Like fine wine it takes time....I've been a beta tester all along and there are hints of greatness but I still rely on XP....
Barrington
· 3 years ago
Please , please , please stop dropping WWDC hints - its hard enough for a poor Macolyte (like myself) waiting for Mr Jobs keynote without a respected journalist implying all manner of Leopard virtualisation and media centre goodness!
Jared Smith
· 3 years ago
When a entire team fails on a NFL Team it's the coach that gets the blame. With Office and Vista the flagship products of Microsoft continually being pushed back there is no one else to blame but management, regardless of poor performance by the employees. - Too many sports analogy's
blegh
· 3 years ago
"Customers" don't want spyware or viruses but Microsoft doesn't care enough to actually usher in policies that make spyware impossible in the first place, eliminating the need for constant security updates.
I don't give a shit what "customers" want (they certainly don't care what I want); I care about what _I_ want, and I want a decent text editor (better than Notepad) that can handle Unix linebreaks and Unicode; I want development and scripting tools bundled in; I want a command line that doesn't suck; I want a web browser that's extensible and that has excellent support for standards; I want an operating system that does not assume I pirated it until I can prove, repeatedly, otherwise. I do not want my web browser to be neglected for years just because Microsoft incorrectly determines it doesn't need to be updated and I do not want to be placed in double jeopardy every time I reinstall or make a major upgrade to my computer.
And what the hell is so bad about thinking like an engineer? Great engineering is why people like BMW.
John C. Welch
· 3 years ago
John: “When things are working correctly, STFU already. If I have all the drivers to make my USB device work, I don’t need to know that.”
John, have you ever worked on the customer support lines for Windows? Sorry, many users are NOT like you. I agree with you, by the way, but if I designed an OS for myself it’d have 10% marketshare. Or worse.
Robert, I've done user support for:
Windows from 3.1 to XP OS/2 from 2.1 to 3.0 Every version of the Mac OS AS/400 green screens Solaris 7-9, just learning 10 Irix 5.x and 6.x AIX 4.x Too many Linux distros.
In:
Small companies, 26- 100 employees medium companies, 100-600 employees Large companies, thousands of employees
So I'll HAPPILY put MY direct user support experience up against YOURS any day you care to play.
The biggest complaint(s) I got about Windows, starting with 95 was: "Why the HELL does it need to continutally bother me? Aren't things SUPPOSED to work right? What is this, a dog wanting a treat for obeying a command? Why do I need to know that my network is up, I'm sending email, DUH. Why do I need 234523523 popups a day. I get more popups from Windows than from Web sites. Why is Windows using a "porn storm" as a notification model?
Ran the gamut of users. Positive notification is dumb. Period. The sheer number of windows' notification dialogs, bubbles, and wizards is stupid. Do I REALLY need to see a blow by blow of a successful driver install? No. Just fire up the damned driver and let me work.
Ahsan
· 3 years ago
I guess a more incremental release towards Vista would have been much better. So XP++ including a better search experience for consumers as well as business. Next internet explorer 7. Then another release with better graphics engine. Parallel release of server with Indigo and all Enterprise stuff. An evolutionary approach would have given the customers much more confidence with different technologies instead of just blasting all these things in their faces and then telling them to wait until sp1 to upgrade.
John C. Welch
· 3 years ago
Barrington, Robert habitually does this. It's his way of "keeping a secret". If you imagine a little kid running around going "I know something you don't know and I'm not going to teeeeeeeeeel" while sticking his tongue out, that's Robert with a secret.
Robert, no one cares who or what you know that you can't tell. Stop letting your feelings of technical genital inadequacy get the better of you.
Deepak
· 3 years ago
I am a marketer and to be honest I think "more features" is an engineering mindset (having been on that end as well). Vista should focus on the correct features, not making it everything for everyone, cause that only fulfils the law of diminishing returns.
I am a Linux user, but the great thing about OSX was that Apple basically tossed out their existing OS model and built something completely new. Vista should not be an upgrade on XP, but something completely and not just a clone of OSX either. The OS world could have used a shot in the arm, which I don't think Vista is going to be. I could be (hope to be) wrong, since I do use windows, but I signs suggest otherwise.
Cody
· 3 years ago
Getting rid of bloat in the OS does mean you have to get rid of all the features. Sure, you might have to cut a feature or two from it, but what I mean is to re-work the code and strip away everything that makes it bloated. Why should feature X use 75% CPU power and 40% of RAM when it can use much less?
And about system resources, my BSD machine is currenly using 8MB of the available 192MB of RAM. My BSD box can do anything and everything Windows can do. Now tell me again why I need 1GB of RAM to use Vista properly.
You know, you can keep this up all day, but the people that know their shit are going to keep blasting Vista for good reason. It sucks.
Alijah Green
· 3 years ago
THE AVERGE PERSON DOESN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM FROM MICROSOFT THEIR HAS NOT BEEN ANY MARKETING YET, SO IF YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT HOW WOULD THEY (AVERGE CONSUMER) REMEMBER A SLIP ANYWAY. MORE SUPPORT FROM THE GEEKS OUT THERE. YOU GUYS REMIND ME OF A BUNCH OF B____!!. THANK GOD SCOBLE STILL CARES.
I'd tell you more if Apple didn't demonstrate it is willing to sue bloggers to find out how they found out that secret information. Apple enjoys this anyway. It's hype. It'll get you to watch the news stream coming from the WWDC.
Jared: >When a entire team fails on a NFL Team it’s the coach that gets the blame.
Yup, I understand that and there is lots of blame coming to the coaches too. But I'd rather fight the mob tendencies. Even where the coach gets blamed, the team shares some of the blame too. And, what happens when the new coach comes in? A house cleaning, usually.
>And what the hell is so bad about thinking like an engineer? Great engineering is why people like BMW.
Absolutely wrong. The fact that you think that way is because of the great marketing. But if you let a car engineer have his or her way without thinking about the customer every car would end up like a Ferrari or a Porsche. Funny joke: "what do you get when you ask Porsche customers what they want? Answer: a Volvo."
John: "Robert, I’ve done user support for:"
Really? You worked at Microsoft on the support lines? I was talking about that. Microsoft is a business. If someone calls the support line they lose money. So, they put lots of annoying things in their products to reduce the numbers of phone calls. Note: I hate them too. But each dialog was put there for a reason with lots of thought.
Ahsan: Bill Gates now agrees with you. The reason Longhorn was redone was he put too many features in that were built on too many undone technologies. Boiling the ocean as a software development approach doesn't work at the scale Microsoft was trying to do it.
Deepak: "I am a Linux user, but the great thing about OSX was that Apple basically tossed out their existing OS model and built something completely new. "
Yeah, and Apple really pissed off its existing customer base who had to wait years to get QuarkXpress done.
And what did it take to get Apple to that point? A falling marketshare that was headed into obscurity. You do remember the "Pray" headline on BusinessWeek's covers to Apple faithful, right? Microsoft isn't being pushed into such desperate measures. To do what Apple did would kill Microsoft. I'd short it big time. Why? Cause Microsoft has a healthy customer base (its sales and profits are continuing to go up, even with the attack of Linux and Apple stuff).
Rewriting the OS would be a disaster. Why? Cause the C and Assembler bit heads who built Windows don't work at Microsoft anymore. What, you want your OS to be rewritten in .NET? Yeah, that'll really be performant.
Andrew Fife
· 3 years ago
Why do you have to "attack" anyone? I believe that one can be critical without attacking. Using the word "attack" to describe your criticism puts people on the defensive, which is counter productive if your goal is to engage them in debate.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Andrew: when a journalist does shoddy journalism someone needs to point that out. I don't want to debate such a person. I want them to be professional.
Blegh: “Customers” don’t want spyware or viruses but Microsoft doesn’t care enough to actually usher in policies that make spyware impossible in the first place, eliminating the need for constant security updates.
That's the problem. Not a single customer was asking about those things in the 1980s. They didn't even know that spyware and viruses were possible. And the engineers didn't design their software for those uses.
By the way, Windows Vista makes spyware a lot lot lot harder. I won't say impossible, because there aren't absolutes in the security industry, but it's a HUGE step up and one that I can't wait for.
blegh
· 3 years ago
haha, someone took a crap in scoble's cheerios today. good luck being an aggro pissant, dude. later.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Blegh: thank you for agreeing that you weren't right. :-)
Jared Smith
· 3 years ago
Scoble - Anyone who says they can accurately predict when software will be ready is a liar. If you expect accurate ship dates in the software industry you’ll constantly go unsatisfied.
Alijah - THE AVERGE PERSON DOESN’T EVEN KNOW ABOUT A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM FROM MICROSOFT THEIR HAS NOT BEEN ANY MARKETING YET, SO IF YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT HOW WOULD THEY (AVERGE CONSUMER) REMEMBER A SLIP ANYWAY. MORE SUPPORT FROM THE GEEKS OUT THERE. YOU GUYS REMIND ME OF A BUNCH OF B____!!. THANK GOD SCOBLE STILL CARES.
These comments make me think you guys think Vista is 6 months late or even a year late. Vista is LATE!!! I can understand software can be late but this is getting ridiculous
Deepak
· 3 years ago
Robert, but the proof of the pudding lies in the eating, doesn't it. One has to have confidence in the product. If Apple had continued down the path with OS9 etc, then they really would be a purely iPod company. Yes there were people who were mad (I know some of them). The reason so many people are using powerbooks today (apart from the cool factor) is the OS. With the switch to intel, they took another risk (I am not sure its going to pan out, but that's another thread). Microsoft has to take calculated risks (I admit its too late for Vista at this point). If it continues along its current path, as the OS becomes less of a focal point, the user experience will become critical. A few years ago, who would have thought that a number of people at leading biotech or software companies (just to use Google as an example) would be using a Mac at work.
The point is that by taking risks Apple has resurrected itself from the mess it was in around 10 years ago. Microsoft should not rest on the safety net of its market share. Consumers are hoping to see some risk taking and something fresh.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Deepak: I agree with you, and so does Bill Gates and others. The problem is that they bit off too much at the beginning of Vista. Even today the app compat story is gonna be pretty bad because they turned off administrator as default (for security reasons, which is the right thing to do, but it'll break a lot of software out there that relied on having administrator permissions).
sam
· 3 years ago
Nerd patrol citation: The "Pray" cover was on Wired Magazine, not BusinessWeek.
You are seriously setting my expectations high for the WWDC with these hints. Most of the buzz I've heard has been about the iPhone, and since the latest iPod/iTunes update makes reference to a phone in hidden preference strings, it's a credible rumor.
But the way I read your latest hints, I'm anticipating something like a tablet.
Maybe they'll announce BOTH!
I wish I had a brother who worked at Apple.
Cody
· 3 years ago
There's nothing convincing about Windows Vista anyways. Ooohhh, so there's a Media Center, and *gasp* shitty Voice Recognition! Wow! Ugh.
It's always good to know your next OS is going to ship with shit you don't care about and use up all your resources for it. Thanks, Microsoft.
I love 100% CPU usage from my OS! *walks away in disgust*
Simo
· 3 years ago
Nothing like discussing a Windows ship date to get people's hackles up. Cody said, in the comments of a previous post, "Instead of putting in MORE bloat, they need to seriously re-work Windows." etc.I agree with Cody, but probably disagree with his definition of bloat. Bloat = "feature(s) you personaly don't use". I say, lose the backwards compatability for MSDOS6 applications, Win 1-3.11, Win9x, etc. I'm not planning on needing them in 2010 when Blackcomb might ship.
Brett Thomason
· 3 years ago
Common SCOBY, tell me what WWDC is all about!!!!
Farhan
· 3 years ago
Cody:
If your BSD box can do anything a Windows box can, then why don't you convince 90% of the market to convert? There are good reasons to use BSD and good reasons to use Windows.
Just because you consider yourself an elitist hacker, doesn't mean the world should go with your opinion.
Also, the reason why your BSD box is using such little memory is because it is not running a GUI shell. Try loading up Gnome 2.6.x and then look at the stats. Yes, Windows comes with Explorer pre-installed and tightly coupled, and then again, it is for good reason.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Cody: stop playing Halo 2. Oh, wait, you're on BSD and can't play.
And, as for Media Center? You know I'm gonna use your words against you when Apple announces such, right?
Cody
· 3 years ago
I don't play Halo anymore, and I've never played Halo 2. You just don't know what OpenBSD can do, and you mock it like all it can do is add numbers together. Which is sad.
Karim
· 3 years ago
BSD can subtract numbers too!
Francine Hardaway
· 3 years ago
Is this a blog or a high school class? I always read for the information, and when I have to sort through all the invective, it slows me down.
macbeach
· 3 years ago
"Rewriting the OS would be a disaster. Why? Cause the C and Assembler bit heads who built Windows don’t work at Microsoft anymore. What, you want your OS to be rewritten in .NET? Yeah, that’ll really be performant."
Huh? I thought the original plan was to write much of Vista in .net no? (yes, I know they blame some of the delay on failure to get this to work). But if they are not writing it in .net, and not writing it in C or assembler, then what? Perl? PHP? This is really news. You should make a headline out of it.
Todd Blanchard
· 3 years ago
TomB: “MSFT had a chance to re-work the OS and put it on top of a BSD or a LINUX kernel....”
Scoble: Sorry, throwing application compatibility out the window would be monumentally STUPID. Stop thinking like an engineer. Start thinking like a customer.
Actually, they could have tossed the proprietary underpinnings and KEPT application compatibility. Apple did it with Carbon. They open sourced the plumbing (darwin) and focused on the application api layer up, adding compatibility apis where necessary.
Maintaining the core OS can't be cheap, adds no end user value, and gratuitous incompatibility with Unix apis locks out lots of good open source stuff that Mac users are getting for free now. Better to leverage the open source goodness at the bottom and focus on the visible bits and app level apis.
It could have been done without loss of app compatibility for existing apps - but it requires the will to do it.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Todd: really? I heard howls from Apple users who had software that didn't work on OSX, and there is relatively little software that runs on OSX.
Changing the underpinings of Windows isn't something done lightly and probably won't happen unless Microsoft goes into deep financial pain which certainly isn't happening this year.
tom
· 3 years ago
I have a couple of addons to my xp like a burning program for .iso, 'launchy' as my application opener and document retrieval-er, filezilla for ftp and µtorrent for torrents. But if these applications were built in into windows, I'd use the windows applications.
So, stuff vista with all these things, add some better security, and it is sold to me. I do not care if it uses all my ram, as long as it works without problems. (i agree that the nagging should be less)
besides, if you are checking your ram usage, i do not think you are the average user...
Tim
· 3 years ago
"Actually, they could have tossed the proprietary underpinnings and KEPT application compatibility. Apple did it with Carbon."
And Microsoft did it with NT.
Cider
· 3 years ago
Vista is now what it always should have been - an evolutionary step up from XP, as opposed to a revolutionary one. Much of the best stuff in Vista are things that are steps up from XP - some small such as the new audio stack and tablet functionality baked in, some massive, such as the security and IE 7. Indeed, virtually no one mentions and no one sees some of the best steps forwards such as WIM and the new network stack.
Overall, I'm starting to really like it, but think it is still 3-4 months from Gold. Scoble is right on one thing: most don't care about the lateness - if it releases relatively bug-free, the response from the everyday folk (ie. not by sociopaths like Cody) will be very favourable.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
MacBeach: the core of Longhorn was never going to be totally rewritten, even before the redesign.
Certainly not in .NET. The fact that you think you can write the kernel in ANY high-level language demonstrates you have never been close to an OS development team.
The parts that were up for rewriting were much higher up the stack like pieces of the UI stack and the search engines and such.
.NET was scrapped for those because .NET wasn't ready and they wanted to remove intra-team dependencies to help it ship.
Cody
· 3 years ago
>not by sociopaths like Cody
Yes, because I'm the only one that's giving real criticism for Windows Vista.
John Koetsier
· 3 years ago
Nothing like a real opinion to bring out the sharp knives and hateful comments.
Scoble, I know that getting a lot of comments that are negative, nasty, and just plain stupid can start to weigh on you sometimes - don't let it.
Thanks for your blog and for calling 'em as you see 'em.
Michiel
· 3 years ago
"I want an OS that’ll protect me against phishing attacks"
OK, yes on the features, as long as I can either turn them off or they are off by default. But Robert, if we are going to have to rely on a machine to protect us against low-level social engineering then all hope is lost. No OS will ever protect against human stupidity.
LayZ
· 3 years ago
I'm confused. First you lambast people for "thinking like engineers and not like customers" then you praise the engineers for giving customers something they would never think to ask for,,because, well...they thought like an engineer? Boy, you are a master at covering your ass.
LayZ
· 3 years ago
Hey, Robert, this wouldn't happen to be your brother, would it? :-)
this is FUN. I was going to tell Robert to tell us what he really thinks; then I read the replies.
I like BSD too. I have a BSD machine and XP 64 bit machine and I like them both for different reasons.
And I like my HD TV. but am waiting for HD DVD machines to come down. I am in the bay area but moving to Costa Rica where they have no army. the wars between OSs is enough now for me.
John C. Welch
· 3 years ago
I’d tell you more if Apple didn’t demonstrate it is willing to sue bloggers to find out how they found out that secret information. Apple enjoys this anyway. It’s hype. It’ll get you to watch the news stream coming from the WWDC.
What news stream? Apple doesn't do live streams of keynotes anymore, and the rest of the conference is NDA'd. Like I said last year, telling you a secret is riskier than telling a parrot. The parrot MIGHT shut up about it.
John: “Robert, I’ve done user support for:”
Really? You worked at Microsoft on the support lines? I was talking about that. Microsoft is a business. If someone calls the support line they lose money. So, they put lots of annoying things in their products to reduce the numbers of phone calls. Note: I hate them too. But each dialog was put there for a reason with lots of thought.
No robert, I've not worked for Microsoft, nor have I ever had any real interest in it. I've dealt with enough tottering beauracracy and unfocused mindsets to last me a lifetime. However, what I AM saying is that I've done a crapload more user support over the last 20 years than YOU have, and I can tell you that the "Why won't windows STFU" was one of the top 5 complaints I heard. They never bothered calling Microsoft on it, as a) it was annoying, not broken, and b) Microsoft was never going to change this anyway. But if you ever get out of your tech bubble, you'd find that people are FAR more annoyed with Windows than you think.
Yeah, and Apple really pissed off its existing customer base who had to wait years to get QuarkXpress done.
Well, no, actually, they were far more pissed off at Quark. But Classic did work really well, and had Quark not tried to foist Xpress 5.x off on people, their dropping customer share might have not hemmorhaged so badly.
Adobe however was DELIGHTED with Quark, hence InDesign stomping Quark continuously now. If you think anyone using Xpress was ever happy with that company, you're real confused.
That’s the problem. Not a single customer was asking about those things in the 1980s. They didn’t even know that spyware and viruses were possible. And the engineers didn’t design their software for those uses.
No, but Microsoft also let the marketing dipwads decide that security and reliablity were second to everything else. Hence the lower reliability in NT 4 compared to NT 3.5.1, and the utter, unjustifiable stupidity of not only making the default user *root*, but not even REQUIRING a password. Microsoft built insecurity into NT/2000/XP, and they reaped the rewards of their work.
Todd: really? I heard howls from Apple users who had software that didn’t work on OSX, and there is relatively little software that runs on OSX.
Really? I bet if we both go to SourceForge with stock installs of Mac OS X and Windows, I'll win. Yeah, you keep forgetting all the stuff that's NOT windows that runs on Stock OS X. No Cygwin needed. But nice try.
It's so nice to see you're still keeping that inner 12 year old handy.
macbeach
· 3 years ago
"Certainly not in .NET. The fact that you think you can write the kernel in ANY high-level language demonstrates you have never been close to an OS development team."
You know what they say about people who ASSUME.
You need to distinguish between "high level" code and interpreted code. Some might consider C high level. But high level code, no matter what the original language can be optimized.
Who said anything about kernel code? Not I. Is most of Windows implemented in the kernel? Again, this is news.
You can mix and match low/high compiled/interpreted code (note: talking two different issues there) all you want as long as code that gets executed a LOT is non-interpreted and has been optimized (by writing it in assembler or using a very good optimizing compiler).
But even interpreted code isn't necessarily slow. APL is an interpreted language, but I'd put it's ability to do matrix manipulation up against any average C programmer, because the matrix operation are all "primitives" in APL and the matrix work is highly optimized (at least for any commercial version).
And while we're at it, your comment much earlier about implementing Windows on top of BSD is at best misleading. The WINE project is an attempt to implement as much of the Widows API as possible on top of another base OS. This is a reverse-engineering effort, and is far from perfect. But is was a good enough base to allow Google to port Picassa to Linux relatively quickly.
Given the actual Windows code (and the rights to use it of course) Microsoft could do a near perfect re-implementation of the Windows user and driver interface just about anywhere they wanted to.
I don't happen to think that the VMS underpinnings (to the extent that the VMSness hasn't been tweaked out of existence) are the source of Windows flaws (WINE has proven that the flaws port quite well). On the other hand, there is nothing inherently spectacular about that VMS history. In fact there is something quite spectacular about your original comment, which I'll re-quote:
"Cause the C and Assembler bit heads who built Windows don’t work at Microsoft anymore. "
All the more reason to build Windows on top of a base that is still openly maintained by exactly that sort of "bit-head". It is exactly at that level that there is no longer any significant competitive advantage in maintaining proprietary code. When is that last time you heard a Windows user complain about inadequacies in the Windows HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer)? Same issue.
solomonrex
· 3 years ago
Let's look at Windows' Vista for a second. Major new features: 1. Desktop search is added, like Apple has had, even though there are several completely free 3rd party apps from Google, Yahoo and... MSN. 2. A new security model, different from anything the most respected secure OSs use. It's reported to be extremely annoying and difficult to use with legacy apps. 3. A new graphics system is added into Windows, that will sit beside Windows Themes that most people disable that was tacked onto XP as a skin to impress the dimwitted. Hey, I thought it was pretty neat, too... 4. widgets system also offered by Apple for a long time, and offered for free by 3rd parties, AND a drain on resources. A semi-useful system for little apps, until it becomes a security issue.
Problems? 1. Current issues not fixed by Vista: system tray, notifications in general, focus issues, IE integration, zillion online apps that run in background that won't move to widgetland. 2. Simple innovations that MS could corner the market on are being ignored. Groove, Steam-like games store, online-integration with Calendar/email/etc., Xbox Live community/marketplace equivalent. 3. The security in XP is fine, especially since most of us now use a wireless router (most of us do now). And corporate computers are always locked down. I'm not sure you can ever stop spyware and phishing on the consumer end, since you have to allow people to download and install apps off the internet.
MS is treading water.
solomonrex
· 3 years ago
Why doesn't Vista chuck compatibility at least for the consumer version? It seems like the idea is to sell faster hardware, and the virtual software that would run legacy apps (like the original Civ or Starcraft) would certainly need it.
Chris
· 3 years ago
Microsoft's biggest problem? It can't say no. The requirements for Vista are horrid. We all know that Vista could run on a 700Mhz machine. But that wouldn't sell new computers would it? Some things are slowly getting better over at MSFT; and I guess some things never change. The reason you have WGA built into Vista is because you have a salesman as your CEO. Plain and simple.
James Halpern
· 3 years ago
MS can most certainly meet their ship date. If bugs aren't resolved by October then they'll be available through Microsoft Update once Vista is installed on individual machines.
Reality Lives Here
· 3 years ago
"And what the hell is so bad about thinking like an engineer? Great engineering is why people like BMW. "
Which is also why BMWs are a niche market. If BMW was gunning for 95% or the market, it'd be hello Honda and Toyota clone.
Goebbels
· 3 years ago
"I heard howls from Apple users who had software that didn’t work on OSX, and there is relatively little software that runs on OSX."
There is more software on OSX than on OS9.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Goebbels: I meant to write that there was very little software on OS9 compared to the amount that runs on Windows. Sorry and thanks for correcting me.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Reality: I think a Toyota or a Ford that costs less than $20,000 is better engineering than a BMW, by the way. It's easier to build a great $40,000 car cause you can use the best components. It's a lot harder to engineer a low-cost one that still is great.
Jamie
· 3 years ago
The most interesting thing about this article are the Apple hints.
And im a Microsoft employee!
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
it’ll be far worse to be remembered for shipping an OS that isn’t finished
True. But it's already unfinished, no matter what happens, WinFS gone, P2P tech gone, this that, everything halfway cool, that was promised, gone, gone. So even the good (delayed) finished is yet unfinished.
But not your fight anymore, let it be. ;) It's all just wacking the hornets nest now.
Cody
· 3 years ago
Scoble, what the hell? In this post, you wrote:
"I don’t want to see blogs that, when it finally ships, says 'wait for the service pack.'"
And a few posts below this one, you wrote:
"I will recommend not installing it and waiting for the first service pack."
You should be hating your blog right about now then...
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Cody: it's clear to me.
If it ships in October, wait for the service pack.
I hope not to have to tell you that. I hope it slips and they put out an awesome product that you WON'T need to wait for the service pack for.
Cybereer
· 3 years ago
>> And the Tablet PC, Speech Recognition, and Media Center stuff that’s in there is WORLDS ahead of Apple.
What the heck are you talking about? Every single Mac can understand voice commands since" 15 years ago, and Apple even shipped a Chinese language kit with impressive voice and handwriting recognition functions in early 1990s, long before Bill Gates started hyping it and the recent Vista "Dear Aunt" fiasco.
I thought you used to be a Mac geek, but obviously that's not the case.
Ken
· 3 years ago
Am I the only one who wants this to be an absolute failure, one that brings the company to its knees?
John C. Welch
· 3 years ago
Reality: I think a Toyota or a Ford that costs less than $20,000 is better engineering than a BMW, by the way. It’s easier to build a great $40,000 car cause you can use the best components. It’s a lot harder to engineer a low-cost one that still is great.
Robert, you keep saying that like it's true. You're confusing good engineering with being able to build a decent cheap car. There's a difference. There's a lot of stuff you get standard for that $40K that you pay extra for on the 20K cars. ABS is STILL an extra cost feature, in spite of the clear evidence that it has no drawbacks and is a fantastic way to reduce injuries and death by reducing accidents.
Note also that BMW does make $20K cars. The Mini for one.
Pradeep
· 3 years ago
hi, I know you can't time a software, coz I have friends who work in a software company and they tell me what it's like. This is their suggestion to let them take it easier. A simultaneous team develops the next generation software while you release. So, when MS is releasing its Vista, another team can be working on the next version of Vista.A team of, say, maybe 10 members working out what the next package should have and put in the basic codes that's the basis of all Windows systems. Then you get the other coders (or atleast most of them) to work on it while you're shipping Vista. After you've finished say 90% of the job. You put a shipping date 6 months away.You meet the targets.
I know it'll not be so easy in implementation. Coz my friends are just talking from the employee point of view and not the overall development. But, can the software industry work like that??
Booger
· 3 years ago
Robert
Wowsa - you say, "I went back to XP on my Lenovo Tablet PC because Vista was sluggish and the drivers weren’t reliable). Application compatibility (I’m hearing that many apps are having problems). Driver compat (my Dell computer at Microsoft never worked completely, and a coworker called me a few days ago to ask 'did you ever get the soundcard working?')"
what's happened? We've had months of the following:
March 16 2006 – why vista is better than XP: “My test? Use Vista for a month then see if you can move back to XP. I am finding it frequently frustrating to move back as I get used to new things in Vista.”
February 20 2006 – Penny Arcade wonders why Halo is on Vista: “On Windows Vista the audio and video continue playing just fine with the same level of stress (on the same hardware). It’s a dramatic example of how much better multimedia will be on Windows Vista.”
January 22, 2006 – Why do I need Windows Vista: “So, today we were arguing out just how good Windows Vista is on an internal mailing list. Someone said “XP is good enough for me.” And I answered back with 15 videos about why I’m moving my life over to Windows Vista.”
January 2 2006 – Hell’s weather Report: “we should get you Windows Vista. I’m running it on a Tablet PC and it’s getting to be pretty interesting. Everyone I’ve shown it to says they are gonna get it.”
December 26 2005 – Hope Your Christmas Went Well: “Me too, after switching half of my life over to Windows Vista and Office 12 it’s really hard to go back to XP and Office 2003.”
If you were concerned about driver support and these other things, why didnt you say it? This is a significant error in omission if you had lingering concerns about something that others had noted about the subject. Should we read comments such as "switching half my life over to Vista" differently than we have in the past? Like you said yourself, "who will listen to an evangelist who tells you something that you already know isn’t true..."
Booger
Diego Barros
· 3 years ago
What's all this about Vista's lack of performance. The team has taken care of it! :)
Dude these people who are bashing Vista are just afraid of "CHANGE"...reminds me of my 69 year old mom who can't get over using a "credit card" to pay for gas!
Like any software, its new, there will be some kinks to work out, but the progress is something to look forward to. I love the new WMP11, and Vista has lots of promise, so I'm excited for all the changes!
LayZ
· 3 years ago
Booger, why to take Scoble's challenge and go back and look at what Scoble said about Vista. Brilliant!
How do you plan to cover your ass now, Robert? About the only way to get out of it is to either say you were a complete and utter MS shill when you worked for them, or to say later builds of Vista are worse than the older builds you were running. In which case, that says things are getting worse, not better.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Booger: because it takes a while for problems to show up. Modern OS's are so stable now that they don't crash in the first few minutes like Windows 95 betas did.
I'm going to go back to Vista as soon as my new computer arrives. Right now I need to do work and not play with beta OS's that work mostly.
I desperately miss Vista, though, and Office 2007. Can't wait to use them again.
And all those posts I'll stand behind. They are all accurate. But playing with betas isn't for everyone and shouldn't be done on a production machine that you need to rely on. I also said that.
Neal
· 3 years ago
The biggest and best thing Microsoft can do to make Vista better is make it refuse to run AT ALL on underpowered, underRAMed machines. No more PC makers selling PCs running Windows on 1/4 to 1/8 the amount of memory that's needed for it to be usable.
LayZ
· 3 years ago
70, Robert, so let me see if I have this straight. Are you saying it took 6 months for the issue you are seeing to surface? Are you running the same builds of Vista that you ran when you left MS? Are you running a later build than the one you were speaking so highly of in March? If so, then it seems the builds are getting worse, not better.
I find it a bit incredible to believe you've changed your usage patterns such that these issues would start to surface now and not in April, May, June, or July. Why are they suddenly seeming to surface AFTER you left MS? Inquiring minds want to know.
Todd Blanchard
· 3 years ago
"I heard howls from Apple users who had software that didn’t work on OSX, and there is relatively little software that runs on OSX."
Carbon is the old Mac Classic api with a few dangerous calls removed. It takes a minor update to move a Classic app to Carbon. Quicken is an example of an app that did this. Appleworks. Photoshop. All written to old apis supported through the Carbon compatibility layer.
New apps are on Cocoa. Many are ports of Next apps.
Plus, we now have the entire unix library available thanks to the X11 layer. Macs run more software than pretty much everything through being API inclusive.
Nothing new. Most experienced developers know that Big Bang development doesn't work well.
Diegoz
· 3 years ago
Sorry people.... Vista is a pathetic imitation (several years in delay) of the best OS around... Mac OS X ... my brother is testing a b. version of vista... all new (and very beta) features are old for mac user... advanced and lightfast search engine, advanced gui, widget etc... look at this video (http://video.google.it/videoplay?docid=79199911...) or this one (http://video.google.it/videoplay?docid=26747917...) .... poor people with a very poor os system.....
Michiel
· 3 years ago
no.76: Even though I think Vista will tank I will use it because the alternative is to associate with sad sacks like you. No, wait, I'm using linux at home. Nevermind. Sap.
LayZ
· 3 years ago
@74. And apparently Sr. V.P. Brian Valentine gets to take the fall for it by getting put on what appears to be the death sentence of "special projects" (if one reads between the lines)
Carbon is the old Mac Classic api with a few dangerous calls removed. It takes a minor update to move a Classic app to Carbon. Quicken is an example of an app that did this. Appleworks. Photoshop. All written to old apis supported through the Carbon compatibility layer.
If you believe that, i have oceanfront property in Missouri for you. Nice view of the Eiffel Tower. Getting it to initially compile and build may be *relatively* simple. Getting an OS 9 codebase moved over, built correctly, the UI redesigned correctly, etc., yadda was NOT simple. At all.
New apps are on Cocoa. Many are ports of Next apps.
No, the Next ports are rather small in number. Most new applications are just that, new applications.
OS11
· 3 years ago
“I heard howls from Apple users who had software that didn’t work on OSX, and there is relatively little software that runs on OSX.”
A purely laughable comment, there are about 11,000 OS9 or (Classic Apps) and 15,560 OSX Apps, and since OSX runs most every Classic App there are about 26,560 current Apps for Macs today. The software library on OSX is the best in the industry, the quality is stunning!
And no, Quark Inc. messed up with Xpress, not Apple... but it ran fine in Classic so it was never really an issue.
Lastly, Mac OS9 was just a stopgap version to bridge over the user from the failed Copland Project. Vista is "MS's" Copland Project, so they will end up releasing a major XP Update before Vista appears.
MS's tried to do too much, provide too much legacy support in Vista, when they should have copied what Apple / Steve did and "bury" the old DOS/XP code and start over. OSX is now the leanest, meanest OS there is on the planet, and will overwhelm Vista going forward.
OSX Leopard on Intel is the next iPod... just watch!
even though I've programmed I wasn't too deep into it, to be able to answer this question well---
do you think if Microsoft was able to migrate everyone to managed code, that it would be much easier to introduce radical changes to the foundations of the Windows code, because old applications would function based on an object model, which could be maintained, or compensated for ?
Wesley Parish
· 3 years ago
One thing I fail to understand about this whole MS Windows Vista/LongHorn saga, and of course the whole MS Windows Legacy albatross-around-the-neck-thereof, is why Microsoft, being world-famous in Redmond for "innovation" (RT[F]M), hasn't done anything with virtual machines and emulation to solve its "can only run as administrator" albatross.
(Of course, that leads on to the deep and meaningful question of why Microsoft's application certification is so stuffed-up that as long as a program runs on MS Windows, it gets the certification, even if it poses a major security risk? But let's leave that to another day, shall we?)
In Linux I can run anything that demands super-administrator rights in a UML - User-Mode Linux. To suggest that Microsoft can do the same with its Windows Vista is to suggest that Microsoft is incompetent.
That could well be the truth. Who knows?
Wesley Parish
· 3 years ago
Oops - "To suggest that Microsoft can do the same with its Windows Vista is to suggest that Microsoft is incompetent."
should read "To suggest that Microsoft can't do the same with its Windows Vista is to suggest that Microsoft is incompetent."
All Comments
I don't give a shit what "customers" want (they certainly don't care what I want); I care about what _I_ want, and I want a decent text editor (better than Notepad) that can handle Unix linebreaks and Unicode; I want development and scripting tools bundled in; I want a command line that doesn't suck; I want a web browser that's extensible and that has excellent support for standards; I want an operating system that does not assume I pirated it until I can prove, repeatedly, otherwise. I do not want my web browser to be neglected for years just because Microsoft incorrectly determines it doesn't need to be updated and I do not want to be placed in double jeopardy every time I reinstall or make a major upgrade to my computer.
And what the hell is so bad about thinking like an engineer? Great engineering is why people like BMW.
John, have you ever worked on the customer support lines for Windows? Sorry, many users are NOT like you. I agree with you, by the way, but if I designed an OS for myself it’d have 10% marketshare. Or worse.
Robert, I've done user support for:
Windows from 3.1 to XP
OS/2 from 2.1 to 3.0
Every version of the Mac OS
AS/400 green screens
Solaris 7-9, just learning 10
Irix 5.x and 6.x
AIX 4.x
Too many Linux distros.
In:
Small companies, 26- 100 employees
medium companies, 100-600 employees
Large companies, thousands of employees
So I'll HAPPILY put MY direct user support experience up against YOURS any day you care to play.
The biggest complaint(s) I got about Windows, starting with 95 was: "Why the HELL does it need to continutally bother me? Aren't things SUPPOSED to work right? What is this, a dog wanting a treat for obeying a command? Why do I need to know that my network is up, I'm sending email, DUH. Why do I need 234523523 popups a day. I get more popups from Windows than from Web sites. Why is Windows using a "porn storm" as a notification model?
Ran the gamut of users. Positive notification is dumb. Period. The sheer number of windows' notification dialogs, bubbles, and wizards is stupid. Do I REALLY need to see a blow by blow of a successful driver install? No. Just fire up the damned driver and let me work.
Robert, no one cares who or what you know that you can't tell. Stop letting your feelings of technical genital inadequacy get the better of you.
I am a Linux user, but the great thing about OSX was that Apple basically tossed out their existing OS model and built something completely new. Vista should not be an upgrade on XP, but something completely and not just a clone of OSX either. The OS world could have used a shot in the arm, which I don't think Vista is going to be. I could be (hope to be) wrong, since I do use windows, but I signs suggest otherwise.
And about system resources, my BSD machine is currenly using 8MB of the available 192MB of RAM. My BSD box can do anything and everything Windows can do. Now tell me again why I need 1GB of RAM to use Vista properly.
You know, you can keep this up all day, but the people that know their shit are going to keep blasting Vista for good reason. It sucks.
I'd tell you more if Apple didn't demonstrate it is willing to sue bloggers to find out how they found out that secret information. Apple enjoys this anyway. It's hype. It'll get you to watch the news stream coming from the WWDC.
Jared: >When a entire team fails on a NFL Team it’s the coach that gets the blame.
Yup, I understand that and there is lots of blame coming to the coaches too. But I'd rather fight the mob tendencies. Even where the coach gets blamed, the team shares some of the blame too. And, what happens when the new coach comes in? A house cleaning, usually.
>And what the hell is so bad about thinking like an engineer? Great engineering is why people like BMW.
Absolutely wrong. The fact that you think that way is because of the great marketing. But if you let a car engineer have his or her way without thinking about the customer every car would end up like a Ferrari or a Porsche. Funny joke: "what do you get when you ask Porsche customers what they want? Answer: a Volvo."
John: "Robert, I’ve done user support for:"
Really? You worked at Microsoft on the support lines? I was talking about that. Microsoft is a business. If someone calls the support line they lose money. So, they put lots of annoying things in their products to reduce the numbers of phone calls. Note: I hate them too. But each dialog was put there for a reason with lots of thought.
Ahsan: Bill Gates now agrees with you. The reason Longhorn was redone was he put too many features in that were built on too many undone technologies. Boiling the ocean as a software development approach doesn't work at the scale Microsoft was trying to do it.
Deepak: "I am a Linux user, but the great thing about OSX was that Apple basically tossed out their existing OS model and built something completely new. "
Yeah, and Apple really pissed off its existing customer base who had to wait years to get QuarkXpress done.
And what did it take to get Apple to that point? A falling marketshare that was headed into obscurity. You do remember the "Pray" headline on BusinessWeek's covers to Apple faithful, right? Microsoft isn't being pushed into such desperate measures. To do what Apple did would kill Microsoft. I'd short it big time. Why? Cause Microsoft has a healthy customer base (its sales and profits are continuing to go up, even with the attack of Linux and Apple stuff).
Rewriting the OS would be a disaster. Why? Cause the C and Assembler bit heads who built Windows don't work at Microsoft anymore. What, you want your OS to be rewritten in .NET? Yeah, that'll really be performant.
Blegh: “Customers” don’t want spyware or viruses but Microsoft doesn’t care enough to actually usher in policies that make spyware impossible in the first place, eliminating the need for constant security updates.
That's the problem. Not a single customer was asking about those things in the 1980s. They didn't even know that spyware and viruses were possible. And the engineers didn't design their software for those uses.
By the way, Windows Vista makes spyware a lot lot lot harder. I won't say impossible, because there aren't absolutes in the security industry, but it's a HUGE step up and one that I can't wait for.
Alijah - THE AVERGE PERSON DOESN’T EVEN KNOW ABOUT A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM FROM MICROSOFT THEIR HAS NOT BEEN ANY MARKETING YET, SO IF YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT HOW WOULD THEY (AVERGE CONSUMER) REMEMBER A SLIP ANYWAY. MORE SUPPORT FROM THE GEEKS OUT THERE. YOU GUYS REMIND ME OF A BUNCH OF B____!!. THANK GOD SCOBLE STILL CARES.
These comments make me think you guys think Vista is 6 months late or even a year late. Vista is LATE!!! I can understand software can be late but this is getting ridiculous
The point is that by taking risks Apple has resurrected itself from the mess it was in around 10 years ago. Microsoft should not rest on the safety net of its market share. Consumers are hoping to see some risk taking and something fresh.
You are seriously setting my expectations high for the WWDC with these hints. Most of the buzz I've heard has been about the iPhone, and since the latest iPod/iTunes update makes reference to a phone in hidden preference strings, it's a credible rumor.
But the way I read your latest hints, I'm anticipating something like a tablet.
Maybe they'll announce BOTH!
I wish I had a brother who worked at Apple.
It's always good to know your next OS is going to ship with shit you don't care about and use up all your resources for it. Thanks, Microsoft.
I love 100% CPU usage from my OS! *walks away in disgust*
If your BSD box can do anything a Windows box can, then why don't you convince 90% of the market to convert? There are good reasons to use BSD and good reasons to use Windows.
Just because you consider yourself an elitist hacker, doesn't mean the world should go with your opinion.
Also, the reason why your BSD box is using such little memory is because it is not running a GUI shell. Try loading up Gnome 2.6.x and then look at the stats. Yes, Windows comes with Explorer pre-installed and tightly coupled, and then again, it is for good reason.
And, as for Media Center? You know I'm gonna use your words against you when Apple announces such, right?
Huh? I thought the original plan was to write much of Vista in .net no? (yes, I know they blame some of the delay on failure to get this to work). But if they are not writing it in .net, and not writing it in C or assembler, then what? Perl? PHP? This is really news. You should make a headline out of it.
Scoble: Sorry, throwing application compatibility out the window would be monumentally STUPID. Stop thinking like an engineer. Start thinking like a customer.
Actually, they could have tossed the proprietary underpinnings and KEPT application compatibility. Apple did it with Carbon. They open sourced the plumbing (darwin) and focused on the application api layer up, adding compatibility apis where necessary.
Maintaining the core OS can't be cheap, adds no end user value, and gratuitous incompatibility with Unix apis locks out lots of good open source stuff that Mac users are getting for free now. Better to leverage the open source goodness at the bottom and focus on the visible bits and app level apis.
It could have been done without loss of app compatibility for existing apps - but it requires the will to do it.
Changing the underpinings of Windows isn't something done lightly and probably won't happen unless Microsoft goes into deep financial pain which certainly isn't happening this year.
So, stuff vista with all these things, add some better security, and it is sold to me. I do not care if it uses all my ram, as long as it works without problems. (i agree that the nagging should be less)
besides, if you are checking your ram usage, i do not think you are the average user...
And Microsoft did it with NT.
Overall, I'm starting to really like it, but think it is still 3-4 months from Gold. Scoble is right on one thing: most don't care about the lateness - if it releases relatively bug-free, the response from the everyday folk (ie. not by sociopaths like Cody) will be very favourable.
Certainly not in .NET. The fact that you think you can write the kernel in ANY high-level language demonstrates you have never been close to an OS development team.
The parts that were up for rewriting were much higher up the stack like pieces of the UI stack and the search engines and such.
.NET was scrapped for those because .NET wasn't ready and they wanted to remove intra-team dependencies to help it ship.
Yes, because I'm the only one that's giving real criticism for Windows Vista.
Scoble, I know that getting a lot of comments that are negative, nasty, and just plain stupid can start to weigh on you sometimes - don't let it.
Thanks for your blog and for calling 'em as you see 'em.
OK, yes on the features, as long as I can either turn them off or they are off by default. But Robert, if we are going to have to rely on a machine to protect us against low-level social engineering then all hope is lost. No OS will ever protect against human stupidity.
http://secretdiaryofstevejobs.blogspot.com/
I like BSD too. I have a BSD machine and XP 64 bit machine and I like them both for different reasons.
And I like my HD TV. but am waiting for HD DVD machines to come down. I am in the bay area but moving to Costa Rica where they have no army. the wars between OSs is enough now for me.
What news stream? Apple doesn't do live streams of keynotes anymore, and the rest of the conference is NDA'd. Like I said last year, telling you a secret is riskier than telling a parrot. The parrot MIGHT shut up about it.
John: “Robert, I’ve done user support for:”
Really? You worked at Microsoft on the support lines? I was talking about that. Microsoft is a business. If someone calls the support line they lose money. So, they put lots of annoying things in their products to reduce the numbers of phone calls. Note: I hate them too. But each dialog was put there for a reason with lots of thought.
No robert, I've not worked for Microsoft, nor have I ever had any real interest in it. I've dealt with enough tottering beauracracy and unfocused mindsets to last me a lifetime. However, what I AM saying is that I've done a crapload more user support over the last 20 years than YOU have, and I can tell you that the "Why won't windows STFU" was one of the top 5 complaints I heard. They never bothered calling Microsoft on it, as a) it was annoying, not broken, and b) Microsoft was never going to change this anyway. But if you ever get out of your tech bubble, you'd find that people are FAR more annoyed with Windows than you think.
Yeah, and Apple really pissed off its existing customer base who had to wait years to get QuarkXpress done.
Well, no, actually, they were far more pissed off at Quark. But Classic did work really well, and had Quark not tried to foist Xpress 5.x off on people, their dropping customer share might have not hemmorhaged so badly.
Adobe however was DELIGHTED with Quark, hence InDesign stomping Quark continuously now. If you think anyone using Xpress was ever happy with that company, you're real confused.
That’s the problem. Not a single customer was asking about those things in the 1980s. They didn’t even know that spyware and viruses were possible. And the engineers didn’t design their software for those uses.
No, but Microsoft also let the marketing dipwads decide that security and reliablity were second to everything else. Hence the lower reliability in NT 4 compared to NT 3.5.1, and the utter, unjustifiable stupidity of not only making the default user *root*, but not even REQUIRING a password. Microsoft built insecurity into NT/2000/XP, and they reaped the rewards of their work.
Todd: really? I heard howls from Apple users who had software that didn’t work on OSX, and there is relatively little software that runs on OSX.
Really? I bet if we both go to SourceForge with stock installs of Mac OS X and Windows, I'll win. Yeah, you keep forgetting all the stuff that's NOT windows that runs on Stock OS X. No Cygwin needed. But nice try.
It's so nice to see you're still keeping that inner 12 year old handy.
You know what they say about people who ASSUME.
You need to distinguish between "high level" code and interpreted code. Some might consider C high level. But high level code, no matter what the original language can be optimized.
Who said anything about kernel code? Not I. Is most of Windows implemented in the kernel? Again, this is news.
You can mix and match low/high compiled/interpreted code (note: talking two different issues there) all you want as long as code that gets executed a LOT is non-interpreted and has been optimized (by writing it in assembler or using a very good optimizing compiler).
But even interpreted code isn't necessarily slow. APL is an interpreted language, but I'd put it's ability to do matrix manipulation up against any average C programmer, because the matrix operation are all "primitives" in APL and the matrix work is highly optimized (at least for any commercial version).
And while we're at it, your comment much earlier about implementing Windows on top of BSD is at best misleading. The WINE project is an attempt to implement as much of the Widows API as possible on top of another base OS. This is a reverse-engineering effort, and is far from perfect. But is was a good enough base to allow Google to port Picassa to Linux relatively quickly.
Given the actual Windows code (and the rights to use it of course) Microsoft could do a near perfect re-implementation of the Windows user and driver interface just about anywhere they wanted to.
I don't happen to think that the VMS underpinnings (to the extent that the VMSness hasn't been tweaked out of existence) are the source of Windows flaws (WINE has proven that the flaws port quite well). On the other hand, there is nothing inherently spectacular about that VMS history. In fact there is something quite spectacular about your original comment, which I'll re-quote:
"Cause the C and Assembler bit heads who built Windows don’t work at Microsoft anymore. "
All the more reason to build Windows on top of a base that is still openly maintained by exactly that sort of "bit-head". It is exactly at that level that there is no longer any significant competitive advantage in maintaining proprietary code. When is that last time you heard a Windows user complain about inadequacies in the Windows HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer)? Same issue.
Major new features:
1. Desktop search is added, like Apple has had, even though there are several completely free 3rd party apps from Google, Yahoo and... MSN.
2. A new security model, different from anything the most respected secure OSs use. It's reported to be extremely annoying and difficult to use with legacy apps.
3. A new graphics system is added into Windows, that will sit beside Windows Themes that most people disable that was tacked onto XP as a skin to impress the dimwitted. Hey, I thought it was pretty neat, too...
4. widgets system also offered by Apple for a long time, and offered for free by 3rd parties, AND a drain on resources. A semi-useful system for little apps, until it becomes a security issue.
Problems?
1. Current issues not fixed by Vista: system tray, notifications in general, focus issues, IE integration, zillion online apps that run in background that won't move to widgetland.
2. Simple innovations that MS could corner the market on are being ignored. Groove, Steam-like games store, online-integration with Calendar/email/etc., Xbox Live community/marketplace equivalent.
3. The security in XP is fine, especially since most of us now use a wireless router (most of us do now). And corporate computers are always locked down. I'm not sure you can ever stop spyware and phishing on the consumer end, since you have to allow people to download and install apps off the internet.
MS is treading water.
Which is also why BMWs are a niche market. If BMW was gunning for 95% or the market, it'd be hello Honda and Toyota clone.
There is more software on OSX than on OS9.
And im a Microsoft employee!
True. But it's already unfinished, no matter what happens, WinFS gone, P2P tech gone, this that, everything halfway cool, that was promised, gone, gone. So even the good (delayed) finished is yet unfinished.
But not your fight anymore, let it be. ;) It's all just wacking the hornets nest now.
"I don’t want to see blogs that, when it finally ships, says 'wait for the service pack.'"
And a few posts below this one, you wrote:
"I will recommend not installing it and waiting for the first service pack."
You should be hating your blog right about now then...
If it ships in October, wait for the service pack.
I hope not to have to tell you that. I hope it slips and they put out an awesome product that you WON'T need to wait for the service pack for.
What the heck are you talking about? Every single Mac can understand voice commands since" 15 years ago, and Apple even shipped a Chinese language kit with impressive voice and handwriting recognition functions in early 1990s, long before Bill Gates started hyping it and the recent Vista "Dear Aunt" fiasco.
I thought you used to be a Mac geek, but obviously that's not the case.
Robert, you keep saying that like it's true. You're confusing good engineering with being able to build a decent cheap car. There's a difference. There's a lot of stuff you get standard for that $40K that you pay extra for on the 20K cars. ABS is STILL an extra cost feature, in spite of the clear evidence that it has no drawbacks and is a fantastic way to reduce injuries and death by reducing accidents.
Note also that BMW does make $20K cars. The Mini for one.
I know you can't time a software, coz I have friends who work in a software company and they tell me what it's like. This is their suggestion to let them take it easier.
A simultaneous team develops the next generation software while you release. So, when MS is releasing its Vista, another team can be working on the next version of Vista.A team of, say, maybe 10 members working out what the next package should have and put in the basic codes that's the basis of all Windows systems. Then you get the other coders (or atleast most of them) to work on it while you're shipping Vista. After you've finished say 90% of the job. You put a shipping date 6 months away.You meet the targets.
I know it'll not be so easy in implementation. Coz my friends are just talking from the employee point of view and not the overall development. But, can the software industry work like that??
Wowsa - you say, "I went back to XP on my Lenovo Tablet PC because Vista was sluggish and the drivers weren’t reliable). Application compatibility (I’m hearing that many apps are having problems). Driver compat (my Dell computer at Microsoft never worked completely, and a coworker called me a few days ago to ask 'did you ever get the soundcard working?')"
what's happened? We've had months of the following:
March 16 2006 – why vista is better than XP: “My test? Use Vista for a month then see if you can move back to XP. I am finding it frequently frustrating to move back as I get used to new things in Vista.”
February 20 2006 – Penny Arcade wonders why Halo is on Vista: “On Windows Vista the audio and video continue playing just fine with the same level of stress (on the same hardware). It’s a dramatic example of how much better multimedia will be on Windows Vista.”
January 22, 2006 – Why do I need Windows Vista: “So, today we were arguing out just how good Windows Vista is on an internal mailing list. Someone said “XP is good enough for me.” And I answered back with 15 videos about why I’m moving my life over to Windows Vista.”
January 2 2006 – Hell’s weather Report: “we should get you Windows Vista. I’m running it on a Tablet PC and it’s getting to be pretty interesting. Everyone I’ve shown it to says they are gonna get it.”
December 26 2005 – Hope Your Christmas Went Well: “Me too, after switching half of my life over to Windows Vista and Office 12 it’s really hard to go back to XP and Office 2003.”
If you were concerned about driver support and these other things, why didnt you say it? This is a significant error in omission if you had lingering concerns about something that others had noted about the subject. Should we read comments such as "switching half my life over to Vista" differently than we have in the past? Like you said yourself, "who will listen to an evangelist who tells you something that you already know isn’t true..."
Booger
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2...
Like any software, its new, there will be some kinks to work out, but the progress is something to look forward to. I love the new WMP11, and Vista has lots of promise, so I'm excited for all the changes!
How do you plan to cover your ass now, Robert? About the only way to get out of it is to either say you were a complete and utter MS shill when you worked for them, or to say later builds of Vista are worse than the older builds you were running. In which case, that says things are getting worse, not better.
I'm going to go back to Vista as soon as my new computer arrives. Right now I need to do work and not play with beta OS's that work mostly.
I desperately miss Vista, though, and Office 2007. Can't wait to use them again.
And all those posts I'll stand behind. They are all accurate. But playing with betas isn't for everyone and shouldn't be done on a production machine that you need to rely on. I also said that.
I find it a bit incredible to believe you've changed your usage patterns such that these issues would start to surface now and not in April, May, June, or July. Why are they suddenly seeming to surface AFTER you left MS? Inquiring minds want to know.
Carbon is the old Mac Classic api with a few dangerous calls removed. It takes a minor update to move a Classic app to Carbon. Quicken is an example of an app that did this. Appleworks. Photoshop. All written to old apis supported through the Carbon compatibility layer.
New apps are on Cocoa. Many are ports of Next apps.
Plus, we now have the entire unix library available thanks to the X11 layer. Macs run more software than pretty much everything through being API inclusive.
Windows is API exclusive. Surely you get that?
Also, Ballmer admits his error today.
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailya...
Nothing new. Most experienced developers know that Big Bang development doesn't work well.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott...
If you believe that, i have oceanfront property in Missouri for you. Nice view of the Eiffel Tower. Getting it to initially compile and build may be *relatively* simple. Getting an OS 9 codebase moved over, built correctly, the UI redesigned correctly, etc., yadda was NOT simple. At all.
New apps are on Cocoa. Many are ports of Next apps.
No, the Next ports are rather small in number. Most new applications are just that, new applications.
A purely laughable comment, there are about 11,000 OS9 or (Classic Apps) and 15,560 OSX Apps, and since OSX runs most every Classic App there are about 26,560 current Apps for Macs today. The software library on OSX is the best in the industry, the quality is stunning!
And no, Quark Inc. messed up with Xpress, not Apple... but it ran fine in Classic so it was never really an issue.
Lastly, Mac OS9 was just a stopgap version to bridge over the user from the failed Copland Project. Vista is "MS's" Copland Project, so they will end up releasing a major XP Update before Vista appears.
MS's tried to do too much, provide too much legacy support in Vista, when they should have copied what Apple / Steve did and "bury" the old DOS/XP code and start over. OSX is now the leanest, meanest OS there is on the planet, and will overwhelm Vista going forward.
OSX Leopard on Intel is the next iPod... just watch!
Monday is going to ROCK the Computing World...
100's of news stories will be here:
http://www.macsurfer.com/
The tape/digital delay will be here:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc06/
Last year's big announcement is here: fun to watch!
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc05/
even though I've programmed I wasn't too deep into it, to be able to answer this question well---
do you think if Microsoft was able to migrate everyone to managed code, that it would be much easier to introduce radical changes to the foundations of the Windows code, because old applications would function based on an object model, which could be maintained, or compensated for ?
(Of course, that leads on to the deep and meaningful question of why Microsoft's application certification is so stuffed-up that as long as a program runs on MS Windows, it gets the certification, even if it poses a major security risk? But let's leave that to another day, shall we?)
In Linux I can run anything that demands super-administrator rights in a UML - User-Mode Linux. To suggest that Microsoft can do the same with its Windows Vista is to suggest that Microsoft is incompetent.
That could well be the truth. Who knows?
should read "To suggest that Microsoft can't do the same with its Windows Vista is to suggest that Microsoft is incompetent."
My bad.