The Real History of the GUI

Back to the big guys. December 1987 saw the release of Windows 2.0, to the consternation of Apple but the yawns of the consumer. Although Win 2.0 looked more like the Mac than ever, with icons representing files and programs, cascading windows, and the like, Mac users weren’t leaving the Apple flocks to buy the IBM/Windows machines (especially since the hunky Mac II’s were all over the shelves). Apple hemmed and hawwed a few more months, and finally sicced the long-threatened lawsuit on Microsoft, claiming that Windows stole the Macintosh’s “look and feel.” 1988 saw the market all but ignore Apple’s GS/OS for the Apple IIGS, but the Mac continued to dominate the market. By 1989, the general buzz was that Windows was a mammoth flop. Microsoft continued to work with IBM in developing the fully graphical OS system, but kept pounding on Windows, hoping to eventually get one version right. As the cliche says, “even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.” It was about to be acorn time in Redmond.

Windows in the 90's

A great, orchestrated hullabaloo welcomed Windows 3.0 to the market in May 1990. Steve Ballmer led the chant of “Windows! Windows! Windows!” at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Washington; the great beast that was, and is, Microsoft’s marketing machine took care of the rest of the world. Microsoft unveiled dozens of applications written specifically for Windows at the same time it released the new version of Windows, which now featured the OS/2 style “sculpted buttons” – credit to icon designer Susan Kare for the much more appealing button styles; Kare also worked on the Mac – more color support, real multitasking, and a much-improved program manager, among other things. These new features and fresh software releases finally got the market’s attention. Impelled by the popularity of its own Win-compatible versions of Word and Excel, and numerous other 3rd party apps, Microsoft sold over 3 million copies of Win 3.0 in its first year of release, and Apple was feeling the chill. Win 3.1 (April ‘92) added scalable TrueType font support and better multimedia capabilities, and Apple was on the run. For the first time, Windows-equipped PCs were outselling the Macs. Windows 3.1.1, called "Windows for Workgroups," did relatively well in the corporate world, as well as bequeathing much of its design to later versions of Windows.

1993 saw the first version of Windows NT (New Technology), which abandoned the crash-prone kernel of its predecessors for a new, much more stable kernel. NT started out as a new version of IBM’s OS/2 system, part of Microsoft’s and IBM’s joint venturing. It was originally known as OS/2 3.0 or OS/NT, but during early development, Microsoft and IBM split, and Microsoft walked away with the program, combining IBM’s OS concepts with their own, rewriting the code, and eventually releasing it under the Windows umbrella. Problem was, Microsoft marketers couldn’t decide what to do with it. Obviously it was more useful for business usage, so, being Microsoft, they tried to sell it to anyone but business users. It quickly became known as “Windows No Thanks”, and catty observers decided that Microsoft had shot itself in the foot. Not so fast... it turns out that a lot of people who were using Unix had decided to give NT a go, and liked what they saw. By early 1995, many European corporations had shifted over to version 3.5, the second “official” version of NT. By mid-1995, NT had established itself among technical and business users, and by the time the “bulletproof” (read: virtually crashproof) version 3.51 was available, Win NT was firmly entrenched. NT worked very well in the corporate and office environment, but less so in the home: it wasn’t engineered to run older DOS-based software, which made it the wrong choice for gamers and folks with less-than-cutting edge software.

The lawsuit wasn’t going well, either. Apple’s strategy was to prove that Windows had illegally copied the “look and feel” of the Mac GUI, but that strategy sprang some significant leaks after the Microsoft lawyers pointed out that both systems “borrowed” liberally from the original Xerox concepts. To Jobs’ accusation of theft, Gates made the damning retort, “No, Steve, I think it’s more like we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set, and you found out I’d been there first, and you said, ‘Hey, that’s no fair! I wanted to steal the TV set!’” The fact that Windows’ interface design looked, if anything, more like the old Alto GUI than the Mac designs didn’t help Apple’s case. Suddenly Microsoft was the buzz, and Apple seemed to be yesterday’s news.

Apple's Torrid Ride

The long-running lawsuit was finally settled in Microsoft’s favor in June 1993, and the doomsayers thought that Apple’s fate was sealed. Wozniak and Jobs were long gone. The company was in financial trouble (though the reports of imminent bankruptcy were wrong). Their long-anticipated “Newton” personal data assistant was a bust. Management seemed more interested in fighting among themselves than righting the company. Orders went unfilled due to production problems. Some predicted that Apple would fade into complete irrelevance when, in August 1995, Microsoft unveiled its groundbreaking Windows 95 OS. Win 95, the first operating system to take advantage of Intel’s powerful 32-bit chips, and a near-clone of the Mac GUI, seemed to be the irresistible force destined to finally run Apple out of business once and for all. Apple tried to recoup by pushing its “Performa” line of low-end PCs (basically older, repackaged Macs) over its higher-end “PowerPC” line, and failed miserably – Performas sat gathering dust in the Apple warehouses, while buyers found it difficult, if not impossible, to get hold of the PowerPCs they wanted. More and more first-time users chose Windows-driven PCs over Apples, in large part because the fierce competition between the Windows-clone manufacturers were keeping the Windows machines’ prices relatively competitive, while Apple’s relentless refusal to let others manufacture clones (only partially loosened in 1994 and yanked in 1999), its embarrassing quality-control problems, and its comparatively high sticker prices, soured many buyers on the Apple name. Microsoft’s decision to slap a modified version of the Win 95 interface onto Win NT 4.0 boosted the NT platform’s popularity, and detracted that much more from the Apple market share.

In October 1994, IBM tried unsuccessfully to yank some of Microsoft’s market share with the third version of its own operating system, OS/2 Warp. OS/2 was originally a Microsoft/IBM joint venture, but Warp was IBM’s own offering, and featured a Windows-like GUI. It managed to stay afloat and win some loyalty, but it never really became anything more than a weak alternative for IBM-machine users who didn’t want to use Windows. And while we’re on the topic of weak alternatives, now’s the time to give a sardonic nod to Microsoft Bob, the “next-generation” GUI that rode atop of Windows and “assisted” novice users with a happy, chatty, virtual assistant named Bob. Bob tanked hard, and became a figure of fun among the computer cognoscenti. His only legacy was the equally annoying Office Assistant, the “dancing paper clip” that currently plagues Microsoft Office.

Meanwhile, Apple wasn’t cored just yet. Steve Jobs had founded a company called NeXT, and while the NeXT computer failed in the marketplace, the sleek and sophisticated NeXT OS (an OS built on the UNIX MACH kernel and featuring a fabulous GUI) was quite attractive to Apple. Apple’s Mac operating system was showing its gray hairs, and Apple wanted something new and glitzy to throw up against Microsoft’s monolithic offerings. In December 1996, Apple bought out NeXT, thus acquiring NeXTStep, elements of which would turn up in the new Mac OS, Rhapsody. Jobs came along for the ride, and it wasn’t long before he was again at the helm of the company he had founded.

Apple fans weren’t happy with the return of their hero for long. In August 1997, Jobs announced a formal liaison with Microsoft, to the dismay of the rank and file. Microsoft bought $150 million of Apple stock, and both companies agreed to once and for all end the GUI dispute. Many disgruntled Apple users, already disturbed by Apple’s continuing inability to build enough machines to fill orders, along with Apple’s failure to license the Apple system to clone manufacturers, leapt off the Apple bandwagon once and for all; it’s no coincidence that the new surge of interest in “alternative” OS’s such as Be and Linux began about the same time as Jobs’ perceived “sellout” of Apple to Microsoft. Certainly the ex-Apple minions fleeing their former home didn’t start the Linux/Be/etc. buzz, but they made their contribution, especially when Apple yanked its support from the Be platform, originally designed to run on the PowerPC.

Note, though, that most Appleniks didn’t dive overboard solely because of the “sellout” of Apple to Microsoft. The more knowledgeable in the Apple community understood that Microsoft’s commitment meant more stability for Apple, as well as continued development of MS Office for the Mac. Microsoft’s $150 million purchase was a small fraction of the Apple stock base, and Microsoft’s shares were strictly non-voting. According to some stories, Apple fans had a reaction similar to a church congregation whose preacher announced that Beelzebub was being named as head deacon. But the real reasons why so many Apple fans were disaffected are much more complex.

Apple gained ground with the successful release of the Mac OS 8 “Platinum,” a popular and stable OS. Unfortunately, some of that ground was lost in the confusion that followed OS 8. The original idea was to give Apple users a “next-generation” system to be called Copland. Instead of releasing it in mid-1996, Apple squelched the project in favor of working with the newly acquired NeXT OS. Apple then announced a new system under development, Rhapsody, which would combine elements of the NeXT OS on top of a UNIX core. The aforementioned OS 8 appeared in July 1997, and featured some of the more touted elements from Copland. Rhapsody also failed to materialize, and eventually transmogrified into the OS X project, announced in May 1998. An upgrade to the “Platinum” system, OS 9, was released in October 1999. The next-generation OS X was finally released for the PC in March 2001, and many of the features promised for Rhapsody appeared in this system.

In 1998 Apple reinvented the PC market with the now-ubiquitous iMac. The iMac, with its cutesy color scheme and user-friendly design, won the hearts of many users and the scorn of many reviewers. “Serious” Apple users gravitated to the ever-more powerful PowerMac line, but millions chose to perch the cute little iMacs on their desks. Along with the modestly successful PowerMac and PowerBook laptop/notebook PCs, the iMac gave Apple the recharge it so badly needed. The iMac comes with either OS 9 or OS X installed. The trend of other folks copying Apple continued, with Daewoo’s eMachines drawing Apple’s fire for looking and acting like the iMac. This time Apple prevailed.

Today...

In Redmond, Microsoft barrels along. Its hyped-to-the-max release of Windows 98, launched in June 1998, failed to live up to expectations. Most users, who were led to expect a revolutionary new product, were annoyed when Win 98 proved more of an upgrade than a groundbreaking new product. Feelings are much the same about Windows 2000, or “Win 2K,” the latest and last iteration of the NT line, and even more so about Windows Millennium, which after all the ballyhoo settled, turned out to be little more than a minor upgrade to Win 98. Microsoft is betting its OS fortunes on its integration of the 9x and NT lines in its upcoming Windows XP system. Microsoft hasn’t fared so well in its latest court outing, with the Department of Justice doing what Apple was unable to do, obtaining a ruling that Microsoft was a monopoly and was acting against the best interests of the market and the competition (though as I write this, the DOJ has abandoned its attempts to break up Microsoft). Apple continues to push their latest iteration of the Mac OS, OS X, and promises a new version, 10.1, by the time you read this. Both corporations are poised to continue their dominance of the PC market for the foreseeable future, though UNIX fans remain firm and Linux is steadily gaining ground.

And the future of the GUI? Well, considering that well over 90% of the world’s users employ one GUI-faced OS or another, considering that new GUI-driven OS’s such as Be seem to be catching on, and considering that this season’s darling, Linux, is usually used with any of several GUI’s from Caldera, Corel, and Red Hat, among others, the future for the GUI seems secure. Comrade Gates and others have proposed a much more “involved” interface, with voice recognition, touch screens, retinal and fingerprint scans for security, holographic representations, and virtual “avatars” that interact with the user much more directly than, say, that damned MS Office paper clip. Ugh would be pleased. I’m not sure what Glug would think.

Note: I am indebted to the many people who responded with commentary, corrections, and criticism of the original version of this article. In particular, Jef Raskin was of enormous assistance through the revision process; I appreciate both his cooperation and his patience. The many respondents on the Slashdot message boards were also very helpful, as were the dozens of people who took the time to e-mail me with their own commentary and enlightenment. Thanks to one and all.
– MT, September 7, 2001