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The “Real” Secret Behind Windows' Success: Part I

Posted by gsh on · 2 comments
OSWeekly.com; By Matt Hartley 		Mail this story
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Have you ever wondered why Windows rose from the ashes while other operating systems of yesteryear fell behind and eventually disappeared for good? Money and the distribution of generated revenue, of course. Not just in capital funds to make Microsoft's R&D a reality mind you, but the mindset behind a system of voluntary servitude based on people rushing to what turned out to be a virtual gold rush.

If there is one thing that can be said for the early years of Windows, it’s that Windows was ripe for growth. Microsoft understood very early that finding mutual interest partners in all the right places would allow the company to experience unrepresented growth.

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Comments (2)

wjl ·
It wasn't gaming and the kids only who/which made M$ big - it was also a question of legal affairs. There were alternatives like GEM and the like, there was another, much earlier and better "office suite" called Framework2, but at least in the case of the first one mentioned here, it had to be crippled down more and more, until only Apple & M$ were left.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_Environment_Manager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_(office_suite) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0

cheers, wjl
dinotrac ·
The resistance to giving the devil his due is pretty remarkable.

I bought Windows 3.0 when it came out. I liked it. Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were jokes, useful primarily as runtimes in which to run...gosh, what was it? Ventura publisher maybe? I forget.

It helped that Microsoft was everywhere and people knew about it. It helped more that Microsoft was a major publisher of Mac software. Excel and Word for Windows were originally Mac applications that were written with Microsoft toolkits to ease their journey to Windows.

The combination of decent applications plus the ability to run your old DOS apps was a pretty good marketing pitch. Plus, as I recall, Windows was pretty cheap.

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