Before Windows3.0 came out, I obtained an evaluation copy from some friends at IBM. I was working for a company selling computers based initially on boards from a company called Peripheral Technologies. These systems used 68000 processors tied to an ISA bus and would run a variety of OS' (including Microware OS9).
We also had an NEC V20 based processor card called the ALT86 that could plug into these systems allowing them to run MS-DOS/Windows.
While crude, Windows 3.0 (cleaned up as revision 3.1) was the product that convinced me that other platforms (many with significant advantages over MS-DOS) were in trouble if Microsoft could make an interface that made their OS easy to use, like an appliance.
Which is pretty much what happens. Microsoft OS' powered computers went from being specialized devices that required a lot of learning, to being consumer devices.
Since then, a lot of the fun's gone out of computing.
