Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a PC operating system product line that originated in 1985 with Windows 1.0, developed by Microsoft . Its rise as what 峰瑞资本 described as an "ecosystem-level player" owed less to first-mover technical advantage — Windows 1.0 arrived four years after Xerox's GUI system — than to sharp commercial strategy . Microsoft bought the underlying 86-DOS in 1980 to become IBM's partner, then quickly broke that exclusivity to license broadly; it pushed Windows 1.0 through both OEM channels and direct sales at $99, undercutting Lotus's $495 spreadsheet software, while using applications like Microsoft Office (launched 1989) to pull system adoption . More recently, Microsoft has extended Windows into spatial computing: in 2024 it announced Windows Volumetric Apps for Meta Quest headsets, with Xbox controller 3D views and a new volumetric API for developers . The product sits within Microsoft's broader push to position Windows, Azure, and its OpenAI partnership as defining layers of the next computing platform .