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Microsoft Hoping for Vista in January
WebHostingGuy writes "Bill Gates said Tuesday there was an 80 percent chance the company's next-generation operating system, Vista, would be ready in January. He is also hopeful that the next version of Office will ship in December. The holdup, he says, is due to constant revisions due to beta tester feedback." From the article: "'We've got to get this absolutely right,' Gates said. 'If the feedback from the beta tests shows it is not ready for prime time, I'd be glad to delay it.' He said Microsoft was investing $8 billion to $9 billion in developing Vista and the company's next version of Office, its key cash-generator. He said the company's software partners, in developing and adapting their own products for the two launches, would invest 20 times as much as Microsoft."
Gates says 80% chance that it will be a go in January.
Mr Gates, how much do you want to bet?
I'd really like to see what kind of odds the Vegas bookmakers would give it.
"The holdup, he says, is due to constant revisions due to beta tester feedback."
Well duh, Just quit testing!
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
a reason to actually upgrade to it by then?
Last I heard, all the features were being removed, and that it required an insane machine to run.
Registered Linux user #421033
At this point, even Debian has a more reliable release schedule!
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
If beta 2 was any indication, they better start from scratch again.
That 80% chance is figuring in the inclusion of a new Microsoft folder game, Duke Nukem Forever. They are taking out minesweeper for it, so they are being extra careful that it will be ready for primetime -- some January.
Any time a widely used OS is significantly changed, everyone will have to invest some amount of time with testing, and possibly refreshing, their software. Since there are so many companies that might have to do so, there's a significant software expense in doing so. If there's a large shift in KDE, to make it more future-oriented, then a very large amount of time will be spent by a large number of developers to update software. While they may not be getting paid to do it, their time still has value. Ol' Bill apparently realizes that software development is done by lots of people in lots of ways, unlike you.
Once again, Microsoft leaves the heavy lifting to others. What a crock. What exactly is Microsoft supposed to do, reverse-engineer everyone's applications for them so it will run under Vista? I'm no Windows programmer, but clearly the partners are going to have to make changes if their software is incompatible with Vista.
body massage!
There is no real need for a Vista release anytime soon, really. Judging from what we've heard so far, people complain about the hardware requirements. Microsoft should not have had a public release date on this product and it seems people are upset only because they missed it. Well, guess what, Windows XP is still here and I doubt anyone in here can actually give me a good reason why we HAVE TO get Vista right away. I wouldn't mind waiting another year.
Full Tilt
Bud Light presents ... Real Men Of Genius.
[Real Men Of Genius.]
Today, we salute you, Mr Impatient For Windows Vista Guy.
[Mr Impatient For Windows Vista Guy.]
While others marvel at an operating system whose primary repair
tradition is a complete wipe, you just can't wait for more of the
same.
[I just love my Long Horn!]
Yes, it lacks security, efficiency, speed, heck, just about
everything. But ever since 1985, when you first jammed your floppies
into that curvaceous 186, you've been enraptured with Windows.
[It was five and a quarter inches!]
Despite the fact that it requires an array of Crays to run already
invented technologies at sub-optimum speeds, you will beat the rush
and see Notepad and Clock run in CPU-crippling GPU-hogging
translucency.
[It turns on all my pixels!]
So crack open an ice cold Bud Lite, oh Chevalier of the Control Panel,
because whilst the rest of us wonder what Vista will bring, you
already know.
[Mr Impatient For Windows Vista Guy!]
Bud Light beer. Anheuser Busch, St. Louis, Missouri.
Windows Vista = new Windows();
Vista.announceWayTooEarlyReleaseDate()
Vista.test();
public void test()
{
test();
}
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
So much buildup for what amounts to, after all the stuff they cut out, a Mac OS X-colored GUI and a fancy new video game engine. And they've been working on this how long?
Man, I remember 10 years ago when I was making fun of Windows 95 for not having any original ideas. I didn't know how good we had it. At least Windows 95 had some ideas, whether or not they were original-- there was at least a substantial difference from Windows 3.1. But it seems like from 2000 to XP to Vista all Microsoft's really done is move options around in confusing ways and make the window title bars increasingly elaborate.
Considering that Vista will be once of the most complicated computer programs in computer history, designed to support more hardware and more third party programs than any other app or OS in history, I don't really think that you can call this "pitiful". I can't think of any other app or OS that comes even close to doing what they're doing. Nothing else is even *close*.
How's the Kool-aid taste?
Hell, I've got even neater features on Linux now, such as the fact that I can start a processor-intensive application running and my machine doesn't become completely unusable (mmm, efficient thread switching...). Let's see you try that under Windows or OSX.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"He is also hopeful that the next version of Office will ship in December."
Oh man, now he's resorting to asking Santa...
Nice; keep in mind that if a country had $180 billion GDP, it would rank in the top 50 countries in the world.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Since Mr. Gates lives in Washington, he is unfortunately not able to respond to your wager online.
Prove it.
...which January?
"Bill Gates said Tuesday there was an 80 percent chance the company's next-generation operating system, Vista, would be ready in January." "We've got to get this absolutely right," Gates said. "If the feedback from the beta tests shows it is not ready for prime time, I'd be glad to delay it." *** In other words, we already know we 'again' can't make the January timeline, but I will use the quality pretext to launch it in 2008. We would, although, like to keep 80% of the investors for now... please...
How does one spend that much money writing code?
Well, OK, when you write it over and over and over again....
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
He said the company's software partners, in developing and adapting their own products for the two launches, would invest 20 times as much as Microsoft
Right there is why Microsoft is the most successful software company in the world -- respect for developers.
It's all well and good to laugh at Steve Ballmer sweating like an ape on a stage and shouting about developers. It's fine to feel smug and superior using Mac OS or Linux (I'm using both write now myself).
But Microsoft has always respected the work of developers coding to their platform. Backward compatibility is a religion at Microsoft, by all accountts. Which is good because they're, um, a platform vendor.
Sounds simple, but it is amazing how often this is screwed up. Apple is notorious for breaking old programs that didn't interpret the Mac API just right -- or that relied on a technology fad Apple pumped and abandoned (OpenDoc, QuickDraw GX, Publish + Subscribe, etc etc).
Apache Foundation did the same thing moving from httpd v1 to v2 -- PHP took quite a long time to move over and at one point was telling people not to even try using it with v2.
Firefox seems to do it on every release with its extensions.
Backward compatibility might not give warm fuzzies to the systems programmers -- it is hard, inelegant work. But it is a boon to users and application programmers.
I only use Linux on the server, where I don't run into backward compatibility issues, but from what I understand the drivers often have to be rewritten from release to release.
I'm not in love with Windows or Microsoft, but I will continue using their OS becase of the sheer range of CHOICES in terms of software and hardware, and the fact that all my old stuff can migrate to a new machine.
So go ahead, laugh at Microsoft, har dee har, "u r d3layed AG@1N!" For your purposes -- programming, running a server -- Linux may be the best. Or Mac OS X for that plus video editing, publishing, and other tasks and price points that don't require the full diversity of Wintel.
But for most computer users, Windows offers wins because of its compatibility with an incredibly array of cheap hardware and an incredible back (and forward) catalog of software. Microsoft knows this, and THAT'S why they are going to wait until Vista is just right. Yes they screwed the pooch, but they are attempting something that neither Linux nor OS X can touch.
Well, there are always going to be incompatibilities with a new major version. And it's not so much that they are leaving the heavy lifting to others, it's just that all those little things that don't work the same need to be fixed in various software programs. Thousands of software programs. That cost is divided amongst all developers. Then the deployment of those changes. And marketing. Etc. These are not Microsoft's responsibility.
That said, I've used Vista Beta 2. It's Alpha quality, at best. (Of course, "Beta" has become somewhat of a buzzword. Often what should be a "Release" is labelled "Beta" to give it a "Cutting edge" feeling.)
I hate grammar Nazi's.
There will 1/12 chance that Vista will be released in January, not 4/5.
You can run an application on Linux?
What does it do?
Everybody is, because there's a 100% chance that it will become the overwhelming market leader whenever it finally does hit store shelves.
Unless it's a bloated bugfest like Windows ME and people refuse to upgrade.
I don't know what the odds of that are, but personally I'm not in a hurry to migrate. I was excited about XP because it fixed the worst of the Windows 98 stability problems. (By making it harder for a misbehaving process to bring the whole system down.) But I don't have any motivation to go from my fully-patched XP system to a new and relatively-untested Vista. There aren't any new features that would make it worth the risk. Maybe I'll think about it in 3-4 years, assuming that a lot of games start requiring DirectX 10.
Here's the problem with Microsoft...they're spending 8-9 billion on Vista, but will only see a very slight fraction of return on the investment. Few people will upgrade to Vista, but instead will adopt Vista when it comes with their new PC. Microsoft could just keep XP and these same people would've paid roughly the same amount for it on a new PC as they would with Vista on a new PC. In other words, Microsoft since becoming the overwhelmingly dominate OS has no incentive to improve Windows unless they can release something so major that it provides an incentive for people to upgrade. The problem is that doing a major release like that would be *extremely expensive* and risk losing customers due to the radical change. This is why the *next* version of Windows after Vista will be even more of a headache for Microsoft.
Release OSX for generic PC. It'll kill their (perceived) "hardware business" (in practice is just expensive dongles for their OS and software suite) but it would pretty much nail M$ to the wall.
Now I admit I'm a huge Mac fanboi and would be just fine never touching another Windows box in my life, but Apple would take many tears and years to integrate the hardware support that Windows has. One of the reasons I love Apple, "Don't do it all, just do what you do damn well."
Ignore anything I said above, I actually agree with everything you believe - mod accordingly.
You want corporate evil? Look at fellows like Carnagie and Rockefeller. There's a couple of great examples of the "robber baron", and we still name civic centers and auditoriums after them. Gates isn't even a blip on the radar next to those two. Granted, he's beyond obscenely rich, and there's no mistaking his business practices for anything resembling fair, but he really is quite tame by comparison to some of America's more revered/despised business leaders of the past.
American history is replete with such men. It's the inevitable result of the free-enterprise system.
Not so lucrative?
In perhaps your tiny world, but think how many *nix freaks would love to run OSX on beigebox pcs. I know I would. I suspect that it wouldn't even really damage their hardware business all that much.
Think about it--how many people would buy the hardware just for the added support, comfort and perceived (and at this point, only perceived) superior reliability? I know a lot of folks would. A good portion of their market wouldn't really even understand what this option meant. Others would, but they are the cost-conscious type who would very likely never purchase a Mac in the first place. They might, however, purchase OSX at a reasonable price (that is, lower than Windows!).
I think that offering their software could only increase their profits. It would very likely seriously damage their relationship with MS, and that is very likely the real reason that the cost/benefit ratio doesn't quite pay off just yet. One day it will, however, and then MS needs to watch out.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
MS recognized this fact. They have an "early adopter" program for corporations, which my company is participating in. Basically, the corporation, with X number of total desktops, agrees to have some number of them (for us its 1000) upgraded to Vista within Y months of the Vista release date (for us I think its 3 months.) For that, MS commits Z number of hands-on, on-site engineering support, to help with software issues, compatability, builds, etc (Vista has a somewhat cool PXE boot process for bare-metal installs; no more Ghost images.) I forget what our Z is; I'm only tangentially involved in the process. My point is that MS is playing both fields; they give corp's resources to figure out build issues, which gets the corps running Vista more quickly (which lets MS make bigger claims about # of deployed desktops) and in turn, I'm sure, any software related issues get pushed back to the software corps for further investigation. And, all that being said, most of us are still wondering why we're MS's guinea-pig/bitch for an OS that /really/ doesn't get us that much. (The only thing I'm looking forward to is native 802.1x supplicant support so I can do Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC). BTW, their version, called NAP, sucks wind. Secure DHCP and private IPSec tunnels to the server. ptttttphtp!)
Well, the plus side of that is that you CAN recompile your apps.
Anyway, I recall back in '94 AOL would have stopped working with Windows 95, so MS changed some memory allocation code pretty much just for them, their competitors.
(I heard that AOL's software was taking a 32 bit Handle (sort of an index to a table of pointers), and only used the lower 16 bits of it: which was all Windows 3.1 really used, with it 65,536 object limit.
People often think of MS being anti-competitive when they win, but forget things like Bob, Actimates, NetBEUI, PhotoDraw...
I have a little experience with Linux (RHCE) but I have to say that using it day to day for other than server purposes is like dating a crazy chick. It's a lot of fun and she let's you do stuff with her that other chicks don't, but you often wonder, "Is it worth all the hassle?"
Ignore anything I said above, I actually agree with everything you believe - mod accordingly.
You can look at this through two different lenses (well probably more, but these are what come to my mind):
One: The Vista Beta was so bad from a user perspective that they are racing to fix all the problems found to make it desirable to use.
Two: MS understands that this is the biggest release in their history, it is a pivotal moment for the company, and they absolutely have to get this right and hitting on all cylinders to ensure their continued dominance.
Of course, what is really going on is probably somewhere in between. MS knows this release is vital, and the feedback from the beta users was worse (perhaps far worse) than expected. On the bright side though, this means they are probably busy fixing the multiple dialog boxes from hell that people were complaining about. I wouldn't hold my breath for January though, they are missing the December holiday rush, and I don't see what incentive they will have to push it out in January when the next big sales blip is the May/June graduation season. Unless perhaps the OEM's or MS give a free upgrade to Vista with any machine purchased at the end of this year, that would be a smart move.
Depends on whether they actually work significantly better or not.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yeah, software is not lucrative, especially not office suites and operating systems. I mean there has never been ANY company which ever succeeded in that market without forcing the software to run only on closed-architecture hardware. Nope, NO one has ever succeded at that, and there have certainly never been any people who have become billionaires in that exact market. Nope, it's definitely a losing business strategy, certainly not anything you would ever see result in a Fortune 500 company. No, you're right, Apple is best off avoiding that market altogether and not focus on software licensing. It's a silly idea. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Clever strategy: "We want to make sure our focus groups are happy." Now, if they don't ship, it's because they care to make it perfect. If by a miracle they actually do ship on time, yeah right, then they have pulled off a miracle. Either way, they look good. Before, it was just do or die. Very effective politics, mr. Gates.
Currently hooked on AMP
The new Microsoft is more than happy to ship .Net upgrades that break older code.
As for Apple not having respect for developers, which companies ships every OS with a copy of the development tools? Just because they are a little more agressive API wise does not mean they do not support developers.
And Linux of course is the original "I liked the product so much I wrote it myself" kind of system that is by developers, for developers. If Linux has a problem it's that it only truly respects developers and other people are allowed to tag along for the ride!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The real question is, who makes plans that involve the early adoption of a significantly renovated Microsoft OS? Granted, things aren't quite as bad as the NT 4.0 days where the OS didn't even approach general stability until around SP4, but one would be wise to wait until at least until SP1 of Vista before widescale deployment.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Boy, do I feel badly for the sucker CIO's who bought into Microsoft's annual payment program so they could receive free upgrades when releases. Promises were made about releases of Windows and Office within 2, "no more than 3 years." "And if you don't sign-up, you'll have to pay full retail." Full retail is looking like a bargain right now vs. paying MS 25% of the cost each and every year, for ever. I am sure those CIO's, especially those from larger organizations, have demanded their money back.
I'm sure Apple does not want to play the "infinite possible hardware configurations" game. That is a support and development nightmare. They just don't have the infrustructure for it. Also, one of the biggest draws of te Mac is that they Just Work. Not only do they Just Work, but the OS is tightly integrated with the hardware. There is no question of compatability. Release OS X for the beige boxes and all that is lost. OS X would most likely go the way of OS/2. Remember OS/2? Wasn't OS/2 significantly better than Windows back in the day? Remember IBM's proprietary PCs? If IBM couldn't pull it off, how could Apple?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Shit Bill, in my day we just called 'em bugs.
In the spring of 2003 XP had 30% of the market. Three years later, XP has 75% of the market. Users upgrade, they do not migrate to the alternative OS. OS Platform Statistics
"Bloat" is strictly a Geek obession. Vista Premium should run just fine on your midline Dell.
But if they did not release Vista, those new PC sales would slowly transition to their competitors (Mac, linux, solaris) as XP became more dated... at which time they would be dead.
They do have an option of simply releasing early and often and evolving XP... essentially delivering Vista over the course of years to it's customers. That's a very nice and user friendly model, but has the drawback of not having big media fanfare every few years.
MS Vista released in January will be bundled with Duke Nukem Forever!
it would pretty much nail M$ to the wall.
Like OS/2 or BeOS?
Been there, evaluated that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Everything I've seen in Vista so far is essentially XP with SP3. This is a no brainer for virtually everyone. I've had it up and running the day after it went publicly beta and have used it extensively comparing the old way and the new way. This is XP with SP3 security. How on earth could this cost them between 8 and 9 billion dollars? The vast majority of this has to be in writing their proprietary DRM systems and all the supporting mechanism. I'm not willing to pay $200-400 for this when it won't even support good old standard hardware found in every day machines. Forget about the AERO interface on the vast majority of notebooks being sold today. The Aero interface doesn't even support most average 128mb video cards. Companies like nVidia aren't going to go back and implement drivers for older cards for XP when they've a policy of removing support from modern drivers. A gforce 4200 ti with 128 mb ram won't work with the AERO interface. Requiring people to double or even quadruple their RAM to run it is way out there. Delay the thing and give us more than just a newer version of XP with more security--when you consider that we already paid for the security to begin with. If Microsoft hadn't been so negligent in the way they designed XP we'd not have the security problems we have today. For goodness sake--9 billion dollars for XP with SP3? That's just outrageous. To demand we spend serious dollars upgrading our hardware for XP with SP3 and a different looking interface (which does exactly the same thing as XP) is a too big of a demand for most people. Let's get real, most people don't need Vista and almost no one needs to relearn the whole interface because Microsoft wants to redesign the interface without menus. XP is here for a long time to come. To arbitrarily cancel it 2 years after Vista comes out is sort of like price-fixing--considering Microsoft is a monopoly.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I gaurentee you that in January 2007, Windows Vista will not be released. I am going to go as far as to say thay it will not even be released in the first half of 2007. I am going to quote this post during that time.