Microsoft is one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world. They have many different products in many different markets, ranging from Windows Phones, Microsoft Bob (though I’m sure Microsoft would prefer I forgot about that one), Xbox, Skype, and two products so ubiquitous there is a greater than 90% chance you’re using them right now: Windows and Microsoft Office.
Microsoft’s early days are almost unrecognizable compared to the fortune 100 company it is today. Many might be aware that Bill gates dropped out of Harvard to found the company. In the 70s Bill Gates and Paul Allen wanted to develop a form of BASIC for the Altair 8800. Most of their early products were just BASIC variants, and their first operating system [neither DOS nor Windows] wasn’t a big hit, though it’s notable for being the O/S that the first version of Word – the great great great… grandpa to the software used to type this document. 
DOS was the company’s first big hit, and in fact Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were considered gimmicky and demanding when they were still new. Windows 1.0 in fact had a requirement of 256kb of ram – 4x the amount it could even address as a 16-bit OS and a massive amount for 1985. Windows 3.0 – specifically the most famous revision 3.11 – was when Windows was finally considered a serious operating system.
The tech industry is (unsurprisingly) a very fast moving industry, with products that would easily still be viable in other industries being horribly outdated in tech. It isn’t uncommon to see your typical American with a classic car decades old or even a car that’s simply old from the early 2000s. I’d say to try using a computer that’s more than 10 years old, but I did. I used the same computer from 2001 to 2011 and I believe “hell” falls short of describing the experiences during the last few years – and I wouldn’t try grading all of these papers on a “classic” computer decades old like the Commodore 64.
Because of the industry’s speed, Microsoft has little choice but to keep up. Microsoft releases new versions of office every few years (in some cases with very little improvement) and new versions of Windows as well. Despite their claims of Windows 10 being the last version of Windows I would be genuinely amazed if there is not a “Windows 11” (they’ll likely try to call it something else) by 2021. Sometimes this change benefits Microsoft while other times it’s to their detriment – there was a time when the best phones were made by Microsoft, and there was also a time the Xbox brand was the joke of the gaming industry,
I could potentially write this entire paper and more besides on Microsoft or the tech industry simply because I’m well versed in these subjects and enjoy writing about them, but ultimately that’s not that this paper is about. I’m supposed to plan to audit Microsoft, not write a thesis on them or their industry. So, let’s get started.
