History
of Microsoft Windows Part II
Getting the Bugs Out
Start Part One The
History of Microsoft Windows
Windows 1.0 was considered buggy,
crude and slow. This rough start was made worse by a threatened lawsuit
from Apple Computer. In September 1985, Apple lawyers warned Microsoft
that they felt Windows 1.0 infringed on Apple copyrights and patents, and
that Microsoft might have stolen Apple trade secrets. (Windows had similar
drop-down menus, tiled windows and mouse support.)
Bill Gates and Microsoft's head counsel,
Bill Neukom, decided to make an offer to license Apple's operating-system
features. Apple agreed, and a contract was drawn up. Here's the clincher:
Microsoft wrote the licensing agreement to include use of Apple features
in Windows 1.0 and all future Microsoft software programs. As it turned
out, this move by Bill Gates was as brilliant as his decision to buy QDOS
from Seattle Computer Products and his convincing IBM to let Microsoft
keep the licensing rights to MS-DOS. (You can read all about those smooth
moves in our feature on MS-DOS.)
Windows 1.0 floundered
on the market until January 1987, when a Windows-compatible program called
Aldus
PageMaker 1.0 was released. PageMaker was the first WYSIWYG
desktop-publishing program for the PC. Later that year, Microsoft released
a Windows-compatible spreadsheet called Excel.
Other popular and useful software like Microsoft Word and Corel Draw helped
promote Windows, but Microsoft realized the product still needed further
development.
On December 9, 1987, Microsoft released
a much-improved Windows 2.0 that made a PC look a bit more like a MacIntosh
computer. Windows 2.0 had icons to represent programs and files, improved
support for expanded-memory hardware and windows that could overlap. Apple
Computer saw a resemblance and filed a 1988 lawsuit against Microsoft,
alleging that Microsoft had broken the 1985 licensing agreement.
In their defense, Microsoft claimed
that the licensing agreement actually gave them the right to use Apple
features. After a four-year court case, Microsoft won. Apple claimed that
Microsoft had infringed on 170 of their copyrights. The courts said that
the licensing agreement gave Microsoft the rights to use all but nine of
the copyrights, and Microsoft later convinced the courts that the remaining
copyrights should not be covered by copyright law. Bill Gates claimed that
Apple had taken some of its ideas from the graphical user interface developed
by Xerox for Xerox's Alto and Star computers.
| 6/1/93:
Microsoft announces that Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the U.S. District Court
of Northern California ruled today in Microsoft's favor in the Apple vs.
Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard copyright suit. The judge granted Microsoft's
and Hewlett-Packard's motions to dismiss the last remaining copyright infringement
claims against Microsoft Windows 2.03 and 3.0, as well as, the HP NewWave.
-From the Microsoft Timeline |
What would have happened if Microsoft
had lost the lawsuit? Microsoft Windows might never have become the dominant
operating system that it is today.
"Microsoft become the top
software vendor in 1988 and never looked back..." - Microsoft
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>> Windows 3.0 to Windows 2000
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