Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Innovative Tuesday: The Invention of the First User-Friendly Operating System

     Hello everybody and welcome back to another edition of Global History Hub! I'll be your host, Mr. Nations, your tour guide to this massive world we all call home. In today's edition of Innovative Tuesday, we'll be taking a look at the invention of the first user-friendly operating system. Well, what are we waiting for? Let's dive straight into it!

     Operating systems existed long before the invention of the first user-friendly operating systems. Surprisingly enough, General Motors made the very first operating system. It was designed to run only a single IBM computer. IBM took on the challenge of creating a suitable OS to be distributed through its line of computers, not to be confused for the personal computer, which comes much later.

     The first user-friendly operating system was developed by Apple and was released to the public on January 24th, 1984. It was called System 1.0 and is known as the first installment to the MacOS series. It was designed to run on the Motorolla 6800 Microprocessor, which was the standard processor in the Macintosh 128k, the first Apple computer.

     The first Windows OS was simply called Windows 1.0. It was released in November of 1985 and was Microsoft's first attempt at a graphical user interface. Development was led by Bill Gates and ran along with MS-DOS, which relied on command-line input.

     We often take for granted the many features operating systems have built into their core functions. What is now considered normal was once considered a far-fetched dream.

     Fun Facts:
  • According to the latest data usage, there are currently roughly 1.6 billion active Windows users.
  • Windows 95 was a smash hit upon release. It sold 40 million copies in its first year. Windows 8 sold 100 million copies in half the time.
  • A 1% drop in usage means that Microsoft loses more users than the population of Illinois.
     Apple Macintosh Desktop.png
     The desktop for System 1.0.

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