I remember this. Solitaire! Cards go BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE!
Windows 3 was about more than Solitaire, but then it needed to be. Windows 1 didn’t even have overlapping windows, and v2 felt clunky compared to what Apple was shipping at the time. But with its fancy File Manager and Program Manager, swanky sculpted buttons and standardised menus, Windows 3 was, well, at least less clunky. And it did have Solitaire, even if that was mostly included to force people to start using a mouse and to pretend computers were for normal people.
So it was very much a case of third time lucky(ish), then?
Yes, in the sense that PC users were dragged into the world of graphical desktop computing… and found they liked it. Four million copies flew off the shelves in a year, burying MS-DOS six feet under. Which isn’t to say Windows 3 was perfect. It had lurid colour palettes (even more so when Windows 3.1 arrived with its yellow and red ‘hotdog stand’ theme), and imagine how it felt when you deleted a folder and Windows 3 had you individually confirm you wanted rid of every single file.
I don’t care about that. I just want to play Solitaire forever!
Too bad, because Microsoft yanked it (along with the Start menu and any interest in UI consistency) from Windows 8, and instead urged you to download the ad-infested Microsoft Solitaire Collection. Still, today you can easily find and run Windows 3 in a browser. Just be mindful that Solitaire is clunkier than you might recall – much like Windows 3.0 itself. But the OS did its job, relegating other systems to also-rans… from which a true challenger would not emerge for a decade.
