Windows | Microsoft's Biggest Mistake

Microsoft Windows has had a tremendous impact on our lives. It’s everywhere we go and incorporated in places we wouldn’t even expect. But of course, it all has to start somewhere, and the very first ever version, Windows 1.0, blessed computer screens around the world in 1985. Especially nowadays, all these features it boasted in its marketing and product design, are let’s be honest, quite boring and really not remarkable, showcasing just how far we’ve gone and how much we take for granted today. But funnily enough, these features weren’t even that remarkable back in 1985! We often like to think of Windows as the pioneers of the computing sector, but at its launch, the product actually faced immense criticism for being nothing more than just a blatant rip-off of other operating systems at the time, particularly System 1 on the newly released Apple Macintosh. A rip-off that wasn’t even as good, as it would also ridiculed for its lackluster and at times unstable performance. But despite encountering all these bumps, Microsoft knew that they had something here and that their value proposition for Windows was something truly special, way too special to give up on right away. And today we are going to tell that story.

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[phirenz]

The premise of this video is a little flawed.

Windows 1.0 wasn't trying to compete against MacOS, even if that was a common comparison that journalists of the day made. Instead, Microsoft was desperately trying to compete against all the other GUIs that sat on top of DOS. It was a rapidly expanding market segment that arose in the wake of the Macintosh, and whoever one that race would gain a massive foothold and potentially de-throne Microsoft, replacing MS-DOS.

We are talking about VisiCorp's Visi On, IBM's TopView, Digital Research's GEM and Lotus' Symphony. They all operated as regular programs running on top of DOS and had similar capabilities. Everyone has forgotten about these programs today, but that's because Microsoft's strategy with Windows worked.

[ThePeterDislikeShow]

When I was a kid I used to think the number "billion" was named after Bill Gates, because he was the first billionaire.

[Chuck_vs._The_Comment_Section]

I'm almost at the end of the video now and I still haven't figured out why Windows was supposedly Microsoft's biggest mistake.
I would argue that Windows in general, and version 3 in particular, was an absolute godsend for MS. With this operating system they were able to displace their competitors, establish themselves as a monopolist and eventually become one of the most valuable companies in the world.
But what do I know? I'm not a wide-reaching YouTuber, I'm just someone who has been intensively involved and informed about these events as a hobby.

[hullstar]

Then original macOS wasn’t exactly watered down xerox os. There’s an example of an software engineer that swears he saw overlapping windows on Xerox’s computer so he tried to recreate it and did successfully because he believed it to be possible just to find out later xerox had not figured out overlapping windows yet. He had just remembered wrong!

I’m pretty sure it was in the Steve Jobs book by Walter you cited,

[mackback]

we need to remake Steve Ballmer Sells Dirty Windows with the little Gill Bates intro

[Emancipatriot]

Windows and Mac were both products of bill and Steve seeing the xerox machines. Glad you brought them up. It’s a shame Xerox never really got into the game themselves. They stuck with their own corner of the market.

[bchristian]

Windows didn't really become popular until 3.0. 2.x was a little better than 1.0, but it still wasn't overly popular.

[jonahplayscello]

Finally, a normal upload rather than a premiere

[kaitlyn__L]

That lower energy delivery of Ballmer’s joke video is actually even funnier than the original. Well done

[danielvest]

Windows was not an operating system until 1995 - it was just a windowing system overlay on msdos

[JamesR]

How fitting that this video, about the very start of “Personal Computing” is uploaded the same day all the reviews of and the dawn of “Spatial Computing” are revealed.

I think of the 4 waves like this:
- Computing (IBM Mainframes, etc) 1940s-1970s
- Personal Computing (The Commodore, The Mac, Windows PC, etc) 1970’s-2000’s
- Mobile Computing (BlackBerry, The Sidekick, iPhone, Android, etc.) 2000’s-2020s
- Spatial Computing (Vision Pro, ???, ???, etc) 2020s-20??

And my god, the sheer poetic irony that the very first GUI demo that inspired what became Windows and what people know as personal computing was called “VisiOn”? Wow

[pmarprj]

Windows 9x being called an MS-DOS program is a glaring error that almost every video gets wrong
9x just uses MS-DOS as a bootloader, and has its own kernel and includes MS-DOS virtualization
its the same as the relation between GRUB and Linux

[PipiRoe]

So why was it Microsoft's biggest mistake?

[JeffRyman]

My first PC (a 286 white box system) in 1987 had an EGA card and monitor. A copy of Windows 1.x was included with the EGA card. I never installed it. It was simply an overlay on MS-DOS that I didn't need because I understood how to use MS-DOS commands.

[adamsfusion]

14:42 this is strictly untrue. Windows 95 and upward were full OS's, _not_ operating environments on top of DOS. While there is an MS-DOS layer that starts the system, when the GUI starts, it unloads MS-DOS and reloads it as a 16-bit compatibility layer within dedicated virtual machines (VDMs). By the time you saw the Windows' logo, you were no longer in MS-DOS at all.

[vikingthedude]

13:09 Scary how younger Gates looked so much like Zucc

[ChinchillaJimmy]

Yeah, this wasn't the title I had in mind...

Damn, 36 seconds ago

[chomskyanlife]

Calling Apple "punk" is like calling Kissinger a humanitarian.

[MickeyMousePark]

1984-1985 was a software/hardware arms race...Top 3 manufactures were Apple--Tandy--Commodore (Apple and Tandy were swapping first and second place a few times..Tandy becoming the leader until the late 1980s...Commodore solid 3rd with the C-64)...Apple was first with a graphical environment in January 1984 and Tandy was second in November 1984 with DeskMate and Microsoft Windows trailing a year later