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Ballmer Calls Vista 'A Work In Progress'
shanen tips us to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story about comments from Steve Ballmer at a conference earlier this week during which he referred to Vista as "a work in progress." He also admitted that the 5-year release cycle wasn't a good idea. Despite the approaching deadline for the end of XP sales, Ballmer's remarks about the older operating system were more ambiguous: "Vista is bigger than XP. It's going to stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn't get bigger still, and that the performance and that the battery life and that the compatibility, we're driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve. I know we're going to continue to get feedback from people on how long XP should be available. We've got some opinions on that, we've expressed our views. ... I'm always interested in hearing from you on these and other issues."
...beta software I've ever heard of.
I thought we were just going to ignore Vista until Windows 7 came out...
It's Windows ME all over again.
They work all those problematic details out before release.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"Vista is bugger than XP. It's going to stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn't get bigger still, and that the performance and that the battery life and that the compatibility, we're driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve.
So.. basically by implication he admits they released an unfinished project that they knew was bloatware?
:-)
Well we knew it, buts its nice of him to admit it. (Bet MS PR just loves him)
This means Vista is still in development development development development?
Amount of bloatware added with each progressive version?
In Soviet Russia, everything runs linux.
If builders built buildings the way Microsoft writes code... well, we'd have the US embassy in Iraq.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Now please explain the hefty price tag for your unfinished product.
is linux not a work in progress? isn't ALL software these days not a work in progress? That's a GOOD thing. software design can respond to user experience and feedback, and move with the times. That's called running a software business responsibly. Face it, if linus stated this everyone would triumph it as showing that linux moved with the times, and was better than monolithic old vista.
This is a poor, half assed attempt to bash microsoft by the fanboys.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
OK, I've read that quote (from the summary) over a few times and I have not a single clue what Ballmer is trying to say. Would someone please translate that in to something resembling a sentence for me?
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Also, maybe you shouldn't release a work in progress.
It is a failure. Why not just name the child by its real name?
We didn't know it at the time but XP pre-SP2 sucked. When Vista reaches SP2 it'll probably be decent (from an average persons point of view - for me it already works absolutely fine). By then Windows 7 will be out and I'll be one of the people sticking with Vista for SP3 and go to 7 when it's SP1 comes out.
Linux and Windows both suffer from the same issue: theres so much variety of hardware out there that you just can't write it perfect for everything right off-the-bat so you need to release and incrementally improve. Mac's suffer less from this situation as Apple rules their hardware configuration with an iron fist - which is the source of their mythical "it just works®".
Shh.
Look, if anyone just does a basic analysis, you'll see that there's this circular process where the heavier operating system requires new hardware, forcing people to buy both to keep up with the times, which both them and the manufacturer want.
Therefore M$'s strategy of making it bigger and bigger is clearly intentional, so that they both continue their same profit model.
This will not end until they have a solid competitor, period, and that means the linux geeks have got to get off their high horse and make an easy, packaged, "buy your box from dell with it pre-loaded" version of it your grandma can use.
Because, personally, i'm getting a little sick of getting these operating systems from Microsoft which I swear to God have code running several extra loops just to bog it down so that only the most bleeding edge (aka money I don't want to spend) boxes can handle it reasonably.
People should get it for free since they're clearly helping them ready vista for completion.
Mind you even for free I wouldn't taint my system with that crap. Ballmer is a tit.
Like turd only halfway out is a work in progress.
This seems to be one more small victory for open source operating systems. The fall of XP may just be the final nail in the coffin.
Released more than a year ago with 6 shitty versions of the same thing.Now you say its still under progress when everything fails! (oh and btw isnt 2008,the year of linux on the desktop,so who cares!)
"Well, Steve, in your own time then..."
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Ballmer is right -- it shouldn't be a five-year release cycle. It should be 10 years. 64-bit is a good reason to have a new release after NT 4.0.
... nooo!
Don't drag "think of the children" into this!
Though Microsoft is getting pretty good at the Chewbacca defense.
"Vista is bigger than XP. It's going to stay bigger than XP."
Meanwhile Windows 7 is aimed at being comprised of (overpriced?) components so you can skip the bloat and make it smaller than XP. Maybe this is the Three Bears philosophy of programming.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Anybody want my mod points?
... There was a time when hardware resources were limited and expensive and programmers programmed accordingly and software was faster and easier to use in ways it is no longer easy.
Granted applications have become more integrated thru the operating system improvements but as technology and its use changes from the mainframe to the cell phone, the cycle of programming should be moving from the packrat (use all the memory and resources you can in your application) back to compactness of providing the right functionality only.
Where does this put Ballmers statement?
He is in essence saying MS will remain stupidly behind the times while claiming to be the forefront.
As the user base becomes more and more adapted to computing in a second nature manner, the more and more the user base will perceive the obvious babel of MS and as such move to alternatives for which third party commercial development will not be able to ignore and stay in business.
And we all know from experience that this is not going to happen over night but more at the rate of evolution via human generations, where each generation will put up with the babel less and less.
You know, Vista may be a work in progress, but Balmer's leadership of the company has most definitely stalled. Microsoft's reputation in the PC marketplace is anything but positive (i.e. neutral at best). They (and their software) are only big and popular (read: ubiquitous) due to inertia and lock-in. It's time for the tech community to just move on - completely ignore MS, deal with their s/w as needed, and replace it with "futureware" when it makes sense. Really. The "deadhorse" tag most certainly applies to this OS. Stop paying attention to anything Balmer blurts out of (any of) his orifices. He's prolly some of the most dead weight at that company anyways.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
Yeah, that'll go over well with corporate CIOs:
I paid HOW MUCH for a "work in progress"!?!?!?!
Actually, I was hoping you could translate to 'software developer' for me; it's a two step refactoring from 'marketing translation' and three from 'real-world'.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Your products suck. They threaten people's hardware, waste their time, cost them too much both in dollars and in lost productivity. They have created a far too large an infrastructure of people who could be made more productive elsewhere (MCSE and the like = Amway pyramid schemes). Furthermore they pollute useful infrastructure used by non-Microsoft solutions by serving as a growth medium for malware and by causing millions of Windows users who can't rid themselves of your products to run helplessly to those who have for help. Ultimately as with any widespread systemic defect, your products cost lives.
Please go to hell. And take Windows with you.
Thanks for listening.
Isn't every software product a work in progress?
how he simply calls it a "work-in-progress", even when microsoft wants windows users to adopt Vista. So let's get this, if you buy Vista, you are testing a work-in-progress OS until microsoft gets enough feedback to "perfect" Windows 7 because they will abandon Vista, and then you will have to buy the new "finished" version. Hell, if Windows 7 doesn't work out, it will simply be called another WIP.
Well, I guess being a work in progress is better than being a work in regress.
I believe the sales figures would be due to systems with Vista pre-loaded (which is practically everything now). In my experience, very few stores will offer to do an XP downgrade (we do), and if they do, they need to be sure that drivers exist for all hardware beforehand or end up with a half functional computer. Before you ask, yes, there are Vista-only pieces of hardware out there, and yes, they are common and mostly OEM, especially on Dells and HPs. Sony are starting to get pretty bad, too, though they actually have a pretty good track record AFAIK. I'm fairly certain there's a good reason for this, in spite of XP still being officially supported by Microsoft.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
There are reasons the earlier versions of Vista sucked, and like Balmer said, are still work in progress. To summarise the three main points I see:
-Actual security (UAC); breaking a shed-load of applications that would write to C:\Windows and think nothing of it
-64 bit. It's the first serious consumer Windows that's 64 bit. XP 64 bit is rare at best; Win2003 isn't for consumers.
-New driver architecture. Video, audio, and network driver stack has been re-written from the ground up after nearly 10 years to being more or less the same. New changes are worthwhile too; a bad video driver should (in theory) never be able to bring a system crashing down like in XP, for instance.
All these things had to be done; all these things broke stuff. They are massive and necessary changes, and in the long run will pay off, but in the short run have been a bit of a system-shock.
Things are changing though; but Vista has been as much a change from XP under the hood as 98 -> 2000 migration was in my opinion.
throw new NoSignatureException();
This analysis explains a lot about how Vista and its business model should be avoided at any cost because it actually harms every user.
because of ReactOS. The minute XP dies ReactOS gets a boost.
No one can doubt that they are very scared of linux and done evrything they can to hinder it.
The last thing they want is to see an OSS version of XP getting a toehold in the OS market.
Those sales are largely OEM copies being sold on computers out of the big box stores. If it wasn't for the Best Buys, Walmarts and so forth (not to mention the Microsoft tax), those sales wouldn't be there. Just how many people do you know that have gone out and purchased Vista for their existing computer? How many people with existing hardware are going to even be able to run it properly. Let's remember for the true Vista "experience" one needs what would be considered a high-end Vista machine.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Microsoft will drive Vista through you skull just like they did with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It may take 3 years to get it through your thick skulls that Vista is your future but you will eventually get it.
What could possibly give them reason to not force Vista on its customers being in the position they are in?
This stuff about Vista uptake/etc is getting old and it appears that even 8 yours is too long for people to remember how it was the last couple of times. Surprise, you're stuck with what they give you.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I can sympathize with the drawn out development cycle. Whenever this has happened at places that I've worked, it gets impossible to keep up with the changes. Scope creeps, because what you developed last year is no longer relevant. Plus, there's something that simply *has* to go into this upcoming release because everyone knows its going to take a while and you have told a customer they can have it. If you don't know when the current release is going out, slating anything for the next one is pretty much saying it'll never get done. These kinds of things just don't stop coming up.
The landscape changed a lot between when MS started Vista and when they released it. They were behind the times, trying to play catch-up, and they botched it. I had high hopes for Vista when they were planning it...new file system, powershell, lots of unfulfilled promises. They ended up delivering something that is passing fare IMO but is behind the times, and I don't see them changing the tune with their next release. They are wed to this beast now.
To summarize: those of you reliant on Microsoft, bend over and grab those ankles.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
According to this basic analysis(pdf), debian Etch is an order of magnitude larger and more complex than Vista. And yet it doesn't require this "new hardware" you're speaking of.
In fact in addition to the x86-32 and x86-64 targets Vista aims for it also runs on alpha, sparc, arm, powerpc, hppa, ia64, mips and s390. From the toys to spacecraft, from webservers to 85.2% of the world's top 500 supercomputers it'll run on almost anything. That's engineering.
You have been able to buy PCs preloaded with linux from Walmart, Dell, IBM, HP and many others for several years.
So switch. It's time. Ballmer says Vista is a work in progress. Gates says its replacement is a year out. Let's take their word for it. This is a great window of opportunity to justify looking at alternatives.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Calling Vista anything above a pre-alpha release is an insult to developers everywhere.
Please sir, may I have some more.
If you, kinda like, wouldn't mind, just putting a *little* more work into the product I purchased, I would ever so much appreciate it --not that I'm not grateful for the opportunity to use it, I mean, just if you don't mind a little work on the whole "make it work" thing. Thanks ever so much good sir!
but usually one expects service packs and bug fixes to be free after buying the original OS and license.
But then Apple does that with each Mac OSX release, 10.5 was meant as a service pack and bug fix to 10.4, etc. The 10.5.1 is a minor fix, and each 10.X is a major release.
Windows Vista 2.0 will be a major fix, Vista SP1 is the minor fix. Windows Vista 1.0 seems to be the beta test according to Ballmer.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Well every body knows how Vista was developed from OS X...
Powered by Ctrl+C
and
Driven by Ctrl+V
and stilllll in Progress?
Impressive isn't it.
... is like calling that oversized, rock-hard constipated turd a "work in progress" because you managed to get it half way out.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Microsoft told us time and time again that Vista would be released "when it was 100% finished, not before". The the reason it was so late was that they wanted it to be perfect, etc., etc.
It was pretty obvious that in the end they rushed it out for Xmas when it really needed another six months/year.
No sig today...
Vista is bigger than XP. It's going to stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn't get bigger still, and that the performance and that the battery life and that the compatibility, we're driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve. I know we're going to continue to get feedback from people on how long XP should be available. We've got some opinions on that, we've expressed our views. ... I'm always interested in hearing from you on these and other issues.
Wow, this is interesting. Some emails coming into my inbox also use very similar words to describe a vista that something of mine will become bigger and longer than I experienced... and they dont need feedback!!!
sed s/Calls/Officially Calls/
There you go.
The next thing we'll read is "Ballmer calls Vista 'Windows ME v2'". I bet my ass on that.
... and even Microsoft showing some willingness to work with FOSS (though, take that with a grain of salt you'd need to set up an entire salt importing business to be able to take that.Read radical news here
The Roman Empire, The Dreamcast and Soviet Communism.
Commercially bundled distros of linux are commercial products.
Read radical news here
there are zillion posts preceding yours that explain how every RELEASE of a linux distro is a STABLE product that cannot be considered anything near the beta vista is. an yet new, UNRELEASED distro is something under development. and it will be a STABLE product that is well to use when its RELEASED.
Read radical news here
I've often had the perception that .NET and C Sharp and Java are programming
resources for others to use. They are easily decompiled, so that big
companies like Microsoft and Sun can examine how the software of competitors
is written. They have limited support, so that writing a competing application
in C++ is likely to be faster and better.
(Microsoft executives lack communication skills. The name ".NET" and naming things using X, such as XBox and ActiveX, are examples.)
Quote from the parent comment: "I think it was Jim Allchin"
Is it true that there never was anyone named Jim Allchin? Isn't "All chin" just a name for the real Microsoft executive, Jabba the Hutt?
Okay, maybe not.
(Hutt biting the heads off of cute sqeaky animals makes Steve Ballmer's chair-throwing look comparatively healthy.)
ms fanboi action - apparently they couldnt stand lenghty articles that criticize vista in a sound fashion.
Read radical news here
I dont want to have an "experience" with my os. i just want it to run the programs i want to have 'experience' with. so i dont care about what 'experience' vista is offering, since its not able to run what i need properly.
Read radical news here
So what? Is it more satisfying or not, that's what matters. So far Vista seems only bigger pain in the ass, with no satisfaction whatsoever. Ballmer may call this "work in progress"... but he should apply this "work in progress" to himself, as a customer I need a finished, completed satisfying product. Smaller or bigger... the same rule applies.
They're a hardware seller, and all their sales desktops run Vista.
Because all they use is a browser to a web back end (which clients also use) which Netcraft reports as running Windows 2003. Nothing else at all.
In those conditions (i.e. avoiding any OS functions), Vista appears to work.
Now here's an evil idea: if we all started to run Linux web servers reporting as Windows, MS could no longer claim the figures because they would be seriously polluted. Maybe switch Web ID every month or so, that way the figure bounces like a maniac..
Just musing, of course. I would never do this. No, I'm just starting an editor, nothing special, tadum tadum tum tum..
Insert
seem to indicate otherwise, hence the more reflective new name Vistasis.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
There exists hardware where the manufacturer refuses to disclose how it operates. The only purpose for this is to prevent it from working with open systems. The cure is simple. Don't buy it. Do not reward vendors for limiting your choices. In time they'll learn to stop including toxic stuff in their box.
Read the label. In this case, read the specifications for the stuff you buy. If the ingredients aren't on your preferred list of safe ingredients then just don't buy it. These days there are plenty of vendors eager to brag about how their platform will run any software you want to run including Dell, IBM and HP. In fact if your hardware won't work with an OS so flexible it runs on x86, alpha, sparc, arm, powerpc, hppa, ia64, mips and s390 then it must be truly broken. After all, Linux supports more hardware devices out of the box than any other.
If they won't tell you what's in the box and you buy it anyway then you're stuck. Fortunately the list of toxic ingredients and their sponsors get shorter every day.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Your last paragraph is the critical one. A 5 year timescale is impossible to manage without having milestones. With a 5 year window, people only start feeling the need to integrate and consolidate after 4 years. No wonder Winfs is always killed: too much effort for not enough feature.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Everyone on earth calls Vista 'A Work In Progress'
Work in Progress - Vista Edition
To: Alan Jackson - Work in Progress
Okay, look, I'm a pile of trash
But I give the boys at Slashdot something to bash.
My older sibling was good; He was born in 2003
Alright I admit, my development was cursory
And I can easily understand why you all curse me.
I'm such a big thing; you might as well use XP
You get tired and disgusted with me
When I can't be just what you want me to be.
I know I'm not held in high regard
I leave all my users bumbling and scarred
I even asked the coders to try and help me
But they quickly responded, "Just use Linux, it's free."
Just by patient, I'm a work in progress.
I'm sorry you get mad, 'cause I'm slow as f*ck
I think that my code has run all amok
You didn't need to get work done, you have all night.
I really hope that there are no hard feelings between us
I just wiped out your files, there's no need to cuss
But I'm starting to see now, what you been saying is right.
You get tired and disgusted with me
When I can't be just what you want me to be.
I know I'm not held in high regard
I leave all my users bumbling and scarred
I even asked the coders to try and help me
But they quickly responded, "Just use Linux, it's free."
Just by patient, I'm a work in progress.
I know they meant well with my security
But there's something damn annoying about UAC
I'm getting in touch with, my old Unix roots.
I should probably do the health thing that you want me to do
Slim down around the center; lose a "feature" or two
Now you're probably right, sir
But it's all good, so what should I exclude?
You get tired and disgusted with me
When I can't be just what you want me to be.
I know I'm not held in high regard
I leave all my users bumbling and scarred
I even asked the coders to try and help me
But they quickly responded, "Just use Linux, it's free."
Just by patient, I'm a work in progress.
Oh Steve B, just be patient now,
I'm a work in progress.
Oh, I need a major tune up.
Maybe Windows 7 will do it.
The thing about dominance on the desktop is that linux is going to win it by doing an end around and using Microsoft's strategy of incompatibility work against them.
Already in this thread there are the usual Microsoft shills whining about how Ubuntu doesn't yet work with their laptop's wireless card. What they don't see is that every time they point out a piece of hardware that doesn't work in Linux it's a win for Linux now. The device manufacturer will open up the interface for development or the line of product will die because people want choice.
When the Linux in your pocket and Linux in your handbag devices just sync better with Linux on your desktop and work seamlessly with Linux on the server then the game is over. The network is the platform.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Innovation: Copying
User friendly: User hostile
Work in progress: Making the customers pay to beta test.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
We don't buy hardware that doesn't have open specifications. It's a winning strategy. You should try it.
If you think wireless is a pain to get working on a Ubuntu laptop you should try getting Vista to install on an eee 2G. Fun times.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This article should prove interesting.
I would say at least one vendor has heard you.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Microsoft taketh away.
It's not a theory. It's been understood doctrine for over 15 years.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
isn't windows xp built on 2000 which was built on NT, which was a greatly improved version of 98 which was based closely on 95 which shares a lot of code with 3.1?
it's like they just stacked all this code on top and polished it every few years.
XP is great right now, but i have a feeling that if you took a look at the source code you'd get an instant migraine headache.
I think vista is MS's way of trying to correct that problem. build a new house from the ground up. it seems like this first release's goal was to get it to do everything that the old system can do.
but because they were pressed for time, MS probably threw some old code back into the thing to get it to run. will they be able to replace all the old code and get a truly new operating system, or did they just stitch together another Frankenstein's monster like ME was?
What could possibly give them reason to not force Vista on its customers being in the position they are in? I think in terms of market share and influence, Microsoft may be in it's weakest position in years. They are still a powerful, profitable company, but they've lost a lot of their clout. As MS gaffs, Apple continues to influence the marketplace and various Linux distributions are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Probably neither of them will be the "market leader" without radical shifts in strategy, but it's not necessary for either of them to be the market leader...I think Microsoft knows they are losing market share to the alternatives, and that people are on to them and turned off by their "shove it down their throats" mentality. They are facing difficult times as the dominant force in the industry...just look at how desperate they are to acquire Yahoo...further indication of Google's own growing power and influence over the web.
Markets change (cough, cough, record industry), and Microsoft, a lumbering giant with it's operating procedure set well in place, is learning that it has little choice but to adapt if they are going to survive as the market leader...or at all.
Do You Experiment?
Another case of a company not listening to everybody else and continuing to think that it's products are better than they are.....
Ballmer and Gates need to realize that Vista just plain sucks. The big brouhaha surrounding it should be a big enough clue.
If Microsoft just stopped and listened to what customers were actually saying about Vista, and what they really want (instead of Gates and Ballmer deciding what customers want), and delivered something that was what CUSTOMERS ACTUALLY WANTED, they have the money and resources to create something that could be TRULY AWESOME.
Microsoft has blatantly ignored the fact that customers:
1) DO NOT want bloat.
2) DO NOT want eye candy.
3) DO NOT want product tie-ins.
4) DO NOT want compatibility problems.
5) DO NOT want compatibility problems to be routinely blamed on something other than Vista.
6) DO NOT want security problems.
7) DO NOT want spyware.
8) DO NOT care about flashy lights and fancy bells and whistles.
9) DO NOT want an OS with a mind of its own.
10) DO want a fully-functional OS.
11) DO want a GOOD BROWSER (IE sucks. Believe it.)
12) DO want to use product other than Microsoft's.
13) DO want an OS without so many goddamn problems as Vista.
14) DO want Microsoft to own up to its shortcomings and FIX THEM.
15) DO want a secure browser.
16) DO want a secure OS.
Of course, Ballmer and Gates continue to think they they "know what's best" for the customer, and that we have no clue what we want.
Vista is a work in progress just like a bowel movement is a work in progress.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I would like to hear the opinion of Wall Street on this "work in progress" comment. Under Ballmer Microsoft has completely tanked. Investors should demand firing him.
IMHO
My understanding is that one of the reasons big corporations are slow to adopt new versions of Windows is that they're risk-averse. They don't want science projects, they don't want works in progress, they want something that's solid and has the backing of another big corporation behind it.
If Ballmer is openly saying that Vista is a "work in progress," I think corporate CIOs will say "OK, then, let's wait until it's finished."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Windows NT completely replaced the infrastructure of Windows, and gave Microsoft a golden opportunity to draw a line under years of hacks based on a bad design. They even came up with a mechanism, subsystems, to make the business of replacing the Windows API with a better one while retaining full compatibility with the existing API... much as Apple did a few years later.
THAT was when they were building a new house from the ground up, and that's when they decided to build the same house pn the new foundations, leaky roof and swinging open front door and all.
Vista is not a new foundation, it's the same basic foundation as NT3, NT4, and NT5 (Windows 2000 and XP). The majority of changes in Vista are just there to stop the end user from running cable from their neighbor's CATV box to their own TV set (or at least figuring out you did it and scrambling the signal). It's not the Emperor's New Clothes, it's the Telescreen from 1984, with the indows logo instead of Big Brother.
And it's got the same basic Win32 house built on that foundation.
And the roof still leaks, it just tells you "Your roof is leaking... do you want to stay sitting under the drips or move to another chair?".
Windows 7 is rumored to be a new house, with a big old storage shed in the back yard with all the bits of the old house packed away in it so you can unpack the leaky roof only when you need it.
We'll see.
Microsoft will drive Vista through you skull just like they did with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
I've been through every possible upgrade cycle, so ordinarily I'd agree. The difference this time, however, is the now widely held conclusion that Vista offers few compelling features while requiring more of everyone involved, and more from their hardware. That odd state of affairs has never been the case in the past.
As for the question of whether Vista will be successful over time, well, I don't think that's settled, especially when given enough time, the next "new and improved" version of Windows will be available.
Personally, I think everyone in the Windows world, at least for the time being, is sort of fucked. That includes the folks at Microsoft.
Unfortunately, the small pressure Linux and Apple put on them only harms their brand and not really their wallet. As you mentioned, their brand is a big deal to them, hence the Yahoo/Google hopla.
None of this really changes the fact that Microsoft is forcing Vista on users just like they did previous releases.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
More liek a work in COngress!!! lol amirite!?
It's the rest of it that's borked. Bill Gates has admitted it. Steve Ballmer has admitted it. We all know it. It's time you accepted that the thing as a whole sucks.
Server 2008, maybe it looks good. Vista? Time to let it go.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Steve Ballmer doesn't need those Harvard etc. guys as assistant. He should just fire up his IE and go to Amazon.
OS X Leopard was a pre-sales hit. I have never seen anything like that. People trusting to Apple have all purchased their Leopard without any significant pre-sales cheapness or anything. Windows Vista never made into that list. Leopard 10.5.0 was a complete crap based on Apple standards but Apple made it a usable thing after 2 updates. What did MS do at that period? They updated WGA (anti piracy) 2-3 times, released Silverlight and pushed to their users machines via their support site even. What a great idea to make Adobe Flash a further de-facto standard.
What MS needs is firing these people:
1) People who lost the focus and forgot what a consumer needs from an operating system (stable kernel, better performance, better security, less nagging)
2) People who came up with the idea of Silverlight, making it a MS Visual Studio only thing while Adobe pushes Web standard technologies via Air.
3) People inked the deal with Novell.
4) People who suggested the idea of disabling Web standards support on IE 7 (don't tell me they coded entire w3c in 1 month)
5) OpenXML guys? Well, I am sure they will end up in some jail. That scandal is just waiting at corner.
6) Ballmer should also fire himself for getting the idea of purchasing open source powered empire named as Yahoo which it happens, will result in half of BOTH MSN and Yahoo users purge their accounts.
They have lost the number 1 weapon for pushing people to new upgrade OS. Games. People who got real sick of their directx tricks, ATI/Nvidia gang scheme, Intel have all moved to consoles and they keep on moving.
They said "DirectX 10 can only work on Vista", people found a way to hack it to install it to XP. Rest didn't care and purchased a console which is guaranteed to work for at least 5 years or more with same performance.
Wonder if they will dare to make new Office "Vista only"?
Make DX10 for XP
Sell the 64bit XP upgrade for cheap.
Make you customers happy!
Give them what they want... not what you think they need MS!
Remember?
That "analysis" was written by somebody who had never used Vista by the time he wrote his analysis. All of his claims were based off random information he found on the internet, and most of his paper has been debunked across the net.
It's funny that the largest section on Peter Gutmann's wikipedia page is dedicated to criticism of his anti-Vista FUD.
...is why an operating system uses 1gb of ram and all other resources. call me crazy but i kind of want my applications to use up my resources, and my OS to pretty much sit there in the background doing very little
Ahh, that confirms it then. Microsoft's *other* division is the fire and brimstone one, right?
The Windows code is a big pile of code that includes everything, and there no separation of concerns:
An example: the Windows message queue is filled with all kinds of messages, some are related to the GUI, some are not.
Another example: A C GUI toolkit is mixed with the Window Manager, making it very difficult to replace the GUI with something else.
It's no wonder that with such a mess, it's very difficult to change things.
Unix is very nicely layered: the kernel, the file system and the GUI system are very lowly coupled, thus allowing for changing parts of the system and not affecting the rest of it.
What I would expect from Microsoft is to ditch the Windows code entirely and start from scratch, then provide a compatibility layer in the new O/S that emulates the old environment. The new code should be designed correctly, so as that future changes are easier.
Ballmer Calls Vista 'A Work In Progress' Seriously, folks...this is news? Every piece of complex software is a work in progress. Correct me if I'm wrong, but right this very second there are hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of coders worldwide who are working on Linux to make it better, faster, stronger...whatever. Doesn't that qualify as a "work in progress" as well? And don't say that MS is in a special category by itself because it charges for Windows. Red Hat is only one of many commercial distros out there. If RHEL is consistently being worked on by Red Hat to make it better -- adding features, squishing bugs, improving performance -- isn't that a "work in progress?" Would we prefer that software makers just sit back after a release and say "it's done and we'll never make any improvements to it?"
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot I'm at Slashdot, where no story about Windows or Microsoft is complete without finding some way to bash it.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If you haven't read this already then you really need to: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
How many times have we blamed the poor performance of Windows on legacy code? How many times have we wished they just redesigned large chunks of their operating system? Well we finally got what we wanted and now we're realising it's not actually that good.
Driver issues? Surely that's a hardware manufacturer's problem (in most cases) but who gets the bad PR?
Improved security, but this breaks lots of existing programs, again it's the application developers that need to adapt but it's Microsoft who will get the bad PR.
I certainly wont be using Vista yet, it'll take time for everyone to get use to this new platform, but if they hadn't released it do you really think they'd have got things moving?
ROF, llllllllll X 10000 :-)
That Ballmer is a real cut-up!!!
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Vista is a POS and no, this does not mean Point of Sale.
I hate articles like this. They take a controversial phrase and make it the headline, but they don't provide the context of the quote.
That was released at least 6 months later, no?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I'm always interested in hearing from you on these and other issues."
Hearing is one thing. Listening is quite another.
Since then, it's been all about the OEM pre-load market. Even in 1995, Microsoft knew what pre-loading did for Windows and prevented may OEMs from loading OS/2 and later BeOS. Remember the court documents which showed how HP was forced to pull OS/2 off computer at Comdex and not a single US company could or would pre-load OS/2 except IBM. IBM had to pay much higher licensing fees for Windows across it's PC line because they refused to NOT have OS/2 preloads.
They may have failed to keep gamers looking for a new Vista PC by allowing a hack to install DirectX 10 on XP but that is such a small small market. One week of pre-load sales probably covers that gamer upgrade market. You are right about consoles being where it's at now and has been for the past 5+ years.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If Vista evangelism was your gig I'm going to have to mark this one a Fail. PC Shipments up 12%, Windows sales down 24%. Bleeding share... how's that feel?
It looks like just about everybody is ignoring the death of XP. Microsoft may "wake up smarter" but it may be too late.
Help stamp out iliturcy.