Engineers Tell How Feedback Shaped Windows 7

An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica took the time to talk to three members of the Windows 7 product development and planning team to find out how user feedback impacted the latest version of Windows. There's some market speak you'll have to wade through, but overall it gives a solid picture regarding the development of a Windows release."

Comments

Mojave Experiment 2.0

[Coopjust]

7 truly is Vista SP3. And I don't say that in a negative fashion; Vista runs very well on my two desktops and laptop.

However, minus the new taskbar (which I think is a massive step forward), there really isn't that much that's new. A little bit faster, a little bit less buggy.

In the end, 7 is Mojave Experiment 2.0. Microsoft tried an ad campaign, it failed because people wouldn't get over how "bad Vista is". Microsoft gives it new clothes and a new name- now it's the best version of Windows EVER!

In short, Microsoft went back to marketing after the Vista launch floundered and destroyed its reputation (due to a bunch of underpowered computers with poorly written drivers giving the OS a bad reputation).

Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even harder to know the requirements when Microsoft has been publically publishing them as a part of the security guidelines required to get Windows Logo certified since 1993.

UAC doesn't enforce or work around anything new, at all. These requirements have always been known. They've always been considered standard security guidelines on UNIX-based systems and have been the standard security guidelines on Windows since the Windows NT 3.1 release, the first release of a Windows kernel capable of enforcing any such restrictions.

Standard user accounts in Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 have always enforced these rules, and because of such this software often simply failed. The answer from the companies that made this crappy software, including such companies as Adobe and Intuit, have always just replied to run as Administrator, often just because the program expects to be able to write files to the same directory as the program binary. Writing to /usr/bin is obviously a no-no in UNIX just as writing to %ProgramFiles% is clearly a no-no in Windows, but apparently a huge amount of software assumes that it can be done and it seems easier to just tell the impatient user to strip all semblance of security than it is to fix the application.

To claim that this can't be the application developers' fault is just stupid. If you found an application on Linux that "required" root privileges just because it violated the published and standard security guidelines for UNIX-based systems you would definitely blame the application developer. If that application developer ran as "root" while developing that application you would also admonish them. When people elect to ignore the guidelines and the safe practices in the name of convenience they get exactly what they deserve.

In my opinion MS should have just dropped the hammer, not permitted users to log in as Administrator, even from the console, and allowed all of these applications to fail. However, from the perspective of the user, including those on Slashdot, that would appear to be the fault of Microsoft. The answer is UAC. Apart from jailing the Admin account under the guise of a standard user and providing sudo functionality from non-Admin accounts (including prompting for the password, a better way to set up a Vista/2008/7 system), UAC also goes out of it's way to help poorly written applications silently succeed by handling common poor practices. For example, when that app attempts to write to %ProgramFiles% instead the file is written under the user profile. It might not be your favorite flavor of cake, and the icing is a bit granulated, but you get to have it and eat it too.

Re:We Listened!

[jonbryce]

Well not really. The sudden concern for netbook users was caused by the possibility that people might switch to linux. When the original linux powered Asus EEE PC was released, it was so popular, it pushed Microsoft into third place behind Apple and Xandros for OS shipments that month. I imagine that would give monkey-boy a bit of a fright.

Re:Let's give the devil his due

[shutdown -p now]

Vista wasn't terrible to begin with.

Vista was terrible to begin with when it just got released. I ran it for 2 months, hoping for something to improve - some magic hotfix pushed through Windows Update, or better drivers, or whatever. I'm a patient guy, which is why it took 2 months to realize that I can forget about it till the service pack.

Vista SP1 now, that was usable. And, of course, 7 is built on everything that was in Vista SP2, and then there are some quite real tweaks perf-wise, and new taskbar is neat...

I have one other theory about why 7 is so much better received than Vista: part of it is the visual design.

If you recall, Vista had that weird color theme with yellow-green background and dark, almost solid black window frames and taskbar (and window frames were entirely black when maximized - and most windows are maximized when working). There also were those dark yet glossy green-cyan toolbars in Explorer that somehow made me think of uranium glass. The overall effect was fairly eye-straining and kinda "meh". It killed all the bling that Aero was supposed to bring on the spot.

Enter 7: bright blue wallpaper with a bright, highly saturated colored Windows logo in the middle. Almost transparent window chrome and taskbar with a light blue tint. Very pale blue selection highlight in menus, and toolbars are almost white. The entire design has a very "lightened" feeling about it because of the color choice.

I strongly suspect that, especially when seeing 7 right after Vista, there's a strong subconscious impulse to differentiate the two just because of the design difference, and not in Vista's favor.

Re:Whoever proposed a bigger memory footprint than

[washu_k]

While I think you got it backwards, I get your point. 3.1 -> XP was a bigger jump than XP -> 7

However:
3.1 required 2 MB, ran OK on 4
XP required 128 MB and ran OK on 256. That is 64 times what 3.1 needed over 9 years
7 requires 1 GB and runs OK on 2 GB. That is 8 times XP over 8 years

7 doesn't look too bad.

We Listened! And We Won!

[westlake]

When the original linux powered Asus EEE PC was released, it was so popular, it pushed Microsoft into third place behind Apple and Xandros for OS shipments that month. I imagine that would give monkey-boy a bit of a fright.

Monkey-boy has the instincts and habits of a winner.*

When the Atom netbook entered the market - typically with a larger screen, better keyboard, and twice the RAM and storage space of the competition - the Linux netbook was drop-kicked into the dumpsters behind your local WalMart.

For the better part of decade in the U.S., WalMart was the lone mass-market retailer to champion OEM Linux. It really, really tried to make a go of it.

____

*-monkey-boy." It's trash talk like this that makes me reluctant to reccomend Slashdot to anyone over the age of consent.

That and irritants like the Borg icon and the stained glass window.

Star Trek: TNG ended its run in 1994.

Re:We Listened!

[hairyfeet]

I'd say what really bit them in the ass with Vista was the whole "Vista capable" fiasco. I am sitting here staring at a Compaq Presario that I got for a whole $50 because the customer absolutely HATED Vista and wanted that box taken out of his sight. Those Worst Buy Vista capable machines really were a very bad joke.

We are talking a 1.8GHz Sempron, a measly 512Mb of RAM, and an ultra cheapo SiS IGP, anybody who has ever run Vista knows there is NO WAY in hell that thing will EVER run Vista at an acceptable speed, instead the customers would quickly get frustrated as the machine thrashed away (this particular box was even given a 250Gb hard drive upgrade from Compaq because it thrashed the original drive to death) and would quickly either dump the machine for a new XP box or bring it to somebody like me and say "get this Vista POS off and put XP on!"

So if MSFT wants to know who is to blame for folks hating Vista like the second coming of WinME, they just need to look in the mirror. Sure on a dual core with 2Gb+ of RAM it'll run decently, but the "Best Buy Specials" being sold at the time of the Vista release were single core Sempron and Celeron with 512Mb of RAM and really lousy Intel or SiS IGPs. Those machines should have NEVER had Vista come within a 1000 yards of it, yet MSFT let manufacturers put "Vista capable" on them along with that piece of trash Vista Basic and customers felt like they were scammed, which of course they were. I have many customers now with new XP duals and Quads and they are not looking at Windows 7 until 2012, if at all. Too many got burnt thanks to Vista Capable and are just gonna set out Windows 7.