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The date -- November 10, 1983 -- is etched in PC lore. The setting was the Plaza Hotel in New York City, a site Microsoft chose to announce the development and release of what would become the most-purchased software tool in the world.

The Windows operating system, the company claimed, would revolutionize computing. A graphical user interface (GUI) would allow PC users to use a mouse instead of DOS commands to compute. The result would be increased efficiency -- and the end of DOS.

The story of the events leading up to the release of Windows is rife with accusations of back-stabbing, betrayal, and bad business decisions. Two things we know for sure: First, the OS that would launch millions of PCs and go on to dominate the world got off to quite a precarious start. And second, it would be years before Microsoft actually removed DOS from the equation.

"No, Steve, I think it's more like we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set, and you found out I'd been there first, and you said, 'Hey, that's no fair! I wanted to steal the TV set!'" -- Bill Gates, responding to Steve Jobs' accusation that Microsoft stole Apple's GUI for Windows (source: apple-history.com)

Murky Beginnings
Not surprisingly, the record on who stole which ideas from whom is blurred beyond recognition. Did Microsoft leader Bill Gates steal such GUI concepts as drop-down menus, tiled windows, and mouse support from Apple's Steve Jobs? Or did both Jobs and Gates steal the ideas from someone else?

This much is clear: Both Jobs and Gates were influenced by Xerox' Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which had developed a computer named the Alto that featured a crude graphical interface. Jobs saw the Alto firsthand on a tour of PARC in 1979, and was extremely impressed, so much so that Apple wound up hiring several PARC engineers. (The Alto wasn't the first GUI. See Wikipedia for a more detailed examination of the history of the graphical user interface.)

By 1979, CPU power and display technology had increased to the point where it was feasible to move a GUI to a small personal computer. Apple was already in the process of building a computer with a GUI. However, it is undeniable that PARC had, at the very least, a strong conceptual influence on the Lisa (the company's first GUI-based system, launched in January 1983) and the Macintosh, launched in January 1984.

It's highly likely that Bill Gates had also learned of PARC's GUI interface. He certainly knew of and had seen what Jobs and Apple were up to -- the two leaders had intermittent contact, enough so that when Microsoft released Windows in 1985, Apple execs immediately accused the company of stealing proprietary ideas.

Rumor has it that Jobs even showed a working prototype of the Mac OS to Gates in 1981, and that Apple and Microsoft were partnering together to produce applications like Word and Excel for this new Mac operating system.