Vista Followup Already in the Works

DesertBlade passed us an InfoWorld article, which has the news that Microsoft is already hard at work on the next version of Windows ... and we may see it as early as 2009. Possibly codenamed Vienna, the next Windows iteration will be coming a brief two and a half years after Vista's launch. This is the same timeframe Microsoft claims it would have utilized for Vista, had they not put Longhorn 'on the back burner' to deal with security issues in XP. Corporate Vice President of Development Ben Fathi is already discussing features for the next OS: "We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is ... Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers. It's too early for me to talk about it ... But over the next few months I think you're going to start hearing more and more."

Comments

Why announce now?

[GBC]

I have used Windows as my main OS for around 13 or 14 years, ever since boxing up my old Amiga (*sniff*). I am now pretty happy with XP, like I imagine most Windows customers are. I really like the look of Office 2007 and will probably end up buying it, but I don't need to upgrade to Vista to use it.

I just don't understand why they are announcing this new version so soon after the release of Vista. The reviews I have been reading about Vista already make me think twice about wanting to upgrade; now that I know they are bringing in another OS in a few years' time what is the incentive for a typical MS customer like me to upgrade? Surely it is better to wait and see what they come up with next.

For those that do want to upgrade there is already a built-in lag before doing so anyway (at least for the sensible ones), either because they need to buy new hardware or because they will not install a new OS without some of the early bugs being ironed out and a service pack being released.

If we assume that MS actually delivers this new OS on time (which is a big if) there is not that long a wait between the time after lag for people to upgrade to Vista and the time this is released. Won't this reduce uptake on Vista? After all, if we are already happy with XP, why not wait?

Anyone already using Vista care to comment?

Re:Fundamentals.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that sells.

The store I work in is a fairly large one, and has only one competitor within the town and its outlying neighbours. Since Vista launched on the 30th, we've sold all of two copies. A lot of the people that are coming in to look at new PC's or Laptops are deliberately avoiding the ones pre-loaded with vista because of all the horror stories they've heard, and of the two copies of Vista that we've sold, one has come back as unusable (it was the upgrade version of home premium. The owners laptop was running XP Pro. The Home premium upgrade refuses to install over an XP pro installation, and the user doesn't want to upgrade to the business version, and ultimate was delayed, therefore not an immediate option. Why the hell are microsoft turning away sales like that?), and the other user is considering returning it as he can't even get on the net with it, despite have drivers for all of his hardware.

As far as launches go, this one has been pretty pathetic. So far, it seems to have cost us more than it's actually earned.

Re:Fundamentals.

[mikeisme77]

That would be nice... One that doesn't require manual defragmenting the hard drive (everybody else can do it...) But they've been working on a new file system for a few years now and keep pushing it back, so it's kind of going the way of Duke Nukem' Forever...

The new interface/interaction paradigm might be cool, but that should come out of Microsoft Research so they can do proper user experience testing (and not just test like 13 MS employees like they did with the ribbon (this was mentioned on the Office development blog)... The ribbon looks cool, but I find myself digging around for items that I used to just have a small toolbox pop up for or were just on the main toolbar--plus there doesn't appear to be a way to reorganize the ribbon...) The regular MS people just don't have the training/expertise to do much user experience work--I've talked to employees about it at career fairs and such (I'm an HCI major) and most of them don't even know what user experience/usability work really is... And for a company that large and ubiquitous, that's just sad...

Of course it's in the works!

[phillymjs]

They've probably been fleshing out the feature list for Vista's successor since the first day a developer copy of OS X 10.5 reached the grubby mitts of a Microsoft employee. Don't expect the real work to start until spring, though, when it's released with its 'top secret' features.

Go ahead and mod me down, bitches, but after this tasty tidbit you know I'm probably right. And they did the same thing to Go Corp, BTW.

~Philly

Re:Fundamentals.

[mikeisme77]

So WinFS is finally being released? That was the one I was referring to that's been in development (and delayed) for years now. I've heard mixed thoughts about whether or not it will be better or worse, but we won't know until it's out...

The other thing that might be useful (eventually) is a file system designed to optimize the use of flash drives (not really all that useful with 30 GB flash drives costing a few hundred, but this will likely be very useful in about 2-5 years after the prices have dropped considerably/larger capacity flash drives are available).

Re:Delays because of doing other work

[tomhudson]

10 reasons

1. Don't forget that the vast majority of people working for Microsoft don't code.

2. Also, that their corporate culture has been known to be sucky for almost 2 decades (hint: nobody likes being shuted at).

3. And that you can make as much or more money elsewhere (Microsoft stock options are no longer a real incentive)

4. You can enjoy more autonomy at almost any other company

5. People want to have a life outside of work (follow-up to #2)

6. Its more fun being a larger part of a small project than a faceless cog in a large project (follow-up to #4)

7. A lot of the interesting stuff just isn't being done by Microsoft

8. Clueless VPs spouting bullshit:

   Corporate Vice President of Development Ben Fathi is already discussing features for the next OS: "We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is ... Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers. It's too early for me to talk about it ... But over the next few months I think you're going to start hearing more and more."

   A perfect example of someone who should be kept locked away from the media until they have something concrete to say.

9. Windows and Microsoft aren't seen as being cool any more, and haven't been for a decade.

10. Who wants to be associated with crap products that are responsible for most of the zombies/worms/viruses?

I mean, really ... Ben Fathi is supposed to be the guy overseeing everything, and he says "I don't know what it is" about what's next, and this is news????

Ben Fathi serves as corporate vice president of development for the Windows Core Operating System Division (COSD) at Microsoft Corp. He oversees the development of core components of Microsoft Windows, including the kernel, and technologies associated with security, networking, virtualization, setup and deployment.

Fathi previously served as corporate vice president of the Security Technology Unit (STU), where he was responsible for delivery of all core security technologies, including the authentication, authorization and audit capabilities (AAA) of Microsoft products; Windows Rights Management Services (RMS); BitLocker drive encryption; and anti-virus, anti-spyware and network security protocols. Fathi also managed the Security Engineering and Communications team, the Security Response Center and the Security Outreach team, all of which focus on helping protect customers from online security threats.

So, he says he doesn't know what the next big thing in Windows is going to be ... here's a suggestion - new graphics and artwork to make it look more like OSX, a new startup sound that cost a billion instead of a few measly million to "enhance the user experience some more", a Duke Nukem Forever interactive screen-saver, and ribbons with dropdowns with flyouts with popups with menus, so that the user has at least 10 different ways to get to any particular option. And not one, not 2, but FOUR new programming languages - D minus (to replace C sharp), DOT NOT (a .net replacement that is ultra secure by refusing to do ANYTHING), J-Script/XML+J-Script/CSS for those who want to continue to build non-standard web sites, as well as Internet Explorer 9 - will only allow you to visit microsoft-signed sites, and a revamped cmd.exe and windows kernel that will only allow access to 640k of ram per process so that no application can ever be a resource hog. This last spec will be known as "Microsoft Dynacode Operating System 1", or MS-DOS 1.0. Plans call for an optional text interface sometime by 2012, and the removal of mouse support by 2015, because they can sell ms keyboards for more than mice.

Oh, and their engineering slogan will be "Windows ain't done until Wine won't run."

Re:Subject

[nomadic]

OS X is NeXTSTEP 5, and has been in development since the mid-late-80s.

Well as an operating system as whole, a lot of Linux is GNU and XFree86, and has been in development just as long. And the scale of NeXTSTEP development is dwarfed by Linux development. If you were to compute the number of man-hours that went into developing NeXTSTEP and OS X and let's even throw in the Mach kernel, I'm sure it would be far, far less than that of Linux, and the end result is a comparable OS that surpasses Linux on several fronts.

I first used Linux in 1993; it's a much fuller experience now, but honestly after 14 years of development I would expect there to be a much more massive change. Windows 3.1-Windows XP is a much bigger jump. The fact that Linux still surpasses Windows is more of a result of a) how bad Windows started out, and b) Microsoft's poor management of the development process. But just because MS mismanages a closed, proprietary development process, doesn't mean that such a process is fundamentally worse than an open source process.

I think that one of the reasons a lot of Linux zealots come down so hard on OS X is it's a very obnoxiously obvious example of a mostly non-open source project being very successful.