Microsoft is celebrating a very special birthday, and you’re all invited. The Microsoft 50th Anniversary Copilot Event takes place tomorrow, and will see the Seattle tech giant unveil its latest AI developments – and, presumably, look back at its vast history.
In the lead-up to the event at 9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET / 5:30 PM BST on April 4, we’ll discuss all of our favorite Microsoft moments from the last 50 years and predict what Copilot upgrades we can expect to see.
Whether you’re a fan of Windows, Xbox, Copilot, or even the Zune (remember that?), you won’t want to miss this birthday bash.
Plus, we’ll have reporters on the ground in Seattle ready to cover all the breaking news as it happens, so stay tuned to TechRadar and bookmark this live blog to keep up with everything Microsoft 50th Anniversary and Copilot.
Good morning! John-Anthony Disotto, TechRadar’s Senior AI Writer here, ready to kickstart our coverage of the Microsoft 50th Anniversary Copilot event!
Stay tuned – because we’ve got a while until the event starts tomorrow (April 4), so we’ll have plenty time to talk about the best (and worst) Microsoft moments from the last half century.
And of course, we’ll also be speculating as to what we expect to see from Copilot, and bringing you any last-minute rumors on that front.
Let’s go over the basics first:
The Microsoft 50th Anniversary Copilot Event will be live-streamed on the company’s website on April 4 at 9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET / 5:30 PM BST.
We expect to see announcements related to Microsoft AI, but details are pretty scarce at the moment.
In the lead up to the event, we’ve asked the TechRadar team to discuss their favorite Microsoft memories from over the years.
Whether that’s the launch of Windows 95, Microsoft’s venture into games consoles in the early 2000s, or Windows Phone, we’ve got so much to reminisce about.
Let’s kickstart this time capsule 50 years ago, back in 1975.
It’s generally considered that Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, but Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s journey started in January of that year when the duo spotted the MITS Altair 8800 on the cover of Popular Electronics.
With their creative juices flowing, the duo launched BASIC in February 1975 as the first computer programming language for a PC and sold it to MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The pair then moved to Boston where Microsoft was co-founded as BASIC. By July 1975, BASIC v2 had officially shipped, and the journey had begun.
Microsoft’s first logo
In November 1967, Micro-Soft was registered as a trade name and we got our first glimpse at a Microsoft logo.
It’s definitely not as iconic as the colorful Windows logo we’ve all grown to know and love, but back in the 60s logos were more about practicality than style.
