blog.wired.com — The world's most ubiquitous operating system was not always so. The evolution of Windows was often uncertain and precarious. Its success was symbiotic with advancements in processor speed and memory capacity, and Microsoft relied heavily on third-party software to bridge the gap between concept and consumer.
Jan 31, 2007 View in Crawl 4
stephbuFeb 1, 2007
No such thing as WinNT 3.1 - NT only appeared as versions 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0.I had the benefit of running NT 3.1 on whole 32Mb of RAM at one point when I 1st joined MS.
stephbuFeb 1, 2007
Win3.x (16bit) as an OS? That it wasn't. DOS was the OS - Win3.x was just another application environment layered up on it... (no one remember having WIN.COM in AUTOEXEC.BAT?) Windows 95 and WinNT3.1 were the first true Microsoft Windows OS's.
digitaldudFeb 1, 2007
The fact that apps than ran on Windows 1.0 still run on Vista today is a testament to the stability of the platform.
kjartFeb 1, 2007
"Seems like the biggest jump they made was the step to 95. Then the step to XP. 95-98 and xp-Vista don't seem all that groundbreaking."I agree with you on Win 3.11 -> Win 95 being the biggest, but I'd say that XP -> Vista comes in second (remember, we're talking visuals). Start button is completely different, transparency, gadgets, etc. I'm not raving about features, but this is cosmetically quite different from XP, whereas XP just felt more like a new color scheme for 2k to me.
puffycFeb 1, 2007
Close, but the real reason Microsoft became what they are today was because they understood that applications drove platforms, not the other way around. Microsoft was hellbent on becoming the single best platform on which to develop apps and remain so to this day. They bent over backwards to be the developers best friend. Nobody buys an OS, they buy apps and then choose a platform that can run them. It is this that keeps Linux and OSX on the sidelines. It was this that killed OS/2 Warp and all the other platforms that came along at one time or another. Linux and OSX can be kick ass all day long but without killer apps they'll always be where they are today.