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Which came first, Apple or Windows?

Which came first, Apple or Windows?
Apple
1976 — 9 years before Windows

Apple came first, by 9 years. Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne founded Apple Computer Company.

Side by side

Apple Windows
Year 1976 1985
Date 1976-04-01 1985-11-20
Category company technology
What happened Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne founded Apple Computer Company. Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0.

Apple

Apple was founded on 1 April 1976, a year and a day after Microsoft. Ronald Wayne, the third founder, sold his 10% stake back for $800 twelve days later. The Apple I was a bare circuit board sold for $666.66; the Apple II of 1977 was the machine that made the company.

Windows

Windows 1.0 shipped in November 1985, twenty-two months after the Macintosh, and it was not an operating system — it was a graphical shell running on top of MS-DOS, and remained so until Windows NT in 1993 and the consumer transition with Windows XP in 2001. Version 1.0 could not even overlap windows: they tiled, because Apple's legal position on overlapping windows was unresolved.

Common questions

Which came first, Apple or Windows?
Apple, by 9 years — 1976 against 1985.
When did Apple start?
1976. Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne founded Apple Computer Company.
When did Windows start?
1985. Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked