Microsoft optimized Windows 8's interface to work with touch-screen devices and displays. Windows 8 bridges the gap between PC and mobile operating systems. It introduces a new interface and supports features that cater to a world that's moving toward touch-screen devices.
Windows 8 marks a dramatic departure from earlier versions of the OS. Others, like Windows Vista, suffered criticism when early problems popped up and never managed to fully recover. Some versions of Windows - like Windows XP - became popular for far longer than most OS editions. Over the following decades, Microsoft refined the Windows operating system and secured itself a dominant position in the personal computer OS market, particularly in corporate settings. The goal was to make the operating system so easy that anyone could get the hang of it with a minimum of fuss.
You can click on an icon and see a graphic representation of where all your programs are instead of typing strings of commands to switch directories. A GUI represents file structures, programs and even commands with images instead of text. Then, in 1983, Microsoft announced it was developing a graphical user interface (GUI) for its operating system.
