Dani Garavelli: Is the Windows operating system a force for good or has it made us slaves to Microsoft?

Published on Friday 12 November 2010 13:17

WHEN a bumptious IT geek called Bill Gates unveiled his plans for a computer operating system that would revolutionise the way ordinary people related to new technology few paid him much heed. In 1985 computers were still largely the preserve of scientists and geeks.

Yet today, 25 years after Windows 1.0 was launched, the multi-coloured flag logo flies hundreds of millions of times a day when the world logs on. Indeed, although Microsoft delivered it a year later than promised and it received a lukewarm response when it arrived, more than 90 per cent of computers around the world now use some version of the product which turned Gates and three of his co-workers into billionaires and 12,000 other employees into millionaires.

We may not give it much thought (for most of us, Windows comes preinstalled with our PCs), but without it, or some other form of Graphical User Interface (GUI), computer use would still involve highly-qualified programmers typing instructions in the form of long codes. It was the introduction of icons, which translate a click of the mouse into an instruction, and the use of several computer planes for different tasks, that has given the less technologically minded the ability to use spreadsheets, surf the net and more.

"Before windows it was about text, whereas if you look at Windows it is about symbols, it is something easy and entrancing," says Pat Kane, cultural commentator and author of The Play Ethic. "That's what Windows did. It made the idea of having a computer more feasible. Microsoft was the first company to come up with the idea that rather than having to write a programme every time, you could have icons to do that for you."

Despite its limitations and accusations that it had simply ripped off Apple's Lisa computer, Windows 1.0 kicked off a global phenomenon that transformed the economy around its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and became part of the fabric of the lives of millions.

Not everyone approves, of course. Some believe Microsoft's success is predicated not on its ability to innovate but on bully-boy tactics and a strategy that centres on locking in vendors and consumers and refusing to share knowledge. Some critics point to the company's failure to foresee the potential of browsers and search engines as proof that it lacks real vision, while others believe GUIs in general and Windows in particular have disempowered the public.

In his book Program Or Be Programmed, author Douglas Rushkoff argues that the ease with which we can use computers (but not program them) makes us passive and more easily controlled. And then there is the Open Source movement, which is dedicated to the freeflow of ideas in the development of software and sees Microsoft as the antithesis of freedom.

So has Windows been a force for good, making PCs accessible to those of us who would otherwise have been disenfranchised? Or, since it is difficult to buy a PC without Windows pre-installed, are consumers being forced to pay a Microsoft Tax? And, despite its huge successes, can Microsoft survive in a fast-changing world in which its proprietary business tactics are increasingly frowned upon?Before Bill Gates got around to creating Windows, he had already demonstrated his business acumen by striking an impressive deal with IBM. Having tasked Microsoft to write Basic (the high-level programming language Microsoft developed for Altair) onto its computers, it challenged Gates and co to come up with an operating system. Never having produced one before, Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from the Seattle Computer Company for 50,000, while keeping the IBM deal a secret. The masterstroke was to persuade IBM that Microsoft should retain the right to market MS-DOS (as it renamed it) separately. It went on to make many millions from the product.

The early days of Windows, however, were to prove less auspicious. Having pledged at a press conference in New York in 1983 to produce a "graphical user interface" which would be used in "90 per cent of all IBM computers (within 12 months]", Gates failed to deliver on his boasts. By the time Windows 1.0 appeared, a year late, Microsoft had been beaten to it by Apple's Lisa, and later, its Macs, both of which had stunning GUI. Windows 1.0 also faced competition from IBM's Top View, VisiCorp's shortlived VisiON, and Graphics Environment Manager released by Digital Research. Windows looked and felt old-fashioned and was bundled with just a handful of apps, including a calculator, clock, calendar and notepad.

Nathaniel Borenstein, who went on to create MIME, the internet standard for sending and receiving multidata, remembers Microsoft representatives stopping by to demonstrate their new system when he was working at Pittsburg's Carnegie-Mellon University's IT department. "What's interesting in retrospect was we laughed; just laughed them out of the place," Borenstein has said. "Because we had a vastly superior window manager of our own and these guys came in with a pathetic and naive system. We just knew they were never going to accomplish anything."

Windows 2.0 was a big improvement, and benefited from the fact that not only had Microsoft finished developing Word and Excel for Windows, but outside companies including Aldus, Corel, and Microtek were all working on Windows 2.0-compatible programs.

But then, out of the blue, Apple launched a legal case, accusing Microsoft of having violated its copyright on the visual displays of the Macintosh - a case it took five years to resolve, although the court eventually ruled in Microsoft's favour.

It wasn't really until the launch of Windows 3.0 in 1990, then, that the world began to sit up and take notice. In the years that followed, Microsoft Windows' influence rose so steeply that, by 1993 - when Windows NT 3.1, which marked the realisation of Gates's goal to create an operating system from scratch, came on the market - a million copies a month were being sold. A dip in consumer confidence prompted by Windows Vista - which was so badly received many businesses continued to use the older Windows XP - seems to have been redressed by the launch of Windows 7, which is now used on 10 per cent of the world's computers. Earlier this year Microsoft announced it had made $4bn in profit in the third quarter - up 35 per cent from the same period last year. All this success despite the fact the company made some catastrophic misjudgments - such as failing to recognise the importance of browsers and search engines - along the way.

The question which has gripped the computer industry for the last quarter of a century is: how did they do it? In his book, The Microsoft Way, author Randall Stross, professor of business at San Jos State University, says Microsoft thrived as a result of a relatively straightforward formula: hire the smartest young people you can find, challenge them constantly, force them to take risks, recognise mistakes quickly and then correct them.

But for others Microsoft is the embodiment of ruthless capitalism; a companywhich, by cynical manipulation of market forces, has insinuated its products into all our homes. Their concerns, which centre on the use of certain monopolistic practices, were addressed, when Microsoft was prosecuted under the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1998. Central to the case was Microsoft's bundling of its Internet Explorer browser software with Windows.

Finding the company guilty two years later, the judge ruled the firm should be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components. This decision was overturned on appeal with Microsoft instead being forced to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who would have full access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance.

Yet it continues to be a thorn in the side of the Open Source movement, which believes software should be developed in a free and open way and wants Microsoft to be less secretive and protectionist. Need Microsoft and OS be constantly at war, though? "I think the debate has become too polarised," says Kane. "It is too purist to say it should be either or.

The Open Source community is achieving amazing things through its collective approach; it is like a trade union movement. But Microsoft was a phenomenon and huge respect to it for doing what it did, for helping to make cyberspace usable."

More recently, Microsoft has made concessions to OS. Last year it announced the launch of a not-for-profit organisation, The CodePlex Foundation, set up with the aim of exchanging code and furthering the understanding of Open Source among commercial firms. Although some of its critics see such moves as little more than spin, it shows Microsoft recognises the need for change. "I think there is some evidence it is trying to adapt, but whether it will adapt and survive or adapt and fail is unclear," says Kane. "The ecology, the environment of innovation, is so unstable it is possible to be dominant and fail within five years, five months, five weeks."Microsoft has seen some positive developments recently. The Windows Phone 7 phone has been well received and is proving itself a match for the iPhone. And then there is this Christmas's must-have add-on for the Xbox 360, Kinect, which lets players interact with the console through speech, movement or facial gestures. Although the concept is clearly inspired by the Wii, the technology has advanced into Minority Report territory and surely has applications beyond gaming.

Who knows if Microsoft will be able to capitalise on the idea. But even if it never develops anything as important again, it will have carved itself an indelible place in history. After all, it provided us with a window on the world - and the future.