Icons, windows, that little mouse pointer wandering around… Like the wallpapers we no longer see, these digital objects have filled our screens for years. But in 1980, these future “graphical interfaces” were still just a utopia and computers were controlled by typing computer commands, word by word. Microsoft then knew something about this because MS-DOS software – on which the PC was based at the time – was completely textual.
This didn’t stop Bill Gates, one of the founders of the American computer company, from understanding early on: to sell computers to the general public, they had to be made more accessible. The first Windows equipped with a graphical interface was launched in 1983 and marketed on November 20, 1985, forty years ago. Even though Microsoft dominates PCs today, success was not immediate at the time.
Reasons for failure
Let’s go back to 1980. Most of the basic components of a modern interface already existed, but they were scattered across laboratories. Some of these are obvious, like the mouse and windows, imagined in the 1960s by Douglas Engelbart’s brilliant team, then realized in 1973 by copier giant Xerox and its Alto computer. As evidenced by reconstructed versions of the software accessible on the Internet, the experimental device’s graphical interface appears complicated and rudimentary today, but was revolutionary at the time. He marked a generation of California developers and impressed Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, as much as Bill Gates.
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