Windows Vista Delayed Again

Trenty writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has delayed Windows Vista yet again. Jim Allchin told analysts that the OS would not ship in January of 2007, which is a 1-2 month delay. Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year."

Comments

Pre Sale

[ackthpt]

Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year.

Not really all that odd. I believe it's called a pre-sale. People do this on eBay all the time, selling items they don't yet have, but will send along when they get them.

In the software world, we've had a vendor offer us a new product, which we may actually like, at a 75% discount if we sign up by September. The product isn't entirely finished yet and it would likely be two years before migration, but the pricebreak is clearly meant to ensure they have some income. I have no idea what their books look like, but suspect this move is the result of a dire need of revenue, so it makes us go "hmmmm..."

Where do you suppose Microsoft would like to enter the income for these early sales? Revenue recorded early is revenue you can't record later. I rather doubt they are turning over a Special Bug-ridden Business User Version early. They'd be flayed in the Information Trade press. (Then again, it's probably happened a few times already, which could explain how little attention CIO's pay to these magazines, they just scatter them on their desks to look Connected and Managerial.)

Re:Pre Sale

[Feyr]

i think i remember reading they had to "ship" a version to business customers early so their support plan would be worth a damn, otherwise they feared many large businesses would not renew the support plan, and that would mean a HUGE drop in revenue

Re:Pre Sale

[MBCook]

I doubt they would give the beta version to businesses. Maybe the business version is finished and it is the special features in the home edition that need the extra testing (like the Media Center stuff).

That said, it reminds me of an interesting story. What happens when a company doesn't want to wait for MS to ship them the final version of an OS (say... Windows 95)? The answer is in this fun little entry in The Old New Thing weblog from a Microsoft employee.

Re:Pre Sale

[andreMA]

If that were the case I'd think they'd find it easy enough to simply extend plans expiring in late 2006 to encompass Vista whenever released, while apologizing for "unanticipated delays" - such a move would generate a bit more customer goodwill than the risk of shipping prematurely and possibly having disastrous bugs.

Re:Pre Sale

[drsmithy]

Not really all that odd. I believe it's called a pre-sale. People do this on eBay all the time, selling items they don't yet have, but will send along when they get them.

The reason it's not odd is because the "security tweaks" are almost certainly going to be changes in the default configurations of things like user permissions, firewalling, workarounds for specific pieces of software, etc. Businesses are (or should be, at any rate) going to change these default settings to suit their own policies and environments.

Re:Pre Sale

[Teddeh]

"Don't expect that much innovation from a company which gives its OS a name for each minor point release."

When did Apple come into this? :p

Gee, go figure

[ericdano]

Like anyone didn't expect this. Are they too busy with Organimi or whatever? Xbox 360? Their URGE music store?

Has Microsoft EVER released anything that was ON TIME?

Re:Gee, go figure

[chadamir]

Maybe they should release it now with even more bugs and security problems so you will have more stories to troll.

Re:Gee, go figure

[Ucklak]

Windows ME

Re:Gee, go figure

[ackthpt]

Like anyone didn't expect this. Are they too busy with Organimi or whatever? Xbox 360? Their URGE music store?

Well, these are typically different divisions and Microsoft is rather a large corporation.

Has Microsoft EVER released anything that was ON TIME?

Probably, but usually to everyone's mutual regret. I think the right time is when it's ready and not a moment sooner.

Did you hear about the Wembley Stadium roof collapse yesterday? Would they rather have that thing completed on time, filled with 100,000 people and then have the roof drop 1 metre?

Massive failure on Microsoft's part is taking a toll and they really have a lot at stake this time, after promising XP would be bug free and the best security ever, just before 1.04e7 bugs and security holes were revealed and exploited. Make Wembley look like a tempest in a teapot.

Re:Gee, go figure

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Has Microsoft EVER released anything that was ON TIME?

Yes, all the time.
They are called "press releases."

Re:Gee, go figure

[dotgain]

s/3//g;
#Please be kind, o lameness filter.

Re:Gee, go figure

[jonadab]

> Has Microsoft EVER released anything that was ON TIME?

Yes. In terms of the NT product line, the most notable time this happened was with Windows NT 4.0, which was released about two years after Windows NT 3.5. Most folks would consider two years to be a reasonable timeframe for a major revision of an operating system, and there were service packs in between.

However, the codebase has rather grown, as have the demands on what needs to be done for each new release, and the total amount of entropy in Microsoft's organization, so you don't expect that kind of timeframe for a release today.

Eventually, Microsoft will have to discard the NT codebase, as they had to do already with Win9x/Me, and as happens eventually to virtually all software. One supposes that they know this and are already and have a small team somewhere secretly working, unbeknownst to most of their own employees much less the public, on a ground-up new OS. However, I don't think we'll hear about it publically until after Blackcomb has been released, and possibly not until after the next release after Blackcomb. Predicting what decade that will be is left as an exercise.

Re:Gee, go figure

[ischorr]

I find it interesting that within the past few years, any time release delays occur, it's typically blamed on "increased security". This is a great strategy, as no one wants a product to be released with reduced security. It isn't the software vendor's horrible development process or management to blame for the slippage - the vendor is instead sacrificing their bottom line to release a product that is less likely to leak your credit card details! What valor!

I call hijinks. They probably need more time for the focus groups to review whether window borders should be more translucent or transparent. Security's just a hard reason for anyone to argue with.

Re:Gee, go figure

[doktor-hladnjak]

Office usually doesn't ship exactly on time either. See this article about 2003. Even 2007 is behind schedule. However, we're usually talking weeks or months with Office and often years with Windows.

Less and less relevant?

[RunFatBoy.net]

Is it me, or is Vista just becoming less and less relevant?

And the thing is, I use to be an MS fanboy but with the rapidly changing environment of security issues and such, who can wait _years_ before considering other alternatives?

-- Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/

Re:Less and less relevant?

[Scoria]

Is it me, or is Vista just becoming less and less relevant?

Look at it this way. Although some may not consider Vista relevant now, they will several years after it has launched. Like Windows XP and Windows 2000 before it, Vista will be preinstalled on all new computers, and vendors will slowly deprecate their support for older Microsoft operating systems.

As long as the executives at Microsoft are capable of maintaining their OEM agreements with the popular brand name manufacturers, Windows will always be relevant.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[bloggins02]

I think Microsoft is making a fundamental mistake here: they are sticking to the same release strategies and timelines they used when software was released on stacks of floppy disks ("please insert disk 37", ahhh, the memories).

Meanwhile, we have the "release early, release often" philosophy of the Free Software Movement as well as the "release often enough to keep things interesting" tactic from Apple. These two tactics make more sense in this new era of software construction, testing, and distribution.

Users have grown accustomed to more frequent releases by software groups and companies they respect. These releases also satisfy an obvious, common human desire: instant gratification. As more and more users grow used to and satisfied with these accelerated release timetables, these multi-year release schedules used by Microsoft (and Adobe, while we're at it) look more and more comical.

Recently, Gates admitted the faux pas of allowing Internet Explorer to stagnate. I believe they have similarly misstepped with Windows. By the time Vista not only comes to market, but comes to be used by the majority of PC users (and don't kid yourself, you know that will happen), it will be very difficult to catch up to the psychological success of the multiple releases of Linux and Mac OS X.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[kimvette]

re: This is something I've never really udnerstand when Linux afficianado's criticize Microsoft.

Well, patch Solitaire in Windows, you have to reboot (okay, slight exaggeration), leading to downtime ranging from minutes to hours (in the case of extremely large databases)

Patch anything but the kernel(and modules) in Linux? Just keep chugging along, perhaps restarting a single process or two, and a fairly transparent experience from the user perspective.

There is a difference.

Also note: downtime due to patches, maintenance, etc., is not counted as "downtime" as defined by Microsoft - just the rest of the world. So when you read downtime/uptime comparisons from Microsoft, ignore them. They redefine the terms.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[petermgreen]

provided you haven't changed anything that changes the linux image itself and only changed modules you should be able to load the new modules without rebooting.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[MickDownUnder]

I'll go further and say Vista is even more relevant than Windows XP, and Windows 2000.

Microsoft has had 10 very long years to think about the internet. Vista is what they've come up with as a result of it. Developer's of .NET will know that Vista is the part of a larger design. Vista is the first OS release that is part of Microsoft's .NET initiative, which is to evolve the internet into a transport for technologies designed and/or inspired by Microsoft. Vista's support of XAML is a very major feature to be released with Vista, many have overlooked it and do not understand it's ramifications.

Many will scoff at this but, we are approaching the end of HTML's reign over the internet. HTML is simply not a rich enough medium to deliver the complex user experience people want. AJAX is a symptom of this, it's just yet another attempt to hack out a solution to the many architectural flaws of HTML as an application development platform. HTML was never designed to be used for what people do with it today, it's evolved organically, and like most things which have been designed organically it's simply not an elegant solution.

Many things have been developed to superceed it.... Macromedia Flash, W3C's SVG, Mozilla's XUL. All these technologies offer similar features to Microsoft's XAML, slick, vectorised graphical interfaces, designed to scale up/down for tomorrow's display devices. What these technologies don't have which XAML does is the full power of direct-x and all the resources and security features packed into the Microsoft .NET framework behind it. It will offer a very seductive and compelling experience for users. It will also seduce those wanting to deliver content to the net with Microsoft's Expression suite of products, enabling graphical artists to work seemlessly with developers.

XAML downloads in a browser, it's somewhere between a web form and a windows form. If all Microsoft's dreams come true, decades from now much of the content you'll see on the net will be in XAML. Vista is the first step to realising this dream.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[bloggins02]

I normally don't reply to people who post ad hominem's but I actually had more to say and I didn't want to reply to my own post, so you're a convenient excuse.

3. Dealing with thousands of Linux whackos like you

Nowhere did I say I was a Linux whacko. I don't use Linux (for many of the reasons you cited, actually). I use Windows XP almost everyday, and I like it. I also use Mac OS X (which I love, rather than merely like). But that's the problem: you see, Windows XP is good, not insanely great mind you, but good. Windows 95 was worth the wait compared to the mediocrity of Windows 3.1 (and don't get me started on 3.11's "networking support"). XP is pretty fast, reasonably stable (I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen XP blue screen, and those were mostly due to crappy drivers for el cheapo hardware), and its development tools are excellent.

So, whereas when Apple releases yet another yearly release, I'm excited to try it and see all the nifty little gadgets they've put in there this year, when Microsoft waits three, four, even five YEARS to release another version of Windows, I'm thinking I'd better be blown-away. This rarely happens. In fact, all of the features that would have blown me away (*cough*WinFS*cough*) are steadily removed from the shipping OS every time the release date slips.

So, there's the problem as I see it. By waiting so long to make a new release, they build up excitement while at the same time watering down the release so much that it's quite anti-climactic when the product finally DOES ship. I still like Windows, I just think they're screwing themselves here.

13. Idiots (you fall into this group, too!)

Assuming I'm a "Linux whacko" becuase I submit a post critical of Microsoft release practices? Hmmm, no comment on this one.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[Slack3r78]

They don't have to release yearly for it to be more effective. But going *over* 5 years between major releases of a desktop operating system takes it to the opposite extreme. As it stands, Windows XP was released 4.5 years ago. In comparison, people constantly complained about Debian Woody being ancient, but the lapse between Woody and Sarge was almost exactly 3 years.

Microsoft's biggest problem is that they're coming to realize that their operating system just plain was not designed with some of today's realities in mind. As a result, they end up undertaking massive reengineering projects instead of solid incremental updates.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[aaronl]

Perhaps you just haven't been around long enough to have seen MS in action, but we've heard that before. Actually, before MS released the first version of NT. It was called "Cairo" and MS has had fifteen years to finish it, and they've failed. They borrowed things and hacked things together, but in fifteen years, they still haven't managed to do what others had done.

Copy and paste from Wikipedia:
        * DCE RPC
        * An object-oriented User Interface
        * X.500 Directory
        * X.400 Messaging
        * Content Indexing
        * Object-based file system (see WinFS)

Those are what Cairo was supposed to be, as announed in 1991. It was even demoed in 1993, but not in an even slightly usable form. They managed to accomplish the directory by taking LDAP and writing a custom schema and tools. Messaging was accomplished by their email system (Exchange), which used previously established standards. They do half-assed indexing. There has been over 10 years of security problems with their RPC implementation, and it's still not fixed. They have nothing resembling the object FS, and cancelled the attempt, as we all know.

NT3.x brought the DCE RPC, NT4 brough the UI and messaging. Win2000 brought the directory, and eventually the indexing. XP/2003 brought nothing more than revisions to those existing components, and Vista is no different. The things that *mattered* have been cut from the platform.

Do you really believe that Vista, something that realistically amounts to security fixes, a new and more annoying UI, and a few toolkits that exist elsewhere, is a bigger release than W2K? I hope not, because that's asinine. I can confidently say that AD was far more important than *ANYTHING* new in Vista. XAML/WPF is another MS copy of existing technology, and one that doesn't even really exist yet. Even if it doesn't suck, it would certainly be many years before it mattered. People like being able to use their computers without requiring internet access, and the entire concept would not allow that.

Anyway, you need to think through things more, and look at past performance. You can't trust anything that MS says until you see it yourself. Every "revolutionary" technology that was so heavily pushed by MS propoganda has been dropped eventually. The current ones are DirectX and .NET. Just in their wakes are large version incompatibilities, and lack of support. When you get into something like .NET or MFC, etc, you see that MS barely uses it, and eventually drops it for their newest shiny toy that will sell more copies of new version of all their products.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[MickDownUnder]

Microsoft is currently developing Microsoft Office on .NET. Vista's whole UI runs off Direct-X....

Vista is real.... there are beta's of it. Since the release of .NET I think everything you could once say about Microsoft technically had to be thrown out the window. Microsoft has delivered on .NET, they have dilivered on SQL Server, Microsoft Expression, development tools specifically for XAML and Vista have already been released. I think you're in denial here.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[drsmithy]

Do you really believe that Vista, something that realistically amounts to security fixes, a new and more annoying UI, and a few toolkits that exist elsewhere, [...]

If you really think that, then you need to do some more research. *Real* research, as well, not reading press releases. Vista has had a *lot* of work done under the hood.

Anyway, you need to think through things more, and look at past performance. You can't trust anything that MS says until you see it yourself. Every "revolutionary" technology that was so heavily pushed by MS propoganda has been dropped eventually.

Uh, is there any vendor this *doesn't* apply to ?

Re:Less and less relevant?

[drsmithy]

Well, patch Solitaire in Windows, you have to reboot (okay, slight exaggeration), leading to downtime ranging from minutes to hours (in the case of extremely large databases)

If rebooting a machine causes you problematic service downtime, your environment has fundamental problems that need to be addressed.

Patch anything but the kernel(and modules) in Linux? Just keep chugging along, perhaps restarting a single process or two, and a fairly transparent experience from the user perspective.

The difference between restarting some network service that everyone uses, and restarting an entire machine, is usually a matter of semantics.

Also note: downtime due to patches, maintenance, etc., is not counted as "downtime" as defined by Microsoft - just the rest of the world. So when you read downtime/uptime comparisons from Microsoft, ignore them. They redefine the terms.

The Real World is interested in *service* uptimes, not *server* uptimes. Scheduled maintenance, patching, etc of servers - assuming your environment is properly designed - should not have any impact on *service* availability.

Comparing individual server uptimes is the geek equivalent of comparing business card designs.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[aaronl]

I didn't say that Vista hasn't had a lot of internal changes, just that they don't matter in that way. They don't enable new applications or technologies; they fix shortcoming in the previous implementation.

I'm not as much talking about vendors as technologies. MS comes up with their own versions of things, pushes everyone to use them, and then they drop it from something shinier. The non-MS part of the world has been using things called "standards", and they have been doing so far longer than Windows has existed, let alone been used.

We have POSIX as an API standard, and that's been around for a long time. MS has had no less than six APIs that I can think of, just off the top of my head. They tried to have their own networking protocols, their own email formats, APIs, and on and on. They have all been problematic, and largely dropped for the standards that were already there. In that regard, yes, I can think of "vendors" that it doesn't apply to.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[aaronl]

Yes, MS has parts of Office on .NET, and one version of their new UI uses DirectX. That's one product, and a UI that is under heavy criticism. Hell, even the new version of Office has a whole lot of people very upset, although not for their .NET use. They certainly didn't port the whole of Office to the .NET CLR, if that is what you're implying.

Obviously, Vista is real; I've seen betas of it, too. SQL Server is *finally* getting to a point where it is at least comparable to things like DB2. I suppose you could say that's delivering on it. You can't say that they delivered on .NET, either. It's being picked up by random devs, and some places are using it for larger apps. It's still MS specific, and has a lot of problems. Expression hasn't gone anywhere, yet, and the dev tools don't matter without the platform. MS has done these things before, and then dismanteled them. What's your point -- that maybe they won't screw up again, this time?

How can you honestly make this statements as if they were truth without anything to show for it? Expression is meaningless right now, and is practically of toy status. XAML lacks a platform for deployment, Vista isn't on the market. Server-side things are steadily moving off of Windows. Hell, one of the biggest reasons that new Windows servers come into existence is because someone decided to play with all the MS toys, and only has a MS centered solution.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[dsci]

The problem with your comparison is that Windows is a mature product, whereas OS X is not.

That's got to be about the stupidest thing I've seen on /. in a long time, and I REALLY try to refrain from saying stuff like that.

By what standard is Windows a mature product compared to any other OS? They release updates and fixes every MONTH and there are like 15-umpty "versions" of Windows in the wild right now. The MSKB is FULL of "bug reports" and stupid workarounds for things that SHOULD have been fixed long ago.

By any rational measure, OS X is every bit as 'mature' as Windows; just ask the millions of people who use it everyday in demanding production environments (I'm not one of them).

Comparing commercial release schedules to OSS is largely nonsensical, because the latter has none of the pressures and/or responsibilities of the former.

Since when is OS X an OSS project? And even if you can somehow claim it is, Apple is a fairly large commercial enterprise with all those pressures and responsibilities you mention.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[sl4shd0rk]

As long as the executives at Microsoft are capable of maintaining their OEM agreements with the popular brand name manufacturers, Windows will always be relevant.

And this may be on the decline.
http://www.silicon.com/software/os/0,39024651,3911 7247,00.htm
http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/10/will _att_ditch_windows.html
http://news.softpedia.com/news/South-Korea-Could-D itch-Windows-11302.shtml
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184234,00.html

Re:Less and less relevant?

[drsmithy]

I didn't say that Vista hasn't had a lot of internal changes, just that they don't matter in that way. They don't enable new applications or technologies; they fix shortcoming in the previous implementation.

So... Just like very other update to a mature platform, then ?

I'm not as much talking about vendors as technologies. MS comes up with their own versions of things, pushes everyone to use them, and then they drop it from something shinier.

So... They're just like everyone else ?

The non-MS part of the world has been using things called "standards", and they have been doing so far longer than Windows has existed, let alone been used.

Really ? What's the standard API for a "unix" GUI application ? How about using audio devices ? Which API should I use to make sure my hardware driver compiles on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and OS X without modifications or special cases ?

We have POSIX as an API standard, and that's been around for a long time.

And is basically useless (not to mention largely ignored) for anything except trivial command line applications.

Heck, it's not at all uncommon to find trivial open source "unix" applications that only work on x86 Linux machines with particular versions of glibc.

Most "cross platform" unix source code doesn't compile on a wide range of platforms because of "standards", it does so because of the amount of work done by things like autoconf and make.

Jeez. One of the biggest hurdles to wider commercial adoption of Linux is the sheer volume of different APIs (many of which all do essentially the same thing), and you're here trying to say there's no such problem at all ?

MS has had no less than six APIs that I can think of, just off the top of my head.

And "unix" has dozens (if not hundreds). Your point ?

They tried to have their own networking protocols, their own email formats, APIs, and on and on.

So... Just like every other commercial vendor ?

They have all been problematic, and largely dropped for the standards that were already there. In that regard, yes, I can think of "vendors" that it doesn't apply to.

Such as ? Certainly not Apple, Novell or IBM. Maybe Sun, but the intersection of markets between Solaris and Windows is vanishingly small.

You act like Microsoft come up with something, then run away from it the first chance they get just to screw everyone over. Yet things like Win32, MFC and DirectX have been around for over a decade, and will *still* be in legacy support 5 years down the track, if not longer. Heck, Vista will still support Win16 on 32-bit x86, an API that's around twenty years old.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[MickDownUnder]

They certainly didn't port the whole of Office to the .NET CLR, if that is what you're implying

That's exactly what I'm saying, I've yet to find a link on the net to confirm it, but at developer meetings I've heard verbal confirmation from a developer at Microsoft that they are in fact in the process of porting Office to .NET.

....What's your point -- that maybe they won't screw up again, this time?

How can you honestly make this statements as if they were truth without anything to show for it? Expression is meaningless right now, and is practically of toy status

Well alot of people will disagree with you there. I think .NET has been very successful, and quite a number of businesses are picking up on it. I've been personally involved in a number of projects for major corporations, including banking and financial organisations. I hear from people in managerial positions, in major corporations with a large investment in Java and Oracle looking at migrating to .NET all the time.

As for Expression being a toy.... it's actually got two distinct parts, the Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer and Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer. The graphic designer is Microsofts Photoshop killer app, it produces, GIF, JPEG, PNG etc etc... HTML and XAML. Unless you classify Adobe Photoshop as a toy it's very much a serious app and is already released. The Interactive designer produces XAML and yes until Vista is released and Win FX is shipped through windows update to XP and 2000 systems, you could say it's a "toy".

Have a read of this article I just found on sourceforge it might help you convince you, it pretty much repeats and re-affirms everything I said in my original comment.

Make no mistake about it, Microsoft has had a bias towards ASP.NET developers, and has been very successful in hooking alot of people into this technology for web development. XAML, WinFX and Vista are some major signs that Microsoft is beginning to shift their focus from web development back towards windows development.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[drsmithy]

You won't believe how amny times some of my less computer-knowledgable friends or clients are afraid to apply a Windows Update patch because they (rightfully) fear that it will break more things than it might fix.

With you "advising" them, I certainly could believe. The fact is, however, Windows patches break things quite rarely. Much less frequently, in my experience, than updates to the average Linux distribution.

(You could believe, if you stopped blindly ignoring every argument against your favorite defective OS.)

I have no "favourite OS". And if you want me to stop poking holes in your arguments, come up with some better ones that involve more facts and less FUD.

You can choose any of QT, GTK+, WXWidgets, Motif, and more. All of them will work, so pick whichever one you like best for whatever reason. For audio, you could use either ALSA or OpenAL for precise control, or Xine or GStreamer if you need multimedia features. Again, all will work. For drivers, I do not have enough knowledge to tell you (not that you want to hear me), but there's a good chance the situation is similar there too.

Thank you for demonstrating why your previous relative criticism about the quantity of APIs for Windows is groundless.

It's better to have a low-leve API that does little but does it so well that it won't need to be obsoleted by a fix 2 years from now.

Which Windows APIs are you thinking of that have been unexpectedly obseleted 2 years after introduction ?

That's why the above-mentioned GUI and audio APIs are so stable as well.

Stable, you say ? How old of a version of QT will support the current release of KDE ? What's the oldest version of KDE you can run with today's QT ?

The Windows APIs are extremely stable. Windows apps written to them 10+ years ago work in todays Windows 2003 systems.

Autoconf and make are an automated system to adjust a generic package to the specifics of a system that is potentially different from the one next to it.

Note that with a "standard" and "stable" "unix API", this should not be necessary.

These differences are not an inherent flaw. They stem from something called "choice", which I'm afraid you may not be able to grasp.

Funny how last post you were criticising Windows for the choice is was offering in "no less than six APIs that I can think of, just off the top of my head".

This is not because having alternative APIs, which all work together, is bad.

No, it's because having dozens of APIs that all do basically the same thing is bad (well, wasteful at the very least).

It's because most IT businesses think in Windows-terms - vendor lock-in and no choice whatsoever.

Most IT business think in terms of economics. And having to support multiple implementations of the same functionality (be it from the developer or end user perspective) costs a lot of money with few reciprical benefits.

You (along with a large proportion of the Linux community, so don't feel too badly about it) seem to be missing one of the main reasons why so little commercial software is produced for Linux - it's because there aren't any standards (or because there are too many, depending on your perspective) and because the APIs tend to be relatively unstable (as they are developed under the assumption that software using them will be open source and thus can just be recompiled when things change).

Lets say Adobe wanted to port Photoshop to Linux. Which package management scheme should they use ? Which distro should they target ? Which GUI should they write for ? Which version ?

With Windows, these questions are easy to answer. Hell, most of them are barely even worth asking, because there's only one answer/

"Unix" systems, as you call them, are not a replacement for Widnows, but an alternative, and consequently do certain things differently. Try this page for a better explanation.

Re:Less and less relevant?

[Elbowgeek]

Ah, I remember when I was thirteen, just like you. I do hope your acne problem subsides before your big date, which at this rate will probably not happen before your thirtieth birthday. Poor lad.

On a more serious note, I will say that the best approach to user interfaces I've yet encountered was, believe it or not, OS/2. They used the concept of a template-centric (using a stationery metaphor) paradigm instead of an application-centric one, just as one does in a real office environment. It was so easy to work with and relate to I've often wondered why it was never adopted outside OS/2.

But it was, in a half-assed sort of way, by Microsoft, such that one can't truly use the Windows interface fully for that sort of interaction with data and applications, but unfortunately the application-centric concept doesn't work smoothly enough for less computer-literate folks (such as yourself) to feel comfortable with the system without much experience.

Cheers

Dupe?

[Black Parrot]

Wouldn't it be "news" if you posted a story when a Windows release wasn't delayed?

Dupe

[DemingBuiltMyHotRod]

" Windows Vista Delayed Again"

-1 Dupe.

The real reason --

[Cmdr-Absurd]

They are replacing the bundled mine sweeper with Duke Nukem Forever.

Vista

[InTRUHell]

While I can't imagine having to use Windows as an workstation OS going forward, is it really any surprise that MS is pushing back a release date.....again? Of course we will see the usual spiel from the Dvoraks and Cringleys about how Apple has convinced MS to make Vista EFI compatible right from launch....yadda yadda CONSPIRACY...yadda, but I think MS's reorg finally has them looking at more than $$ for once and it is starting to show.

And if anybody asks I never said that.

Better

[CriminalNerd]

An OS with less holes is better than an OS with more holes. Let us wait patiently...

Official link

[RonnyJ]

There's an official statement here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/mar0 6/03-21WindowsVistaDeliveryPR.mspx

There's nothing odd about this....

[MickDownUnder]

Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year

When a product is ready to be shipped Microsoft releases it immediately through MSDN subscriptions. It's products are always available for download to registered customers a month or more before it ends up on the shelves. Round that time of year I doubt they would be wanting to go to the expense of pushing it to the stores round Christmas.... I mean it's not like anyone out there is going to buy a copy of Vista to fill a christmas stocking.

This doesn't surprise me at all. A staged release of a system like Vista is only sensible. I'd want to know about every little possible glitch or issue on installation of the system before, mum, dad, grandma and grandpa start installing the thing.

Re:There's nothing odd about this....

[MBCook]

I agreed with most of your post until you got to Christmas.

Wouldn't MS want to get Vista out in time for Christmas? There are two big PC shopping times... back to school (August) and Christmas (December). They'll never get it out by August, and never said they would. But getting it out in November would be just in time to make a big blitz about "Buy a new computer with Windows Vista to put under your tree this year." The OEMs would love this, and MS could get massive sales.

Frankly, by November I don't think you should buy a new computer until Vista comes out and is pre-installed (Wintel only, if you are buying for Linux or a Mac, this doesn't apply).

If anything, I think this would HURT MS and the OEMs.

Izzard

[rmsmith]

To quote (from memory, but hopefully accurate) the wonderful Eddie Izzard regarding Microsoft's release schedules: "It'll be out tomorrow! Next week! Next month! When we're fuckin' ready, alright?!"

I upgraded grandma to Lindows (from win98)

[ylikone]

She is on a fixed income and has an older computer. Forget about Windows XP, and especially Vista. Lindows is easy and works... and it's Linux.

Such a pity for investors

[bigberk]

Who bid up MSFT stock to its highest price in one year, probably partially on expectations that the OS was ready for release. Life is sooo unfair

Explanation: Testing Is Exponentially Complex

[Anonymous Coward]

The better explanation for the delay is that the amount of time required for testing either a new integrated circuit or a new computer program is exponentially proportional to the number of bits in the circuit or the computer program. So, for example, if a circuit had 8 bits, then testing it requires time that is O(exp(8)).

More to the point, if a computer program is B bits in length, then testing it requires time that is O(exp(B)). If the new version of the computer program doubles the length of the original version, then the required testing time is O(exp(2 B)). In other words, the testing time for the new version is exp(B) times the testing time for the original version.

Microsoft management probably put a gun to the heads of the grunts doing the programming and the testing. The management then realized that even if they theatened to kill the grunts, the grunts cannot defy the laws of finite mathematics, automata theory, and testability to finish the product by July 2006. Hence, the product has been delayed until 2007.

In 1990 (?), Intel management actually pulled the trigger on that gun. The consequence was the infamous floating-point-division defect in the Pentium.

By the way, I speak from experience -- as a grunt.

When is XP not good enough?

[poopie]

The only way I can see Microsoft being able to have Vista succeed faster than just by licenses bundled with new hardware is to cut off patches and support and upgrades from Windows XP.

After working *so* hard to get corporations to upgrade from Windows 95,98, and Windows NT to Windows XP... It's going to be a hard sell to explain that Windows XP is no longer good enough and that corporations need to not only upgrade their OS, but also need to upgrade their *HARDWARE* to take advantage of Windows Vista.

Regardless of how you define "thin client", a desktop running Windows XP fits that bill quite nicely. IE6 is good, Firefox is available, everything is going browser based. Even *if* Microsoft tried to withhold a future version of Internet Explorer from Windows XP users, there will be Firefox and Opera. If microsoft tries to require non-portable components on the client side of their web components, they're going to cut off mobile users, OSX users, Linux, etc.

How exactly can Microsoft make Vista a compelling upgrade other than releasing new game titles that will not run on Windows XP?

Certainly, they cannot cut off security updates on Windows XP at least for the next decade or so.

Re:When is XP not good enough?

[Pharmboy]

A desktop running XP is NOT a thin client.

MS has made it clear they will support older operating systems with security patches for at least 5 years after they discontinue selling it.

Businesses buy new computers on average every 4-5 years, if for no reason other than it is cheaper than maintaining the old hardware. Cost to maintain vs. new is one reason. Depreciation rules are another.

They will cut off XP update in 6 to 8 years. They will cut off all non-critical updates (bug fixes) in 2 to 4. All of this is published on their site, their policies for End of Life products.

My house is 50% Linux, 50% MS right now. We will not be making the transistion to Vista. By the time games won't run on XP anymore (5-6 years from now) I expect they will on Linux, or I simply won't buy the ones than don't.

So I really don't care when Vista comes out.

Surprise... Surprise... Surprise...

[__aaclcg7560]

What's being pulled out that won't be shipping? If they pull out the kitchen sink, all they got is an overworked copy of Windows XP.

Odd coincidence

[tootlemonde]

The Wall Street Journal reported that before the stock market opened today

Microsoft broke the bullish news that it planned to significantly boost the distribution of its Xbox 360 videogame consoles. Xbox and Vista are handled by two different divisions of Microsoft, but did the Redmond brain trust really not know about the Vista news until this afternoon? Microsoft representatives weren't immediately available for comment.

Microsoft shares were down as much as 3% in after-hours trading.

You'd think that Microsoft's investor relations department would try to co-ordinate two announcements that might affect the stock price. If they deliberately staggered the announcements to reduce the effect of the second one, Microsoft might be in violation of securities regulations.

In any case, investors should view Microsoft's future positive announcements with suspicion since they could simply be a precursor to a negative one.

Vaporware

[ron_ivi]

It's also commonly called vaporware, and MSFT's gotten in trouble for it in the past Vaporware

Last month, the U.S. District Court jurist in Washington suggested barring Microsoft from making vaporware announcements because doing so can allegedly freeze the market and discourage buyers from purchasing competing products.

Seems not much has changed since 1995.

Re:It's the DRM

[paugq]

No DRM in the business edition? Then everybody and his brother will install Windows Vista Corporate with a Volume License Key which requires no activation, just like people did with Windows XP.

Ubuntu

[Beuno]

I guess they heard how good the Ubuntu delay was recieved and thought the same reaction would happen.
The only thing they might of missed is that Ubuntu was always delivered on time, but windows....

Not so odd

[steveha]

The business volume customers aren't going to roll out Vista company-wide the same day they get it. They will start installing it on their test computers, evaluating it, seeing how it runs their in-house applications, etc. Plus, they should already have a good system in place for getting patches from Microsoft; it won't bother them much if there are lots of patches for a while.

The corporate guys will serve as an extension to the beta testing. If corporate test installs find anything, Microsoft can fix it and roll the fix into Vista before the final release.

Even if Microsoft had not slipped the final date, the corporate customers would still spend several months before rolling it out. They will probably be happy to get Vista earlier rather than later, so they can start the evaluation process.

The last customers who should get the OS are the home users, who want something that will Just Work right out of the box.

steveha

Comparisons are looking worse...

[Coryoth]

I remember when MacOS X 10.4 got released there were plenty of comments from MS people that Vista had similar but "better" things and would be out shortly. Now Vista has been pushed back to the point where we can expect to see MacOS X 10.5 first (scheduled for the end of this year apparently), so really all those comparisons pitting Vista against Tiger were vastly premature - the comparison is Vista with Leopard - and we don't know what that will come with yet.

In the meantime the Linux side of things continues to move along. At the present rate I would expect it reasonable to find Xgl or AIGLX along with Beagle and similar as standard in distributions released around the end of this year, along with a more Cairo-ised GTK and a steadily improving GNOME. I don't know anticipated release dates for KDE 4.0, but I don't believe it's too far away (compared the the Vista release), and certainly promises to be impressive. A lot of Vista's claims to superiority are going to be already present in Linux distros before Vista gets released.

Certainly this has to be a worrying trend for MS. The Linux desktop used to be well behind and playing catch-up. While it could still use some polish in some areas, as far as new features are concerned Linux has pulled up to level pegging - that implies that the Linux Desktop is improving much faster, and Linux pulling ahead is simply a matter of time. In the meantime Apple has been managing a much faster release cycle and doesn't seem to be having any problems staying ahead of MS.

Jedidiah.

Re:Comparisons are looking worse...

[ZachPruckowski]

Leopard will come out "right around the time Vista does". We may see a preview of it at WWDC in August, but it may well not launch until anytime between November and January. But you're right. There are a lot of MS competitors who are upgrading in 2006. Firefox 2.0 will be out long before IE7 at this rate, and KDE, and Ubuntu will also get bumps. Exicting year in computing, for everyone but Windows fans.

Re:Comparisons are looking worse...

[drinkypoo]

In the meantime Apple has been managing a much faster release cycle and doesn't seem to be having any problems staying ahead of MS.

Pretty much every player worth noticing has been ahead of MS all along. I mean hell, GEOS did everything Windows 3.1 did and more, including scalable fonts before anyone even came up with a way to do that on windows period, and yet GEOS got clobbered - because they couldn't sell it. The problem with keeping ahead of Microsoft has never been one of technology, but mindshare, and thus market share.

Re:Comparisons are looking worse...

[dbIII]

The Linux desktop used to be well behind and playing catch-up

When I ran enlightenment via X on a win2k box about five years ago everyone who saw it was struck with the differences and speed - even without shaped window support and the window manager being run on a different and lower spec machine over the network. The MS Windows desktop environment has the twin advantages of being widespread and of being taught to kids in schools - but in many ways it is inferior to even CDE from many years back (KDE was inspired by CDE). Compare both to apples and they both look inferior.

Re:Comparisons are looking worse...

[g00dn3ss]

Compare both to apples and they both look inferior.

Yes, but what if we compare them to oranges...

Re:Better Holes

[Foofoobar]

You assume less holes. Microsoft has not really proven that each version contains a significantly fewer number of holes. Given the same time frame as 2000, XP has proven to be equally flawed.

Also, keep in mind that they openly admitted that they stopped development halfway through to rewrite the entire OS and still attempted to make a deadline! That to me says that they had to cut corners on development and on testing and I'm willing to bet their are GAPING holes as a result.

Now Placing Bets...

[thatoneguy_jm]

...On which will arrive in stores first:

A) Duke Nukem Forever

B) The Infinium Phantom Console or

C) Windows Vista!

Re:Now Placing Bets...

[jd]

Now now. Be nice. Windows Vista probably will be released - eventually. To be fair, you'd have to compare the other two with the release date for the advertised Vista (with all the enhancements they've dropped)

Re:Hey.. look at the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

"And relevant."

No it isn't.

A relevant has big ears and a long nose.

Not shipping in January 2007?

[Bourbonium]

I think what he meant to say was "OS would not ship *until* January of 2007". At least, that was the impression I got from other news reports hitting the internet this afternoon on this topic.

API compatibility

[mr_tenor]

Hmmm...

http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2006-Ma rch/045571.html

"So there we have it - this appears to be the first release in which they simply started dropping APIs."

"And, therefore, the first time for which we can categorically state that Wine will be more compatible with Windows applications than Windows itself."

"Not to mention that they're handing a near-fatal blow to OpenGL support, too."

etc.

Re:API compatibility

[nsayer]

"Not to mention that they're handing a near-fatal blow to OpenGL support, too."

Uh, that's by design. DirectX is not cross-platform, at least not to the extent that OpenGL is. So this is yet another platform lock-in play by Redmond. Color me shocked.

Marketing Graphics

[owlnation]

I can't help noticing that one of the marketing graphics for Vista is a picture of two people standing on a hillside searching into the far distance across an empty landscape.

They may wish to think about changing this image. Appropriate, it may be, but not the best marketing image...

Look on the bright side - this is great news

[Weaselmancer]

The date they will stop patching your copy of XP just got pushed back two months.

Re:It's the DRM

[cyberformer]

If they install the business edition, they won't be able to play high-definition video in MS's proprietary DRM format.

Unlike with XP, the home version isn't just the business version with some newtorking functions taken out. It has some extra (DRM-crippled) multimedia stuff that businesses don't get.

Missing digital media/entertainment features

[MojoStan]

No DRM in the business edition? Then everybody and his brother will install Windows Vista Corporate with a Volume License Key which requires no activation, just like people did with Windows XP.

Not if they want Media Center functionality, DVD video authoring, Movie Maker HD, and other "home" features that are left out of the "business" versions of Vista.

Apparently, the only versions of Vista that will be available with a Volume License Key ("business versions") will be missing features that most pirates want.

Re:Missing digital media/entertainment features

[StikyPad]

Maybe, but I think you're underestimating the ingenuity of crackers. Just because those features are "left out" of the VLK edition doesn't mean they can't be added via other means. It might even be as easy as a simple slipstream, but even if its not, it may be easier to add the missing components to a VLK edition than remove the protections from the home/ultimate editions.

Not that it really matters either way. I predict a 99% chance that illegitimate copies will be widespread before February 2007, a 90% chance within a week from release, 75% chance within 24 hours, and 50% chance before the actual release.

Release the insecure version first?

[LuminaireX]

Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year.

I know! Let's sell the less secure version first to businesses who actually profit from their computers! What an great idea!

*Microsoft T-shirts and Xbox games to all*

Re:It's the DRM

[JFitzsimmons]

I thought there wasn't going to be volume licencing for Vista. That's just something I heard on Slashdot, so it is probably untrue.

Re:OSX Comes along again

[JackAxe]

First of all, upgrading is a choice, not a requirement. Apple provides incremental updates for free, which are basically the same as service packs, meaning that 10.3.1 - 10.3.9 were free for Panther owners as an example. The difference between 10.4 and 10.3 as noted by others, is basically difference between XP and Win2k. You can't compare a Service Pack to a completely new version of an OS, that's like comparing a security update to a SP.

Apple on average upgrades their OS every 2 years and at just over $100, they are a way better deal than MS's limited offerings. XP Pro cost me more than my Tiger and Panther upgrades combined. When it comes to features, stabibilty and security, just to name a few, XP pro was a complete rip-off when compared to any version of OS X.

<]=)

And the winner is...

[Bullfish]

Who had March 21rst on the "Vista is delayed" announcement pool? New pool for the next announced delay date starts soon!

Re:It's the DRM

[AlterTick]

If they install the business edition, they won't be able to play high-definition video in MS's proprietary DRM format. Unlike with XP, the home version isn't just the business version with some newtorking functions taken out. It has some extra (DRM-crippled) multimedia stuff that businesses don't get.

Err...so what version do people in the high-definition video business buy?

Possible Reason?

[justindz]

Are we talking a delay in all 6 versions, or just the 3 consumer ones, or the 2 other ones or that 1 other one?

OEM vs upgrade pricing

[tokabola]

I think it has a lot to do with not wanting to sell before Christmas. Many people who are buying new PC's for the kids will do that at Christmas, and you'll see a lot of "Vista Ready" PC's being advertised. However, many of the new games that come out starting next year will use DirectX 10, which will only be available for Vista. This will create a lot of kids whining for an upgrade to Vista next Christmas.

Why sell it now (at OEM pricing, around $50US) when you can sell it a few months, maybe a year, later at upgrade prices (at least $100US). They even get to keep the 50 bucks they made selling the OEM copy of XP.

The PC makers like the idea because it will boost PC sales in the early part of the year, a traditionally slow period, but probably won't seriously impact Christmas sales.

Re:OEM vs upgrade pricing

[clodney]

If DX10 will only be available on Vista, games will not start requiring DX10 until Vista has achieved significant market penetration. Anything else is suicide for the game vendors.

Re:It's the DRM

[HiredMan]

Err...so what version do people in the high-definition video business buy?

Macs, duh.

=tkk

Top 10 Reasons Vista was delayed:

[ZOverLord]

Top 10 Reasons Vista was delayed:

10 - Waiting for Roswell Alien Technology .dll

9 - Will work better when Bird Flu is World Wide

8 - Oprah has not done the book review yet

7 - Apple Dual Boot XP still needs work

6 - Courtney Love needs one more rehab

5 - Still Can't remove Sony Root-kit

4 - Bush is still president

3 - http://onlytherightanswers.com/ has NOT given thumbs up yet

2 - Silva Brown said WAIT!

1 - Moore's Law, It's too slow right now

I ws just reading this today...

[sedyn]

To back up what you were saying http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/history.html:

"It would be an understatement to say that OS X is derived from NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. In many respects, it's not just similar, it's the same. One can think of it as OpenStep 5 or 6, say. This is not a bad thing at all - rather than create an operating system from scratch, Apple tried to do the smart thing, and used what they already had to a great extent. However, the similarities should not mislead you: Mac OS X is evolved enough that what you can do with it is far above and beyond NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP."

Just like you can think of XP being NTv5.1 (I think it is 1 or 01...)

Hey!

[SuperKendall]

I thought there wasn't going to be volume licencing for Vista. That's just something I heard on Slashdot, so it is probably untrue.

Hey look everyone! There's not going to be volume licencing for Vista!

Now you have a source - that's how the internet works my friend.

Let us do what again?

[SuperKendall]

An OS with less holes is better than an OS with more holes. Let us...

Buy OS X?

Install Linux?

Install BSD?

There's all sorts of options that involve more or less instant gratification.

Re:It's the DRM

[TheNetAvenger]

Macs, duh

Of course, but if they want to watch the videos in HD format, they will have to buy a separate player or another computer with Windows Vista.

DRM and the HD HDMI restrictions are part of the HD media formats, and have nothing to do with Microsoft. Microsoft is providing the ability for their OSes to play the media, and unless Mac or Linux also make the same concessions, they will also not be able to play the content in true High Definition.

(Your post was funny, but since it was popular thought this would be a good place to stick these facts. People think that Windows is 'crippled' by DRM and HD HDMI standards, when the movies themselves ship with copy protections, Windows is so far the only OS offering support for them.)

It is like this, regular DVDs have region and DVD copy protection, it is just all DVD players came from the factory supporting the decrypting of the copy protection, and even though it has been hacked and bypassed, 99.9% of the when any of us watches a DVD on a computer or a home player, we are still using the Copy decryption technologies installed in both the players and the computer software.

Same will be for HD DVD and other media. Vista will support the new copy protection, just like the new stand alone players will. So Vista actually 'adds' in the ability to play and decrypt the newer standards. Where people are calling Vista crippled, it is actually the opposite, as it supports the new formats. PERIOD.

Re:It's the DRM

[AndersOSU]

And if they are in the movie industry they will also be privy to information that the movie isn't worth watching (let alone copying) before any of us.

Re:Explanation: Testing Is Exponentially Complex

[cswiger2005]

If you need exponential time to test your code as it increases in size, you're probably going about the business in a less than ideally efficient way. Unit-testing can help. So will proper design.

I'm being too polite, what you've described sounds a lot like the testing equivalent of the bogosort algorithm, ie, sorting a deck of cards by shuffling them randomly and then checking to see whether you happened to shuffle them into sorted order. A bogosort takes exponential time, whereas an ideal sort is O(n * log(n)) worst-case.

If you were writing a program which needed to convert between N different image formats, would you write something that converted between each combination (ie, N*N conversion routines), or would you be more clever and do what Jeff Pozanker did with PBM (ie, write a common intermediate format and only N * 2 conversion routines)...?

Re:It's the DRM

[Lumpy]

DRM and the HD HDMI restrictions are part of the HD media formats,

really??

why is there none in mpeg4? I have lots of full resolution and HD quality content in mpeg4 format, as well as Divx flavor and Xid Flavor.

They have no DRM in them and work perfectly for a HD media format. Hell I even have a set top box that plays them well to my HD TV.

Oh you must mean the NEW Hd formats they are going to shove at people to hide the fact that non DRM restricted formats already exist.

Kind of like the losing attempt to unseat Mp3 with WMA.

Mp3 is old but still outnumbers all other audio formats 300 to 1 simply because there is no DRM or DRm capable.

If MS didn't support it, there was no DRM!

[LinuxDon]

Where people are calling Vista crippled, it is actually the opposite, as it supports the new formats. PERIOD.

The only reason that DRM in HD formats is going to succeed, is because the largest software maker in the world supports it.

If MS would say 'no' to DRM, they wouldn't have succeeded in pushing it through.
Somehow, you believe it is a good thing that Vista "supports" the "new formats".
But Vista is only facilitating something that is going to be a very bad thing for consumers in general.

So I hope everyone is going to be very happy with their crippled OS while I'm sticking with Linux.