The History of Windows XP

Summary

Microsoft is an interesting company. It is a company whose omnipresence shapes the perception of its products. By the end of the 1990s, Microsoft’s products had become part of the landscape of life. Any change to any product would stir overreaction whether it be positive or negative, and some time later, that same product would just be quotidian, and the next release would be the problem of the world or the cure to all ills. The previous release would then be the single most loved and cherished thing to have ever existed.This presented a rather serious issue for Microsoft. As the company in charge of the world’s computer operating system, office suite, web browser, media player, and encyclopedia, they could make no changes without upsetting people. This was especially bad given that the foundation upon which Microsoft had built all of this was something they didn’t really like. Nearly from inception, Microsoft wanted to kill MS-DOS and replace it with XENIX and XEDOS. This changed on the 10th of June in 1985 when Microsoft and IBM inked a joint development agreement for OS/2. This agreement died when Microsoft’s Windows 3 saw success. IBM wanted rights to the OS, and BillG felt insulted. Gates’ strong reaction and refusal likewise stirred a sense of betrayal within IBM. With both parties feeling wronged, they worked out a deal for shared use of some technologies and promptly divorced.To any outside observer, this would have appeared disastrous for Microsoft. Despite the rise of strong competition, IBM was still huge. It was one David Neil Cutler Sr who proved to be instrumental to Microsoft’s dilemma. Having recently worked on DEC’s VMS, he was precisely the kind of engineer who could get Microsoft out of MS-DOS entirely and provide an operating system well suited to a more technologically complicated environment. What he and his team created was Windows NT. The new operating system had VDMs (virtual DOS machines) for MS-DOS compatibility (x86 only), and it had pers...