Few people understand Microsoft better than Tandy Trower, who worked at the company from 1981-2009. Trower was the product manager who ultimately shipped Windows 1.0, an endeavor that some advised him was a path toward a ruined career. Four product managers had already tried and failed to ship Windows before him, and he initially thought that he was being assigned an impossible task. In this follow-up to yesterday’s story on the future of Windows, Trower recounts the inside story of his experience in transforming Windows from vaporware into a product that has left an unmistakable imprint on the world, 25 years after it was first released.
Thanks to GUIdebook for letting us borrow many of the Windows images in this story.
–David Worthington

Microsoft staffers talk MS-DOS 2.0 with the editors of PC World in late 1982 or early 1983. Windows 1.0 wouldn’t ship for almost another two years. From left: Microsoft’s Chris Larson, PC World’s Steve Cook, Bill Gates, Tandy Trower, and founding PC World editor Andrew Fluegelman.
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Yesterday I paid a long-overdue visit to one of the Bay Area’s most amazing geek destinations–the Weird Stuff Warehouse, which salvages the hardware and software that Silicon Valley has lost interest in. The place has been in business for a quarter century and throngs of shoppers were roaming the aisles during my expedition. And it was bursting at the seams with shrinkwrapped software for defunct platforms, obsolete gadgets, components and cables of every imaginable type, and much, much more.
You saved and you saved until you could finally buy that shiny new $1000 gadget that promised you everything under the stars. When it came time to plug it in, you found your joy being subsumed by abject horror. Your stomach plunged deep into your gut and you (yes, mortal non-designer you) recognized a fundamental flaw in your flashy gizmo so obvious that it made you want to pick up the device and smash it over the designer’s head.
I spent a couple of my formative years as a tech journalist working at
“Insanity,” novelist Rita Mae Brown wrote, “is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” By that standard, the long history of tablet computers doesn’t quite count as insanity–manufacturers have tried a variety of form factors and features over the years. But the results are the same, over and over again: failure. It’s the classic example of a gadget that the industry keeps coming back to and reintroducing with all the hype it can muster–and which consumers keep rejecting.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” So
The tech press covers Apple like it does no other company. And one oddball, ongoing example of Apple exceptionalism is the fact that even its invitations to product launches are treated as major news. They’re also analyzed as if the minimalist words and imagery they contain will reveal precisely what Apple will announce, if only we can crack the code.
The world is
Quick, what’s the most admired technology brand? Maybe you answered Apple. Or Google. Or maybe even Microsoft. I’m reasonably certain, however, that none of the brands you’re about to read about sprung to mind. They’re all damaged goods–severely damaged goods in most cases.
If ever a decade began dumb, it was this one.* When clocks struck midnight on January 1st and the dreaded Y2K bug turned out to be nothing but a mild irritant, it proved once again that the experts often don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.






By Tandy Trower | Posted at 11:41 pm on Monday, March 8, 2010
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