The future of Windows - Windows Watcher - Column

Home Office Computing, May, 1992 by Kay Yarborough Nelson

Windows and its sister graphical user interfaces are opening the world of personal computing to everybody. In the old days, we had to learn each program from scratch, and they all worked in different ways. But with Microsoft Windows, GeoWorks, DeskMate, and the Apple Macintosh, and their consistent user interfaces, once you learn one type of program, such as a word processor or a spreadsheet, you have a pretty good idea about what's in the next one, at least at the basic level. This is truer for Macintosh software than for Windows, but Windows is getting there.

Systems of the future. Windows is one of the best-selling software packages of all time, and it doesn't seem to have much competition, at least not yet. What about IBM's OS/2? IBM says it "does Windows better than Windows." Well, OS/2 may yet have a second coming, but IBM just didn't seem to market it right the first time out of the gate.

Industry watchers predict that the 32-bit version of Windows, called Windows NT (expected late this year), will be the operating system of the nineties. Windows NT is being created entirely from scratch and will possess greatly extended capabilities. We can expect changes in DOS, too. Only vague rumors are surfacing about a DOS 6, but it's obvious that DOS is already pushed to its limits. In fact, some industry watchers are predicting a DOS/Windows combination next year.

New features now. In the meantime, we have Windows 3.1, a smoother, faster, and more amiable version of Windows 3.0. What can you expect until the next generation of system software comes along and knocks your socks off? First, you can expect to see much more of OLE--object linking and embedding. This means that a word-processing document can hold spreadsheet data, for example, and you edit the spreadsheet data just as if you were in the spreadsheet program (which in fact, you are).

Also expect to be able to customize applications to your liking. More and more Windows programs come with macro capability, and Microsoft is putting macro language into all its Windows programs. You'll be able to execute complex tasks just by pointing and clicking, not only in one program but in all your favorite Windows applications.

One mad Apple. Sounds pretty rosy, doesn't it? But let's look at the other side of the coin. Remember the passing mention of the Macintosh at the beginning of this column? Well, Apple is asking for a court judgment to halt the sale of Windows and to "impound and destroy" all copies of Windows. It's likely that the battle over who gets to use the interface and how it will be used will be decided this year.

How did this happen? Here's a thumbnail history. (For its perspective I am indebted to Tim Bajarin writing in Computer Currents; although I was working at Xerox during some of the time in question, the employees are always the last to be aware of anything.)

Back in 1984 when the Mac made its debut, its revolutionary user interface was very close to that of the Star system that had been developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). For some reason, Xerox never patented its operating system, but Steve Jobs, after seeing how similar the Star system was to the one he and his cohorts had devised at Apple, copyrighted his. The next year, Microsoft applied to Apple for permission to use the Mac interface, and Apple agreed that they could use it in Windows 1.0.

But Windows has come a long way since version 1.0, and its look and feel have (some say) become more and more like the look and feel of the Macintosh. On the Mac, you double-click to open a document; in Windows, you double-click to close one. Is that the same look and feel? I won't try to guess; the courts will decide.

Microsoft, of course, doesn't want to have to pay hefty licensing fees to Apple. That's understandable. And it certainly doesn't want to have to change the basic features of Windows. Although a decision in Apple's favor would certainly keep all the programmers at the software companies employed for the next several years, such a decision would be a blow to us as users. Will the software we have stop being supported overnight? It's hard to believe that this worst-case scenario could happen. But a new player has joined one team: IBM. Apple has now licensed its Mac interface to Big Blue, so it's now entirely possible that the Mac desktop could become the new industry standard.

Our forecast looks fuzzy. What does all this mean for you and me? Will Windows wither and die as the legal battles continue? Bill Gates and the folks at Microsoft don't seem to think so, and they're going right ahead with Windows NT. But--there's always a but. Did any of you buy a Kodak instant camera? Polaroid won that one in the courts, and Kodak wound up giving its instant-camera customers "traditional" cameras. What will we get in place of Windows? VisiCalc?

Next column. Back to Windows tips.

KAY YARBOROUGH NELSON is the author of The Little Windows Book (Peachpit Press), The Little WordPerfect for Windows Book, from the same publisher, and more than 15 other computing books.