Microsoft recently held an event in Toronto to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Windows. It combined publicity for an upcoming release with Microsoft patting itself on the back. Well, if you can’t pat yourself on the back on an anniversary, when can you?
Talk of another decade of innovation and changing people’s lives seemed a bit much, though. Anyone who thinks Windows has changed his or her life either doesn’t have one or has made a lot of money working at Microsoft (or both). And if the past few years are any indication, the next decade is not going to be one of innovation unless you count largely incremental improvements.
The last really important release of Windows, at least from a business or professional user’s point of view, was Windows 2000. That was because it was the first version of Windows that was reasonably reliable.
Subsequent releases have incorporated some improvements, but nothing dramatic.
Windows isn’t alone in this. PC software in general is less exciting than it once was. When was the last really new software category? When did the design of the typical PC last change in a way most users would notice?
The Windows anniversary celebration featured a couple of displays of older hardware, dating back of course to 1985 when the first version of Windows appeared. Looking at the older ones, one could see a few significant changes in the hardware. Screens have become much bigger, and although none of the vintage laptops were turned on, if they had been it would have been easy to see the difference in readability. Remember those flat screens you had to squint at from just the right angle to read them at all? Come to think of it, maybe some of those machines were turned on, and I just couldn’t tell.
Drive technology has also changed — there was an early copy of Windows on 5-1/4-inch disks on display. But how much of this was in the last five years?
The real changes these days are in other areas, such as handheld devices, wireless networking and, of course, Internet Protocol.
At an event the day before Microsoft’s, the pace of change was much more evident. It was a Motorola showcase, focusing mainly on mobile phones. Phones that play music, phones that take pictures, phones you can watch TV on. Who wants this? Not me — I don’t watch TV on my TV, never mind my phone.
But there seems to be a market for it, about two generations beyond mine.
Functioning phones
Looking at these phones, acquiring more and more functions, and at PCs getting smaller and cheaper but otherwise not changing much, you have to wonder when the two will combine, resulting in a device as portable as a phone but with all the function of a PC.
The keyboard and screen size still seem like serious obstacles. But someone has wisely said that we usually overestimate how much things will change in the short term, and dramatically underestimate the amount of change in the longer term.
Look at the ubiquity of the Internet today compared to 10 years ago, or of cellphones compared to 15 years ago, and you see the truth of that statement. Maybe by Windows’ 30th anniversary today’s PCs will really be museum pieces.