[Zelphyr]

The fact that they actually tried to compete with the Mac with this is amazing to me. And, as much as I dislike Microsoft products, you have to hand it to them; they persevered until they had a product that could compete. ...at least until OS X. (I couldn't resist)

[rogerbinns]

They were not competing. Microsoft has always put phenomenal effort into backwards compatibility. Windows was constrained to work with DOS, your DOS device drivers, and most importantly your DOS apps. The majority of initial PC buyers were businesses, and those apps mattered. The last time I tried, the MSDOS 1.0 version of Visicalc (1982) still ran under Windows.

By contrast the Mac didn't provide any Apple 2 backwards compatibility (although I believe one Mac model had an add on board, and there was the IIgs). Windows and the Mac were competing in different dimensions (backwards compatible, hardware & software variety versus green field new platform).

TopView - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_TopView - GEM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_Environment_Manager - and to a lesser extent Desqview and similar were the competition for Windows, until later OS/2 was as well.

[iolothebard]

This is why everyone still used DOS. Mac OS was bloated and slow as well. It was certainly the future but the 128k wasn't nearly enough. 512k made it better but it was still years away from living up to the hype.

Until OS X, laughable. iOS has done exponentially more for Apple than OS X has or ever will.

[Zelphyr]

My comment is about desktop OS comparisons.

[pmelendez]

> at least until OS X. (I couldn't resist)

I must be alone in the world but I actually dislike OS X a lot. I had been forced to work with Mac OS in several iterations of my life (I believe my earlier contact with Mac OS was with 7.6 on a Performa) and OS X had been one of the poorest. If Ubuntu weren't that buggy (it just tires me to be fixing video cards problems on every update) it would be years ahead in overal experience in comparison with OS X.