Microsoft Windows 1.0
| Windows 1.0 | |
|---|---|
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| developer | Microsoft |
| License (s) | Microsoft EULA ( Closed Source ) |
| First publ. | November 20, 1985 |
| Current version | 1.04 (April 1987) |
| Kernel |
PC compatible DOS ↳ Windows kernel |
| ancestry | Windows 1.0 (no ancestors) |
| timeline | Windows 1.0 Windows 2.x Windows 3.0 Windows 3.1 Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows Me |
| Others | Development discontinued Support: until December 31, 2001 |
| www.microsoft.com | |
Microsoft Windows 1.0 is a graphical user interface developed by Microsoft . It was intended to facilitate the use of the MS-DOS and PC DOS operating systems , which are PC-compatible DOS as a whole , to standardize the appearance of application programs and to simplify the use of peripheral devices such as printers and monitors for users . For the product officially announced on November 10, 1983 by Bill Gates in New York , on which 24 software developers had worked for three years, the delivery of the retail version was announced on November 20, 1985 after a long delay. The product was officially presented at a press conference the following day.
Windows 1.0 was not well received by users because it required expensive hardware components such as a mouse , hard disk drive , expansion memory, and color graphics card to work properly. In addition, there were only a few applications that were specifically tailored to the performance characteristics of Windows . However, it already contained many features of the Windows 3.x versions that were successful from 1990 onwards .
Development history
Until the mid-1980s, the first graphical user interfaces for personal computers (which appeared Macintosh from Apple was released in 1984, others in 1985 or shortly thereafter), computers were operated almost exclusively with command commands whose command syntax are respected had and required training. This made intuitive work impossible.
Most graphical user interfaces are more or less based on the Xerox Alto , the first computer with an interface of this kind. With these interfaces, the user can manage files, start programs and create files with a click of the mouse without having to memorize an exact string of characters. Data, applications, resources and parts of the computer system, e.g. B. the system control, are displayed as objects (in the form of visual symbols or as clickable list entries) and you work with them through context or selection menus, through buttons and other graphic elements or by clicking directly on an icon with the mouse.
Development of Windows 1.0
In September 1981, one month after the delivery of PC DOS 1.0 by IBM , work began on the Interface Manager project , which was supposed to form an intermediate layer between MS-DOS and the application programs and to make it easier to use the printers and monitor connected to the computer . The Interface Manager should be hardware-independent , work in graphics mode , offer support for WYSIWYG and standardize the appearance of the application programs. Manager-Magazin wrote in a historical review in 2005 that the interface and system should be woven into an operating system to ensure that all users who opted for the interface were dependent on the system. As with Microsoft Multiplan, which appeared in August 1982, an alphabetically ordered list of commands was originally planned at the bottom of the screen. In 1982, under the impression of the graphical user interface of the Xerox Stars and Apple's Lisa , the decision was made to use pull-down menus and dialog boxes and to enable the display of several documents in different windows . As input device one should mouse are used.
After the software manufacturer Visicorp presented its Visi On product at COMDEX in autumn 1982 , which Charles Simonyi believed was very similar to the product planned by Microsoft, Bill Gates made the first hints about the development of the Interface Manager in January 1983 . In May 1983, the manager responsible for the product, Jeff Raikes, suggested the name Microsoft Desktop , but was unable to assert himself. Since the developers always talked about windows, the PR managers came up with the simpler name "Windows".
After the delivery of Visi On began in October 1983 and the announcement by IBM that they wanted to develop something similar to the Interface Manager with TopView , Microsoft was forced to go public with its own product development. On November 10, 1983, in New York , Bill Gates announced the development of a graphical user interface for MS-DOS, which by the end of 1984 would be in use on more than 90 percent of all MS-DOS computers. However, the delivery date of Windows 1.0 had to be postponed several times, which earned the product the reputation of a so-called vaporware and from which the reputation of Microsoft suffered. The developers have struggled with the performance of the Intel 8088 - processor . Windows was taking up too much disk space and was too slow. With the multitasking window environment DESQview (July 1985; predecessor DESQ, already May 1984, was practically meaningless) from Quarterdeck , Top View (January 1985) from IBM and the graphical user interface GEM (February 1985) from Digital Research , further competing products appeared after Visi On . After Microsoft's restructuring in August 1984, Neil Konzen was given responsibility for the user interface. He defined numerous internal routines of Windows new to the adaptation of Macintosh applications on Windows easier. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of Windows , the programs Write and Paint were developed based on the example of the Apple programs . Under the direction of Tandy Trower, other tools such as the calendar, the calculator, the card manager, the clock and the game Reversi were created. Windows was presented to the public at COMDEX in May 1985. Windows could now be operated with both a mouse and a keyboard and it supported the PIF files introduced by IBM's TopView . On June 28, 1985, Microsoft delivered an initial trial version for software developers and computer manufacturers.
The finally released version 1.01 was presented on November 21, 1985 at a press conference. The delivery of the retail version had been announced the day before. 85 percent of the source text was written in the C programming language. Only critical program parts were implemented in assembly language. It took 24 programmers 110,000 hours to develop the first Windows version. The programmers were also supported by test and documentation teams. During the three-year development period there were a total of four product managers and three development managers. Version 1.02 , localized in the most important European languages, including German, followed in May 1986 . Versions 1.03 (August 1986) and 1.04 (April 1987) only contained minor improvements, bug fixes and updated device drivers . Windows was listed under the auxiliary programs in the dealers' price lists and cost around 340 DM in December 1986.
Range of functions
After executing the WIN.COM file on the DOS command line , Windows starts with the desktop and the MS-DOS program window , a file manager comparable to the later workstation. For example, it allows users to copy files, create directories or start DOS and Windows programs without knowing the exact syntax of the MS-DOS commands . Active programs were shown as symbols at the bottom of the screen . Microsoft called them symbols in this version. With the help of the control panel it was possible to adapt certain properties of Windows to the preferences of a user. The colors used or the blinking speed of the cursor could be set. Thanks to the included printer spooler , files were printed out while working with Windows in the background . The clipboard allowed the exchange of data between Windows programs. With the Terminal system program it was possible to communicate with other computers using a null modem cable .
Compatibility with DOS applications
Since there were hardly any Windows programs, the users had to fall back on their usual DOS programs. These can also be used under Windows, but without the advantages of the graphical user interface with its central graphics and driver management. The PIF Editor can be used to configure these applications to work in Windows , such as using memory or peripherals (see figure below).
DOS applications that only use DOS system calls (Microsoft calls them “cooperative programs”) can be started in a “DOS box”, a window under Windows . This increases the need for RAM , since the DOS programs are loaded into memory in addition to Windows.
scope of delivery
The scope of MS-Write corresponded developed by Microsoft for the Macintosh in about Microsoft Word and led for the first time on PCs that marked with the extension .DOC file format of Word one. MS-Paint was on a par with comparable applications and, like these, only allowed black and white drawings. Windows also contained the computer game Reversi and various utilities that represented things that are typically found on a desk: a calculator, an appointment calendar, a notepad , an index card manager, and a clock.
The Windows scope of delivery also included device drivers for a total of 19 printer models from Epson , IBM, Oki , NEC , C. Itoh , Star , Toshiba , TI and HP . Windows supported memory expansion cards based on the LIM-EMS standard , with which the RAM, which was limited to 640 kByte under DOS, could be expanded to several megabytes. The installation included PIF files with the standard configurations for the most popular DOS applications at the time and an editor for editing these configuration files.
In contrast to many other operating systems and later Windows versions, the contents of the installation disks were categorized according to function. The six 5.25-inch disks are named WIN1, WIN2, ANWENDGN, FONTS, HILFSPRG, and WRITEPRG (version 1.03). All installation files are uncompressed.
System requirements
The minimum requirements for installing Windows 1.01 , which was supplied on five 5.25-inch floppy disks , were a computer equipped with an 8088 CPU from Intel , 256 Kbytes of RAM and two drives , one of which had to be a floppy disk drive Operating system MS-DOS 2.x or higher . At the time of the market launch, the network-compatible MS-DOS version 3.1, which had been delivered since November 1984, was already available. Windows supports the Hercules graphics cards as well as the CGA and EGA standards.
Windows does not fully support all of the above specifications in these versions. For example, MS-DOS is not fully supported until a later version (version 3.2) and the CGA standard is only supported in black and white.
resonance
When Windows appeared at the end of 1985, there were four products on the market for IBM-compatible PCs with a comparable range of functions:
- Under Visi On of VisiCorp only specially programmed for this application applications could run. For their development was a VAX or - DEC - minicomputers needed, which was very expensive at about $ 20,000. The users only had access to the word processing system, a spreadsheet and a graphics program developed by Visicorp. An equally expensive hard drive was required to run Visi On . For these reasons, Visi On's sales figures were disappointing for Visicorp, which invested $ 10 million in the product. Eventually she had to stop doing business.
- DESQview from Quarterdeck, with which several DOS programs could be executed at the same time , was the most successful multitasking environment for DOS, but was largely superseded by Windows until the early 1990s.
- IBM's TopView was not a graphical user interface, but used text mode . TopView could run DOS programs, but only applications specially developed for TopView could run at the same time and allow data to be exchanged by means of copy and paste .
- GEM but Digital Research could only each run an application that leaned heavily on that of Xerox PARC developed graphical user interface and offered, for example, overlapping windows, which Microsoft only with Windows 2.x introduced.
A survey by InfoWorld magazine in December 1985 showed that those responsible for data processing in companies would prefer Windows to GEM or TopView , but would wait for better integration options. Windows proved to be too slow in everyday use . The hard disk, expansion memory cards, mouse and color graphics card hardware components required for meaningful use were still very expensive at the time and were therefore not very common. Only a few manufacturers of IBM-compatible PCs delivered Windows with their products. There were next to no applications specially adapted for the capabilities of Windows . The first non-Microsoft Windows application was developed by Paul Grayson of Micrografx and was the In-A-Vision drawing program . The software development kit required for developing Windows applications consisted of seven floppy disks. It contained a special version of the Microsoft C compiler , further auxiliary applications and a documentation of the Windows API of about 1000 pages and was too complicated for many programmers. Appeared only in December 1986 with the DTP software PageMaker from Aldus the first major application for Windows . Due to the low development of Windows was PageMaker with a special runtime environment of Windows sold. At the end of October 1987 Microsoft published Excel 2.0, the first application program specially adapted to Windows . It appeared at the same time as Windows 2.0 and required a computer with an Intel 80286 processor .
Journalist Jim Seymour rated Windows as follows shortly after it appeared in PC Week magazine :
“I'm a fan of Windows, not because of the features it offers today, but because of the role it is sure to play one day. […] In my opinion, programmers who do not ensure compatibility with Windows for new products and who successfully create new Windows versions of existing products are out of their senses. "
literature
- Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft story: Bill Gates and the most successful software company in the world . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-453-08161-7 .
- Günter Jürgensmeier: MS Windows - the operating system for the new generation of computers . In: Computer Personal , Issue 25, November 27, 1985, pp. 118-123 (online) .
- Eckart Steffens: Go to the window . In: c't . No. 8, August 1986, pp. 26-27 (online) .
- Thomas Vogler: The window to the machine . In: Chip , Issue 2, February 1986 (online) .
- John Markoff: Microsoft Does Windows. In: InfoWorld , Vol. 5, No. 47, November 21, 1983, pp. 32-33 (online) . (English)
- Phil Lemmons: Microsoft Windows. A mouse with modest requirements. In: Byte , December 1983 (online) . (English)
Web links
- Advertisement for Windows in Byte magazine issue 1, 1986
- Article at Winhistory including screenshots
- Windows 1.01 as "Virtual PC" in Winhistory
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article in Manager-Magazin: Das Fenster zum DOS from November 21, 2005 (page 1)
- ↑ Article at winhistory.de
- ^ Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft Story: Bill Gates and the Most Successful Software Company in the World . P. 241
- ^ A b Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft Story: Bill Gates and the Most Successful Software Company in the World . P. 253
- ↑ News Release M-1423: Microsoft Ships Windows Retail . Bellevue, Washington November 20, 1985.
- ^ A b Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft Story: Bill Gates and the Most Successful Software Company in the World . P. 259
- ↑ a b Quote from the online article by Winhistory.de : Windows was not a great success because there were almost no applications for it. … Working with DOS applications under Windows hardly brought any advantages. … MS DOS 3.2 is fully supported
- ↑ Windows in 1983 , article from toastytech.com (English)
- ^ Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft Story: Bill Gates and the Most Successful Software Company in the World . P. 244 f.
- ↑ Computer History Online at weller.to
- ↑ Angelika Lauer, Wolfram Wilss: Translation Studies in Change ISBN 3-8233-5160-5
- ^ Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft Story: Bill Gates and the Most Successful Software Company in the World . Pp. 245-246.
- ^ Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft Story: Bill Gates and the Most Successful Software Company in the World . P. 256
- ^ Charles Petzold : Windows 1.0 and the Applications of Tomorrow. A Keynote Delivered at DevConnections in Las Vegas, November 7, 2005 . on-line
- ↑ Tom Hormby: The Apple vs. Microsoft GUI Lawsuit (accessed March 31, 2009)
- ^ Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft Story: Bill Gates and the Most Successful Software Company in the World . P. 277.
- ^ Daniel Ichbiah: The Microsoft Story: Bill Gates and the Most Successful Software Company in the World. P. 255.
