I'll say this: the Office team under Steven Sinofsky makes its dates and has consistently done so. That's not something that's lost on me.
A
· 3 years ago
Office made its dates. So? What, exactly, is the difference between Office 97 and Office 2003? In my opinion -- Outlook and OneNote. It's only with Office 2007 that we've seen any huge changes throughout the product suite.
It's easy to make your dates when your goal is steady incrementalism. (Don't get me wrong, this is a laudable goal in itself.)
Windows consistently tries to do something ambitious. (Note that I wrote *tries*.) The problems are that they frequently waste time and fail, and then there's a mad scramble to ship something.
There has to be a better way than Office's extended turgidity, and Windows' randomness.
As a developer on the Windows team, I can't take this crap much longer.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Search folders and no limits on Outlook PST size. Those were huge in my book. But I agree with you. Having somewhere in the middle would be good.
M
· 3 years ago
Scoble, I agree with Mini microsoft. Some body needs to be fired. Its funny to read the management's email every time there is a delay. It has the same statement over and over.."You promised you will deilver and I believe you will deliver". Well if the WSJ news is true then we have yet another reorg coming down this year. I wonder whether the commitments of our VP's MUST include "I will oversee 2 reorgs this year". I am sure ballmer will send a "We are innovating in vista" email tomorrow. Well..stock lost its month long rally in one afternoon and with more red coming tomorrow.
Sigh!
anon
· 3 years ago
I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product.
Take your time. It took two years after release for Windows XP to become any good.
moo
· 3 years ago
Considering that's it is only March now, I seriously doubt if this would be the last delay. I have a feeling Vista will probably ship in the middle of 2007. Did everyone see the HP guy's comments in the press release? What a load of crap! I bet MS has agreed to substantially subsidize all of HP's Vista-related marketing.
Wild Bill
· 3 years ago
And in the same week that MS fired a $500m advertising campaign against its biggest consulting Partner - IBM.
"We have a very diff view of how people are making people productive. Microsoft is trying to prolong a pre-Internet business model, the same one they were selling 20 years ago," Bisconti said.
Still. It does give more time for a "Tiger on Intel" push, and for Suse 10 Linux Desktop to get established.
Have they published a timetable for SP1 for Vista - cos lets face it, it'll never be on corporate desktops en masse before SP1 is out....
$30b in the bank, and no-one at the helm ?
Tch.
---* Bill
GregW
· 3 years ago
All of this boils down to one thing...
..."The future of this company depends on the quality of this product being flawless, and we can accept nothing less...regardless of timeframe. Otherwise people will simply stand up from their desk and walk over to an Apple store...and move on with their lives."...
...a quote from ( someone/everyone ) at Microsoft during the meeting prior to this annoucement.
As obvious as this quote may seem to everyone...one can't help but gaze in the wonderment at the desperate reality that is Microsoft today.
Darren Straight
· 3 years ago
Same here, I would much prefer to have a debugged version of Windos Vista than a version full of bug's, though I guess I now know I've lost my guess on the "Guess the Launch Date Contest" for Windows Vista:
There are definitely too many of us with hardened opinions that, as we put it, reflects on the average American (oops Earth citizen.) Went the C9 discussions and we're all as opinionated as always.
Personally, if Alan Cooper had anything to do with it, GREAT!!!
Just don't ship crappy code that is gonna tie Microsoft down for the next 10 years, fix the stupid things (no matter how long it takes.)
Does OS development take longer than WordProcessors ? I certainly hope so! Does it involve research into unexplored waters requiring research with an unknown ship/release date? I certainly hope so!
Those two machines I wanted to buy to have VISTA on ? Obviously they weren't important enough if their main focus was to get VISTA on them, so they'll just wait until next year. Oh well, back to this dingy crappy 3.2Ghz laptop with 1GB ram.
Unfortunately the purchase delays effect 1 x TabletPC and 1 x Origami. In the end the Borg will get me, so I hope the experience is going to be worth the wait.
The delay of shipping to OEMs from July to August will unfortunately delay getting the product into my non-corporate hands until Jan 2007.
Now to find something interesting to do for the next 9 months. Hey, sweet-heart ...
John C. Welch
· 3 years ago
Good job Robert. Verify, then post. Or in this case, just relay the news, there's not a lot you CAN say about this, in a literal and figurative sense.
Carlos
· 3 years ago
Who really thinks that 4 extra weeks when there are 36 months left after a 240 week development cycle makes ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL. You force your developers to work just one extra hour a day for 36 weeks and you gain 4.5 weeks just like that. This delay will be 40 weeks, you mark my words, it makes zero business sense to release a major product in January. They will release to RTM in August 2007 (which means no "business" version in November) and wide availability in November 2007. What a bunch of screwups. And guess what, the top management will collect huge bonuses this year and the rank and file will be "punished" with no raises or bonuses for "failing" in delivering the "innovation". lol
Carlos
· 3 years ago
"when there are 36 weeks left"*
Matt
· 3 years ago
Vista better be fantastic and standard setting for the amount of time we've been stuck with the same OS.
Larry
· 3 years ago
Now the question is, can Apple get 10.5 out before Vista? If so then at least Microsoft will get some new "ideas" for Vista SP1.
Wow, this Snark Non-Dairy Creamer is great with coffee!
jeneane
· 3 years ago
just make it good--without the need for all those patches right after releasing it that screw up my machine. that's all i care about. some folks sound like they can't get work done in the mean time. i'm fine with what i have. i don't see the big deal.
Brian
· 3 years ago
Mary Jo Foley suggests that partner pushback may have been involved -- didn't want the marketing message "diluted" during the holiday season and see January sales as a better time to launch to consumers.
Doesn't makes sense to me. Early adopters would cut through holiday clutter and it will take months for Mom and Pop consumers to get the message anyway...
Dave
· 3 years ago
Like the man said, "...and I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product."
No matter what Redmond releases, there are whole armies of dedicated foes who will find the flaws before Microsoft ever does. They'll exploit the holes and bash the design (Take a look at the s***storm on the PCWorld blog thread devoted to the delay.)
With people waiting for you in the wings like that, determined to give you bad press and eventually thwart sales, wouldn't you want to wait until the thing kicked ass before you let it out? Maybe even win over the critics?
Microsoft simply realizes that this thing doesn't kick ass yet. But you can't really say that in your press releases. You say things like "on target" and "on track." I'd expect even more delay beyond the January 2007 target...hopefully upping the kickass factor.
Ted
· 3 years ago
From experience with Microsoft, even after the ship date slips, it is still a cruddy product. Just a late cruddy product.
Jeff
· 3 years ago
2007 was my pick on a Vista release ever since I realized it's importance in the overall Web as Platform development process. Starting with the Internet boom and Netscape's IPO in 1995, moving to Google's incorporation in 1998, the dot.com implosion of 2001, and Google's IPO in 2004, something significant was bound to happen in 2007. Frankly, I'm glad it's Vista. It reflects a major change in operating systems, and it should be released only when it's ready to perform well.
Mujibur
· 3 years ago
Anyone who has worked on a large software project like Vista knows that six months is rarely the difference between a crappy product and a great one.
No matter the spin, things must be pretty desperate at Microsoft to sacrifice the holiday season.
J
· 3 years ago
It'll be a cruddy product anyway.
Patrick Grote
· 3 years ago
Maybe it's me, but does it strike anyone else as odd that arguably the world's greatest software company can't ship a new product in six years?
With the most resources of any software company on earth, with the most money of any software company on earth and with the best software engineers on earth they can't make it happen on time?
Amazing.
Bill Gates
· 3 years ago
Steveb said that he is planning to jump on sony's ps3 slip and try to pump xbox 360.
I wonder what the other steve is planning? How about this, mobilize his forces to make sure that dell, hp, etc. can run OSX on their PC's? Why not. Apple has already done most of the hard work, AND all the PC vendors are having to adjust their componetry a little to account for Vista demands. Why not align with Apple on 20% of their lines? This will wake up Microsoft, and Apples stock will double on the rumor alone.
Mike Drips
· 3 years ago
"I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product."
Um, Robert Windows XP has been out for FIVE YEARS, and Windows Vista development has been going on darned near that long. Did you think that Microsoft was going to slip quality into the product at the last minute.
I've been reading a lot of Microsoft employee blogs in the last 24 hours that indicate a great deal of dissatisfaction with this date slippage and that are pointing the finger at management.
I've been blogging about this for sometime. I like Microsoft, but lengthy product development and delivery cycles impact business productivity and innovation.
Bob Jones
· 3 years ago
"and I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product."
Who says you won't have both?
Larry Borsato
· 3 years ago
It does seem strange that Microsoft can predict a slippage of a few weeks over a year into the future, given that they were comfortable enough to commit to a timeline in the first place.
Steve
· 3 years ago
This is a lesson in managing expectations. Though I believe Microsoft should upgrade consumers for less who buy during the Holiday season...should it actually be a January release...Scoble is right. It would be a major failure if the product was a failure. The product needs to be great...not good. And if that is not the reality, then shipping must be delayed. Look what happened to Xbox. Great product, distribution nightmares. They should have delayed the launch until they had sufficient and tested GDDR3 supplies. Sure you bash expectations...but after the bashing is over people want a real product in their hands.
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
Well gosh, all the Mix 06 and Convergence spin, gone to moot, as this will dominate the headlines for eons. I would have timed the news release info better. Not right after 2 major conferences, and not even prepping the talking points with key people. Just slumbering out there with the news, catching EVERYONE off guard. Yet still singing the same ole ole tired song of delay = security improvments and quality code.
Maybe internals should start using their own dogfood, Microsoft Project. Easy to be a critic here, but it is a massive undertaking with a user base of millions, but then THEY hyped it up, starting with PDC 03, and as time went by, slowly letting the air out of the feature set (WinFS and etc.), and now failing to meet their own committed deadlines. The blogs and the 'Evangelists' share some blame, for over-promising and over-hyping. Considering that Vista will be mainly a new hardware system upgrade, missing the holiday is a serious hit.
But here's the bigger problem beyond the delay, they still have yet to articulate why the average consumer or even average Fortune 500 company needs to upgrade. I guess they will have to spend every dime of that $500 million in doing so. But I have yet to hear a good elevator pitch.
Buzz Bruggeman
· 3 years ago
Given the complexity of the undertaking, coupled with the demands of every ISV, Hardware vendor, user, blogger, etc. I often marvel that new versions of software ever ship.
From what I have seen Vista will be better than XP, how much better, who knows, but sometime it seems that all the bitching is just a waste of time.
Focus on getting things done, providing meaningful comments, and having a life!
Phillip Zedalis
· 3 years ago
I don't usually comment on such articles... but let me make some opinions of my own.
a) No one I know has bought someone else a copy of Windows for the Holiday season.
b) Given that most copies of Windows are sold with computers... computers are evolving more and more into utilities that students, loved ones, friends NEED as opposed to want... so any Holiday gifts... while may include new computers, will probably be stuffed with cool toys like PSP's, 360's, iPod's, etc. c) If you think Microsoft is lame because they can't release a product in 5 years... your forgetting:
Updates to Exchange Server 2003 R2 Visual Studio 2005 .NET Framework 2.0 SQL Server 2005 OneCare Messenger 8.0 in the works Windows Live! WMP 10
There are tons and tons of applications being updated and released all the time from MSFT.
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
Focus on getting things done, providing meaningful comments, and having a life!
So all these 'naked conversations' that depart from the standard line, are 'un-meaningful' and prove that said responder has no life? Railing against broken promises and vaporware is 'bitching' and a 'waste of time'? I guess the whole of the tech press can go home, now that they know it's all a 'waste of time'. At what point does accountability ever enter in?
You marvel that software even ships? That's their job, that's why they earn billions, that's what they promised, that's what their shareholder's and partners expect, if they can't do that, they die. I more marvel when ActiveWords will ship a decent bug-free version, with a good UI (not dated from 1996) and something beyond the slap together Tablet version. Focus on "getting that done" over eternal marketing buzz and blog suck-ups. AW needs a serious rewrite.
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
Christopher: it's funny that you mention AW's UI. the whole point of it is to GET RID OF THE UI. Do you even use it? Sounds like you don't. I type a word, hit F8, and it does something that I programmed into it. Type "NYT" and hit F8 and it goes to the New York Times. Saves me time. I don't care that the UI doesn't look like it was done with Windows Presentation Foundation or that it would never make it onto CSI. It does what it advertises and it stays out of the way.
Jonathon
· 3 years ago
Remember, Mac Minis are only $599, a pretty low cost to try out OS X.
Ricky
· 3 years ago
Ok, I can't help it, I have to say it.
The MS press release on this is so "pre-Scoble".
We know this can be described as an announcement of "loads of stuff is actually on schedule, but we need to do some things a little bit later", but doesn't the MS press office ever LEARN.
Rule (1) find anything that might be bad news in the stuff you have to announce and "fess up", front and center.
Say you are disappointed.
Even if you can somehow internally find a thousand fantastic reasons why you should even gosh-darn CELEBRATE the thing that will look bad, you should start seriously thinking about who is going to suffer and giving your REGRETS number one priority as far as what you have to say and then maybe consider presenting all that "accentuating the positive" stuff AFTERWARDS as a way of saying that there is at least perhaps some compensation.
Otherwise it is like saying:
"Bad stuff happened, it may hurt you, it may hurt us, but we're going to pretend it never happened, we're going to pretend it isn't bad and we aren't going to complain, so don't you complain".
Microsoft has shown that it wants to be seen to care about users "in everything it does", but somehow corporate communications does not seem to be something that it considers to be part of "everything it does".
This is something that enthusing over RSS feeds or OPML or Web 2.0 will not fix.
Surely "Scoble the confessor" is being ignored:
You will always get stuff wrong.
Confessions build trust.
Presenting bad news as good news is bad news.
Microsoft's press release today was one for the textbooks (Naked Conversations 2.0?)
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
Ricky: I agree. Personally, if I had bad or good news I'd bear all in the blogs.
Nik Cubrilovic
· 3 years ago
Robert it's not the first 'slip up', they started the project again at a time when it was due out - so this slip up is the 4th that I can recall. Worst of all it's an indication to the public of what is happening within Microsoft. Big big big mess.
Nik Cubrilovic
· 3 years ago
Oh and I wonder if Jim Allchin will now need to stay on a bit longer
Grant
· 3 years ago
Who's going to love this? The zealous people who already hate Microsoft and its products beyond any rational objectivity.
Who's going to hate this? People with blue badges and those without who drink too much Kool-Aid.
What do actual customers and partners think? In my corner of the world, they want you to get it right, ship it when it's ready and not a moment sooner. Live with the PR, the only one's who will remember the timeline in a few years are the one's holding their own little bitter field days right about now.
Kent Pribbernow
· 3 years ago
This isn't surprising given Vista's schizophrenic development cycle, but it is highly disappointing to witness yet ANOTHER delay in an already disastrously long process. It's a comedy of errors. I had hoped to participate in the Vista beta program in order to gain an early look at the new platform and provide feedback. But now I just want something to satiate my appetite for new tech!
Does anyone know if and when Microsoft will make Vista beta available to consumers?
JonUK
· 3 years ago
Where'd my comment go :@
JonUK
· 3 years ago
HAHAHAHA!
Only it isn't that funny. I hope Apple sell a licence to develop OSX to some huge company that can support it for a generic IBMcomp.
solomonrex
· 3 years ago
OBVIOUSLY, they delayed it to help X360 out. That's why Vista is delayed on the consumer side (where it's in competition with the more important X360 project), but still shipping to businesses. Now that MS is a hardware manufacturer, the OEMs should know MS can't be trusted.
They're in competition for the same money from the same gamers. That's why MS announced the good Xbox 360 stuff first. That's what they care about. And next year they'll start ignoring 'Plays For Sure' to integrate their MP3 player with Xbox Live, which is more money for MS and less for OEMs.
So good luck spinning this. I know MS is going to placate your Software Assurance Customers by rolling Vista out just for them, and making it look temporary by hiring a known quantity in the Office dude, but sooner or later, customers will notice that you're killing them.
You should split up for the good of your shareholders.
Kent Pribbernow
· 3 years ago
I love this delusional notion that, because Vista is delayed by a month, consumers and business will universally dump Windows and move to Linux or Mac. Someone needs to dump an ice cold bucket of rationalism on this topic, so it may as well be me. Do you really want to know what the net effect of Vista's delay will mean? Answer: nothing. Not a damn thing. Both consumers and businesses will simply maintain what they already have, especially the latter. Corporate customers are notoriously slow at migrating to new operating systems, and usually won't begin that process until the first service pack ships. XP is still a great solution for consumers, and runs all the software they want. And I seriously doubt millions of consumers are sitting on pins and needles waiting to buy new PCs this Christmas running Vista. Operating systems are just not that exciting anymore.
John C. Welch
· 3 years ago
If the consumer version ship dates are being pushed back to make it more secure, reliable and better, but the corporate ship dates haven't changed, does that mean that the Enterprise gets less secure, less reliable and worse?
kapeka
· 3 years ago
and I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product.
Bad if you got both :mrgreen:
But you're rigth, so I will be waiting patiently for kick-ass Suse 10.1 ;-)
Ralph Scheuer
· 3 years ago
WHAT??? Vista delayed? Must be the first time, never heard that before ;-)
J. Random Poster
· 3 years ago
It's time to admit it. Vista is failed project. It's the biggest software development failure of all time in the private sector.
Dave
· 3 years ago
Well, I'm glad that my not attending PDC '03 rendered my skills irrelevent! Sorry Robert, couldn't resist one more poke at you.
All kidding aside, I feel sad for you. This surely can't sit well with you.
I'm quite sure you didn't join MS with expectations that the product you are paid to evangelise is still vaporware some 18 months after it was supposed to be released.
And the timing and way they announced this... talk about a cold slap in your face. New MS? Transparency? Let's just say that your influence obviously hasn't included certain corners of that 57,000 monolith you work for.
I don't see this as a win for Apple. But since they (a) are well ahead of their timeline of switching to Intel and (b) were smart enough to NOT make any statement on when Leopard will be released - it also isn't a loss for Apple.
No, the biggest losers are Microsoft and the OEMs. The $$$ losses for the OEMs are obvious. Whatever anyone might comment about PCs as holiday gifts... face it, Wall Street already has Vista factored into their sales for calendar Q4 this year.
Microsoft? Two big things will result - and neither one good. First, while they will likely not suffer much in the way of lost sales, they already have begun suffering a (or is that another) gigantic loss of face. Second, like you pretty much said Robert, Vista HAS to be a much better OS than XP. Not just incremental. Not just an OS X ripoff. It has to be complete, bug-free, and capture everyone's attention.
That is a very tough order. And the history of Microsoft - and Vista in particular - doesn't inspire much confidence either.
Henry
· 3 years ago
There are many great people in the systems division working on Windows but the management is poor. The quality of software is determined by management first and culture second. Microsoft suffers on both. Windows management insists on a monolithic approach where Windows is considered one big program. The development culture favors the cowboy over the professional.
Contrast this with Office where, by design, it consists of a suite of relatively independent programs. As the development progresses management enforces rules so that common components are more difficult to change.
To enforce Steven Sinofsky style management will be nearly impossible in the systems group. During the “Cairo years” the “object model” changed almost weekly. It was clear to me that management knew neither what an object model was nor what the implications of one design decision over another would be. They certainly did not know what the consequences of changing it so frequently were. These same managers and the cowboy “architects” they nurture remain in the group today.
Another key failure of Windows management is the focus on bundling. Not only must things be not-modular, they must have system dependencies. The root of this is fear. In the face of falling operating system kernel prices (open software) management seeks to expand the size of the operating system.
Microsoft systems division, it’s so, well, IBM like isn’t it? Yet IBM has moved on. Perhaps Vista will ship and perhaps it will be the last great giant monolithic operating system. Or maybe Windows XP was the last…
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
Do you even use it? Sounds like you don’t.
Yeah, Buzz slapped me with a freebie, member? You prodded him to do such, back when I was Tablet PC Marketing King and your seemingly best friend. Get rid of the UI? Well you always need a control panel factor, but getting rid of the UI, makes it expert-level only. You always need an UI indicator of sorts. Been using it since Palm Beach Florida days, and it hasn't really developed much since then, and that was 3 moves ago, and 5 years ago.
Anyways, back on topic...wondering if the RTM of October 25 will hold? I am still on for March 5th, 2007 as launch date.
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
PS - I don’t care that the UI doesn’t look like it was done with Windows Presentation Foundation
I sure hope you care in regards to Vista, the new GUI 3D look, is about the only centerpiece you have for average customers. OSX'ing it, only many years later. ;)
eponymous coward
· 3 years ago
John it's pretty simple, actually. It takes a fair amount of time to press a zillion CDs and stuff them into packaging, and to have OEMs load stuff on computers. So what will happen is the code will be frozen as Gold Master sometime in November and handed off to OEMs, corps and so on, as well sent to manufacturing, there will be a big huge ship party with enough beer to float a battleship on the Microsoft campus, and sometime in January Vista will be available at retail/preloaded on computers after Jay Leno/Conan/whoever is onstage with Bill Gates at some ship event.
Brad
· 3 years ago
I think it's going to be a revolutionary blockbuster, and no I don't drink Koolaid. WPF apps in the browser. Think about just that one. And if MS was *really* worried about the timeline, they would have delayed 3+ months now, 4 weeks is just nothing on a big project.
solomonrex
· 3 years ago
From a consumer perspective, I don't understand what Vista will change...
Games on ps3/x360 music on Itunes pictures online blogs online online email
How often do I use office software at home? almost never. For resumes, and I hope that isn't necessary in the future.
How often do I need a specific OS? Almost never. I'm relying on it for organizing pictures, but that could easily be done online, I haven't gotten around to it.
Most consumers are like this, now. It doesn't matter how great Vista is. No one else is standing still. Like how Ford sold the same Taurus for the last 10 years, while Camry and Accord kept upgrading? Well, Ford was pumping out SUVs and MS is working on Live and X360 and DRM. And it's starting to hurt. People are spending their money on HDTVs this year. Vista isn't even on the map for consumers. And business customers are so unimpressed, this won't be rolled out in earnest for 2 more years.
You all know this. That's why Live is a big deal. But the company IS too big, and needs to be split up. The X360 has no relationship to Vista, and is a competitor in the consumer space. I can say the same for Live.
mike
· 3 years ago
um.. they are totally screwing the hardware makers with this, no? Vista was going to give hardware makers a nice demand push...
And to those saying they'd rather have a good product than one shipped on time.. let's be clear..
Monopolies suck. Competitive markets are faster, and better quality.
And even if it shipped November it would already be LATE AS HELL.
OS X came out in 2001.
Yes, Sony and HP are asking for OS X lisences. But alas, Apple is a hardware company..
J. Random Poster
· 3 years ago
If Sony and HP got licenses to sell OS X, that would be the clearest signal yet that MS is heading for the ash heap of history. In less than a year, Apple could marginalize Windows, changing it from "that legacy system that we all have to use" to "that legacy system that we're moving off of as quickly as our budgets allow".
It would take decades for MS to drop below 50% market share, but fall they will, and we'll all be far better off for it. We'll remember Windows XP the same way we think of CP/M: a system that was woefully inadequate from the day it shipped.
RL
· 3 years ago
I will say I was disappointed at the news but, I have been disappointed before. I remember waiting months upon months for Halo 2 seeing the ship date pushed back time and time again. The whole gaming community was drooling and disappointed at the same time. We didn't yell about how bad the game was going to be or how Bungie (a division of Microsoft) was lost or behind the times. We waited because we knew that with a game (software) that the wait would be worth it. We knew that we would rather have a perfect game than some piece of crap shipped out to snag our money. I was not disappointed that day that I slid that disc into the X-box and had my dreams come true. When the 360 came out the one game I looked forward to playing on the console was a square-enix title. I didn't sit back and complain when they announced a 8 month delay, because I knew that when it does ship it will be exactly the same quality product that I expected. So Microsoft is delaying Vista. So what? Is XP so bad that we can't use it another 4 weeks? I don't want Vista for what XP does, I want Vista for what XP doesn't do. As far as OSX or LINUX, if they are so great/marketed so well then why does MS own the PC market? If you want OSX or LINUX, it's out there go get it, for me I will gladly wait an extra 4 weeks and get what I want.
I sympathize with the writer of that article, Clif. I got a marketing survey the other day asking about people-ready as a choice for their new campaign. I hated the phrase for exactly the same reasons that the author describes. Hint to Microsoft, fire the marketing staff and find better people to take your surveys. Also, see if you can find a better product spokesman, one that is really passionate and doesn't come off as a "fake". Sorry to be harsh, but calling it like I see it here in the public.
mcloki
· 3 years ago
Apple is going to run out of cat names before this one ships.
I can see Vista in the distance, yet it seems farther away today.
7of7
· 3 years ago
"If Sony and HP got licenses to sell OS X, that would be the clearest signal yet that MS is heading for the ash heap of history.
I highly doubt that. If Sony and HP wanted to sell a cheap eye candy upgrade to BSD, they'd develop their own. Not only that, but Apple's business practices are such that no sane company would want to collaborate with them. The only way to make money off of Apple is to try to appeal to the herd of brainwashed hipsters that Apple has created. This delay for Vista is hardly a blip on the history of software. People who don't already illogically hate Microsoft won't care and they'll buy their Dells preloaded with Vista anyway. As for Apple, hopefully sometime soon people will realize they've been duped and Apple will be relegated to the ash bin of uninnovation fit for their hacked together OS and their black box PCs.
Innocent Bystander
· 3 years ago
"If Sony and HP wanted to sell a cheap eye candy upgrade to BSD, they’d develop their own. "
And who would develop the apps Mr Troll? Meanwhile, MS continues to build on quicksand.
"When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands."
Guess which movie.
John C. Welch
· 3 years ago
Monty python and the holy grail.
Dmad
· 3 years ago
Someone remind me again why Joe Average home computer user NEEDS Vista? Does it make logging in to AOL better? Does it make viewing photos ALL that much better? Does it make reading email ALL that much better? Does it make typing the yearly Christmas card letter ALL the much better? Does it make surfing eBay ALL that much better? Does it make posting on MySpaces ALL that much better? Does MS even know how the home user users their computer anymore? Ballmer still wants to relive his Win95/Office 95 wet dream. The world has vastly changed since 1995. Apparently MS has yet to figure that out.
Eric Graham
· 3 years ago
Ubuntu's next release (Dapper Drake) has been delayed too--and this from a team which prides itself on its clockwork release schedule. Both Vista and Dapper look to be major steps forward for their respective developers, even if the two releases are proportionally distant in terms of importance. 2006 is looking to be a banner year for software companies who want to make their first at-bat count: IMO, that's a great thing for end users. I'm less interested in a three month delay than I am with the quality of the finished product. Good platforms are worth waiting for.
There, I just drew a vaild comparison between Windows and Linux. Flame at will ;)
Windows Vista Home Premium Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.
Windows Vista Home Basic Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs.
Of course, for XP we had:
Top 10 Reasons to Get Windows XP Home Edition
While we can think of hundreds of reasons to use Windows XP Home Edition, these are the 10 at the top of our list.
Help Protect Your PC Automatically keep your PC up-to-date with the latest security enhancements including the Windows Security Center, Windows Firewall, and more to help protect it from viruses and worms that can spread through the Internet.
Set Up and Share Your Computer Quickly and Easily Quickly set up and connect all the computers, printers, devices, and an Internet connection in your home with the all new Network Setup Wizard. Sharing a computer with others has never been easier; quickly access your personal files and accounts without having to close applications or restart the computer.
Easy to Use The clean, simple design of Windows XP puts the features you use most often at your fingertips, helping you find them quickly.
Streamline and Safeguard your Web Browsing Experience Internet Explorer 6 simplifies Web browsing tasks as well as helping keep your personal information private. It blocks most annoying pop-up ads, provides warnings regarding security issues, and helps stop downloads that could harm your PC.
Communicate and Share Memories Easily with Family and Friends Now it’s easier than ever to communicate via text, voice, or video using Windows Messenger. In addition, you’ll find it’s easy to organize, edit, and share pictures and home movies using My Pictures and Windows Movie Maker.
Recover Easily from Problems Caused by System or Application Changes If something goes wrong with your computer, you can easily remove and roll back any system or application changes without losing files and other valuable information.
Easily Access and Explore the Vast World of Music and Video Using Your PC Windows Media Player for Windows XP gives you an easy-to-use place to play your DVDs, organize music, burn CDs, sync with a wide range of media players, and much more.
Quickly Connect to Wireless Networks Windows XP provides rich, wireless network support, helping you simply and easily connect to wireless networks whether in your home, office, or out on the road.
Get Help from Someone You Trust No Matter Where They Are Remote Assistance lets you allow someone else running Windows XP to remotely access and control your computer to demonstrate a process or help solve a problem.
Work with the Tools You Need to Get Things Done Choose from the widest range of software, hardware, and services designed to work together seamlessly including support for many older applications designed for earlier versions of Windows.
Des
· 3 years ago
Wow Im just glad Windows XP will be around a little longer, Windows XP Home was the best purchase I ever made only $30 from HP because of Microsofts Technology Guarantee (I bought a Old HP Computer with Win ME and paid the extra for the upgrade CD)... maybe this will happen again and I can get Vista for $30.
I wish Microsoft well, and hope they can release a good product, which is stable and makes computing easier for everyone. Windows XP is actually a great product, the only thing I really dislike about it is the product activation feature and thats only a pain because your only allowed to activate once.
Hopefully Microsoft will realise that people are not crooks and will be a bit more lenient with the home consumer licensing of Windows Vista like they were with Office 2003 Student and Teachers Edition, allowing 3 installs per copy.
Infact they almost need to do this to survive, or all these older PCs will end up running Linux. Im no Linux fanboy but Ive tried a few Linux live CDs and Im impressed at the progress that the open source community has made.
Microsofts first goal should be to make a stable secure product, that is what bussiness demands and why I welcome this Vista delay.
The second goal should be to stop consumers getting familiar with other any other OS. Thats why retail copies of Vista should be cheaper or allow multiple installs per copy.
In many homes these days you have more than one computer it would be nice to put vista on the old computer(s) aswell as the new top of the range vista built PC... it would increase the security, and ease of use for familys. It would be nice to be allowed to install Vista on Grandmas machine so when she calls you for help you dont have to think where was that menu hidden in Windows XP?
Ultimately Microsoft needs to make money from adverts, and extra services but since the competition is tough right now I would try to make Vista the best OS it can be and then push Vista on everyone by making it really cheap for home users.
There needs to be more ads on Xbox and MSN messenger!
Dmad
· 3 years ago
@83 "Windows Vista Home Premium Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.
Windows Vista Home Basic Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs."
Oh, okay. Now I get it!!! I see the differences now between Vista and XP. It will be "more satisfying" Whatever the hell that means.
And I need Vista Basic to.. just do the basics. I had no idea users weren't doing that yet. But it will be "more reliable". More reliable than what? XP? Great! From a Joe Average user perspective this is very compelling
Andy Merrett
· 3 years ago
"The company says that the delay is due to continuing efforts to improve the security of the operating system." [PC Pro News]
So, never released then, eh ? :)
D
· 3 years ago
Some quick background: First computer was a Mac 128k, switched from the Mac to PC around Windows 95, now just jumped back in with Mac OS X Tiger and a intel Core Duo iMac (along with keeping a Dell desktop and laptop.)
All that said can someone more knowledgable about software development answer some basic questions for me?
1. Windows Vista is clearly a critical release for MS. It does beg the question that for the listed feature set (basically large scale security improvements with graphics and search enhancements to catch up to Mac OS X) how this release has taken so long to be developed? 2003 was supposed to be the launch date, then 2004, then 2006, now 2007... how is it possible for this less than huge list (at least in my mind) of improvements take this long?
2. Does *anyone* think MS will have the courage (or some would say the stupidity since it would likely break old software and endanger there huge marketshare) to someday do a real ground up re-write of the Windows OS? Vista STILL is sitting on the NT kernel which STILL shares a bit with MS-DOS. Everyone knows that part of Mac OS X being so solid was a total restart based on UNIX and NextStep. I do admit a company with 2% marketshare has more of a luxury to do such things but I do think the ground up re-write of the OS is directly what allows Apple to lead the way in OS technology and continue delivering meaningful OS updates on a 12-18 month basis?
I still think Vista while improved will not fully catch up to Mac OS X in a purely technology level (which is disappointing since OS X has existed since 2001) and Mac OS 10.5 will be out late this year, early next year and won't be standing still.
PS: Not promoting Macs here... just wondering what it will REALLY take for MS to truly catchup to the modern Mac OS and even hopefully pass it.
excerpt: "The cornerstone of Microsoft's monopoly power and incredibly profitable Windows and Office franchises, which account for virtually all of Microsoft's income and covers up a huge array of unprofitable or marginally profitable product lines, the Windows API is no longer of much interest to developers. The goose that lays the golden eggs is not quite dead, but it does have a terminal disease, one that nobody noticed yet."
R
· 3 years ago
The delay isn't good for getting early adopters excited -- the early adopters who do IT, particularly, who are thinking about hardware budgets, wondering when/if they'll need to tell bookkeeping that they'll have to shell out extra $$ in Quarter x of 2007 for upgrades. My buddy at a smaller sized company, (where hardware costs are a significant % of operations), gets to have that conversation with his boss, and he's not looking forward to it.
What's worse, is that the feature set subtractions are driving that uncertainty: I can't keep track of which highly promised features Vista is actually going to have, and which ones got subtracted.
If the only thing Vista delivered was a new kernel to wrap XP's interface around, that actually sandboxed explorer and user accounts properly, that would be awesome. But that would, be what, the new innovation for IE 7 plus Service Pack 3?
Alejandro
· 3 years ago
as always: late
Dave
· 3 years ago
D - here's my thoughts on your questions. Very good ones too!
(1) Vista has taken unexpectedly long. I think all people, inside and outside MS, will agree on that.
I believe the product was NEVER announced to be released in 2003. As for the 2004 version, after the (alpha) bits they released at the PDC in October 2003, they reversed course on their "three pillars" afterwards to the point of pretty much going back to the drawing board on the featureset.
They really didn't make this public until 2005, when they also made it clear that they would drop whatever features they had to in order to definitely make a 2006 release.
Which brings us up to this week. What happened? I'm betting very few know. My guess is that the management shakeup is a good indication of the state of things.
(2) Being a Mac guy myself, I'll take your questions as sincere and not just religious posturing. If one reads them (your words) objectively, they'll see how accurate you describe - and answer - your own question.
Microsoft simply cannot dump their existing customer base. They do not have that luxury. Their market would not tolerate it.
And opposite of that is Apple. We're barely a year beyond Tiger and I believe nearly 40% of Macs out there run on it. Five years after OS X and nearly 95% run it. Five years after XP? Penetration is nothing like that.
Different companies, different markets... and different strategies. But yet - both are successful in their own ways!
George
· 3 years ago
I've used the second beta of VISTA and it's GOD AWFUL. The one thing in Windows that I use the most - the file browsers - are so frigged-up and horrible that I'm going to end up being a Windows XP hold-out until I either lower myself to Vista or Son Of Vista or switch to Linux. I cannot use an operating system that offers me a cutesy, dumbed-down, mega-bloated file browser. Hec, I'd even consider Mac OS X on Intel if Apple ever grew a brain and decided to relent to the millions of people dreaming about using their OS without having to pay a fortune for their hardware.
Case in point: the new Vista file browser highlights the entire row when you select a file in details view, yet, I can still click anywhere in the highlighted area (not on the file name itself) to begin drawing a box to select more files. This is so frigged-up that it will confuse people even more: "why won't the file drag? I'm dragging on the blue highlighted area?! What gives?"
Another case in point: most Windows do not have a visibly-discernible control-menu-box (you know, the one in the top left corner). If you click there, you still get the control-menu, but you just can't see that one is there, unless you know to look there. This is also extremely dumb, Microsoft!
Dave
· 3 years ago
It appears that Vista may be undergoing a new round of featureset changes to go along with the management shakeup. Ouch. Talk about a morale killer.
timthefoolman
· 3 years ago
Is it just me, or does it seem ironic to read:
"The only way to make money off of Apple is to try to appeal to the herd of brainwashed hipsters that Apple has created."
followed by:
"People who don’t already illogically hate Microsoft..."
Tim
(Written on a Dell Inspiron 1150, at lunch from my work managing delivery of an XP-Pro/Win2k3-Server product.)
timthefoolman
· 3 years ago
BTW, the quotes were from the same post. Clearly, 7on7 isn't one of the "brainwashed hipsters" that Apple has created.
:-D
Tim
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
And now Office, is playing follow the leader, with its own delay. And yet another Microsoft reorg...but all the Office and Windows comparisons going on now are so much as meaningless, it's a differing beast altogether.
With Kevin Johnson going on and on about 'Ozzie'ism services', the "online advertising industry" and buzzword heavy "align[ing] our organization" and other quasi-post-Microsoft talk. The "optimize for the industry" cop-out in the Press Release was CLASSIC. Ohmigosh. So it's the INDUSTRY'S FAULT then? Hahahha. Comically sad, glad I got them outta my portfolio.
But being that Apple is too iron-fisted as to let HP, Sony or Dell in, and being that Linux is thousands of miles away from being mainstream desktopped, just grin, bear and wait, and suffer through all the beach-ball-bouncy happy-happy Evangelists, MVPs and Bloggers, eternally telling us the 'Emperor's New Clothes' are of the finest silk ever made (right before some new announcement of a dropped feature-set).
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
Reading the Press Release...
"But the industry", "optimize for the industry", "Because of the way businesses test and deploy software"...
Gotta love Microsoft, their own delay, becomes the fault of industry deployment practices. "Shame on you all, you customers you, you don't deploy our stuff right. Yes, you."
Amazing the arrogance it takes to kick out PR like that.
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
George: there isn't a second beta of Windows Vista yet, so when you say you are using it you are lying. Why should we believe anything else you are saying in your post here?
Jon
· 3 years ago
"I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product."
The problem is, MS has been continually cutting features from Vista.
So what do we end up with in a year(?)--a cruddy product that's slipped more than one date.
But oh look shiny moving windows! And Dell is going to preload every PC no matter how much it lacks so who cares how cruddy it is right?
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
Jon: really? A lot of the features that I thought were gonna be cut (like Sidebar) are now back in.
Scott Allen
· 3 years ago
From the individual user's perspective, I imagine most of us would much rather have the date slip and have a stable product. If I wanted to beta test products I'd sign up for the beta. Instead I grumble about Microsoft's idea that "public beta" means "gold release".
But in the enterprise, it's a whole different matter. When Windows slips, everything slips - hardware purchases, other major software purchases, internal development schedules, etc. The whole ecosystem slips. What does this do to a small software company? Microsoft may be in a financial position to weather a few months slippage, but everyone else isn't.
As a solo professional, I can wait, but I understand why others are pissed.
Jon
· 3 years ago
"A lot of the features that I thought were gonna be cut (like Sidebar) are now back in."
Seriously? The feature that made it back in is the "sidebar"?
Not WinFS. Not EFI support. Not monad shell. But wait--sidebar is back in! I better pre-order my copy of Vista ASAP then.
(I still can't tell if your comment was just a joke or if you were being serious).
Dmad
· 3 years ago
Which category does Sidebar fall in to? Better security? Better diagnostics? Less reboots on updates? Support for new kinds of hardware? Better managabiliy?
What, exactly, will Sidebar help an average user do every day that they aren't already doing with their computer running XP? Please tell me this is not your tipping point feature add back in for Vista.
Marty
· 3 years ago
What about photoshop?
I was thinking about articles I've seen on Cnet and else where speculating on the fallout of another Windows delay.
They are saying that 'if there's one company that stands to benefit from the delay of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, it's Apple Computer.'
That might be true in a consumer market segment outside Apple's traditional user base. Almost all my contact with Mac fans has been in graphic design, photography, or film. The problem is Photoshop and the other Adobe tools are not likely to be available for the new intel Mac's until second half of 2007. Forbes had an interview with Bruce Chizen Adobe's chief executive and he is quoted as saying that CS3 won't be out until second half 2007.
Adobe is also saying they do 'not plan to re-release current products as Universal applications that can run natively on both Intel and PowerPC based systems. This applies to Adobe Creative Suite 2 and Studio 8, as well as individual applications such as Photoshop CS2, InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, Acrobat 7.0 Professional, Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8, and After Effects 7.0. Instead, we are focused on delivering the next version of these products as Universal applications that will run natively on the new Intel-based Mac computers. By incorporating the effort to support Intel-based Macs into our normal development process-inwhich we coninue to evolve our features and support for creative workflows in the ways that our creative customers expect from us-we can deliver optimal value for those customers.'
One big reason, according to an Adobe engineer who posted a comment on his blog, is there is no short cut as with the switch to OS X. Switching to OS X could be done with patches rather then recompiling the code and having to do all the testing associated with that kind of effort.
From having projects with large numbers of files that open quickly, to having compact debugging information, to having stable project formats that are text-merge-able in a source control system. These are things XCode is playing catch-up on. Now, Apple is doing an amazing job at catching up rapidly, but the truth is we don't yet have a shipping XCode in hand that handles a large application well. And switching compilers always involves more work than you would think in a codebase of this size.
So where does this leave the question of market gains given that Microsoft is saying that Vista has been delayed? Probably will give them an edge in a consumer market segment thats looking for a fresh OS look and feel as well as a 'more secure' environment. Is that sustainable? On the professional creative front all is not well. Desktops aren't available till second half of this year and the G5 platform is being phazed out. The last speed bump for the G5 I'm aware of has already happened. So for the creative pro its limbo till second half 2007 unless they can tolerate Photoshop or other Adobe products runing at G4 speeds or less on the new Intel Macs.
In short I'm not so sure Apple has the edge the analysts say they do.
Jamil Ashour
· 3 years ago
Jeopardizing delivery in a cause of quality, is it justifiable?. No, absolutely not. In a world of furious competition, in a world where Microsoft is being chased by each software company on the planet, in a world where Linux is phenomenally growing, failure to deliver is not an option. Why does Microsoft has to jeopardize quality in the first place?. Why the delivery date is not being met in the first place. I think risking Microsoft bread and butter-Windows OS- by some irresponsible highly compensated executives should have only one answer: get rid of them and get Microsoft back on track.
Jamil, a Linux lover
Larry Leatherwood
· 3 years ago
Quality before Quantity is the golden rule.
I applaud Microsoft for not releasing the product. As a professional technologist I would rather see Microsoft test their products more thorough before releasing the product.
Besides that, no one is going to jump all over this 64bit OS that needs major hardware upgrades before deployment to the desktop. They made the right decision.
Limeybloke
· 3 years ago
This must be killing you man. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Dr. Fyzz
· 3 years ago
"I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product."
Congratulations. Now we have both. :)
Seriously guys, just get out of the OS market altogether and stick to selling keyboards and mice. Those are the only halfway decent products Microsoft has had in years. You were relevant once, but everyone and their dog has shipped their "next gen" OSes literally *years* ahead of you.
pxfixer
· 3 years ago
I think that at leased from a custumer's point of view the problem are the fact that Microsoft has an monopoly in the the operatingsystem business with its 95 % Ewery company that has this market share will eventualy loose its custumer base when and if its starting to produce crappy over bloated software that no one realy wants and don't have the choise not to pay for when they buy a new pc Ewen the employees at the company (MS) think its crap. In an market economy the usual thing for a company that ewedentialy produce crap would be to go out of business but because the US goverment seems to bee wery found of monopolies a'la Sovjet union this would newer happen. What I mean is that since Microsoft dosn't have to compete it can do what ever they want and people whould still end up with its product becuse of the OEM deals with major pc vendors. Most people dosn't have a choise since they can't choose another OS at the computer store if they wanted to. And that is the main reason why so many people hate Microsoft. With other words, there's no freedom when buing a computer. Of course you can download some Linux iso files but since its not on the computer when you buy it and you have to pay for windows anyway most people would newer ewer try linux and that is a shame because its realy good, beleaweme,i ve been using it for six years now.
What needs to be done about microsoft? 1. split microsoft in smaller parts 2. make them follow the international laws of competition I can think of at least two or three laws they arebreaking ight now here in sweden an in the EU 3.scrap the OEM deals with HP,IBM etc.
Maybe then, they starts to produce something thats inwenting and secure for a change instead of copying others and patenting it as there own. btw I use Xandros 3.0 and its great www.xandros.com
jean
· 3 years ago
OKAY vista is delayed OKAY i will buy vista in 3000 AD BUT not OKAY when a patch is released 2 weeks after VISTA is released. Well then the question is what were you doing for 994 years? www.irintech.com/x1
Aspartame
· 3 years ago
Microsoft didn't deliver on functionality AND didn't deliver on time. The project will be 4 years late circa 2007. People won't focus on how many promised features where cut because of the 4 year f*ck up. I can lead this product division better than any past, present, or future executives at Microsoft.
cartman
· 3 years ago
Suck my balls
David
· 3 years ago
Windows is delayed so AMD won't take more market share from Intel with AMD's 64 bit chips. Simple as that, conspiracy and collusion.
Mike High End
· 3 years ago
Indeed. Its nice to have some freedom about being able to post news.
All Comments
I'll say this: the Office team under Steven Sinofsky makes its dates and has consistently done so. That's not something that's lost on me.
It's easy to make your dates when your goal is steady incrementalism. (Don't get me wrong, this is a laudable goal in itself.)
Windows consistently tries to do something ambitious. (Note that I wrote *tries*.) The problems are that they frequently waste time and fail, and then there's a mad scramble to ship something.
There has to be a better way than Office's extended turgidity, and Windows' randomness.
As a developer on the Windows team, I can't take this crap much longer.
I agree with Mini microsoft. Some body needs to be fired. Its funny to read the management's email every time there is a delay. It has the same statement over and over.."You promised you will deilver and I believe you will deliver".
Well if the WSJ news is true then we have yet another reorg coming down this year. I wonder whether the commitments of our VP's MUST include "I will oversee 2 reorgs this year". I am sure ballmer will send a "We are innovating in vista" email tomorrow. Well..stock lost its month long rally in one afternoon and with more red coming tomorrow.
Sigh!
Take your time. It took two years after release for Windows XP to become any good.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1939489,00...
"We have a very diff view of how people are making people productive. Microsoft is trying to prolong a pre-Internet business model, the same one they were selling 20 years ago," Bisconti said.
Still. It does give more time for a "Tiger on Intel" push, and for Suse 10 Linux Desktop to get established.
Have they published a timetable for SP1 for Vista - cos lets face it, it'll never be on corporate desktops en masse before SP1 is out....
$30b in the bank, and no-one at the helm ?
Tch.
---* Bill
..."The future of this company depends on the quality of this product being flawless, and we can accept nothing less...regardless of timeframe. Otherwise people will simply stand up from their desk and walk over to an Apple store...and move on with their lives."...
...a quote from ( someone/everyone ) at Microsoft during the meeting prior to this annoucement.
As obvious as this quote may seem to everyone...one can't help but gaze in the wonderment at the desperate reality that is Microsoft today.
http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/default...
Personally, if Alan Cooper had anything to do with it, GREAT!!!
Just don't ship crappy code that is gonna tie Microsoft down for the next 10 years, fix the stupid things (no matter how long it takes.)
Does OS development take longer than WordProcessors ? I certainly hope so! Does it involve research into unexplored waters requiring research with an unknown ship/release date? I certainly hope so!
Those two machines I wanted to buy to have VISTA on ? Obviously they weren't important enough if their main focus was to get VISTA on them, so they'll just wait until next year. Oh well, back to this dingy crappy 3.2Ghz laptop with 1GB ram.
Unfortunately the purchase delays effect 1 x TabletPC and 1 x Origami. In the end the Borg will get me, so I hope the experience is going to be worth the wait.
The delay of shipping to OEMs from July to August will unfortunately delay getting the product into my non-corporate hands until Jan 2007.
Now to find something interesting to do for the next 9 months. Hey, sweet-heart ...
Wow, this Snark Non-Dairy Creamer is great with coffee!
Doesn't makes sense to me. Early adopters would cut through holiday clutter and it will take months for Mom and Pop consumers to get the message anyway...
No matter what Redmond releases, there are whole armies of dedicated foes who will find the flaws before Microsoft ever does. They'll exploit the holes and bash the design (Take a look at the s***storm on the PCWorld blog thread devoted to the delay.)
With people waiting for you in the wings like that, determined to give you bad press and eventually thwart sales, wouldn't you want to wait until the thing kicked ass before you let it out? Maybe even win over the critics?
Microsoft simply realizes that this thing doesn't kick ass yet. But you can't really say that in your press releases. You say things like "on target" and "on track." I'd expect even more delay beyond the January 2007 target...hopefully upping the kickass factor.
No matter the spin, things must be pretty desperate at Microsoft to sacrifice the holiday season.
With the most resources of any software company on earth, with the most money of any software company on earth and with the best software engineers on earth they can't make it happen on time?
Amazing.
I wonder what the other steve is planning? How about this, mobilize his forces to make sure that dell, hp, etc. can run OSX on their PC's? Why not. Apple has already done most of the hard work, AND all the PC vendors are having to adjust their componetry a little to account for Vista demands. Why not align with Apple on 20% of their lines? This will wake up Microsoft, and Apples stock will double on the rumor alone.
Um, Robert Windows XP has been out for FIVE YEARS, and Windows Vista development has been going on darned near that long. Did you think that Microsoft was going to slip quality into the product at the last minute.
I've been reading a lot of Microsoft employee blogs in the last 24 hours that indicate a great deal of dissatisfaction with this date slippage and that are pointing the finger at management.
I've been blogging about this for sometime. I like Microsoft, but lengthy product development and delivery cycles impact business productivity and innovation.
Who says you won't have both?
Maybe internals should start using their own dogfood, Microsoft Project. Easy to be a critic here, but it is a massive undertaking with a user base of millions, but then THEY hyped it up, starting with PDC 03, and as time went by, slowly letting the air out of the feature set (WinFS and etc.), and now failing to meet their own committed deadlines. The blogs and the 'Evangelists' share some blame, for over-promising and over-hyping. Considering that Vista will be mainly a new hardware system upgrade, missing the holiday is a serious hit.
But here's the bigger problem beyond the delay, they still have yet to articulate why the average consumer or even average Fortune 500 company needs to upgrade. I guess they will have to spend every dime of that $500 million in doing so. But I have yet to hear a good elevator pitch.
From what I have seen Vista will be better than XP, how much better, who knows, but sometime it seems that all the bitching is just a waste of time.
Focus on getting things done, providing meaningful comments, and having a life!
a) No one I know has bought someone else a copy of Windows for the Holiday season.
b) Given that most copies of Windows are sold with computers... computers are evolving more and more into utilities that students, loved ones, friends NEED as opposed to want... so any Holiday gifts... while may include new computers, will probably be stuffed with cool toys like PSP's, 360's, iPod's, etc.
c) If you think Microsoft is lame because they can't release a product in 5 years... your forgetting:
Updates to Exchange
Server 2003 R2
Visual Studio 2005
.NET Framework 2.0
SQL Server 2005
OneCare
Messenger 8.0 in the works
Windows Live!
WMP 10
There are tons and tons of applications being updated and released all the time from MSFT.
So all these 'naked conversations' that depart from the standard line, are 'un-meaningful' and prove that said responder has no life? Railing against broken promises and vaporware is 'bitching' and a 'waste of time'? I guess the whole of the tech press can go home, now that they know it's all a 'waste of time'. At what point does accountability ever enter in?
You marvel that software even ships? That's their job, that's why they earn billions, that's what they promised, that's what their shareholder's and partners expect, if they can't do that, they die. I more marvel when ActiveWords will ship a decent bug-free version, with a good UI (not dated from 1996) and something beyond the slap together Tablet version. Focus on "getting that done" over eternal marketing buzz and blog suck-ups. AW needs a serious rewrite.
The MS press release on this is so "pre-Scoble".
We know this can be described as an announcement of "loads of stuff is actually on schedule, but we need to do some things a little bit later", but doesn't the MS press office ever LEARN.
Rule (1) find anything that might be bad news in the stuff you have to announce and "fess up", front and center.
Say you are disappointed.
Even if you can somehow internally find a thousand fantastic reasons why you should even gosh-darn CELEBRATE the thing that will look bad, you should start seriously thinking about who is going to suffer and giving your REGRETS number one priority as far as what you have to say and then maybe consider presenting all that "accentuating the positive" stuff AFTERWARDS as a way of saying that there is at least perhaps some compensation.
Otherwise it is like saying:
"Bad stuff happened, it may hurt you, it may hurt us, but we're going to pretend it never happened, we're going to pretend it isn't bad and we aren't going to complain, so don't you complain".
Microsoft has shown that it wants to be seen to care about users "in everything it does", but somehow corporate communications does not seem to be something that it considers to be part of "everything it does".
This is something that enthusing over RSS feeds or OPML or Web 2.0 will not fix.
Surely "Scoble the confessor" is being ignored:
You will always get stuff wrong.
Confessions build trust.
Presenting bad news as good news is bad news.
Microsoft's press release today was one for the textbooks (Naked Conversations 2.0?)
Who's going to hate this? People with blue badges and those without who drink too much Kool-Aid.
What do actual customers and partners think? In my corner of the world, they want you to get it right, ship it when it's ready and not a moment sooner. Live with the PR, the only one's who will remember the timeline in a few years are the one's holding their own little bitter field days right about now.
Does anyone know if and when Microsoft will make Vista beta available to consumers?
Only it isn't that funny. I hope Apple sell a licence to develop OSX to some huge company that can support it for a generic IBMcomp.
They're in competition for the same money from the same gamers. That's why MS announced the good Xbox 360 stuff first. That's what they care about. And next year they'll start ignoring 'Plays For Sure' to integrate their MP3 player with Xbox Live, which is more money for MS and less for OEMs.
So good luck spinning this. I know MS is going to placate your Software Assurance Customers by rolling Vista out just for them, and making it look temporary by hiring a known quantity in the Office dude, but sooner or later, customers will notice that you're killing them.
You should split up for the good of your shareholders.
Bad if you got both :mrgreen:
But you're rigth, so I will be waiting patiently for kick-ass Suse 10.1 ;-)
All kidding aside, I feel sad for you. This surely can't sit well with you.
I'm quite sure you didn't join MS with expectations that the product you are paid to evangelise is still vaporware some 18 months after it was supposed to be released.
And the timing and way they announced this... talk about a cold slap in your face. New MS? Transparency? Let's just say that your influence obviously hasn't included certain corners of that 57,000 monolith you work for.
I don't see this as a win for Apple. But since they (a) are well ahead of their timeline of switching to Intel and (b) were smart enough to NOT make any statement on when Leopard will be released - it also isn't a loss for Apple.
No, the biggest losers are Microsoft and the OEMs. The $$$ losses for the OEMs are obvious. Whatever anyone might comment about PCs as holiday gifts... face it, Wall Street already has Vista factored into their sales for calendar Q4 this year.
Microsoft? Two big things will result - and neither one good. First, while they will likely not suffer much in the way of lost sales, they already have begun suffering a (or is that another) gigantic loss of face. Second, like you pretty much said Robert, Vista HAS to be a much better OS than XP. Not just incremental. Not just an OS X ripoff. It has to be complete, bug-free, and capture everyone's attention.
That is a very tough order. And the history of Microsoft - and Vista in particular - doesn't inspire much confidence either.
Contrast this with Office where, by design, it consists of a suite of relatively independent programs. As the development progresses management enforces rules so that common components are more difficult to change.
To enforce Steven Sinofsky style management will be nearly impossible in the systems group. During the “Cairo years” the “object model” changed almost weekly. It was clear to me that management knew neither what an object model was nor what the implications of one design decision over another would be. They certainly did not know what the consequences of changing it so frequently were. These same managers and the cowboy “architects” they nurture remain in the group today.
Another key failure of Windows management is the focus on bundling. Not only must things be not-modular, they must have system dependencies. The root of this is fear. In the face of falling operating system kernel prices (open software) management seeks to expand the size of the operating system.
Microsoft systems division, it’s so, well, IBM like isn’t it? Yet IBM has moved on. Perhaps Vista will ship and perhaps it will be the last great giant monolithic operating system. Or maybe Windows XP was the last…
Yeah, Buzz slapped me with a freebie, member? You prodded him to do such, back when I was Tablet PC Marketing King and your seemingly best friend. Get rid of the UI? Well you always need a control panel factor, but getting rid of the UI, makes it expert-level only. You always need an UI indicator of sorts. Been using it since Palm Beach Florida days, and it hasn't really developed much since then, and that was 3 moves ago, and 5 years ago.
Anyways, back on topic...wondering if the RTM of October 25 will hold? I am still on for March 5th, 2007 as launch date.
I sure hope you care in regards to Vista, the new GUI 3D look, is about the only centerpiece you have for average customers. OSX'ing it, only many years later. ;)
Games on ps3/x360
music on Itunes
pictures online
blogs online
online email
How often do I use office software at home? almost never. For resumes, and I hope that isn't necessary in the future.
How often do I need a specific OS? Almost never. I'm relying on it for organizing pictures, but that could easily be done online, I haven't gotten around to it.
Most consumers are like this, now. It doesn't matter how great Vista is. No one else is standing still. Like how Ford sold the same Taurus for the last 10 years, while Camry and Accord kept upgrading? Well, Ford was pumping out SUVs and MS is working on Live and X360 and DRM. And it's starting to hurt. People are spending their money on HDTVs this year. Vista isn't even on the map for consumers. And business customers are so unimpressed, this won't be rolled out in earnest for 2 more years.
You all know this. That's why Live is a big deal. But the company IS too big, and needs to be split up. The X360 has no relationship to Vista, and is a competitor in the consumer space. I can say the same for Live.
And to those saying they'd rather have a good product than one shipped on time.. let's be clear..
Monopolies suck. Competitive markets are faster, and better quality.
And even if it shipped November it would already be LATE AS HELL.
OS X came out in 2001.
Yes, Sony and HP are asking for OS X lisences. But alas, Apple is a hardware company..
It would take decades for MS to drop below 50% market share, but fall they will, and we'll all be far better off for it. We'll remember Windows XP the same way we think of CP/M: a system that was woefully inadequate from the day it shipped.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11961731/
I'd be very interested in your response.
I can see Vista in the distance, yet it seems farther away today.
I highly doubt that. If Sony and HP wanted to sell a cheap eye candy upgrade to BSD, they'd develop their own. Not only that, but Apple's business practices are such that no sane company would want to collaborate with them. The only way to make money off of Apple is to try to appeal to the herd of brainwashed hipsters that Apple has created. This delay for Vista is hardly a blip on the history of software. People who don't already illogically hate Microsoft won't care and they'll buy their Dells preloaded with Vista anyway. As for Apple, hopefully sometime soon people will realize they've been duped and Apple will be relegated to the ash bin of uninnovation fit for their hacked together OS and their black box PCs.
And who would develop the apps Mr Troll? Meanwhile, MS continues to build on quicksand.
"When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands."
Guess which movie.
There, I just drew a vaild comparison between Windows and Linux. Flame at will ;)
From Windows Vista: The Versions
Windows Vista Home Premium
Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.
Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs.
Of course, for XP we had:
Top 10 Reasons to Get Windows XP Home Edition
While we can think of hundreds of reasons to use Windows XP Home Edition, these are the 10 at the top of our list.
Help Protect Your PC
Automatically keep your PC up-to-date with the latest security enhancements including the Windows Security Center, Windows Firewall, and more to help protect it from viruses and worms that can spread through the Internet.
Set Up and Share Your Computer Quickly and Easily
Quickly set up and connect all the computers, printers, devices, and an Internet connection in your home with the all new Network Setup Wizard. Sharing a computer with others has never been easier; quickly access your personal files and accounts without having to close applications or restart the computer.
Easy to Use
The clean, simple design of Windows XP puts the features you use most often at your fingertips, helping you find them quickly.
Streamline and Safeguard your Web Browsing Experience
Internet Explorer 6 simplifies Web browsing tasks as well as helping keep your personal information private. It blocks most annoying pop-up ads, provides warnings regarding security issues, and helps stop downloads that could harm your PC.
Communicate and Share Memories Easily with Family and Friends
Now it’s easier than ever to communicate via text, voice, or video using Windows Messenger. In addition, you’ll find it’s easy to organize, edit, and share pictures and home movies using My Pictures and Windows Movie Maker.
Recover Easily from Problems Caused by System or Application Changes
If something goes wrong with your computer, you can easily remove and roll back any system or application changes without losing files and other valuable information.
Easily Access and Explore the Vast World of Music and Video Using Your PC
Windows Media Player for Windows XP gives you an easy-to-use place to play your DVDs, organize music, burn CDs, sync with a wide range of media players, and much more.
Quickly Connect to Wireless Networks
Windows XP provides rich, wireless network support, helping you simply and easily connect to wireless networks whether in your home, office, or out on the road.
Get Help from Someone You Trust No Matter Where They Are
Remote Assistance lets you allow someone else running Windows XP to remotely access and control your computer to demonstrate a process or help solve a problem.
Work with the Tools You Need to Get Things Done
Choose from the widest range of software, hardware, and services designed to work together seamlessly including support for many older applications designed for earlier versions of Windows.
I wish Microsoft well, and hope they can release a good product, which is stable and makes computing easier for everyone. Windows XP is actually a great product, the only thing I really dislike about it is the product activation feature and thats only a pain because your only allowed to activate once.
Hopefully Microsoft will realise that people are not crooks and will be a bit more lenient with the home consumer licensing of Windows Vista like they were with Office 2003 Student and Teachers Edition, allowing 3 installs per copy.
Infact they almost need to do this to survive, or all these older PCs will end up running Linux. Im no Linux fanboy but Ive tried a few Linux live CDs and Im impressed at the progress that the open source community has made.
Microsofts first goal should be to make a stable secure product, that is what bussiness demands and why I welcome this Vista delay.
The second goal should be to stop consumers getting familiar with other any other OS. Thats why retail copies of Vista should be cheaper or allow multiple installs per copy.
In many homes these days you have more than one computer it would be nice to put vista on the old computer(s) aswell as the new top of the range vista built PC... it would increase the security, and ease of use for familys. It would be nice to be allowed to install Vista on Grandmas machine so when she calls you for help you dont have to think where was that menu hidden in Windows XP?
Ultimately Microsoft needs to make money from adverts, and extra services but since the competition is tough right now I would try to make Vista the best OS it can be and then push Vista on everyone by making it really cheap for home users.
There needs to be more ads on Xbox and MSN messenger!
"Windows Vista Home Premium
Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.
Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs."
Oh, okay. Now I get it!!! I see the differences now between Vista and XP. It will be "more satisfying" Whatever the hell that means.
And I need Vista Basic to.. just do the basics. I had no idea users weren't doing that yet. But it will be "more reliable". More reliable than what? XP? Great! From a Joe Average user perspective this is very compelling
So, never released then, eh ? :)
All that said can someone more knowledgable about software development answer some basic questions for me?
1. Windows Vista is clearly a critical release for MS. It does beg the question that for the listed feature set (basically large scale security improvements with graphics and search enhancements to catch up to Mac OS X) how this release has taken so long to be developed? 2003 was supposed to be the launch date, then 2004, then 2006, now 2007... how is it possible for this less than huge list (at least in my mind) of improvements take this long?
2. Does *anyone* think MS will have the courage (or some would say the stupidity since it would likely break old software and endanger there huge marketshare) to someday do a real ground up re-write of the Windows OS? Vista STILL is sitting on the NT kernel which STILL shares a bit with MS-DOS. Everyone knows that part of Mac OS X being so solid was a total restart based on UNIX and NextStep. I do admit a company with 2% marketshare has more of a luxury to do such things but I do think the ground up re-write of the OS is directly what allows Apple to lead the way in OS technology and continue delivering meaningful OS updates on a 12-18 month basis?
I still think Vista while improved will not fully catch up to Mac OS X in a purely technology level (which is disappointing since OS X has existed since 2001) and Mac OS 10.5 will be out late this year, early next year and won't be standing still.
PS: Not promoting Macs here... just wondering what it will REALLY take for MS to truly catchup to the modern Mac OS and even hopefully pass it.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
old article, from june 2004, and looong, but still valid
excerpt:
"The cornerstone of Microsoft's monopoly power and incredibly profitable Windows and Office franchises, which account for virtually all of Microsoft's income and covers up a huge array of unprofitable or marginally profitable product lines, the Windows API is no longer of much interest to developers. The goose that lays the golden eggs is not quite dead, but it does have a terminal disease, one that nobody noticed yet."
What's worse, is that the feature set subtractions are driving that uncertainty: I can't keep track of which highly promised features Vista is actually going to have, and which ones got subtracted.
If the only thing Vista delivered was a new kernel to wrap XP's interface around, that actually sandboxed explorer and user accounts properly, that would be awesome. But that would, be what, the new innovation for IE 7 plus Service Pack 3?
(1) Vista has taken unexpectedly long. I think all people, inside and outside MS, will agree on that.
I believe the product was NEVER announced to be released in 2003. As for the 2004 version, after the (alpha) bits they released at the PDC in October 2003, they reversed course on their "three pillars" afterwards to the point of pretty much going back to the drawing board on the featureset.
They really didn't make this public until 2005, when they also made it clear that they would drop whatever features they had to in order to definitely make a 2006 release.
Which brings us up to this week. What happened? I'm betting very few know. My guess is that the management shakeup is a good indication of the state of things.
(2) Being a Mac guy myself, I'll take your questions as sincere and not just religious posturing. If one reads them (your words) objectively, they'll see how accurate you describe - and answer - your own question.
Microsoft simply cannot dump their existing customer base. They do not have that luxury. Their market would not tolerate it.
And opposite of that is Apple. We're barely a year beyond Tiger and I believe nearly 40% of Macs out there run on it. Five years after OS X and nearly 95% run it. Five years after XP? Penetration is nothing like that.
Different companies, different markets... and different strategies. But yet - both are successful in their own ways!
Case in point: the new Vista file browser highlights the entire row when you select a file in details view, yet, I can still click anywhere in the highlighted area (not on the file name itself) to begin drawing a box to select more files. This is so frigged-up that it will confuse people even more: "why won't the file drag? I'm dragging on the blue highlighted area?! What gives?"
Another case in point: most Windows do not have a visibly-discernible control-menu-box (you know, the one in the top left corner). If you click there, you still get the control-menu, but you just can't see that one is there, unless you know to look there. This is also extremely dumb, Microsoft!
"The only way to make money off of Apple is to try to appeal to the herd of brainwashed hipsters that Apple has created."
followed by:
"People who don’t already illogically hate Microsoft..."
Tim
(Written on a Dell Inspiron 1150, at lunch from my work managing delivery of an XP-Pro/Win2k3-Server product.)
:-D
Tim
With Kevin Johnson going on and on about 'Ozzie'ism services', the "online advertising industry" and buzzword heavy "align[ing] our organization" and other quasi-post-Microsoft talk. The "optimize for the industry" cop-out in the Press Release was CLASSIC. Ohmigosh. So it's the INDUSTRY'S FAULT then? Hahahha. Comically sad, glad I got them outta my portfolio.
But being that Apple is too iron-fisted as to let HP, Sony or Dell in, and being that Linux is thousands of miles away from being mainstream desktopped, just grin, bear and wait, and suffer through all the beach-ball-bouncy happy-happy Evangelists, MVPs and Bloggers, eternally telling us the 'Emperor's New Clothes' are of the finest silk ever made (right before some new announcement of a dropped feature-set).
"But the industry", "optimize for the industry", "Because of the way businesses test and deploy software"...
Gotta love Microsoft, their own delay, becomes the fault of industry deployment practices. "Shame on you all, you customers you, you don't deploy our stuff right. Yes, you."
Amazing the arrogance it takes to kick out PR like that.
The problem is, MS has been continually cutting features from Vista.
So what do we end up with in a year(?)--a cruddy product that's slipped more than one date.
But oh look shiny moving windows! And Dell is going to preload every PC no matter how much it lacks so who cares how cruddy it is right?
But in the enterprise, it's a whole different matter. When Windows slips, everything slips - hardware purchases, other major software purchases, internal development schedules, etc. The whole ecosystem slips. What does this do to a small software company? Microsoft may be in a financial position to weather a few months slippage, but everyone else isn't.
As a solo professional, I can wait, but I understand why others are pissed.
Seriously? The feature that made it back in is the "sidebar"?
Not WinFS. Not EFI support. Not monad shell. But wait--sidebar is back in! I better pre-order my copy of Vista ASAP then.
(I still can't tell if your comment was just a joke or if you were being serious).
What, exactly, will Sidebar help an average user do every day that they aren't already doing with their computer running XP? Please tell me this is not your tipping point feature add back in for Vista.
I was thinking about articles I've seen on Cnet and else where speculating on the fallout of another Windows delay.
They are saying that 'if there's one company that stands to benefit from the delay of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, it's Apple Computer.'
That might be true in a consumer market segment outside Apple's traditional user base. Almost all my contact with Mac fans has been in graphic design, photography, or film. The problem is Photoshop and the other Adobe tools are not likely to be available for the new intel Mac's until second half of 2007. Forbes had an interview with Bruce Chizen Adobe's chief executive and he is quoted as saying that CS3 won't be out until second half 2007.
Adobe is also saying they do 'not plan to re-release current products as Universal applications that can run natively on both Intel and PowerPC based systems. This applies to Adobe Creative Suite 2 and Studio 8, as well as individual applications such as Photoshop CS2, InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, Acrobat 7.0 Professional, Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8, and After Effects 7.0. Instead, we are focused on delivering the next version of these products as Universal applications that will run natively on the new Intel-based Mac computers. By incorporating the effort to support Intel-based Macs into our normal development process-inwhich we coninue to evolve our features and support for creative workflows in the ways that our creative customers expect from us-we can deliver optimal value for those customers.'
One big reason, according to an Adobe engineer who posted a comment on his blog, is there is no short cut as with the switch to OS X. Switching to OS X could be done with patches rather then recompiling the code and having to do all the testing associated with that kind of effort.
From having projects with large numbers of files that open quickly, to having compact debugging information, to having stable project formats that are text-merge-able in a source control system. These are things XCode is playing catch-up on. Now, Apple is doing an amazing job at catching up rapidly, but the truth is we don't yet have a shipping XCode in hand that handles a large application well. And switching compilers always involves more work than you would think in a codebase of this size.
So where does this leave the question of market gains given that Microsoft is saying that Vista has been delayed? Probably will give them an edge in a consumer market segment thats looking for a fresh OS look and feel as well as a 'more secure' environment. Is that sustainable? On the professional creative front all is not well. Desktops aren't available till second half of this year and the G5 platform is being phazed out. The last speed bump for the G5 I'm aware of has already happened. So for the creative pro its limbo till second half 2007 unless they can tolerate Photoshop or other Adobe products runing at G4 speeds or less on the new Intel Macs.
In short I'm not so sure Apple has the edge the analysts say they do.
No, absolutely not.
In a world of furious competition, in a world where Microsoft is being chased by each software company on the planet, in a world where Linux is phenomenally growing, failure to deliver is not an option.
Why does Microsoft has to jeopardize quality in the first place?.
Why the delivery date is not being met in the first place.
I think risking Microsoft bread and butter-Windows OS- by some irresponsible highly compensated executives should have only one answer: get rid of them and get Microsoft back on track.
Jamil, a Linux lover
I applaud Microsoft for not releasing the product. As a professional technologist I would rather see Microsoft test their products more thorough before releasing the product.
Besides that, no one is going to jump all over this 64bit OS that needs major hardware upgrades before deployment to the desktop. They made the right decision.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Congratulations. Now we have both. :)
Seriously guys, just get out of the OS market altogether and stick to selling keyboards and mice. Those are the only halfway decent products Microsoft has had in years. You were relevant once, but everyone and their dog has shipped their "next gen" OSes literally *years* ahead of you.
Ewery company that has this market share will eventualy loose its custumer base when and if its starting to produce crappy over bloated software that no one realy wants and don't have the choise not to pay for when they buy a new pc Ewen the employees at the company (MS) think its crap.
In an market economy the usual thing for a company that ewedentialy produce crap would be to go out of business but because the US goverment seems to bee wery found of monopolies a'la Sovjet union this would newer happen.
What I mean is that since Microsoft dosn't have to compete it can do what ever they want and people whould still end up with its product becuse of the OEM deals with major pc vendors. Most people dosn't have a choise since they can't choose another OS at the computer store if they wanted to. And that is the main reason why so many people hate Microsoft.
With other words, there's no freedom when buing a computer. Of course you can download some Linux iso files but since its not on the computer when you buy it and you have to pay for windows anyway most people would newer ewer try linux and that is a shame because its realy good, beleaweme,i ve been using it for six years now.
What needs to be done about microsoft?
1. split microsoft in smaller parts
2. make them follow the international laws of competition
I can think of at least two or three laws they arebreaking ight now here in sweden an in the EU
3.scrap the OEM deals with HP,IBM etc.
Maybe then, they starts to produce something thats inwenting and secure for a change instead of copying others and patenting it as there own.
btw I use Xandros 3.0 and its great
www.xandros.com
OKAY i will buy vista in 3000 AD
BUT not OKAY when a patch is released 2 weeks after VISTA is released. Well then the question is what were you doing for 994 years?
www.irintech.com/x1