1985-2015: Windows 10 to Kick Off the Second 30-year Era of “Windows Everywhere”

Oct 2, 2014

Sogeti Labs

Silently steered by co-founder Bill Gates’s not that invisible hand, Mr. Satya Nadella’s New Microsoft this week leapfrogged from 8.1 directly to Windows 10. The barely hidden message: in 2015, after 30 years of Windows’ dominance, Microsoft is ready to enter another generational era of “Windows Everywhere.”

Many may have noticed this already: in the early 1990s Microsoft started to promote a single-API strategy, heralded by the phrase “Windows Everywhere.” “This strategy envisioned Windows as a scalable architecture that straddles a broad range of hardware platforms, from hand-held pen-based computers to powerful RISC-based multiprocessor servers,” Charles Petzold wrote November 1992 in PC Magazine.

Although times have changed, the mantra has remained the same. Back in April, Time’s Harry McCracken reported:

• Developers will be able to write Windows programs that work on PCs, tablets, phones and the Xbox One (with interfaces and features that adjust themselves to the platform they’re on as necessary);
• Microsoft’s various app stores will let consumers buy a program once, then run it on multiple Windows devices;
• The company will try to increase Windows’ market share in new categories by offering the operating system for free to manufacturers of phones, small tablets and Internet of Things gadgets;
• Windows will also power “Internet of Things” gizmos of all sorts, such as the giant piano Microsoft honcho Joe Belfiore hopped around on as if he were Tom Hanks in Big;
• Microsoft is working on putting Windows’ “Modern” interface into cars, via a system akin to Apple’s CarPlay.
• The company is also open-sourcing some of its technology that’s used for creating Windows applications with JavaScript, which might lead to other companies creating web apps that look like Windows apps.

Here we see Mr. William H. Gates III’s hand at work. He is not merely helping out at his company but steadily guiding and closely monitoring the “Windows Everywhere” strategy instead, taglined “One Experience. On Every Device. For Everything in Your Life.”

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