Today, 20th November 2015, marks the 30th anniversary of Microsoft’s biggest achievement, Windows. Launched back in 1985, the OS bares only small resemblance to its modest early days, with such features as dialog boxes, scroll bars, and icons. Even more remarkable are some of the applications that came standard with the first edition, such as MS Paint and Notepad. Windows was a big jump in the computer era, switching from the command-prompt MS-DOS, to the GUI. We take a look back through the history of the GUI, and how it has transformed over time.