Since my post yesterday I have turned into a ‘Windows 7 PI’. Hunting down decent articles online to try and decipher the intelligence within.

In another article over at ars Peter Bright details what he saw from the W7 demo:

What was shown at D6 was rather less than hoped. The big feature—in fact, the sole feature—demonstrated was multitouch, the same technology as found in Microsoft’s multi-thousand-dollar Surface table and Apple’s iPhone. The demonstrated software was more or less the same demos we saw with Surface—photo scaling, finger painting, splashing about in water—along with a Virtual Earth/Google Earth-style mapping program. And that’s the extent of it.

So why did Microsoft bother? Its clear they want to let the world know that W7 is coming. A move which TOTALLY undermines Vista.

Sorry….

Its as if that inside Microsoft they know they messed up with Vista and they want to make it right before they loose everyone to other platforms. So by dangling the W7 worm out in the tech community they probably believe they are doing the right thing.

But they aren’t right. If the 2 Steve’s just came out and said “OK, Vista wasn’t what we hoped.” and apologized to all the techies and developers and then proceeded to open the floor to feedback and comments as to how to move forward then THAT would be the right thing to do.

Hello Seattle, I’m Listening

Given time I think this is what will happen. I still have an optimistic view that the next version of Windows will be what Vista should have been and that Microsoft will hear the backlash loud and clear.

There is one thing I like about the whole Windows 7 thing and that’s the name.

I was never a huge fan of ‘Vista’ as a name. Or of giving a real name to a Windows OS at all. I was always happy with numbers or years such as ’3.11′ or ’95′ and ’2000′.

XP wasn’t so bad (Windows 2001 would have been really lame) but Vista should have been labelled ‘Windows 2007′ or something.

‘Windows 7′ is a cool name. Its short and sweet. Its simple and elegant. It doesn’t try and say anything about the OS like ‘Vista’ does and its not a weird acronym/pseudonym like NT or XP (New Technology and eXPerience).

I just hope that Windows 7 IS the final name of their next OS and it doesn’t end up getting a ridiculous monitor 6 months before release.

It turns out ars technica published an excellent article on the transitions Microsoft experienced during XP to Vista and Apple when the ditched OS9 for OSX.

Titled: From Win32 to Cocoa: a Windows user’s conversion to Mac OS X it comes off as a quite misleading almost fanboy-esq bitch fest at times but has some excellent history lessons and is a wonderful insight into a disillusioned Windows developers life.

XP was released in 2001. And that was basically it from Microsoft for the next five and a half years. Until Vista, Microsoft didn’t bother putting out a single new client OS. Meanwhile, Apple released Mac OS X 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4. It continued to tidy up legacy features (deprecating QuickDraw, for example). It added new APIs like Core Audio and Core Image. It made sure that these APIs were of high quality—Core Audio offers extremely low latency, for example, and Core Image provides high performance accelerated image processing—and it consistently ate its own dog food. This produced high-quality, best-of-breed applications such as Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, and even Aperture (after an admittedly lackluster initial release) that leveraged these new technologies.

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

I’m sick of hearing about Windows 7.

I have only been using Vista for a year and already Microsoft have given up on it. This is evident though the lack of any serious marketing.

Is Steve Ballmer really ready to turn a $10 billion investment into a replay of Windows ME? I can’t believe he is but all the evidence points to this. I just hope he can fix the Vista mess before Microsoft start building a new OS.

Year One

After a year using Vista I can say that it IS a better OS than XP. But, only very marginally.

So small is the difference in fact I have quite happily left Windows XP on my work PC and have absolutely no need to upgrade. I require NONE of the new features in my work environment and if Vista was taken away from me tomorrow I would happily go back to using XP.

Vista isn’t any more stable or any leaner than XP. 2 things I hoped it would be. Its just as bloated and controlling as XP ever was.

In fact Vista, in terms of usability, is probably LESS usable than XP for new computer users. I managed to get to grips with the new annoyances (mostly security hand-holding) early on and customise Vista to work just how I wanted it to but I have over 10 years computer experience. I guarantee new computer users would be perplexed and even scared by some of the crap Vista churns out.

Not that I’m having a terrible time or anything. Quite the opposite. My new Vista-Ultimate-powered (self built) PC works great. It has only crashed out on me maybe 4-6 times over the year and runs smoothly during any task I have thrown at it.

So I’m, not bitching. I like Vista. I just don’t think Microsoft do.

7 Stone

The idea Windows 7 has been floating around ever since Vista was launched. Everyone sort of knew that Vista wouldn’t be the BIG upgrade Microsoft had promised so hoped the next version would be such a beast.

But, it turns out Windows 7 will be more of the same. Its code base is still in the same old Microsoft style. It doesn’t look like they are being revolutionary, it just looks like they want to get a new version out ASAP.

Take this quote from Mr Ballmer as evidence of this:

About the five-year gap between XP and Vista, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a group of Microsoft MVP’s (Most Valuable Professionals), “We can’t ever let that happen again.” But whether the Incredible Hulk can successfully morph into the Silver Surfer is an open question.

I can see why they are looking at it this way. 5 years is a long time. And Microsoft didn’t evolve their new OS, they just made it work.

Right now, if it took another 5 years for Windows 7 to materialise Microsoft would suffer.

What NeXT

So my advise to Microsoft is this. Learn a lesson from Vista but don’t forget about it. Give it some support, some advertising. Quit PUSHING it onto OEM providers and businesses, let them see the benefits and decide for themselves.

This will probably buy Vista another 2-3 years as the main Microsoft OS, slowly replacing XP as it goes.

And, while this is happening, start over.

Do it! Drop the NT/XP/Vista/Longcrap/Whatever code base and start again.

Take a CHUNK of advice from Apple. Develop a new, spanky, light, modern and sexy OS from the ground up.

Erase the mistakes of the past. Bundle Virtual application support into the OS so old XP/Vista software can run in the new environment and slowly convert the Windows development world to a new, modern and clean standard.

Then, make it cheap. Like £50 ($100) and only have a SINGLE version! No Ultimate, Business, Premium, or Neanderthal version! Just plain old ‘Windows 7′.

I think this is the only way Windows 7 can succeeded. SURE have the touch screen, net-mesh and mobile features thrown in as well but don’t overload it. Give the OS back to the users.

As for me. Any more Vista bashing from Microsoft top-flight and I will seriously consider moving over to Mac. And I never thought I would say THAT 5 years ago when XP was released.