Slashdot Mirror
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.
This means Vista is still in development development development development?
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.
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.
Like turd only halfway out is a work in progress.
HEAD/source code = Work in progress
Tagged release/distro = Finished release
There is a difference between always working on a project and releasing crap.
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.
There's a difference between "Work in progress" and "Oh bugger, that's broken."
... 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
There's also a difference between something that is given away for free being called a work in progress and something that is a pricey commercial product being called a work in progress. Of course, you're right about feedback and improvement. This seems more about a poor choice of words by Ballmer.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
The kernel is under constant development, but the releases are always quite stable. And nobody forces you to run the latest kernel.
I wouldn't be so sure. Linux is something that's more ambiguous than Windows is - Windows is a packaged, supposedly complete product that costs real money (a lot of it), is extremely widespread, and most importantly to your point, used by almost everyone in North America at some point in their lives - Which, in essence, means that Ma, Pa and Uncle Tusky are alpha/beta testers. And they're paying for it.
Linux is at its core a community effort, rather than a commercial product (though many have been made from it). As such, it is constantly changing and evolving, and is quite difficult to "keep up" with for most who aren't enthusiasts (Windows version upgrades gives most people a hard time to begin with). There exist shiny, polished distros like Ubuntu and Fedora that are meant to be a "whole product", being almost literally a snapshot of stable, tested software bundled with a stable version of the kernel, but these OSes are generally non-profit or free (as in both these cases).
The core difference between them at first glance is that Windows costs money. Coupled with what Ballmer went on record with in TA, that basically means that Microsoft doesn't consider Vista a "complete" product as yet, but has no problem charging inordinate amounts of money for the privilege of running it. That said, my experiences with Ubuntu in the past have always been a lot more polished than my experiences in Windows, and I would consider Windows to be an inferior product on most days. I still use Windows XP (my X-Fi doesn't yet have a driver for Ubuntu and Wine still isn't perfect), but I doubt I'll be making a jump to Vista "Just Because". There don't seem to be any compelling reasons to make the change (aside from having Aero and DX10 support, the latter of which won't run on my system and the former of which is a memory hog for a decrease in desktop CPU usage), and a lot of people feel the same way - Even Joe and Jane Average.
Another difference between Windows and Linux is that while the Linux kernel itself may be in perpetual development (as is the general mindset of Linux), this is because it falls under a different development model than the Microsoft mindset. Linux' greatest trait is that it IS in perpetual development - Because this is desired and necessary. For Microsoft, it's supposed to be one spit-shined, heavily-tested operating system every few years. A different model; Not necessarily better or worse, but different, more similar to Mac OS and most traditional software development cycles. In this model, however, being in a state of perpetual development is something that is absolutely catastrophic, because as with the XP->Vista jump, more development time is spent fixing holes and bugs in the previous generation of software to bring it up to spec than is spent working on the next big release. This is what we're looking at with Vista, which Ballmer confirmed.
The very fact that most of the more impressive features of Windows Vista (hi, WinFS!) were ripped from it later on in its development stunted its ability to really compete against even its own predecessor, and for me, cast doubt upon its legitimacy as a valid entry in the product line.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Oh, in software developer, it's "Oh, shit--Marketing says release it now. We're toast!"
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
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.
If Linus made this statement about Linux, it would be within the context of operating systems whose kernels and other low level components have an established history of successful upgrades with minimal negative impacts on userland. However I doubt that Linus would ever make this statement since he rarely casts glittering generalities before the public.
But the statement was made by Ballmer, and needs to be evaluated within the context of Microsoft's history of software releases. Within that context, the statement is clearly a piece of spin doctor legerdemain to cover the damage that Vista does to the userland experiences of those unfortunates who have had Vista inflicted upon them.
I suggest that author of PP sell off his MSFT stock and invest in something with a better future, like maybe a recycling and disposal company. It should be obvious to everyone with a brain that when a stockholder has to take up fanboi behaviors to protect his investment, there is something wrong with that stock.
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();
There's that conspiracy theory that Windows is working hand in glove with hardware manufacturers to increase each other's sales. Each new release of Windows requires new Intel hardware for best results, while every new hardware purchase comes with a Windows license you often can't avoid.
I don't know if I'd call Ballmer a fanboy. He is the CEO after all, and he would certainly know how bad Vista is. If anyone has the right to bash MS, it's him.
I don't think you can complain when he takes an opportunity that's handed to him on a platter.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
And Ubuntu is still a pain in the ass to get working on a good many laptops. Now, that's not entirely the fault of the open source community, as a lot of hardware vendors won't or can't deal with Linux, and force developers to either do hacks like ndiswrapper or reverse engineer Windows drivers. But the fact remains that laptops remain a huge problem for Ubuntu, and for all Linux distros.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Indeed. This appears to be the strategy now. "Don't worry about Vista, because Windows 7 will knock your socks off". I must tell you that in the organization I work in, and in a number of others that I am familiar with, this is precisely the attitude. Windows 7 will likely fit in with the hardware upgrade cycle. Vista appears to be the great forgettable OS, though IT departments will still have to deal with it for years to come on various machines that, through OEM or upgrade, managed to become infected with it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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!
is linux not a work in progress?
Yes and no.
YES:
The Linux souce code/kernel is release on release improving, so it could be called a work in progress if you look at the bigger picture - You might draw a comparison by calling "Windows" a work in progress as in progress from 98 to 98se to ME to XP to Vista. Every Windows release has (supposedly - I am not an expert on that subject) a new kernel, architecture updates. Similarly the progress can be shown by comparing the progress from Edgy to Feisty to Gustry to Hardy.
NO:
Every release of the Kernel, and every full public release of a distribution is supposed to be a finished product (excluding testing, alpha and beta releases.) Hence Feisty was a finished product, and Gutsy was a finished product and Hardy upon release should be a finished product. Similarly Win98/98se should have been finished products, Me -> XP -> Vista should have been too.
GREY AREA:
Now, as to your comment quoted below;
isn't ALL software these days not a work in progress?
There is a gray area in the use of the term "work in progress" that lends some weight to your statement. It is difficult to determine how it is used in each scenario - by Mr Balmer and by you - language by nature can be very fluid, it is actually a beautiful thing but I digress...
Defining the term "work in progress" might go as follows:
To say a Linux release is a work in progress could be defined as I used above - but a detractor might say that the constant refining and bug fixes that takes place after release in the OS, and in any OS (a good example are Microsoft service packs), could point to a "work in progress" scenario. Did Steve Balmer use it this way? If he did, then he is essentially saying the following: Linux is essentially just as good and "desktop ready" as Windows Vista is.
However, the detractors of Linux desktop operating systems are continually saying "Linux is not desktop ready" hence it is still an unfinished work, and thus can be said to be a work in progress. Because this statement is used in a comparative sense with Windows operating systems it infers "Windows is desktop ready" and thus should be a finished work upon release. If it were the case that the term was used thusly it would be a bad thing for Mr Balmer to say that about his own product.
software design can respond to user experience and feedback, and move with the times.
Yes. That is quite correct - that is how it should be. However I contend that the five-year release cycle of Windows hinders this a bit. The service packs might smooth this over a bit, but as I see it response to user complaints - with the possible exception of security alerts - is almost non existent. Bear in mind that as a Linux user my view may be skewed - a lot. Would you think that if enough customers/Vista users complained that DRM is not wanted in Vista that Microsoft would issue a patch to completely remove it? I would think no. In fact when DRM is disabled by a third party "hack" Microsoft is quick to release a patch that disables said "hack", pointing out to me that the wishes of the customer does not come first.
Is Vista a work in progress? Okay - then define exactly where the "progress" is needed.
Was it desktop ready when released?
Was it user ready when released?
Was Microsoft satisfied that it was ready for release when it was released?
I contend that it was not completely desktop ready when released - this might in part be due to the slow reaction of third-party vendors to release drivers so let's set that aside.
I contend that it was not user ready when it was released - partly this is because users needed to "learn the software" before being able to use it properly. This is in part due to newer features, not a bad thing, and (arguably) questionable interface design decisions - lets strike that one because it is really a question open to debate in the end.
Did Microsoft think it was re
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
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...
Except that Ma Bell wrote a better OS.
... 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
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.
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.
Do You Experiment?
There. Fixed that for ya. I sure couldn't do that to a MS product.
Do You Experiment?
You might draw a comparison by calling "Windows" a work in progress as in progress from 98 to 98se to ME to XP to Vista.
Geez. I do wish people would get a clue, or at least refrain from trotting this out. What you're describing is the upgrade path marketing campaign sold to retail consumers which has little to do with the actual progression, or what businesses or knowledgable individuals (regrettably not all of the Slashdot crowd) adopted.
There were 2 (two, count 'em) lines of development, simplifed as the following:
DOS -> Win3 -> Win95 -> Win98 -> WinME
NT4 -> NT5.0 (Win200)-> NT5.1 (WinXP) -> NT6 (Vista)
From those two lines, the upgrade path most commonly adopted for desktops was:
DOS -> Win95 -> Win98 > NT5.0 -> NT5.1
Obviously, you can conclude the first line of development died ungracefully. The second line is, well, you decide if if it's dead or dying or just resting. There's a Wiki article on the subject if you're interested in further reading.
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.