Yesterday marked Windows’ fortieth birthday : the first version of the operating system was released on November 20, 1985. Windows 1.0 was primarily a graphical interface for DOS, but it was also capable of running applications written specifically for Windows, which DOS could not. Windows 1.0 has an extremely basic and spartan look, in line with the capabilities and limitations of the technologies of the time, but it is possible to already sense the fundamental graphical elements we still carry with us today, with windows, scroll bars, title bars with additional options and more.
However, it would take several more years before the real “bang” . Windows 3.1, in 1992, was the driving force behind this feat, bringing applications we take for granted today into the homes of millions of people: Paint, File Explorer (which at the time was called File Manager), Notepad, and the Control Panel. Graphically, however, the real leap forward came in 1995 with Windows 95 , which introduced the Start menu, the taskbar, and much more advanced and reliable multitasking support. From that moment on, PCs definitively became a mainstream product, indispensable in the vast majority of homes and offices around the world.
Subsequent versions of the operating system followed a fluctuating trajectory : Windows 98 was a huge success, Millennium a bit of a disaster, then came the excellent 2000, which, however, remained somewhat confined to professional environments but represented the transition to an NT kernel. This was followed by the legendary Windows XP (2001), one of the longest-lived and most beloved systems in history, which dominated the market for over a decade and offered better Internet integration. Vista, released in 2007, was hated even more than Millennium, but then Microsoft bounced back in a big way with Windows 7, probably the best edition of the operating system ever, at least for its time.
Windows 8 in 2012 was another flop , a failed attempt to push the PC world towards touchscreens. The real recent turning point is Windows 10 (2015), designed as a constantly evolving service and regularly updated—well, at least until a few weeks ago.
Today, Microsoft’s efforts are all focused on Windows 11 , another OS that isn’t exactly a huge fan favorite like 8, Vista, and ME, and with the disruptive advent of the AI era, its future is harder to predict than ever. Just recently, Microsoft said it wants to transform the computer from a simple tool to an “agentic” platform, with Copilot integrated directly into the system and able to work on the user’s behalf.