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."

Comments

The most expensive...

[Anonymous Coward]

...beta software I've ever heard of.

Re:The most expensive...

[MightyMartian]

No, I'd say after using Vista for a few months that it's probably a reasonable first or second beta release. Most things work, but it's the annoying bugs (like the constant disk use which kills laptop battery life).

At the end of the day, other than a few neat things in the UI, I still don't see the point of it. It offers little or nothing that's all that compelling. It's not like it really runs any of my software any better, and simple things like trying to install Apache and MySQL turn into major headaches.

So...

[i kan reed]

This means Vista is still in development development development development?

That's great Steve.

[nurhussein]

Now please explain the hefty price tag for your unfinished product.

that was my reaction

[Presto Vivace]

Also, maybe you shouldn't release a work in progress.

Re:that was my reaction

[MightyMartian]

You're right that software is never done, but considering the revelations of what was happening in the final months before Vista's release, even die-hard Microsoft apologists have to admit that it was a victory of marketing over engineering that got an operating system like Vista through the starting gate. It wouldn't be so bad if it was labeled that way. I've installed bleeding-edge Linux kernels in the past out of pure curiousity, but never in my wildest dreams would I dare throw one on a production server or on to someone's PC.

That's exactly what happened with Vista. It simply wasn't ready, and worse, it appears that the backroom way which Microsoft works with major hardware companies even knocked it back a few notches. It's not surprising to me, as I had heard some rumblings long before the revelations a few months ago. The marketers wanted an operating system ASAP, the teams didn't think it was ready, but the marketers won, and now Microsoft's credibility has fallen through the floor. Even worse, for most people, there's no point to the upgrade. As awful as it sounds to the marketers in Redmond, and maybe even to a lot of FOSS fanatics, Windows XP is a stable, mature product that works properly on today's hardware.

But Microsoft doesn't survive on stable, mature products. It survives on its unholy hardware alliances and marketing department, which push for unrealistic (and pointless) upgrade cycles. The problem here is that Vista is a resource hog. They say 1gb of RAM should be enough, but I can tell you that Aero runs, but does not run all that well, on 1gb of RAM. Only now are we seeing what I would consider legitimately sufficient hardware being released that runs the Vista "experience".

But it doesn't end there. Rather than admitting that Vista was a disaster, Microsoft still appears determined to kill XP, despite the fact that most business and many consumers don't want Vista. The only reason the operating system can even be considered a success is because of Microsoft's long-standing darling, the OEMs.

Here's a tip to Microsoft. Keep XP on the shelves. You're stuck with supporting Vista, but maybe Windows 7 will be an improvement, but only if a) you refuse to take hardware vendor's calls when they demand support for their low-end shit and b) fire 9/10s of marketing department, they're the incompetent evil morons that have created this disaster, and they should be shown the door. As well, as a sort of sub-point to that, the developments should always win automatically against marketing demands. Vista may have been released six months late, but you wouldn't have the black eye you have now.

Re:that was my reaction

[ShieldW0lf]

The power of trusted computing:

Worried about the illegal acts your company has been engaged in being leaked to the public? Trusted computing can make it impossible.

Hospital behind on their software payments after those budget cutbacks and the legal system won't help you enforce? Shut them off at the push of a button.

Someone at a news agency release information that compromises the governments position? Revoke the signature key, now it will not play even if someone does try to redistribute. Censorship after the fact.

They put the hardware on everyones desktops quite some time ago, just needs the right software support. That is what Vista is. It'll also be embedded in every set-top box after transitioning everyone away from analog television.

Now, imagine you were a powerful government or among the richest companies on earth, and someone approached you and offered to bring this scheme to reality. How much would that be worth to you? Billions? A place in the regime? All of the above?

Connect the dots.

The general population will not believe this is happening until the pieces are all in place. They can't. It's too big, and it means discarding everything you thought you knew about the way the world works. But it's still happening nevertheless.

The end user? Show them something flashy and keep dropping the price. Get it out there into the market at all costs. Do it while you've still got the influence to pull it off.

Re:that was my reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

I work as a dev at Microsoft, although I've never worked in the Windows org. Still, I know plenty of development people over there and have heard plenty through the grapevine about what happened with Vista.

It wasn't a victory of marketing over engineering in so much as it was a total failure of engineering and management.

Too many interdependencies, poor project management and Windows' notorious 'cowboy culture' ultimately lead to delays and the cutting of big features like WinFS. What would become Windows Vista was supposed to originally ship in 2003. By 2006, everybody knew that Vista had to be completed so that the nightmare could end and work could begin on the next (hopefully better handled) version. There's a saying at Microsoft that "shipping is a feature". Management cut other features so that Vista could just be done with and ship after 5 years of dragging ass.

Once Vista was pushed out the door, marketing came in and did what they always do--advertise and sell the completed product. Marketing doesn't drive engineering at Microsoft like it might do at other companies. These failures were not about engineers failing to fend off demands from marketing, but rather about engineering from bottom to top scaling back an out of control project enough that it could actually be completed.

Re:that was my reaction

[MightyMartian]

I heard about this sort of thing a decade ago when a Java chip was supposed to be coming down the line. Operating systems would be written in Java. At the end of the day, these environments simply put too much in the way, even if it all natively compiles. Either your performance is going to be the shits, or you're going to end up having to write performance-dependent parts in C, C++ or assembly anyways, and then it raises the question as to why bother writing any of the OS in anything else?

Quite frankly I've never seen the point. C is a powerful tool that has proven its worth for decades now. There's a lesson in all of this, never buy into your own PR.

Re:that was my reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

...even die-hard Microsoft apologists have to admit that it was a victory of marketing over engineering... Close. But wrong.

That's exactly what happened with Vista. It simply wasn't ready, and worse, it appears that the backroom way which Microsoft works with major hardware companies even knocked it back a few notches. It's not surprising to me, as I had heard some rumblings long before the revelations a few months ago. The marketers wanted an operating system ASAP, the teams didn't think it was ready, but the marketers won, and now Microsoft's credibility has fallen through the floor. What really happened is a complete failure of engineering, not a victory for marketing. With the immense armies of developers swarming like locusts across the vast Microsoft campus for years and years and years, they couldn't build jack shit. Even after top management did an about face by removing every innovative promise from the product in order to reduce the OS to something you could spoonfeed a baby, the engineering group still could not build jack shit.

All those people in all those buildings for all those years earning all that money. For nothing. It's a crime. A business crime. Especially as your gnat-size competitor has an amazingly superior product for years which they find a way to grow by leveraging the popularity of a portable music player. And, in the far off distance, Linux desktop begins to be something other than vaporware.

Your fly is unzipped and you've got nothing to show.

It wasn't a marketing victory. It was top management desperation to output anything -- anything at all -- to give the appearance of relevance, stave off stock price drops, and otherwise throw glitter in the eyes of those who might point out the emperor had no clothes.

I'd fire the entire line of engineering staff. Baby and bathwater. Wholesale. Cut the cancer out.

In Other Words

[fluch]

It is a failure. Why not just name the child by its real name?

Like a Turd

[Anonymous Coward]

Like turd only halfway out is a work in progress.

Re:Translation, please?

[jeiler]

Marketing translation: "Like any other release, there are occasional issues, but we're working to resolve those issues."

Real-world translation: "It's buggy bloatware, but it's our buggy bloatware, and if I catch you even thinking about another operating system I'll start throwing furniture again."

Hope that helps.

Re:And if they said this about linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

HEAD/source code = Work in progress
Tagged release/distro = Finished release

There is a difference between always working on a project and releasing crap.

5-year release cycle

[michaelmalak]

He also admitted that the 5-year release cycle wasn't a good idea

Windows was complete when NT 4.0 came out in 1996 -- 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking with a normal user interface (i.e. no Program Manager). With the possible exception of Active Directory, everything else could have been a service pack or patch: USB, WiFi, CD-R. When the calendar drives a release schedule rather than needed features, Microsoft is not only acting just to fill its coffers, but it costs companies massive admin overhead.

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.

Leadership...

[Woodmeister]

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.

Vista changed a lot

[Toreo asesino]

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.

Re:And if they said this about linux?

[ozmanjusri]

This is a poor, half assed attempt to bash microsoft by the fanboys.

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.

Yeah long development cycles suck

[Unnngh!]

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.

Basic analysis

[symbolset]

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.

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.

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.

You have been able to buy PCs preloaded with linux from Walmart, Dell, IBM, HP and many others for several years.

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.

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.

Re:XP SP2!

[benbean]

There was a night and day architectural difference between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X though, and it was worth suffering through the transition to get to the end-point of an infinitely better designed core OS. The underpinnings of XP and Vista are still essentially the same and still fundamentally flawed.

If Microsoft is going to make its users go through that sort of transition, it would have been far better to make a completely fresh start on a better foundation with a compatibility layer for older software, just as Apple did.