role the
Windows played in selling the other products. It's sold
developer tools, it's sold Office, it's sold Office. It
pulled a lot of products with it. And if you weren't making
the changes that you needed to make in the operating system,
you were not going to sell those other products and in fact, you
are going to hamper their development. During the late 90s, technology
was rapidly changing. Personal computing and the Internet were
becoming more widely used. Bill Gates sent a memo titled The
Internet Tidal Wave where he said "I want to make clear that
our focus on the internet is crucial to every part of our
business." When the Internet came about,
you know, we're very proud to have that, in a sense be birthed
on the Windows platform. That's where the Internet started. Now
many people use it on their mobile phone, but it started
there with Netscape and then with our you know, Internet
Explorer browser. In the 1990s, Microsoft was
under legal scrutiny for using its dominant position to scare
off competition. For much of that decade, its share of
Intel-compatible PC operating systems was above 90%. When
Microsoft launched Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator
already dominated the internet browser market. But in 1998, the
US government accused the company of using its dominance
in computer software to drive competitors out of business. The
antitrust suit debated whether Microsoft forced computer makers
to exclude a Netscape browser on their PCs. A judge ruled the
company unlawfully tied Internet Explorer to Windows and ruled
the company needed to be split up. It was around this time that
Bill Gates stepped down as CEO and Steve Ballmer took over, but
in 2002, an appeals court threw out the ruling, the company
settled and agreed to a consent decree and barred the company
from entering into Windows agreements that excluded
competitors. It unveiled Windows 98, 2000, Me and XP in quick
succession. These versions added remote desktop, stronger
security and graphic interface updates. Today, it really is actually the the
end of the MS-DOS era. It's also we would say the end of the
Windows 95 era. Windows XP is the most powerful, fastest, most
reliable operating system we have ever done. Together with
Office XP, Windows XP will set a new standard for business. He
really was building the product for the enterprise use, which
ultimately became the foundation for the Windows product itself,
but it took a while. It really took till XP, before the
crossover could be fully made. Microsoft made sure to pay
attention to what business users were asking for big companies
that were deploying thousands of Windows PCs. And once those
companies are in Windows, and they start building internal
applications for Windows, many employees get used to using
those programs. All of that makes a formidable base that
companies are maybe reluctant to leave. That is one piece of the
enduring success of Windows. Windows went through good and
bad cycles, Vista interacted differently with programs and
previous versions of Windows. Users experienced applications
running at slower speeds, problems with graphics and other
hardware connection issues. That whole management team got kicked
out after the disaster of Vista. And they put the people that had
been in charge of Office in charge of Windows. But then
Windows 7 kind of fixed that. 8 was sort of Microsoft's new
coke moment, they tried to change the operating system,
particularly as it's exposed to the user too much. A lot of
people just couldn't cope with the degree of change that
occurred. A lot of the frustrations that
we had with Windows 8, there was no Start menu that was
unfamiliar to people and companies would say I need to
train my employees. And you know, the Windows 8 team, I give
him credit for pushing the boundaries, but they became too
unfamiliar. Windows 8 had a touch friendly
design like a smartphone. Microsoft did develop a mobile
OS. But the company failed to win a leadership position. In hindsight, I give Apple and
Google credit for investing appropriately to capture the
mobile opportunity at the right time. By the time you know, we
were all in on mobile. And the same thing could be said of
search by the way. By the time we were all in on search, it
wasn't five years to late, it was really like two years to
late. And that's a lifetime in technology. We constantly try and stay
focused on the customers who use the PC and use Windows but then
along are coming mobile phones and with the advent of these
smartphones that could do web browsing and phone calls. They
became a platform. No, we missed the phone wave. I mean, it's no
no secret, right? We tried with Windows Phone, I think we had a
pretty good offering. You know at that time, I would say hey,
look, we didn't see the advent of the mobile phone becoming a
full computing platform. In 2014 Satya Nadella replaced
Steve Balmer as CEO, Windows 10 ushers in an era of
more personal computing in a mobile first, cloud first world.
In Windows 10, what they've done is they've kind of blended the
best of the old so we bring back the start menu that folks were
comfortable with on Windows 7, they also brought Cortana to the
PC. Cortana is kind of Microsoft's answer to Siri. And
then with Windows 10, our challenge was to maintain the
frontier of a technical question to touch but make it more
familiar, which again, when you think
about a billion users, it is a challenge. Microsoft kept some
of those touch friendly features and features that worked well
with a stylus. But ultimately, it turned out that iOS and
Android could coexist alongside Windows on PCs. While Windows
for phones became less and less and less popular. Microsoft began to de emphasize
Windows with Satya Nadella saying in 2019, "the operating
system is no longer the most important layer for us." That
was after the company split the Windows team into pieces the
year before. Two main engineering teams now focused on
experiences and devices and cloud and AI platforms. Two
major areas of focus of the company moving forward. Microsoft has seen its Azure
Cloud business grow as companies look beyond their corporate
server closets and try to add computing resources to meet the
demand of their IT departments during the pandemic. So beyond
Azure and gaming, and office. Also, you have this thing called
Windows and sales of Windows licenses to device makers that
are related to consumer PCs have gone up considerably. Even though the company's vision
of Windows became broader, it's still a huge source of revenue
and dominates the desktop OS market. After six years, the
company announced a new version of Windows. Windows 11. This is the first version of a
new era of Windows. We're building for the next decade and
beyond. We think it's the best platform for creation. If you're
an app developer and you want to bring your own commerce store
will let you bring your commerce store within Windows and you
keep all of the revenue. You can't do that on other platforms
so you get better economic return, you get better control
of your application. Other key features include the
Start button moving to the middle of the screen, but has
the option to stay put. Microsoft Teams is now built
into Windows, and it will allow Android apps in its store. The clear winner during the
pandemic in the PC market was the Chromebook. And Microsoft
introduces Windows 11. One of the big features is Android apps
through the Amazon App Store. Effectively, Microsoft is
getting to parity with the Chromebook with its whole
variety of mobile apps on a personal computer. It does feel
like Microsoft wants to make sure that Chromebook has one
less advantage, which is a whole big variety, thanks to the
support for Android. They made some hard decisions on
security. And I think that's great for the world. I'm sure
that was not an easy decision to say, let's raise the bar on the
minimum hardware spec to be more secure. Despite the size of the market
share, it has in PCs, Windows will have to keep evolving, as
more of the world increasingly uses mobile devices, including
many things we used to need PCs for. We want it to be the
democratizing force for technology, meaning for
consumers, it's the easiest place for you to come and try
new innovations, new technology that's coming and things we
haven't thought about mixed reality, augmented reality.
Second of all, things like quantum computing, I think
that's going to open up a whole ability to do sophisticated
tasks on your computer you've never been able to do before.
I'm interested to see with Microsoft's continual
improvement and it's speech technology and its cognitive
services. And with its acquisition of now Nuance, where
is Microsoft going to go with all these great resources to
take windows and its interface in a direction that it really
needs to go that goes far beyond just tweaking around with where
the icons appear in the taskbar. The version of Windows that I
would love to see is take Windows annoyances and just fix
them. No new features. Just fix the querks. Get it stable, get
it secure. I don't need to change to the color of the start
menu. I don't need rounded vs squared windows. What I need is
not to have to restart my PC once a week because it can't
find the printer. This brand has meaning globally.
There's a reason why all those PCs run Windows. It is an
ecosystem of users, software developers, hardware makers
retailers. So replacing it's gonna be challenging, and Google
and Apple are gonna try.
For me it's obvious. Compatibility and easyness. Windows may be buggy sometimes. Sometimes more often than sometimes. But it works. I can play games as I like. I can run programs which I want. I don't want to play "will it work" game. And now, if Android apps will work there, it will be even more reliable for me.
At one point I was asked on this site why I don't use Linux, when I pointed out my Windoze woes.
I'm committed to an ecosystem of Apps and Programs and I see no reason to not use them. Windows apps just install and work. No shells or other non-sense.
It’s the mainstream. You can go Linux and work around Apple and theirs. But in the end. When you get tired of that you will be on windows. Hell Apple for the longest booted windows. Just cause of that.
One word : preinstalled.
But I wouldn’t say it’s beating other system, it’s just more popular. There are different operating systems better suited for some kind of users, like Linux and Mac, and then there is windows for the pleb.
So this is the jerk who replaced Bill Gates, huh? A corporate CEO losing their grips on how a good operating system UX functions is basically explaining: "Am I out of touch? No, it must be all the grandparents who are wrong."