And amusingly enough, part of that new UI is a tiled interface that directly hearkens back to its ancestor. You’re probably familiar with how you can drag windowed programs on top of one another so that they overlap, yes? That functionality was removed from Windows 1.0 by the time it shipped. Instead, applications would appear tiled, each one automatically resizing itself to fit the available space. Stories differ as to whether that was a conscious decision by Microsoft or whether a secret agreement with Apple caused them to remove overlapping windows, but the overlap returned in Windows 2.0 and sparked an Apple lawsuit along the way. And yet, Windows 8 brings back the tiled interface with Windows Snap, and not all apps are functional when resized to smaller proportions. No wonder the Windows logo is back to square one.

Windows 1.0 launched to optimistic but middling reviews, and didn’t end up fulfilling its promise to be an affordable, powerful OS. Popular Science liked the idea, but called it relatively slow, noting that “it takes up to 15 seconds to switch from one program to another.” Multitasking was a memory hog, too: “my 640-kilobyte computer couldn’t hold more than two medium-sized programs in memory at once,” complained the publication. Creative Computing worried about the dearth of compatible graphics cards, and was uncertain whether Windows was a valuable upgrade over DOS. InfoWorld led with the headline “Windows Requires Too Much Power” and gave it a 4.5 (out of 10) score. “It makes such intense demands on the computer’s processing power that it’s just not appropriate for an ordinary 8088-based IBM PC or compatible,” wrote the publication. And The New York Times said that “running Windows on a PC with 512K of memory is akin to pouring molasses in the Arctic.” It turned out that you really did need that extra memory and that expensive hard disk drive to run Windows at a reasonable pace, and some even suggested a RAM disk like Intel’s Above Board.

It took two more versions of Windows for the operating system to catch on.

We shouldn’t kid ourselves, though: in the 80s, the PC industry was a wild west, and those days are long gone. The issues that stymied Windows 1.0 when Microsoft was young won’t necessarily block today’s operating system from success, not when every major computer company is churning out compatible Windows 8 machines and the appeal of touchscreens has already been proven. In 1985, Windows 1.0 launched into a market about to boom, one that was just waiting for the right operating system to unify a host of different computer hardware. There were several competing platforms, and one of them could have stood up. But if Windows 8 fails, there will still be a huge number of computers waiting for the next version of the now-familiar operating system. Unless you believe that the PC itself will make way for mobile devices, of course.