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Не знам какви спомени изплуват във вашата главата, когато чуете годината 1995-та, но за нас това е годната, в която Майкрософт продаде 7 милиона копия на Windows 95, врамките на 5 седмици след пускането му на пазара. На 24-ти август 1995г. Майкрософт пуска на пазар своята нова операционна система, която е абсолютно революционен продукт, в сравнение с предходните. Бюджетът за реализиране на рекламната кампания се равнява на 250 милиона долара. За популяризирането на продукта помагат Джей Лено, Ролинг Стоунс с парчето „Start Me Up“, както и любимите „приятели“ на Америка – Дженифър Анистън и Матю Пери (последните двама, с участието си в мини Кибер сериал – Видео-наръчник за употреба на Windows 95). Точно 20 години по-късно, добре познатата операционна система все още е един от фаворитите на потребителите. В чест на двайсет годишнината на Windows 95 и пускането на последната версия – Windows 10, Daily News прави своеобразно кратко „Родословно дърво“ на Windows продуктите на Майкрософт, което отразява еволюцията на операционната система през годините. Ето го и него: Windows 95 Windows 95 не е първата Windows операционна система на Майкрософт. Предхождат я версиите 1.0, 2.0 и 3.0. Въпреки това, появата на версия 95 на пазара, тотално променя „правилата на играта“… и ни „запознава“ с емблематичния Старт бутон. Windows NT Втората потребителска версия на Windows е първата 32-битова версия на тази операционна система. Windows NT е пусната на пазара на 27-ми юли 1993 и приложението й е фокусирано изцяло върху това, да бъде стратегическа бизнес платформа. Windows 98 За разлика от своите предшественички, които са били единствено бизнес ориентирани, тази версия прехвърля фокуса върху тъй наречения „consumer experience“. Windows 98 e специално проектирана, така че да е лесна и удобна за употреба в дома, в офиса, дори и в обикновено интернет-кафеJ. „ Рождената и дата“ е 25-ти юни 1998г., a слоганът „Works Better, Plays Better.“ Windows 2000 В основата си, Windows 2000, е леко подобрена версия на Windows NT, към която са добавени по-добра скорост и стабилност на работа, с цел да послужи на големи бизнес организации. Windows ME Майкрософт пуска две различни версии през 2000г. Първата от тях е бизнес насочената Windows NT, а втората Windows MW, която е предназначена за по-широк потребителки кръг (т.е. масова употреба). Windows ME, позната още като Millennium Edition, има няколко подобрения, свързани с приложенията за музика, изображения и видео, които и я различават и правят по-добра от предишните версии. Windows XP 25-ти октомври 2001 – излиза версия Windows XP, Майкрософт е на върха! Новата операционна система е с напълно променен потребителски интерфейс и дизайн, изцяло фокусирани върху лекотата на работа с продукта. Също така, има добавени няколко помощни функции, които правят навигацията в системата много по-лесно от всякога. Windows Vista Windows Vista е първата версия на системата, която е подходяща едновременно за бизнес и за масова употреба. Версия 2006 има изключително висока степен на защита и много добър контрол върху настройките на Потребителския акаунт, което позволява на всеки собственик да предпази компютъра си от зловреден софтуер. Windows 7 Windows 7 запазва всички полезни инструменти и функции от предходните версии, с малката разлика, че ги предоставя на потребителите с чисто нова по-добра визия. Освен това, с Windows 7 за пръв път е представена функционалността Windows Touch, която значително улеснява работата с операционната система на всички притежатели на тъчскрийн устройства. Въпреки че, версия 7 излиза на пазара през 2009, много от потребители не се решават да преминат към нея, повлияни от лошите отзиви за версия Windows 8. Това е причината и до днес някой от тях, все още да използват версия Windows 7. Windows 8 Windows 8 се появява на бял свят през октомври 2012г., представяйки един напълно променен потребителски интерфейс, който разчита почти изцяло на приложенията. Началния екран наподобява мозайка от различни плочки, а бонус е фактът, че оперативната система е приложима и към новите хибридни устройства. За съжаление, новият интерфейс не се харесва на всички потребители, поради което много от тях решават да се придържат към версия 7. Windows 10 Windows 10 е последната излязла на пазара версия, която, според създателите си, обещава да е най-добрата създавана досега. Потребителският интерфейс на версия 10 е сходен с този на Windows 8, с някой леки визуални промени. Подобренията в новата операционна система са добавеният интелигентен гласов помощник – Cortana. Освен това версия 10 се предлага с предварително инсталиран новия браузър на Майкрософт Microsoft’s Edge. Да видим какво следва от тук нататък? Автор: Севим Рашидова Източник: nydailynews.com
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In 1983, Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface (GUI) for its own operating system (MS-DOS), which had shipped for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. The product line has changed from a GUI product to a modern operating system over two families of design, each with its own codebase and default file system. The 3.x and 4.x family includes Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me. Windows for Workgroups 3.11 achieved the breakthrough from 16- to 32-bit networking and 32-bit disk access. Windows 95 completed the migration to 32-bit code and started an entirely new user interface, most of which is still used today. Windows NT family started with NT 3.1 in 1993. Modern Windows operating system versions are based on the newer Windows NT kernel that was originally intended for OS/2. Windows runs on IA-32, x86-64, and Itanium processors. Earlier versions also ran on the i860, Alpha, MIPS, Fairchild Clipper, and PowerPC architectures. Some work was done to port it to the SPARC architecture. The NT kernel borrows many techniques from VMS. With NT4.0 in 1996 the shell changed from Program Manager to Explorer. CPU support included PowerPC, MIPS, and DEC Alpha for earlier versions of NT, but focuses on Itanium, 386, 486, and x64 today. Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0 The first version of Microsoft Windows included a simple graphics painting program called Windows Paint; Windows Write, a simple word processor; an appointment "calendar"; a "cardfiler"; a "notepad"; a "clock"; a "control panel"; a "computer terminal"; "Clipboard"; and RAM driver. It also included the MS-DOS Executive and a game called Reversi. Microsoft had worked with Apple Computer to develop several Desk Accessories and other minor pieces of software that were included with early Macintosh system software[citation needed]. As part of the related business negotiations, Microsoft had licensed certain aspects of the Macintosh user interface from Apple; in later litigation, a district court summarized these aspects as "screen displays". In the development of Windows 1.0, Microsoft intentionally limited its borrowing of certain GUI elements from the Macintosh user interface, in order to comply with its license. Microsoft Windows version 2 came out on 9 December 1987, and proved slightly more popular than its predecessor. Much of the popularity for Windows 2.0 came by way of its inclusion as a "run-time version" with Microsoft's new graphical applications, Excel and Word for Windows. They could be run from MS-DOS, executing Windows for the duration of their activity, and closing down Windows upon exit. Microsoft Windows received a major boost around this time when Aldus PageMaker appeared in a Windows version, having previously run only on Macintosh. Some computer historians[who?] date this, the first appearance of a significant and non-Microsoft application for Windows, as the beginning of the success of Windows. Versions 2.0x used the real-mode memory model, which confined it to a maximum of 1 megabyte of memory. In such a configuration, it could run under another multitasker like DESQview, which used the 286 Protected Mode. Later, two new versions were released: Windows/286 2.1 and Windows/386 2.1. Like previous versions of Windows, Windows/286 2.1 used the real-mode memory model, but was the first version to support the High Memory Area. Windows/386 2.1 had a protected mode kernel with LIM-standard EMS emulation, the predecessor to XMS which would finally change the topology of IBM PC computing. All Windows and DOS-based applications at the time were real mode, running over the protected mode kernel by using the virtual 8086 mode, which was new with the 80386 processor. Version 2.03, and later 3.0, faced challenges from Apple over its overlapping windows and other features Apple charged mimicked the ostensibly copyrighted "look and feel" of its operating system and "embodie[d] and generated a copy of the Macintosh" in its OS. Judge William Schwarzer dropped all but 10 of Apple's 189 claims of copyright infringement, and ruled that most of the remaining 10 were over uncopyrightable ideas. Success with Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0's user interface was finally a serious competitor to the user interface of the Macintosh computer. PCs had improved graphics by this time, due to VGA video cards, and the Protected/Enhanced mode allowed Windows applications to use more memory in a more painless manner than their DOS counterparts could. Windows 3.0 could run in Real, Standard, or 386 Enhanced modes, and was compatible with any Intel processor from the 8086/8088 up to the 80286 and 80386. This was the first version to run Windows programs in protected mode, although the 386 enhanced mode kernel was an enhanced version of the protected mode kernel in Windows/386. A "multimedia" version, Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions 1.0, was released several months later. This was bundled with "multimedia upgrade kits", comprising a CD-ROM drive and a sound card, such as the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro. This version was the precursor to the multimedia features available in Windows 3.1 and later, and was part of Microsoft's specification for the Multimedia PC. The features listed above and growing market support from application software developers made Windows 3.0 wildly successful, selling around 10 million copies in the two years before the release of version 3.1. Windows 3.0 became a major source of income for Microsoft, and led the company to revise some of its earlier plans. It was discontinued on 31 December 2001.[1] A step sideways: OS/2 A GUI, called the Presentation Manager (PM), was not available with OS/2 until version 1.1, released in 1988. Its API was incompatible with Windows. (Among other things, Presentation Manager placed X,Y coordinate 0,0 at the bottom left of the screen like Cartesian coordinates, while Windows put 0,0 at the top left of the screen like most other computer window systems.) Version 1.2, released in 1989, introduced a new file system, HPFS, to replace the FAT file system. By the early 1990s, conflicts developed in the Microsoft/IBM relationship. They cooperated with each other in developing their PC operating systems, and had access to each others' code. Microsoft wanted to further develop Windows, while IBM desired for future work to be based on OS/2. In an attempt to resolve this tension, IBM and Microsoft agreed that IBM would develop OS/2 2.0, to replace OS/2 1.3 and Windows 3.0, while Microsoft would develop a new operating system, OS/2 3.0, to later succeed OS/2 2.0. This agreement soon however fell apart, and the Microsoft/IBM relationship was terminated. IBM continued to develop OS/2, while Microsoft changed the name of its (as yet unreleased) OS/2 3.0 to Windows NT. Both retained the rights to use OS/2 and Windows technology developed up to the termination of the agreement; Windows NT, however, was to be written anew, mostly independently (see below). After an interim 1.3 version to fix up many remaining problems with the 1.x series, IBM released OS/2 version 2.0 in 1992. This was a major improvement: it featured a new, object-oriented GUI, the Workplace Shell (WPS), that included a desktop and was considered by many to be OS/2's best feature. Microsoft would later imitate much of it in Windows 95. Version 2.0 also provided a full 32-bit API, offered smooth multitasking and could take advantage of the 4 gigabytes of address space provided by the Intel 80386. Still, much of the system had 16-bit code internally which required, among other things, device drivers to be 16-bit code as well. This was one of the reasons for the chronic shortage of OS/2 drivers for the latest devices. Version 2.0 could also run DOS and Windows 3.0 programs, since IBM had retained the right to use the DOS and Windows code as a result of the breakup. Windows 3.1 and NT All these versions continued version 3.0's impressive sales pace. Even though the 3.1x series still lacked most of the important features of OS/2, such as long file names, a desktop, or protection of the system against misbehaving applications, Microsoft quickly took over the OS and GUI markets for the IBM PC. The Windows API became the de-facto standard for consumer software. Meanwhile Microsoft continued to develop Windows NT. The main architect of the system was Dave Cutler, one of the chief architects of VMS at Digital Equipment Corporation (later purchased by Compaq, now part of Hewlett-Packard).[2] Microsoft hired him in August 1988 to create a successor to OS/2, but Cutler created a completely new system instead. Cutler had been developing a follow-on to VMS at DEC called Mica, and when DEC dropped the project he brought the expertise and around 20 engineers with him to Microsoft. DEC also believed he brought Mica's code to Microsoft and sued.[3] Microsoft eventually paid US$150 million and agreed to support DEC's Alpha CPU chip in NT. Windows NT 3.1 (Microsoft marketing wanted Windows NT to appear to be a continuation of Windows 3.1) arrived in Beta form to developers at the July 1992 Professional Developers Conference in San Francisco.[4] Microsoft announced at the conference its intentions to develop a successor to both Windows NT and Windows 3.1's replacement (Windows 95, codenamed Chicago), which would unify the two into one operating system. This successor was codenamed Cairo. In hindsight, Cairo was a much more difficult project than Microsoft had anticipated and, as a result, NT and Chicago would not be unified until Windows XP—albeit Windows 2000, oriented to business, had already unified most of the system’s bolts and gears, it was XP that was sold to home consumers like Windows 95 and came to be viewed as the final unified OS. Parts of Cairo have still not made it into Windows as of 2009 - specifically, the WinFS file system, which was the much touted Object File System of Cairo. Microsoft announced that they have discontinued the separate release of WinFS for Windows XP and Windows Vista[5] and will gradually incorporate the technologies developed for WinFS in other products and technologies, notably Microsoft SQL Server. Driver support was lacking due to the increased programming difficulty in dealing with NT's superior hardware abstraction model. This problem plagued the NT line all the way through Windows 2000. Programmers complained that it was too hard to write drivers for NT, and hardware developers were not going to go through the trouble of developing drivers for a small segment of the market. Additionally, although allowing for good performance and fuller exploitation of system resources, it was also resource-intensive on limited hardware, and thus was only suitable for larger, more expensive machines. However, these same features made Windows NT perfect for the LAN server market (which in 1993 was experiencing a rapid boom, as office networking was becoming common). NT also had advanced network connectivity options and the efficient NTFS file system. Windows NT version 3.51 was Microsoft's entry into this field, and took away market share from Novell (the dominant player) in the following years. One of Microsoft's biggest advances initially developed for Windows NT was a new 32-bit API, to replace the legacy 16-bit Windows API. This API was called Win32, and from then on Microsoft referred to the older 16-bit API as Win16. The Win32 API had three main implementations: one for Windows NT, one for Win32s (which was a subset of Win32 which could be used on Windows 3.1 systems), and one for Chicago. Thus Microsoft sought to ensure some degree of compatibility between the Chicago design and Windows NT, even though the two systems had radically different internal architectures. Windows NT was the first Windows operating system based on a hybrid kernel. Windows 95 Microsoft did not change all of the Windows code to 32-bit; parts of it remained 16-bit (albeit not directly using real mode) for reasons of compatibility, performance, and development time. Additionally it was necessary to carry over design decisions from earlier versions of Windows for reasons of backwards compatibility, even if these design decisions no longer matched a more modern computing environment. These factors eventually began to impact the operating system's efficiency and stability. Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the product name for Chicago when it was released on August 24, 1995. Microsoft had a double gain from its release: first, it made it impossible for consumers to run Windows 95 on a cheaper, non-Microsoft DOS; secondly, although traces of DOS were never completely removed from the system and a version of DOS would be loaded briefly as a part of the booting process, Windows 95 applications ran solely in 386 Enhanced Mode, with a flat 32-bit address space and virtual memory. These features make it possible for Win32 applications to address up to 2 gigabytes of virtual RAM (with another 2GB reserved for the operating system), and in theory prevented them from inadvertently corrupting the memory space of other Win32 applications. In this respect the functionality of Windows 95 moved closer to Windows NT, although Windows 95/98/ME did not support more than 512 megabytes of physical RAM without obscure system tweaks. IBM continued to market OS/2, producing later versions in OS/2 3.0 and 4.0 (also called Warp). Responding to complaints about OS/2 2.0's high demands on computer hardware, version 3.0 was significantly optimized both for speed and size. Before Windows 95 was released, OS/2 Warp 3.0 was even shipped preinstalled with several large German hardware vendor chains. However, with the release of Windows 95, OS/2 began to lose market share. It is probably impossible to choose one specific reason why OS/2 failed to gain much market share. While OS/2 continued to run Windows 3.1 applications, it lacked support for anything but the Win32s subset of Win32 API (see above). Unlike with Windows 3.1, IBM did not have access to the source code for Windows 95 and was unwilling to commit the time and resources to emulate the moving target of the Win32 API. IBM later introduced OS/2 into the United States v. Microsoft case, blaming unfair marketing tactics on Microsoft's part. Microsoft went on to release five different versions of Windows 95: - Windows 95 - original release - Windows 95 A - included Windows 95 OSR1 slipstreamed into the installation. - Windows 95 B - (OSR2) included several major enhancements, Internet Explorer (IE) 3.0 and full FAT32 file system support. - Windows 95 B USB - (OSR2.1) included basic USB support. - Windows 95 C - (OSR2.5) included all the above features, plus IE 4.0. This was the last 95 version produced. The first Microsoft Plus! add-on pack was sold for Windows 95. Windows NT 4.0 Just before Windows NT 4.0, real MS-DOS disappeared, and have been replaced by a window "Command Prompt" in Windows® Windows NT 4.0 came in four versions: - Windows NT 4.0 Workstation - Windows NT 4.0 Server - Windows NT 4.0 Server, Enterprise Edition (includes support for 8-way SMP and clustering) - Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Windows 98 In 1999, Microsoft released Windows 98 Second Edition, an interim release. One of the more notable new features was the addition of Internet Connection Sharing, which was a form of network address translation, allowing several machines on a LAN (Local Area Network) to share a single Internet connection. Second Edition was also much easier to use and much smoother than the first edition of Windows 98. Hardware support through device drivers was increased. Many minor problems present in the original Windows 98 were found and fixed which make it, according to many, the most stable release of Windows 9x family—to the extent that commentators used to say that Windows 98's beta version was more stable than Windows 95's final (gamma) version.[6] [edit] Windows 2000 While Windows 2000 upgrades were available for Windows 95 and Windows 98, it was not intended for home users.[7] Windows 2000 was available in six editions: - Windows 2000 Professional - Windows 2000 Server - Windows 2000 Advanced Server - Windows 2000 Datacenter Server - Windows 2000 Advanced Server Limited Edition - Windows 2000 Datacenter Server Limited Edition Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Windows Me was conceived as a quick one-year project that served as a stopgap release between Windows 98 and Windows XP. Many of the new features were available from the Windows Update site as updates for older Windows versions, (System Restore and Windows Movie Maker were exceptions). Windows Me was criticised for stability issues, and for lacking real mode DOS support, to the point of being referred to as the "Mistake Edition" or "Many Errors." Windows Me was the last operating system to be based on the Windows 9x (monolithic) kernel and MS-DOS.\ Windows XP Windows XP is available in a number of versions: - Windows XP Home Edition, for home desktops and laptops - lacked features such as joining Active Directory Domain, Remote Desktop Server and Internet Information Services Server. - Windows XP Home Edition N, as above, but without a default installation of Windows Media Player, as mandated by a European Union ruling - Windows XP Professional, for business and power users contained all features in Home Edition. - Windows XP Professional N, as above, but without a default installation of Windows Media Player, as mandated by a European Union ruling - Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE), released in October 2002 for desktops and notebooks with an emphasis on home entertainment. Contained all features offered in Windows XP Professional and the Windows Media Center. Subsequent versions are the same but have an updated Windows Media Center. - Windows XP Media Center Edition 2003 - Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 - Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, released on October 12, 2004. Included Windows XP Service Pack 2, the Royalle Windows Theme and joining a Windows Active Directory Domain is disabled. - Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, for tablet PCs - Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 - Windows XP Embedded, for embedded systems - Windows XP Starter Edition, for new computer users in developing countries - Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, released on 25 April 2005 for home and workstation systems utilizing 64-bit processors based on the x86-64 instruction set developed by AMD as AMD64; Intel calls their version Intel 64 - Windows XP 64-bit Edition, is a version for Intel's Itanium line of processors; maintains 32-bit compatibility solely through a software emulator. It is roughly analogous to Windows XP Professional in features. It was discontinued in September 2005 when the last vendor of Itanium workstations stopped shipping Itanium systems marketed as "Workstations". - Windows XP 64-bit Edition 2003, based on the Windows NT 5.2 codebase. Windows Server 2003 December 2005, Microsoft released Windows Server 2003 R2, which is actually Windows Server 2003 with SP1 (Service Pack 1) plus an add-on package. Among the new features are a number of management features for branch offices, file serving, printing and company-wide identity integration. Windows Server 2003 is available in six editions: - Web Edition (32-bit) - Standard Edition (32 and 64-bit) - Enterprise Edition (32 and 64-bit) - Datacenter Edition (32 and 64-bit) - Small Business Server (32-bit) - Storage Server (OEM channel only) Thin client: Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs [edit] Windows Home Server Windows Vista Windows Vista ships in six editions:[9] - Starter (only available in developing countries) - Home Basic - Home Premium - Business - Enterprise (only available to large businesses and enterprises) - Ultimate (combines both Home Premium and Enterprise) Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 ships in ten editions: - Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition (32-bit and 64-bit) - Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (32-bit and 64-bit) - Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (32-bit and 64-bit) - Windows HPC Server 2008 - Windows Web Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) - Windows Storage Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) - Windows Small Business Server 2008 (64-bit only) - Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) - Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems - Windows Server 2008 Foundation Server Windows 7 Some features of Windows 7 are faster booting, Device Stage, Windows PowerShell, Media Center in all main versions, less obtrusive User Account Control, multi-touch, and improved window management. Features included with Windows Vista and not in Windows 7 include the sidebar (although gadgets remain) and several programs that were removed in favor of downloading their Windows Live counterparts. Windows 7 ships in six editions:[12] - Starter (available worldwide with new PCs only) - Home Basic - Home Premium - Professional - Enterprise (available to volume-license business customers only) - Ultimate (available to retail market with limited availability to OEMs)