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

We Listened!

[db32]

We heard what you wanted and were sure to avoid those things at all costs. In the event that we could not avoid a given feature we made it practically impossible to use, moved the functionality to a new hidden location, or barrage you with popups and wizards to ensure you really want to use it.

Re:We Listened!

[j00r0m4nc3r]

"With Windows 7, Microsoft made sure that every edition of its operating system would run on low-end hardware. "One of the feedbacks that we got was how different the needs were for users on laptops compared to needs of users on desktops,""

Are you kidding me?! You're a company named Microsoft. You've been developing operating systems for 30 years. It took you this long to realize that different users have different needs, and that your OS should run on low-end hardware? And you only figured that out because of user feedback??
/me boggles

Re:We Listened!

[runyonave]

It's Microsoft, they take a very long time to do anything right (or do anything at all). Just look at Internet Explorer, they have been working on it since 1994. 15 years later, we are still YET to receive a browser from Microsoft that is at least more than 20% web compliant. As a web developer this dearly pisses me off. How is that Firefox, Opera even Safari can get complaince in the 75%+ rating and not IE. Now that boggles my mind.

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:We Listened!

[Again]

It's Microsoft, they take a very long time to do anything right (or do anything at all). Just look at Internet Explorer, they have been working on it since 1994. 15 years later, we are still YET to receive a browser from Microsoft that is at least more than 20% web compliant..

Microsoft does have the technical resources to make IE score 100% on the Acid3 test. However, it is not in their best interests to do so. Here is a quote from Bill Gates (taken from wikiquotes) which demonstrates Microsoft's business strategy.

One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.

This is the attitude that Microsoft is developing software with. Just look at the number of businesses that are stuck with IE6 because of some legacy ActiveX application. Microsoft's strategy is working very well for them and I don't see them ever changing.

Re:We Listened!

[PitaBred]

And all they had to do to head that off was give away their 8 year old OS. No major skin off Microsoft's back, and they maintain lock-in. There probably wasn't even a chair thrown.

Re:We Listened!

[UnknowingFool]

Remember MS has never concerned themselves with consumers; for the most part consumers are not their customers. Companies were their customers for businesses. On the consumer side, OEMs are their customers. Either way, MS never dealt as much with direct consumer support and interaction. If there were support issues, companies' IT departments took care of their business users and OEMs handled the consumers. With Vista, this came back to hurt them as OEMs could simply blame MS on the whole fiasco especially when consumers could downgrade to XP and see a significant performance and stability improvements.

MS also gambled that minimum hardware would advance more than their new OS would bog it down. With every release, MS would redefine what "minimum" hardware requirements meant. With Win95 and 98, minimum meant Windows may be slower if the user was doing processor intensive. More memory would definitely fix it. With XP, "minimum" meant that Windows would be slower especially if the user was doing processor intensive. More memory would fix most things. By the time of Vista, minimum meant you could load Windows onto the machine. Good luck on actually running anything but the OS. More memory might fix it, but CPU and video card upgrades were more likely necessary which meant it would be cheaper for the user to buy a new computer or downgrade to XP rather than upgrade their computer to actually use Vista.

Re:We Listened!

[aztracker1]

Because for a while (96-98) there weren't concrete standards for DOM interaction beyond document.clear/write/close .. Once the standards were firmed up, things headed in that direction and IE5 was pretty compliant for its' time compared to the alternatives. At that time Opera was pretty much following IE's lead, and Netscape 4.x was a nightmare by comparison. This is even without use of proprietary ActiveX plugins or Java.

Microsoft created an XML interface that eventually became the XmlHttpRequest we all know and love. MS's DOM interactions in IE4 shaped the direction of the W3C DOM specification we have now. It's easy to gripe about MS from today's standards, but when IE4-5 came out it was well ahead of the competition.

This is why your comments are trollish. You could say that from 2003-2007 there was a huge level of disparity between the development of IE and where web based standards have come. And that you have large issues with MS because of this. From 1997-2002 IE was pretty much the best option.

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.

Yes

[homey of my owney]

Ummm.... We'd like it not to crash.

Re:Yes

[L4t3r4lu5]

I'm fairly sure they would too :)

Re:Yes

[__aamnbm3774]

oh come on now. Since XP was released the random 'crashing' isn't prevalent any more.
If you have bad hardware or are overclocking, that is a different story, but also your own fault.
Lets be reasonable, this is like a wife of 30 years, bringing up stuff you did in high school!

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like a wife of 30 years, bringing up stuff you did in high school!

I'm guessing you're not married.

Feedback

[Thanshin]

We took all the feedback.
Printed it.
Made bricks with the printed feedback and some glue.
Built a piramid with the bricks.
Painted it green and brown.
Called it Mount Feedji.
Burned it down in a massive party.

Then, still drunk from the party, we designed W7.

.

Ok, that was a lie. We didn't actually paint it. But we considered that suggestion for quite a long while.

Re:Feedback

[MRe_nl]

I wanted to start a farm on Feedji, you insensitive clod!

Let's give the devil his due

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 plain rocks. Seems like Windows 2000 just got reincarnated and polished.

I've been running it for a while now and have no issues.

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:Let's give the devil his due

[Mashiki]

I'm actually not sure how this got to +4 funny. Maybe +5 interesting? I digress. I've been a fan of Win2k for a long time, I used it for just about everything from gaming to my work up until XP64 and had a stable driver set. Does Win7 have that nifty feel of Win2k? Yes actually it does. Even on lower end hardware it's decently snappy, and runs well.

Issues? The biggest I've found is it's ability to lose connection to the internet on reboots. Meaning you need to disable and reenable your network card which fixes it. Sadly no new drivers for my card, but otherwise works fine. I consider that a 2 on my 1-10(10 being worst) scale of crap. Otherwise, I'm quite happy. My XP64 machine has been up and running for a bit more than 460 days now without a reboot. I expect that Win7 will beat that easily.

Re:Let's give the devil his due

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus trolled Zarathustra.

Re:Let's give the devil his due

[mcrbids]

If you have gone 460 days without a reboot, it's because you haven't been applying security updates. Your system is highly vulnerable, and you are a joke as a system administrator.

Turn in your geek card NOW.

MS moves fast

[gEvil (beta)]

Over a decade ago, feedback for Microsoft software took place by filling out surveys on paper and floppy disks sent in to the company's headquarters. The ubiquity of the Internet has led to more feedback, faster.

And yet they could have used the Internet for feedback well more than a decade ago. Glad to see they've finally entered the mid-90s.

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

[Dan667]

in spite of the hardware problems, I have used vista and I hated it. Why do I have to re-learn everything because microsoft wants to try to sell more copies of an OS? It should make you life easier, not harder. And completely ignoring things like boot time, security, and backwards comparability (the things the Customer actually cares about), while bending over backwards to make sure DRM for hollywood is in the OS is really just shooting yourself in the foot.

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:Mojave Experiment 2.0

[EvanED]

I'll echo the above to a large extent. Here's my take on UAC, as compared to sudo.

First the similarities: they function in much the same way.They have similar (though not completely overlapping) goals, and they protect more or less the same stuff. Back when I first switched to Vista (about six months after it came out), there was still a lot of flap going on about UAC. I decided to keep a log of every UAC prompt I received, and did so for a month. I don't have it handy, but IIRC here is roughly how it came out. There were bascially three reasons I got prompted: (1) I was making an expected administrative change that would have required root on Linux (most of them), (2) there was a bit of the UI that was designed poorly, or (3) I was first logging on and this hardware monitoring piece of software was starting. The second category is the most interesting; almost all (or maybe all) of these were because I wanted to change my environment variables. Even though I was just changing my user's variables the dialog where you do that is also where you change system-wide environment variables; the fact that you could do the latter mean you needed elevation. (Win 7 fixes this dialog so you don't need elevation to change your own environment.) In addition, while I didn't get it for this reason, some people got UAC prompts for things like start menu and desktop changes. The desktop thing wouldn't happen on Linux because neither KDE nor Gnome have the idea off a global "all users" desktop in addition to the per-user one. The changes that caused these UAC prompts were because the change had to affect the all users desktop. I'm not sure how Gnome and KDE store the equivalent of the start menu soo I'm not sure hoow sudo would behave there.

Now the differencees:

1. UAC behaves more like 'su' than sudo. You need the password of the admin user, not your own. For enterprise users, this could be a big deal. For a home user, I doubt it matters much. For a single-user computer, it doesn't really matter in the slightest.

2. UAC doesn't cache its permission. If you need to elevate twice in a row, you have to explicitly elevate twice. At least on a typical desktop configuration, gksudo will cache its permission for a couple minutes. This is the main respect in which, IMO, UAC is more annoying. That said, this rarely happened in my month of UAC logging.

3. UAC is on-demand: a running program can ask for elevation. This is in contrast to sudo, where you need to start with said user's rights. This isn't very different from the end user's perspective as compared to stuff like GkSudo, but is pretty nice as compared to running sudo from the command line, where at least I often found myself going "oops, I needed to start that as root."

4. Even admin users need to elevate, but root doesn't need to sudo. A little annoying if you're doing a loot of admin stuff. Then again, you only need to click 'yes' as opposed to type your password, so it's not too bad. This is important for Windows users where most people are an admin anyway (and hence sudo as-such wouldn't do anything). Speaks more about the Windows architecture and programs than UAC in that respect. (Win 7 changes this; admin users don't have to explicitly elevate as much. Icons with the UAC logo elevate without a prompt. Programs that just want elevation, like installers, still cause a prompt.)

5. UAC checks the program's digital signature, and displays either the confirmed source or a warning about a missing signature; sudo doesn't do any of that. In theory this is a nice win on UAC's part, but in practice I doubt it matters much. A lot of programs (esp. OSS apps) aren't signed, so the presence of that warning usually isn't surprising so I just click through anyway, and (1) you need to a lot of thee time and (2) I even know all about what it's talking about it.

All Microsoft did in 7 is reduce the security, since many users will blindly click through whatever is shown anyways, and power users turn it off.

I don't buy this stat

Nothing to see here

[headhot]

Its a pretty useless article. You don't get any more info out of the article then you get from the title.

Re:Whoever proposed a bigger memory footprint than

[int69h]

XP requires TONS more ram than Window 3.1 and would be much slower on the same hardware. Do you not agree that XP is progression from 3.1?

Re:An F-15 is much bigger than a P-51. OMG BLOAT!

[schnikies79]

From my observations, people are upgrading hardware at a slower and slower rate, so it is relevant. Most I know haven't done a major upgrade, outside of possibly adding ram or a changing video cards, in a few years and don't plan to anytime soon. Hardware has reached a "good enough" point.

I'm on a Athlon X2 with 4gb ram (maxed out). I have absolutely no intention of upgrading anytime soon.

Dear God...

[X.25]

Windows 7 is another proof that enough marketing can make something good.

Windows 7, Windows 7, Windows 7, ...

I yet have to find someone who can show me what it brings me, over XP, that is worth paying 100+ EUR for.

Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!"

[tenzig_112]

I get the impression that the Windows 7 launch is a lot like seeing an old girlfriend suddenly show up on your doorstep wanting to get back together. She's had some work done, apparently: stomach stapling to take off some of the weight, breast augmentation, and a radical nosejob to make her look as much like your current girlfriend as medical science will allow.

She's pretty, of course, almost too pretty. She still wears far too much makeup and carries that desperate look in her eyes. The fragrant haze around her is the perfume she overuses to mask the scent of failure.

But standing there in that low-cut top, you'd almost forget for a moment what a psycho she was- how she used to shut down in the middle of a date and forget everything you were talking about and how she was only happy when you were buying her things. You'd almost forget about carrying around her legacy baggage or those nights when, for seemingly no reason at all, she would simply stop speaking to you and when you asked what was wrong she'd just spit a string of hex code at you and expect you to figure it out.

You complained about her for years before finally deciding to get rid of her, and here she is again. Though, somehow she seems like a completely different person now.

"I'm up here," she says when she catches you staring at her chest.

Tempted though you may be, you know that over time she'll get bored and slow down on you just like she always does. And then you'll be right back where you started: trapped. She keeps you by convincing you that you don't have a choice. You're just not smart enough for one option or rich enough to afford the other.

"But I'm different now," she says, batting her eyes innocently. "I've changed."

Indeed she has. Apparently, she's really into Cabala now or something like that. It's helped her discover loads of untapped potential in herself. But it also means that you'll have to buy all new furniture to fit with her understanding of feng shui. That's not the only change she has in store for you. The minute you let her move in, she'll have a new alarm system put in that succeeds only in preventing your friends from coming over on poker night.

She doesn't love you, but she doesn't hate you, either. The truth is that she couldn't care less one way or the other. She's here because she doesn't want to be alone. Like all human beings, especially those well past their prime, she wants to feel wanted and, after a string of lost jobs and bad investments, she needs a place to stay.

But all in all, she's OK. She's a seven. She'll do, I guess.

Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!"

[Comatose51]

Had me up until "is a lot like seeing an old girlfriend " and I lost any sense of reference of what you're talking about.

Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!"

[vulgrin]

Lets continue the analogy:

Your OSX Girlfriend shows up on your doorstep telling you to buy her a new Snow Leopard coat. Oh, and you are going to need to get her some updated pants and shoes too to match. Of course, she won't step inside your door until you've gone and bought one of those new Apple brand "iMansions" that, really, is just the same as the Intel Houses that everyone has, but comes with fancy aluminum siding and costs twice as much. You could TRY to put aluminum siding on any old Intel house, but you hear those contractors are getting sued out of business.

So, you finally get the new mansion and invite her in and you realize that she's really just like every other girl you've been with. But, all your friends like her, so you might as well go along with it. She's arty, but very serious too, and won't play any games with you. After a while, after buying her all her iAccessories you realize you really aren't getting any more out of her than your other girlfriends.

But your Linux girlfriend, she is awesome. She'll do whatever you want, whenever you want, rarely complains and will stay in pretty much any house or mobile home you have. Sadly, she's also a robot who gets delivered to your house in a box, and you have to assemble her up the way you want. You have to turn to your friends and the internet to find out why the heck she won't talk with you, or why her feet are on backwards. She's very secure in your relationship, so much that she won't do anything unless you really PROVE you are her boyfriend. She plays a few games, but you're getting sick of chess, solitaire and downhill sledding penguins. And then every few weeks you have to shut her down to replace her heart and lungs. You are so damn tired keeping her running and happy all the time who has time for sex?

To top it off, everyone has seen her naked. She's put it all over the Internet for everyone to see and fiddle with her naughty bits. She claims it makes her a better woman, but since you have to keep patching her up, you aren't so sure. What's worse, she keeps comparing you to some guy she met in Finland and talks about how much he "got inside her."

Window's Explorer...

[FlopEJoe]

Can I just have a 64-bit windows operating system that will keep up with the latest graphics drivers. And bring back classic XP Window's Explorer... I hate Vista's Explorer with a passion. If you change something, make a classic version!

Lack of feedback

[Enderandrew]

I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but one of the things I truly love about OSS development is how transparent development is. I can easily contact the developers. I can submit bugs.

I have tons of usability gripes with Windows. I've never felt like I could submit feedback to Microsoft that might be seen and looked at.

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.

Mojave was Vista SP1

[tepples]

What's your point? That mojave marketing stunt didn't address Vista's actual problems.

The Mojave ad campaign came out a few months after the February 2008 release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which did address technical problems with Windows Vista.

Is there anything GOOD in windows 7....

[sys_mast]

...that came from this feedback, that makes businesses using XP want to switch? We all know why NOBODY switched to Vista, so why would anyone switch to win7?

Please, I'm not asking why should NOT switch, we all know that answer. But someone please explain why we SHOULD move to win7 !

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.