Windows 2.0 Released

December 9, 1987

Microsoft releases version 2.0 of Windows. The most notable feature of Windows 2.0 was that application windows could overlap each other, unlike in Windows 1.0. The terminology of “Minimize” and “Maximize” was also introduced in Windows 2.0.

Windows 2.0 was a relatively obscure operating system, as the popularity of Windows did not really take off until version 3 in the 1990’s. Interestingly, Microsoft officially supported Windows 2.0 until December 31, 2001, a span of 14 years.

All that being said, Windows 2.0 is probably more important in computer history for being the version of Windows that prompted Apple’s famous lawsuit against Microsoft for copyright infringement of the Macintosh operating system.