By Oluwademilade Afolabi
Publication Date: 2026-08-24 20:00:00
Windows feels so welded to Microsoft today that the company’s operating system strategy in the late 1980s can seem almost bizarre in hindsight. Microsoft was pouring serious engineering effort into OS/2, a new platform it was building with IBM as the planned successor to DOS.
Windows, which Microsoft had already launched as Windows 1.0 in 1985, was still moving forward on the side, but it had not yet become the obvious center of Microsoft’s future. For a brief stretch, the next era of PC software seemed poised to arrive with IBM and Microsoft sharing the nameplate.
