Only One Side Will Be the True Successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

Introduction

Hello everyone, and welcome to a double GUI Wonderland Episode, where we explore the birth and evolution of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) in computers; today, we’ll have a look at two parallel projects by IBM and Microsoft, OS/2 and Windows 2.x, which shared some development time, and have a very similar UI. Yes, I could have talked about them in two separate Episodes but, given how they’re both shorter and share some points, I decided to release both at the same time!

You don’t have to necessarily start reading from 12a (this one), so feel free to jump to 12b if you want to start from OS/2 1.x!

As always, I recommend you read the previous Episodes, in order to have a better understanding of today’s topics; the obvious choice is Episode #10 about Windows 1.x, but Episodes #3 and #7 about the Lisa and the Macintosh are always useful!

Double Episode!

**All the best GUI Wonderland Episodes come in pairs:**Click on the picture to switch to Episode 12b about OS/2 1.x!

Windows 2.x

Release date | December 9, 1987 | Discontinued | December 31, 2001 | OS | DOS | Developer | Microsoft | Price | $100 (2.0), $199 (2.0 386), $99 (2.1 286), $195 (2.1 386), $25 (2.1 upgrade for 2.0 users) |

This is a major release of Windows and, similarly to the previous one [ep 10], it is not a complete operating system, but it’s simply a graphical user shell that is meant to be run on top of MS-DOS; thus, it inherently gains its limitations, albeit the developers had time to fix some things with this release, as well as add new features such as icons on the desktop and keyboard shortcuts.

Weirdly enough, it was meant to be the final incarnation of Windows, and the idea was that OS/2 would supersede it soon enough; as we all know, things ended up going a little differently.

The Creation of Windows 2.0

Despite what you may imagine from how history went afterward, Microsoft was fully aware of how MS-DOS was starting to be inadequate for current and future computing, especially if GUIs were truly going to become the only way to go from that moment onward; poor Windows 1.x could barely run on the most common machines of the time (which were running on Intel 8086 and 8088, and not on the newest 80286 and 80386), and it’s not like Windows 2.x could potentially do much better.

Thus, Steve Ballmer, negotiated an agreement with IBM on a successor to Windows, a true operating system; ideally, the interfaces of both programs were going to be as similar as possible, so that, one day, Windows 2.x users could switch to OS/2 and encounter a familiar environment, albeit with many new functions and additions. In the meantime, though, they needed to develop another version of Windows, so that they could also fix all the issues caused by the rushed Windows 1.x release [ep 10]; plus, it’s not like OS/2 would be ready right away, as it was much more complex than Windows 2.x, so they needed some kind of new release to appeal to the existing market, and slowly accustom people to the wonders of the new UI.

Windows 2.0 April 1987 build, find out more below

Remember Tandy Trower, the manager who succeeded in shipping Windows 1.x after everyone else had failed [ep 10]? Well, he was back, and he was tasked with working on this same project, so that Microsoft’s Application Group could work on a new version of Word and Excel, which were becoming very popular on the Macintosh; the problem was that most of the original Windows development team had been tasked with working on OS/2 instead, and even Trower himself had to work alongside that same team in order to maintain consistency between the two UIs.

Something that we can really appreciate is how Trower suggested that they created a separate team who also employed real graphics designers, rather than simply software developers, to craft the new UI, hoping to achieve a truly user friendly and consistent interface, rather than whatever the developers found easiest to make; this is in line with the development of the Lisa [ep 3] and the Macintosh [ep 7], where UI was above every other aspect of the software. Plus, if you remember [ep 7], even the Macintosh’s icons were designed by a graphics designer, Susan Kare, who then designed the one found in Windows 3.x. This team worked so well that they ended up influencing the usability of many Microsoft products, and even the full overhaul in Windows 95!

The Macintosh’s icons by Susan Kare

Back to our poor Windows 2.x, even if Trower only had eight months to get it all done, he still managed to do it all; he finally got the chance to add all of the features that he had to skip during the development of 1.x, such as overlapping windows, or a proportional system font. Then, he tried to add in as many UI upgrades, whilst never forgetting to be compliant with OS/2’s UI; some of these things were only possible because of a clever trick that allowed you to use extended memory (part of RAM) in PCs, and not just the base amount that the processor permitted you to use.

Fundamentally, Intel processors found on IBM PC compatibles only allowed you to use 640 KiB (kibibytes, not kilobytes) of conventional memory for applications, which meant that anything beyond that amount was reserved to other system functions and was not available to the user; still, there were ways to circumvent that, and that’s how Windows 2.x and other programs such as Lotus 1-2-3 managed to have more RAM available for their needs! It was less difficult to achieve this on a 386, but most people could not afford it, so that’s why they couldn’t assume you’d have one; if you’re curious, here’s a video that shows you how this process worked in the 90s, thanks to some really awesome programs!

Even if not everyone had a 386, there were still some useful improvements that could be added to a version that required it, apart from fully preemptive multitasking; one of them involves the fact that the 386 was able to go into “protected mode”, which was more stable than the “real mode” found on other processors, but made you unable to run code not designed for it, such as DOS applications.

After a lot of work, in 1987 not only one, but two flavors of Windows ended up coming out; Windows 286 and Windows 386, which were then renamed to Windows/286 and Windows/386 once Version 2.1 was released.

Beta Build

Windows 2.0 April 1987 build – 1987-04 | This is the earliest build you can find, and it was shown in the Microsoft Systems Journal magazine in May 1987. We can see that the UI has the same color scheme as Windows 1.x, but you can now overlap windows, and you have more ways to control them. |

Things start not going so well anymore: a nice lawsuit from Apple

⚠️ A Little Disclaimer ⚠️

Before we start with this section: I’m not a lawyer nor a law student, so if there are any inaccuracies, you know why.

It all started on March 17, 1988, when Apple filed a lawsuit against both Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, stating that they had violated Apple’s Macintosh copyright; according to Apple, the Macintosh’s “look and feel” could not be copied as it was protected by copyright, so that’s why they sued both companies.

True or not, what makes this even more interesting is that Apple and Microsoft had a previous agreement regarding Windows 1.x, where Apple licensed certain parts of their GUI to be used in the first version of Microsoft’s OS; it all started in 1985, when Microsoft risked getting sued by Apple for that same version of Windows. If you remember from our episode about GEM [ep 9], Apple “loved” suing companies if their GUIs were a bit too similar to the Macintosh and the Lisa; that also happened in 1985, and they managed to force DRI, the company behind GEM, to make some changes, as the similarities were simply too big to be ignored.

Still, Apple didn’t end up suing Microsoft just yet, as Gates managed to obtain royalty-free rights to the Apple patents and copyright regarding their GUI