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Microsoft Celebrates 40th Anniversary

Posted by timothy on from the 14,609-days-ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody dept.

HughPickens.com writes Alyssa Newcomb reports at ABC News that the software company started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975 is 40 and fabulous and highlights products and moments that helped define Microsoft's first four decades including: Microsoft's first product — software for the Altair 8800; Getting a deal to provide a DOS Operating System for IBM's computers in 1980; Shipping Windows 1.0 in 1985; Microsoft Office for Mac released in 1989; Windows 3.0 ships in 1990, ushering in the era of graphics on computers; Windows 95 launches in 1995, selling an astounding 7 million copies in the first five weeks, and the first time the start menu, task bar, minimize, maximize and close buttons are introduced on each window.

For his part, Bill Gates sent a letter to employees celebrating Microsoft's anniversary, and how far computing has come since he and Paul Allen set the goal of a computer on every desk and in every home, and predicting that computing will evolve faster in the next 10 years than it ever has before.

23 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And to think by crunchy_one · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I did. Microsoft was the big dog in the world of BASIC. My second personal computer, an Apple II Plus, came with Applesoft BASIC in ROM, a Microsoft product, of which I have fond memories. Happy birthday Microsoft!

  2. Re:And to think by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

    40 years ago I never heard of it.

    Often I wish I never heard of it, today.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  3. Evolution by sanf780 · · Score: 2
    If computing is going to evolve far way faster in the next ten years than on the previous ten, can Microsoft cope with that? For many people and companies, the usage pattern of Microsoft software has been Windows XP and Office 2003 for approximately the last ten years (with some offset).

    Adobe set a worrying pattern here that I think Microsoft wants to follow: Software as a Service. That is, monthly or yearly fees for licenses. And the reason is that, for some people, some software do everything you need. A similar thing happens with the CPUs - upgrade cycles are becoming longer.

  4. What? by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Windows 3.0 ships in 1990, ushering in the era of graphics on computers

    I think Apple might have something to say about that claim....

    1. Re:What? by kthreadd · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Windows won using abusive monopolist tactics.....

      Ehm, technically you can't really use "abusive monopolist tactics" until after you've "won."

    2. Re:What? by msobkow · · Score: 2

      Windows had a colour graphics API; the Macs of the period were still black and white.

      Personally I thought the Amiga was better than either (and so I bought one), but they're not around to lay claim to being first with graphics accelerators and special-purpose sound chips.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    3. Re:What? by darkonc · · Score: 2
      Apple definitely succeeded. By 1990, Mac was the de-facto standard for desktop publishing. Even many of the the biggest Window/DOS newsletters were being created on the Mac. When Windows95 came out, the mantra was "Almost as good as a Mac". Microsoft won the desktop war with anticompetitive practices, not quality.

      I remember around 1989, a print shop in Edmonton was broken into one night. The thieves stole all of the shop's Macintosh computers -- even the ones in the back room, but didn't touch the many PCs.

      If it wasn't for stiff competition from Apple, it's probable that Microsoft wouldn't have introduced a Graphical desktop until well into the '90s. Apple, The Amiga, Sun, SGI and many other companies led Microsoft in the graphical desktop field. Microsoft was very much a follower, not a leader.

      --
      Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
    4. Re:What? by GrahamCox · · Score: 3, Informative

      Windows had a colour graphics API; the Macs of the period were still black and white

      Nope. Colour Quickdraw was written in 1985 and shipped with the first Mac II in 1986. It had a full colour RGB model, though initially only had 256 colour hardware - 32-bit hardware came in 1987. Even the original "black-and-white" Quickdraw had a simple colour model to support colour printing on Apple's dot-matrix printer.

      You could also do colour graphics on a C64, BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum (hint - the name "Spectrum" was for that very reason). Rewrite history all you like - some might even believe it - but there are plenty of us still around that actually remember how it was.

  5. Thank you, and may you live forever Microsoft! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Happy 40th Anniversary and may you live forever Microsoft.
    Thank you for helping my business with your reliable and affordable products (from the DOS times until now), and for making computers usable for all people (from coders like me to even illiterates around the world).
    A Greek that uses "Linux" almost 3 decades now, but -while anonymous- is not the usual Slashdot coward...
    (haters gonna hate!)

    1. Re:Thank you, and may you live forever Microsoft! by Mass+Overkiller · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As much as people poop on Microsoft I have to thank them as well for making computers so popular and giving me a life long job and hobby that I have used to support my career and family. Thank you Microsoft!

  6. History revisionism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    WOW: "ushering in the era of graphics on computers", WTF is HughPickens.com smoking?

    I don't get how everyone is swallowing this propaganda whole every time there's a corporate PR push like this, computer graphics predates Microsoft by decades, and computer graphics 'in every home' predates Windows 3.0 by at least 5 years if you only take the various Apples, Commodores/Amigas, Ataris that were out by 1985 and literally sold millions by then (C=64 e.g. sold 27 million overall until Commodore went bankrupt in 1993). Even "multimedia" was a popular Commodore marketing term for their CD-ROM equipped systems years before Windows 95. This blurb makes it sound like Microsoft "innovated" again and invented computer graphics all by themselves.

    Same for "the first time the start menu, task bar, minimize, maximize and close buttons are introduced on each window" (style errors aside: "start menu"/"task bar" on every window?), again min/max/close buttons were present on every window in early Lisa/MacOS, AmigaOS, Atari TOS, even Geos for C=64 way before MS copied it from Apple (who copied it from Xerox). The only thing Microsoft keeps (re)inventing is history. I guess stock prices aren't inflated high enough yet.

    1. Re:History revisionism by Carewolf · · Score: 2

      They managed to make it stick. That way Microsoft brought graphical UI to the masses, just like Apple brought smartphones to the masses with the iPhone though smartphones had existed more than half decade already.

  7. Re:They didn't user in the era of graphics by crunchy_one · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On that score, let's not forget Xerox PARC. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

  8. Re:And to think by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 2

    Yeah MS is evil and nothing they do is ever good. .NET? More like FailNET. Why don't you just use Java? Java has uhh... It's uhhh better because you can use it on like 10% of the computer market-share, or something! Yeah portability!

    Plus what's up with Windows? Why can't everyone just learn Bash or something and use Linux (but only [insert favorite distro]). GUIs are dumb! I went to programming school so like, everyone else should know what I know about computers, sheesh stupid morons.

    And why not just open source everything, no strings attached? They don't need to make money! Also *grumble grumble* my job doesn't pay me enough *grumble*.

    Whoo am I right guys?

  9. Re:And to think by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    AmigaBASIC also came from Microsoft. It was pretty good, although for some reason you needed a RAM expansion to perform a graphics fill operation.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  10. Re:And to think by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Convicted monopolist, right there with AT&T and Standard Oil...

    --
    Good-bye
  11. Re:And to think by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Interesting

    BASIC.

    Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

    Beginners.

    That's what was up. Besides, you really could do quite a bit with BASIC on those machines by linking to Assembly code. Although many of us had to unlearn twisted spaghetti code in order to progress anywhere, I do wonder what horrible PTSD cases we would have created if high school kids in the 1970's had to start out with C. Talk about a dystopian future.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  12. Re:What about Bob? by CronoCloud · · Score: 4, Insightful

    anyone remember Clippy, the animated paper clip in Office that everyone loved?

    I see you are making a reference to Clippy, would you like some help with that?

    I didn't mind Clippy that much, but I seriously dislked that @#$@#$ Search dog. He was actually dumber than Clippy, if that's possible and seemed to cause a performance hit.

  13. Re:"ushering in the era of graphics on computers" by DaHat · · Score: 2

    A more intelligent person than the AC who said:

    LOL. Which idiot wrote this summary? There were no "graphics on computers" before 1990 then?

    There were cars before the Ford Model-T, would you claim that Ford did not user in the era of the horseless carriage?

    There were electric cars before the Toyota Prius, but would you claim that Toyota did not user in the era of the electric car?

    Ushering in the era doesn't mean you are first, but that you are the most effective/impactful.

    By your logic, it should not be said that Apple ushered in the era of the smartphone or tablet, plenty of companies had them before... yet Apple was the first to get it right and establish broad appeal.

    --
    Help Brendan pay off his student loans
  14. Time to gaze back on the throne of skulls by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    First off, I like what Microsoft is doing these days. I like what they are doing with open source, I like that they are really supporting other platforms. I even think Azure looks like a nice server solution.

    That said I don't think we should EVER forget that the computer industry lost around two decades of progress as Microsoft crushed all innovation and competition, and along with it real advancement in computer science and writing applications. There's also Microsoft trapping who knows how many brilliant minds inside Microsoft R&D, their work never to be seen again in anything meaningful because it might have impacted Windows.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  15. Re:For all the MS Hate... they did one thing well. by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    They brought computing to the masses

    Perhaps in the sense they "standardized" the OS and software by bundling and monopolizing it. But this had the side-effect of stopping progress once they knocked out a market category.

    I've seen the same bug set in MS-Access linger for about 15 years: MS didn't care because there was no practical alternative to MS-Access: they had pretty much killed Paradox and dBASE because Office bundling made Access the obvious choice in both price and familiarity. (And they bought out FoxPro).

    And they were not innovators; they purchased or stole most of the key technologies they depend on.

    If you believe competition is the key to innovation and choice, then what MS did cannot be viewed in a good light. Microsoft stifled the industry; we'd be better off without them.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  16. Re:What about Bob? by necronom426 · · Score: 2

    The search dog is the only search I know works in Windows. The later version didn't work, and the one in Windows 7 doesn't work. A few weeks ago I was searching for a file I could see on the screen, and it didn't find it. I have no faith at all in any search in any version of windows apart from the Dog in Windows XP.

  17. Maybe this will give some context. by Johnny+Loves+Linux · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've seen a lot of pro and con posts about Microsoft's place in computer history. Maybe this post will help people see it more clearly.

    1. Microsoft didn't invent BASIC. BASIC was around since 1964. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B....
    2. Microsoft didn't invent DOS. They bought something called QDOS and rebranded it DOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8...
    3. Microsoft didn't invent ubiquitous computing. IBM created a personal computer based on the Intel 8086. But long before that there was the TRS 80, the Commodore Pet, Apple II, and for those people who preferred to roll their own hardware, there were Heathkit parts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit_H8, and http://oldcomputers.net/heathk...) to build one's own computers.
    4. Before there was DOS there was CP/M which could run on Intel 8080, Zilog Z80, Motorola 6502 (it was available as a card for Apple II's). There was even a version for 8086. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M)
    5. The PC industry began not with Microsoft, but with Compaq who made the first IBM PC clones. You may be too young to remember, but PCs used to be called IBM PCs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    6. Others have already pointed out that GUIs began with Xerox PARC, and the mouse itself goes back to 1968 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos)

    So what exactly did Microsoft invent? Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

    1. A method of ensuring an operating system monopoly by preventing other operating systems from being preinstalled on OEM equipment.
    2. A method of ensuring that OEMs cooperated by giving them a kickback if they cooperated with Microsoft's strategies.
    3. A EULA (End User Licensing Agreement) making it difficult, if not impossible, for an individual to decline the license, return the software, and receive a refund for the Microsoft software they didn't want to use.

    I don't believe it's immoral or wrong for folks to make their livelihood using Microsoft products, but I do think it's unwise to do business with Microsoft while being ignorant of their long history. I also think it's dishonest not to admit that the Microsoft Corporation has a long history of doing shady things to software partners (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.#Browser_wars and http://www.justice.gov/atr/cas... for example) , OEM vendors, Standards Boards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML) and lastly to customers (http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf)