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Windows 7 To Skip Straight To a Release Candidate
b8fait writes "The head of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows development confirmed that Windows 7 will take the unusual path of moving straight from a single beta, which was launched earlier this month, to a release candidate. Sinofsky fleshed out the plan today and hinted that just as there would be no Beta 2, the company would also not provide a RC2 build. In other words, there may be only one released build of Windows 7 before it ships, possibly much sooner than even some of the most aggressive rumors about Windows 7. How much different can Windows 7 really be with such a shortened beta cycle?"
For what is touted as a major OS release I really can't believe that a single beta can get the job done. Either they are rushing it, or it's really just a minor change to Vista.
Vista was shoved out the door too early without enough time to season. So for their second whack at it, which they've conveniently renamed to disguise the fact that it's a second whack, they're shoving it out the door too early without enough time to season. Consistency is a good thing but not when you're doing it wrong.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Windows 7 is mostly a marketing play. It should have been Vista SP2 with the usual bunch of very useful cleanups, accelerations and simplifications (i.e. what Vista should have been).
However, the name Vista is now such a disaster that they had to change the name.
I always thought that "Release Candidate" was english, meaning that it is a candidate for release? How can they then know how many such candidates that will fail to be release quality before hand?
Not very different. Face it, Windows 7 is simply Windows Vista SP3. Microsoft just can't call it that because of the bad reputation Vista gained thanks to MS's mishandling and misapprehension of what users actually want. What we're seeing isn't a shortened beta cycle for Windows 7, it's a longer-than-usual testing/beta cycle for a service pack.
Of course they're trying to rush the release of Windows 7, Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" is right around the corner.
I guess that Apple ad about Microsoft putting all their money into marketing instead of R&D was closer to truth than some people would like to believe.
Windows 7 is likely more aimed at XP users and people considering the unreasonably expensive switch to Mac.
I don't think it's really aiming to be the next big upgrade for Vista users, although I believe it will be anyway.
If you want to consider Windows 7 a SP, that's not a bad call, since it's built on Vista's backend directly. It's really an overhauled and re-imagined userland which really does warrant a version change. It doesn't act like prior Windows so it is fair to call it a new system, for user's sake.
I've been using the Beta for a while and it isn't a beta like say... an Ubuntu beta. This is a beta of a quality the open source world cannot obtain. We call this a release in linuxland. For this reason, I don't think there's anything strange about them aiming for a single RC.
Alternatively, this could easily be a case of an upgraded installer/software update tool rendering it unnecessary to separate RC releases. They might just upgrade the RC if they need another one.
I think the marketing angle on this is that Windows 7 is correct by design. Besides, Apple releases new versions of OS X that are basically service packs at full price all the time, and they don't even have large public betas. Consider that Microsoft has a far larger and more effective QA system internally than Apple. They CAN release like this-- they've got an army of internal testers aside from the millions of beta testers out there.
The timing of Windows 7's release being sped up may not help it.
Look at the economy in most countries right now. Many people have either lost their jobs or are fearful for their security. Most firms need maximum productivity with minimum overheads to survive the storm.
Could there be a worse time to launch a new product? Especially when said product is a dubious, at best, improvement on XP. As a home user, and not a gamer, I see no reason whatsoever to switch from XP. For business users, I'm thinking it must be corporate suicide to introduce a new operating system that adds little extra features, and yet has such a different interface that it will require some extra training, and a noticeable decrease in productivity. Never mind the additional cost of licensing and installation.
I simply do not understand how they can possibly think Windows 7 will be successful.
Except that XP does just about everything Vista does. Can you say the same for DOS?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm using the Windows 7 Beta right now, and previously I've been using Windows Vista.
Is it really that much better? Here are the points I can think of it being better than Vista:
* Faster on Less Hardware - They did make it work better on older slower hardware with less memory. * Less Annoying User Account Control - It doesn't freak out every time I want to run a program from the desktop. This should be included into Vista with a service pack, imho. * New Starbar - I like it. Good Job Microsoft. But is it worth the upgrade?
Other than these things... why would anybody upgrade?
Oh... yeah, that's right... Everybody says it's "So much better." Right.
--Pathway
What has every new edition of Windows been other than a slightly better UI coupled with more support for more hardware? I mean, 2 out of 3 of your points are about UI, and from what I've been able to tell (also currently running the beta) it makes a fairly large difference. Finding windows/using more windows at once isn't a problem with the new taskbar, and as you said, it is slightly leaner than Vista was.
So why would anybody upgrade? Because the only real reason people ever upgraded their (Windows) OS was security (adjustable UAC helps with that tremendously) and UI. So, yeah, it really is "So much better" to those who don't realize how minimal of a change this is. In fact, its still "So much better" for those who do know how minimal the change is. Hell, I was an XP holdout til the beta. I even have an XP partition on my drive, which I've used all of three times. The UI in 7 just keeps driving me back towards it, and I feel that's the same reason people will upgrade.
That's not to say that Vista couldn't be essentially 7 - in fact, with a simple service pack, it really would be just a slightly beefier version - but since that won't happen, expect people to flock to 7.
The UI is the frontend to the entire OS. Even minimal changes, especially good, solid minimal changes (e.g., the taskbar), make a huge difference in the overall "feel" of the OS. Furthermore, they help increase the usability of the OS - and coupled with running faster, these two seemingly small changes can really help increase productivity on the OS.
So, sure, aside from all these things... why would anybody upgrade? Because only an idiot would discount these things.
Windows 7 is to Windows Vista as Windows 98 SE is to Windows 98.
Microsoft is good at selling a repaired version of the original software at full price. I don't know any other business that can successfully release a broken product and then charge their customers full price for what essentially amounts to a product upgrade. Only lawyers get more money for less.