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Microsoft and the GUI

 
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While Microsoft's Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS, had quickly established itself as the dominant operating system in the business world when introduced in 1981 (displacing an earlier standard, C/PM), Apple's Lisa soon made clear that the graphical user interface (GUI) was the OS of the future.

Microsoft's early attempts at adding a graphical desktop to run atop the line-command interface of DOS were clumsy. Windows versions 1 and 2 were slow, unstable and offered fewer features than the Mac, Amiga or Atari ST operating systems. In fact, early in its existence, Microsoft Windows faced serious competition from two other GUIs that could run on computers with MS-DOS: GEM and Geoworks.

 
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Copyright 2002 Computer Museum of America