First Microsoft Windows May 2026

From a tiled, slow, and often-mocked interface to the most dominant desktop operating system on the planet, the journey of Microsoft Windows had to begin somewhere. And it began on that day in November 1985.

In a charming nod to history, in 2015, Microsoft released a short video showing someone trying to use Windows 1.0 on a modern Surface Book. The video ended with a simple, fitting tribute: a blue screen with white text that read: first microsoft windows

The development process was a nightmare. The team, led by a young and intense programmer named Steve Ballmer (who would later become Microsoft's CEO), faced immense technical hurdles. Early IBM PCs were painfully slow and had very little memory. Simply drawing a window on the screen was a computational challenge. Microsoft announced Windows to the public in 1983, hoping to build excitement, but the launch was delayed repeatedly. Critics began calling it "vaporware"—a product that existed only in press releases. When it finally arrived, Windows 1.0 was a far cry from the polished, powerful operating systems we know today. It wasn't a full operating system; it was an application you launched from within MS-DOS. From a tiled, slow, and often-mocked interface to