Since taking over the Windows development reins from Jim Allchin, Steven Sinofsky has chosen to fall almost completely off the public radar.
It’s not that he hasn’t been busy getting Vista Service Pack 1 out the door and starting work on Windows 7. It’s just that Sinofsky doesn’t want to talk about products until they are well along in their development. Last year, Sinofsky penned a blog to his Windows unit co-workers, explaining his public silence and urging them to follow his lead.
“I know many folks think that this type of corporate ‘clamp down’ on disclosure is ‘old school’ and that in the age of corporate transparency we should be open all the time,” Sinofsky wrote. “Corporations are not really transparent. Corporations are translucent. All organizations have things that are visible and things that are not.”
Well, Sinofsky is breaking his public silence, slightly, to offer a few important details about 7 (he reiterated that it is coming by January 2010) and to explain why he is saying so little publicly.
I’ll make a note in my calendar to check on Windows 7 in January 2010.
BTW – Ballmer gave folks a few sneak peeks at the WSJ – D Conference. Windows 7 should catch up to the iPhone by 2010.
Notice he’s not wearing a tie? Har.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osbourne_effect
That’s all I have to say.
2-you do realize that article you linked says the effect is merely a myth, right?
Eidard-you do realize there are plenty of touch-screen windows mobile devices, and said devices were out long before the iPhone, right?
The apple lovefest on these techsites trying to rewrite history is amusing at best, annoying at worst.
So little so late
Get a horse – or another car
Anyone with brains has moved away from the Microsoft platform. Unfortunately, I will have to deal with it at work for the foreseeable future. On the bright side we have no plans to deploy Vista at work. I never thought I would applaud my employer’s tight fisted budgeting.
#3, #4 – your antifanboy hangups are barely amusing when they interfere with your understanding of tech.
I just read the Ballmer link, and he’s talking about the addition of multi-touch – which was introduced by the iPhone. And will probably be in Apple laptops and – not so incidentally, some Linux laptops and cellphones – years before it lands in Windoze.
The tech was developed independent of OS X and Apple; so, it’s OK for you to “approve” of it. They were just smart enough to latch onto it.
Get over it.
Some of the whiners really should read through both articles and consider discussing the topic. It is interesting, after all.
Example: “The reactions that we’ve had to some of the lessons learned in Windows Vista are really playing into our strategy of getting together a great plan for Windows 7.”
This doesn’t vary a jot from pronouncements during Vista beta testing or even XP betaland. There were technologies discussed and welcomed by IT folks – and scrapped before release of the final product.
There are legitimate reasons why technical users felt there was worth to the proposed changes in file management, etc.. Why should it take a couple of versions and a decade to bring them to market inside Windows?
This guy would look real good in a Nazi SS uniform. Until MS discovers that their basic philosophy is fundamentally flawed I think we can count on them churning out one useless product after another.
Well, like any version of WinBloze, we’ll see it WHEN PIGS FLY !!!
>>Why should it take a couple of versions
>>and a decade to bring them to market
>>inside Windows?
They’re concentrating on on-line advertising now. Screw that software shit. That’s so 80’s. And as long as the cash keeps flowing in from forced “upgrades”, why change the business model for their orphan software franchise?
I have noticed over the years that microsoft makes these promises. Gets everybody to look to the next OS to fix all of their problems. Til it gets here, it isn’t all that better and they start promising that the next one will be the one to solve all of their problems. I think consumers are getting tired of being lied to.
I think Microsoft really has backed themselves into a corner. They have created a massively complex operating system that is simply too difficult for a typical user to install and operate at an efficient level. You than contrast that with a slow dying Western economy and end users have little room to upgrade.
Finally, many people subscribe very heavily to tradition. I know of a number of Windows network administrators than run bare bone white-boxes. No enhanced interface, no virtual windows, no virtual machines and most importantly… no knowledge of the CL. It is almost as if they are literally using Windows NT 4.0, yet they are either running Vista or much more likely XP. Now that is progress!
Moral of the story: If you’ve got the money, move to an Macintosh. If you’ve got the resources and education… use Linux or better yet a true monolithic kernel BSD.
Maybe Windows 7 will trump OS X Panther when it appears in 2013.
JimD said
Well, like any version of WinBloze, we’ll see it WHEN PIGS FLY !!!
You’re not a fan of Pink Floyd?
😉
J/P=?
As I mentioned previously, Win 7 could not be anything more than a repackaged Vista.
My new name, which I believe to be accurate, for Win7 is “ReVista”.
As Ballmer said, “the company prides itself on fixing shortcomings in later versions.”
So Microsoft is going to rework Vista to address some of the issues users have and add a pretty (and mostly useless to most users) new touchscreen capability to Aero.
This whole touchscreen idea is Microsoft’s way of saving face. They have to say SOMETHING other than “Win 7 is Vista with all the kinks worked out.”
Really, except for graphic designers, how many of us really need to reach out and touch our screens?
Its Microsoft’s new strategy: Under-promise AND under-deliver. They’ve been doing the 2nd part all along. Now they’ll be consistent across the board.
Unless they plan to build a new OS from scratch, it is extremely unlikely to succeed. Every time they come up with a ‘new’ version of windows it turns out to be a revamping of the previous version, which comes with an exponential growth in the number of lines of code. The bigger and more complex something is, the higher the probrability error. Windows has already crossed the threshold with a level of complexity which assures error. The future of MS is in the balance, they either trim the fat or they can kiss their market domination goodbye.
Holy Crap! I agree with Mustard! (#11) Yeah, advertising always makes your PC run better. And with MS’s adoption of “touch” technology you’ll even be able to feel what a piece of shit it is. If they could work on the smell it would be perfect. Then they could do some more turd polishing and make it shine like Baldmer’s head.
i can’t think of many mind-blowing enhancements in windows over the years. the general experience of vista if fundamentally identical to that of even windows 95. any so-called feature isn’t anything so spectacular that it couldn’t be shoe-horned into any given o/s by a single utility. it’s hilarious that this guy tries to spin hardware compatibility as their core value when it was vista’s biggest blunder.
i can’t think of many mind-blowing enhancements in windows over the years. the general experience of vista if fundamentally identical to that of even windows 95. any so-called feature isn’t anything so spectacular that it couldn’t be shoe-horned into any given o/s by a single utility. it’s hilarious that this guy tries to spin hardware compatibility as their core value when it was vista’s biggest blunder.
I’ve got a mind blowing enhancement to Vista!
“Satisfying Customer Experience”.
What do you expect Microsoft to say about Windows 7? They’ve just started serious coding for it. Anything they say now is speculation.
Vista is very similar to Windows 95. It’s a whole new code base, and it has a lot of potential, but it hasn’t been polished. Windows 7 will contain more code (just like Windows 98/2000/XP did), but it will be a more refined product.
That being said, I actually enjoy using Vista. I’ve commented several times that I’ve found it to be very stable and secure and performance is now nearly identical to XP.
>>performance is now nearly identical to XP.
Whoa! Way to go, Microsoft! Six years, hundreds of millions in development costs, and the new OS is “nearly” as good as what it’s replacing.
Hey, there’s always that translucent Aero interface. You have to buy a new computer to use it, but wtf. Gotta keep the economy running.
Mustard – you’ll be happy to know that not only is vista “nearly as good” as xp, but it’s downright “on par” (*** as long as you upgrade cpu, storage and memory)
Micro$oft morons too smart to get any real work done.
#30
I’m not exactly sure what you were expecting. Vista has much better memory management than any previous version of windows, using superfetch to cache frequently used applications, and 64-bit support will certainly lead to better performance. Beyond that the OS doesn’t have much to do with application speed. It comes down to good drivers and well-written applications.
Vista runs my games just as well as XP, and everything launches faster (This is on an Athlon 64 3000/Radeon X700 Pro/1 GB RAM, nothing too fancy).
Microsoft has struck a good balance between stability and ease of software development with Vista. If you want perfectly written applications you can try switching to OSX, although if you think Apple’s OS upgrades lead to better performance you’re going to be disappointed.
Try fixing the beta Vista first befor you come out with beta 7.
#35
Good job misquoting me.
The truth is that application performance generally comes down to how well the application was coded. Microsoft can improve the speed and responsiveness of the actual operating system (boot time/application launch speed), but outside of providing better memory management and forcing hardware companies to write better drivers (which they have) there’s not much they can do to improve application speed.
I saw this right after I posted. Vista vs XP:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2303830,00.asp
Performance is identical between the two now that hardware drivers have matured. With Vista you get faster application launches and much better security. There’s no reason not to upgrade anymore.
@Somebody_Else
You sound like a Microsoft shill and/or fanboi.