Microsoft Corp. will require hardware makers to test their device drivers on Windows 7 to receive certification for Windows Vista, according to documents posted (.pdf) on the company’s site.
“Beginning with the release of the first beta of the next operating system, all Windows Vista client and Windows Server 2008 submissions must include a complete [set of] test logs for the new beta OS,” the company said in the document.
Although the company has disclosed a few tidbits about the OS, including multi-touch functions similar to what Apple Inc. now offers on its iPhone, Microsoft has not publicly set a release date for Beta 1…
Drivers don’t necessarily have to pass those tests in the first beta of Windows 7, said Microsoft, but the results must be turned over to the company. And Microsoft reminded the hardware makers and system sellers that it will hold them to account when Windows 7 nears. “Issues with hardware, system BIOS or drivers must be investigated and resolved by partners prior to the launch of the logo program for the new OS,” Microsoft said.
There are sufficient reason$ for someone to want to design products for Windows. Right?
I so wish I could ween my work place from this Microsoft nightmare.
this is a good thing
Not surprising. A big part of Vista => Windows 7 movement includes the whole touch/table/wall/graphics thing that they are pushing. They are trying to make a big bang on the UI side which is equivalent to the difference they had when people upgraded from 3.1 to 95 (way back when).
This is essentially using gaming technology for all parts of the desktop/laptop which means that you either get tight control over the hardware (XBox, Wii, Macintosh, etc) or you abstract that control to the driver level. That’s why they are pushing driver certification which really stung them during the Vista rollout.
It will also mean driving the development community toward WPF for regular types of apps (e.g. business, social networking, etc), Silverlight for web, and XNA for gaming.
great, because hardware vendors bent over backwards to update their drivers for vista itself, which is why fairies and leprechauns welcomed vista like a talking lion. they will surely fall over themselves to meet this latest requirement.
btw, i think we have a new windows 7 banner.
MS trying to pass blame onto others ignoring the main reason why there is an issue with the drivers in Vista: requirements impossible to be met, which is scientifically proven and published (and of course the underlying reason why those impossible requirements are there: DRM).
Linux or Mac X looks good.
knowing what they know today, who in their right mind would have invested resources into certifying their drivers for _longhorn_in 2003?
You guys bitch when hardware doesn’t work on the new OS (Vista), and now you bitch when Microsoft ensures hardware will indeed work on future OSes. Microsoft sucks in many ways, but you criticize them even when they try to fix past mistakes.
So please, kindly, SHUT UP.
#8 = “Microsoft sucks in many ways, but you criticize them even when they try to fix past mistakes.”
I just find it funny that the push for Win7 is seemingly a tacit admission that Vista is a “past” mistake…
Also odd that they seem to have chosen to deflect criticism of Vista by directing everyone’s attention to how much better the -next- version of Windows will be.
Saying “Vista is great!”, out of one side of their mouth, while saying “Win7 won’t repeat the problems of Vista!” out of the other…
Can you imagine Panther being so bad that Apple would completely trash it for… um…. Lynx? Apple would be dead in the water.
Microsoft, considering their incredible size and wealth, is performing like an upstart. It’s pathetic! Mac fanboys, nerds… whatever… have your fun with them cause they’re asking for it… but Apple Corporation, with a tenth of the resources of MS, continually trumps Microsoft in just about every way imaginable.
That’s why MS is getting snickers and skepticism from their announcement.
8, so if microsoft washed your car with shoe polish, you’d give them an A for effort? why should my company put man hours into certifying and re-certifying hardware for a pre-alpha o/s at this stage, just to put out a device FOR VISTA.
STFU kthxbai
JimR, where is Apple position in the corporate world? How many sites do you see running OSX as a web server?
Second, it’s Linux… not Lynx. Lynx is a real-time OS, not really a desktop alternative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LynxOS
Still, Apple did trash their OS for a version of a Unix like system (Mach with BSD subsystem) and than placed a candy interface on it called Aqua. You of course know all of this.
I like Vista but obviously not many share this opinion. But Microsoft is trying to do the right thing with 7. The only thing I dislike about Vista and I’m sure 7 is the DRM. If they offer a version of 7 without the DRM then we may have a winner, even if it breaks compatibility with older hardware. Got to break a few eggs…
#5 you seem to have conveniently missed the fact that more than 70% of all system crashes during the first 6 months or so of Vista’s life were caused by ONE COMPANY’S screwed up drivers.
Hell nVidia didn’t even have its drivers ready after 4 years of testing and public betas for when vista was released, and we had to wait almost a month to use our shiny new 8xxx series cards.
Also, #11, stupid blind annoying fanboy much?
Apple screwed up so bad on their OS that they had to go license a ‘real’ OS from someone else and slap their sugery bullcrap GUI on top of it, instantly breaking just about every piece of mac software currently available.
#15 – That is pretty funny!
#13, Jeff, I guess you haven’t noticed that Apple names their OS after wild cats, or else you would have realized that my suggestion of Lynx was for a hypothetical future release. Substitute any wild cat name in there you like if you don’t like Lynx… it doesn’t change the facts one snick. MS follows apple around, always has always will it seems.
Unfortunately for you, the corporate worlds is stuck with MS and any corporation would love to change. The trouble is that MS crap is so entrenched that its better to put up with second best MS than be a pioneer.
#15, your anger and ignorance gives you away as one of the poor corporate suckers who is stuck up to the waist in MS muck. Apple made sure it’s new chips ran OS 9 for years after they changed over. Not only that but OSX until this year ran fine on Apple computers 12 years old. Can MS say that for XP?
OS9 was way better than any MS OS at the time. What part of “Apple is ALWAYS ahead of MS” don’t you understand? The problem to being psychologically and physically in prison with Microsoft is that when someone hands you the keys to get out (OS 10.5) you are too scared to move.
“Can you imagine Panther being so bad that Apple would completely trash it for… um…. Lynx?”
I, still don’t get how this relates to the code names they have used for every release since 10.0, but I guess that really is not that important.
OSX ran fine on a computer that was 12 years old until this year… really? That must have been one damn fine 603e. I remember the early days of OSX. It was really slow. It really wasn’t until 10.3 that Apple found a groove, a whole three releases later. This would place Apple in limbo between 1995 and 2003.
Don’t even get me started on the stability and multi-tasking efficiency of pre-mach releases of Mac OS. Mac OS 9 (not the real OS 9) was a joke. A complete and utter embarrassment. It was not Copeland, it was not even close to as stable as Windows 95 or Windows 98, never mind that Microsoft actually had a stable NT kernel (1st released in 1993 and usable by 1995).
Finally, if Apple has anyone to thank it is the BSD community who have actually saved them from oblivion.
WTF… I meant Copland (original Mac OS 8).
As a Mac LAN administrator I can say this, from the enterprise stand point, OSX doesn’t hold a candle to what is out there for WinTel configs.
I manage 2,350 computers, 150 of which are Macs which take almost double the man hours to administer because of the problems with OSX, the lack of admin tools, and being almost totally ignored by Apple on the remote management end.
Having to deal with both MS and Apple on an almost daily basis I can also say that Microsoft’s arrogance pales in comparison to the arrogance I get when dealing with Apple.
Neither is better than the other, they are both tools to get a job done. Both have their strong points, but it wrong to slam one over the other. Both companies treat their customers like turds and deserve to be treated with disdain.
And Jeff said:
“never mind that Microsoft actually had a stable NT kernel (1st released in 1993 and usable by 1995).
Finally, if Apple has anyone to thank it is the BSD community who have actually saved them from oblivion.”
And Microsoft can thank Digital for VMS where much of their knowledge and team were poached for NT. They also ripped off a lot from OS/2 during their partnership with IBM. And so the great circle of life continues Simba.
If you go to Redmond you’ll find guys on the kernel team who’ve worked for Apple and Sun. Same in Cupertino and Santa Clara. The system software engineering world is a small world.
And as others have noted…
ALL this using the Win 2000 core.
Never mind… I forgot about A/UX. I now feel compelled to worship the almighty Apple.
A/UX truly sucked. It was also the underpinning for that whole pink/taligent/copeland mess. And that sucked even more…
Almost all Windows problems can be traced to drivers not written by Microsoft. On my Vista laptop, the bad boy was an Intel graphics and Ethernet driver, which dropped my Internet connecion sporadically. Two months later, Intel pushed another driver, and the problem disappeared.
OS X doesn’t get off free. My wife had text files deleted from her Mac when she installed a new version of OS X.
On buying Macs for businesses: will only happen when the price of Mac computers drops down to that of a regular PC, or when OS X can run on any PC.
#20 is right…. I work on both platforms and the tools and flexibility on Windows is much better. And I agree, the arrogance I get from Apple and their fan boiz just pisses me off.
My Macbook Pro won’t recover from sleep without a reboot. I took it to an Apple store. Their answer “I must be lying because it that never happens. MBPs always work perfectly.”
Still happens, every damn time. Yet Apple refuses to look at it since it must not happen in their little universe.
Grrrrr
I’ve also noticed that the video ripping and editing tools for Windows now exceeds what it available for the Mac…. and Apple claims to be the machine for media centric people. Yea, right.
>>I disliked vista before using it.
>>I loathe it now
I was neutral on Vista before using it. I DESPISE it now.
My platform of choice: http://tinyurl.com/2jtkw6
#20, #26 – http://www.LANDesk.com
#27 – Just because you’ve been owned time and time again over your Mac hatred is no reason to get pissy.
This is a great thing!! This is what 3rd party hardware makers should be doing. We should not be waiting for the next OS to be on store shelves and at computer maker’s to start testing beta drivers for it! Work the bugs out before release. More power to Microsoft for doing something about mistakes made in Vista.
Ron, zap your pram and change your screen saver. Yea, I know. Weird.