this episode of techwiki is best viewed in Internet Explorer 11 just kidding but
it wasn't too long ago that Microsoft's position in the market was so dominant
that nearly everyone was using iie anyways along with Windows Office and
that space cadet pinball game that was actually awesome so just how did
Microsoft become the face of the software industry before Google was even
a glint in Larry Page's eye well it
started back in 1975 when Bill Gates and
Paul Allen wanted to get the programming language basic working on their alter
8800 the first successful PC the one
with the little lights and switches on the front that was programmed directly
by toggling them they believed a basic interpreter would make it a lot easier
for people to program on the alt using a keyboard what a concept this interpreter
called alt basic was Microsoft's first ever product and it took up just 4
kilobytes on paper tape it proved to be so popular that Bill Gates sent a very
angry letter to hobbyist telling them to stop copying it and passing it around
for free unfortunately for Bill product activation was still a few decades away
but that's okay it didn't stop Microsoft from growing and developing many more
forms of basic through the early 1980s
which served not only as programming environments but also as Proto operating
systems for home computers of the time Microsoft also launched its first ever
piece of Hardware in 1980 called the soft card which allowed the operating
system CPM which later evolved into Doss
to run on Apple Computers sound familiar
anyway speaking of Doss Microsoft agreed to produce Doss for IBM in
1981 which quickly made Microsoft a software giant their yearly Revenue
raised from 16 million in 1981 to over 97 million a mere 3 years later in
1984 this number was also bolstered by the introduction of Microsoft Word in
1983 which was notable for being one of the first what you see is what you get
word processors meaning you could see formatting like italics on screen
instead of having to type in a command later to get the printer to print the
font that you want and Microsoft continued to roll with the whole idea of
making things on the monitor look nicer when they released Windows 1.0 in 1985
and while this initial version of Windows was really just a graphical
shell that ran on top of MS DOS it was still ahead of its time in some ways for
example it was widely criticized for relying too much on the mouse since most
computers in 1985 didn't even have them yet but Bill Gates who previously
announced that the company would focus firmly on Windows was undeterred and 5
years later in 1990 Windows 3.0 was
released and was a smashing success thanks in no small part to their use of
real actual icons to represent programs and files and a support for a whopping
256 colors the original version of Microsoft Office was also released this
year and was similarly successful though some of Microsoft's productivity
software Rivals cried foul because Microsoft's knowledge of Windows
supposedly allowed them to make office run better on Windows than the
competition whatever the truth was Windows became the world's most popular
graphical OS in 1993 with office
becoming the market leader in productivity applications a year later
so with all this success the stage was very much set for the much B hooded
Windows 95 release in you guessed it
1995 which included many enduring features like the start menu the modern
Windows desktop Paradigm and the taskbar
this along with Microsoft's growing portfolio of consumer products like
incarta Internet Explorer and MSN which
is still around as a dialup provider and a web portal quickly turned Microsoft
into a household name and a Mainstay on both home and office PCS
worldwide they even invaded our TVs partnering with General Electric to
launch MSNBC in 1996 a cable news
channel that emphasized interactivity and online news to complement its TV
offerings in its early days of course Microsoft's market dominance raised some
eyebrows especially when they bundled internet explore with Windows 98 and
treated the browser as an integral part of the operating system certain elements
of Windows wouldn't run properly without IE this escalated to the point where the
US government nearly broke Microsoft into two companies in 2000 though this
was avoided through a settlement while this litigation was going on Microsoft
rolled out Windows me which was so buggy that PC World joked that me stood for
mistake Edition but Redmond quickly writed itself in 2011 releasing the
venerable Windows XP the first Windows
version for consumers that ditch Ms Doss
which ran underneath Windows 90x using
the much more stable Windows NT kernel which was previously only intended for
business use that same year Microsoft Dove head first into the game console
Wars releasing the original Xbox is a big Fu to Sony whose PlayStation product
line was driving game developers away from Windows and although the Xbox may
have been a little big and looked a little tacky it was ahead of its time in
a number of ways being the first console to include an Ethernet Jack and a hard
drive so by this point it's clear that Microsoft was trying to diversify their
business in areas other than just the traditional PC software space but
unfortunately if we went into all of Microsoft's post 2001 successes and
missteps this wouldn't really be a tech Quicky episode it'd be like a tech
longy episode so let us know in the comments what you'd like to see us cover
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