There was a time, not so long ago, when computer software (and the programmers who wrote it) commanded no respect at all. In an age when we regularly pay tens or even hundreds of pounds for programs to use on our PCs, this may seem hard to believe (unless you were involved in the business yourself, of course!), but it’s true.We’re going back a few decades to a time when computers had to be designed and built to order, and could easily fill a room, and the companies and organisations doing the buying would often be incensed at the suggestion they should pay for the software. Surely, they would argue, it’s just a fiddly little detail compared to this roomful of gadgetry? We can’t even see it! Indeed, many companies in the computer business were accustomed to burying the price of developing the software among other ‘incidentals’ to avoid any drawn-out wrangling.
Times have certainly changed, and to a large extent that’s due to Microsoft. As a new and tiny company, Microsoft was asked to write software for the then-enormous IBM. Someone at IBM had had a peculiar idea that if they designed a small ‘personal computer’, they might sell a few, so they half-heartedly set about it. True to the feeling of the day, the software was regarded as a fiddly detail, so they got lil ole Microsoft to supply it cheaply. So unconcerned were they about the software that they even allowed Microsoft to retain all rights to it.
Disappointingly for IBM, this ‘personal computer’ was unexpectedly popular, but way too expensive. So countless other companies started producing their own much cheaper ‘PCs’, sidelining IBM, but they had to licence Microsoft’s software (named ‘MS-DOS’) to make them work.
The rest, as they say, is history. The PC became a purely-functional item, and what everyone cared about – and would willingly pay for – was the software that made it easy, friendly and capable. Of course, the software wasn’t really any of those things to begin with, but successive versions of Windows have gradually improved matters.
If you’ve ever wondered how we got from the dull days of MS-DOS to the glossiness of Windows 7 – or you just fancy a trip down Memory Lane – here’s a web page you’ll find interesting:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/history
It’s a short history of the various versions of Windows, with pictures and brief explanations of how each version built on the last. It’s written by Microsoft itself, so, for example, the article celebrates the innovations of Windows Me while conveniently overlooking the fact that it was astoundingly unreliable, but it’s an easy, friendly and informative read.
