Windows 1.0
More info
- Owner
- Microsoft
- Released
- Type
- Graphical shell for MS-DOS
- Successor
- Windows 2.0
Microsoft's first graphical environment, where windows sat side by side and were never allowed to overlap.
Announced in 1983, shipped in November 1985 — the delay helped popularise the word vaporware in the trade press. Windows 1.0 ran on top of MS-DOS with a file manager, the MS-DOS Executive, as its shell. In the box were Paint, Write, Calculator, Notepad and the game Reversi.
The windows were tiled: they divided the screen between them and could not be stacked, dialog boxes aside. The popular explanation is fear of Apple, but tiling was also a deliberate design choice. Few people bought it and almost nobody wrote software for it. Windows 2.0 got overlapping windows in 1987 — and Apple sued the following year.