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Windows Blue: Microsoft's Plan To Release a New Version of Windows Every Year
MrSeb writes "Way back in August, three months before the release of Windows 8, we learned about the existence of a project at Microsoft codenamed Blue. At the time it wasn't clear whether this was Windows 9, or some kind of interim update/service pack for Windows 8. Now, if unnamed sources are to be believed, Windows Blue is both of those things: a major update to Windows 8, and also the beginning of a major shift that will result in a major release of Windows every 12 months — just like Apple's OS X. According to these insiders, Blue will roll out mid-2013, and will be very cheap — or possibly even free, to ensure that 'Windows Blue [is] the next OS that everyone installs.' Exact details are still rather vague, but at the very least Blue will make 'UI changes' to Windows 8. The sources also indicate that the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 SDKs will be merged or standardized, to further simplify the development of cross-platform apps. Perhaps more important, though, is the shift to a 12-month release cadence. Historically, Microsoft has released a major version of Windows every few years, with the intervening periods populated with stability- and security-oriented service packs. Now it seems that Microsoft wants to move to an OS X-like system, where new and exciting features will be added on an annual basis. In turn, Microsoft will drop the price of these releases — probably to around $25, just like OS X."
We're renaming service packs as major releases now?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It would be better if they could get one good one to work well and stuck with that but I suppose it is more about sucking as much blood as possible out of the punters...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Lovely... so it'll be like automobiles.
You'll hear about recalls that affect Windows 2015, 2017, and 2018
but luckily, I'm still running Windows 2014
people in 2029 will brag about how they wish they'd bring back "classic Windows 2019, but not that crappy POS Windows 2021 that had the noise problem"
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Personally, I upgraded to windows 8 specifically because it was so cheap. At only $40, it was a steal compared what they've charged for previous versions of Windows. I'd be happy to pay $25 a year and always have the newest version of Windows.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
So instead of $129 every 4/5 years, it's $25 each year. Yes, we're all being horribly ripped off.
In the Stephen King book The Stand the virus that wiped out most of humanity was part of Project Blue.
Seems almost fitting somehow.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Apple can charge $25 because they have made money on the hardware. Hard to see how MS makes sufficient revenue from this, unless they anticipate controlling more of the hardware than they do now.
Pin the command prompt to the taskbar, problem solved. You even get a shortcut for it: Win 1-9 activates taskbar buttons 1-9.
Indeed, their problem is that enough people have decided that they did get one to work well enough, and only buy a new OS when they buy a new computer, that they are concerned about future OS sales. Computers are not getting 'better' as quickly as in the past to the view of the average user, and so there is less reason to buy a new one every few years. The ego upgrades are going for phones instead. To combat these factors, a strategy of convincing people somehow that upgrading their OS is something they do regularly for a nominal fee is indeed probably a good way to keep sucking blood from the users.
Coca Cola may have not done this on purpose when they released New Coke, but Microsoft seems to have caught on to the fact that they (Coke) doubled their sales after reintroducing original Coca Cola. Major UI changes..
"Here is Metro, no start menu. Oh wait here's it back. We told you we listen to our customers!"
No it's not a good thing. Nobody needs an upgrade of his OS every 12 months (including the people who like it). Every upgrade is a hassle and potentially creates problems. The idea is crazy and doesn't make any business sense.
Apple upgrade their OS so often in order to make hardware appear to be outdated earlier than necessary, because they still make the majority of their money with hardware sales.
I use XP in a VM whenever I have to use the one in a thousand windows program so at my present rate of Windows usage I would have to upgrade every second time I use windows. What Microsoft is missing is that most people are using windows out of inertia. Places like Staples and Walmart still sell windows laptops so people buy them. If Apple changed its whole marketing approach tonight and reduced macbooks to $350 the sales of windows machines would plummet. I am not making the Mac vs Windows argument I am saying that people usually don't care; nor am I suggesting that apple drop their prices. Gamers use windows because that is where the games are, not because of some love of windows. If all the PC games moved to BeOS tomorrow then the day after tomorrow most of the gamers would move as well.
So what MS needs to do is to find out what people really want. A good example of them not doing this would be their new tablets. Most people want enough storage to watch lots of video and some for their apps. What people didn't want was all their space taken up with MS Office on the tablet; who the hell is going to do extensive office work on those tablets? As a programmer I want tools to make my life easier. What Microsoft tries to foist upon me are tools that guide me into their suite of products such as office and SQL server. What my mother wants is a machine that is simple (like an iPad) what MS gives her is a machine that is always asking hard questions. What my mother also wants is a machine that she can't easily screw up (like an iPad). What MS give her is a machine that comes pre screwed up by the manufacturer with trialware and allows for third party crap to install itself over and over until, in the case of her browser, she has 7 inches of toolbars and one inch of browsing space.
So until MS starts actually listening to their customers and not their internal marketing departments the only customers they are going to keep are the ones who don't bother leaving them.
You'll hear about recalls that affect Windows 2015, 2017, and 2018 but luckily, I'm still running Windows 2014
people in 2029 will brag about how they wish they'd bring back "classic Windows 2019, but not that crappy POS Windows 2021 that had the noise problem"
You don't understand Microsoft's logic. Back when they only released an operating system every few years, they included the year in the version. Now that they will be switching to an annual release cycle, they're switching to colors, using the ROYGBIV order, which is why they are starting with blue. You see, Blue comes after 8, which comes after 7, which comes after Vista, which comes after XP, which comes after 2000, which comes after the millennium edition, which comes after 98, etc. They found that people were very confused about Windows 8 following Windows 7. It didn't fit the pattern at all. Hence, they are moving to colors. After ROYGBIV they're moving to Pantone color numbers, in order from Ballmer's least favorite Pantone to his favorite.
Last years "Windows Blew" - so let's Blue again...
Quality naming guys!
That's nice for the consumer side, but I daresay the enterprise and OEMs (who have to support said enterprises) will scream bloody murder at being pushed in that direction...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The major PC vendors have made it very difficult to NOT buy Windows 8. That's not the same thing as saying that Windows 8 is successful...
Well, Microsoft has been in the minority here:
- OS X every year or two
- Android every 6 months, sometimes 9 months to a year
- iOS every year
- Ubuntu every 6 months (LTS every 2 years)
You don't have to upgrade every time Microsoft puts out a new release. If they make it easier (say via Windows Update), then perhaps it won't be much more hassle than a service pack.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
And a completely horrid thing for business users.
Microsoft has completely lost its head. It's as if they are looking at the world around them for the first time ever and are trying to be like everyone else around them without actually understanding why they are doing what they are doing.
Microsoft needs to understand not only its current customers, but the customers they want to have. I know this is not particularly Steve Jobsian, but Microsoft needs to understand what people want... or at LEAST what they don't want.
Why is Microsoft a failure in the iPod business? Where to begin? Why is Microsoft a failure in the phone and tablet business? Well? It should be obvious -- people don't want what they have come to expect from Microsoft on their phones... rebooting, slowness, crashiness and vulnerability. If Microsoft EVER wanted to participate in the phone/tablet market, they first need to address the problems people have with their current OS and Office products. The missing ingredient? USER CONFIDENCE.
In contrast, Microsoft has done well in gaming. Extremely well. I know my tiny sample of observation isn't sufficient to form a conclusion, but I can say, the Saturday after Black Friday, there were still Wii and PS3 game units for sale where I heard store people talking about how fast XBox360 disappeared. That was huge, in my opinion.
So if Microsoft wanted to make something handheld? I'd say they should make a handheld game system. Do it up like Android. Game market online and all that... a PSP competitor. I think they'd do well. Morph that into a phone and a tablet and they have their in. But don't turn Windows into a phone or a tablet. We don't want it.
And we don't want constant changes in the workplace.
They could go the way that Ubuntu does... say that they'll release patches for every 3rd version as long term support. The other two are consumer grade, but have shiny new features...
I recall a few years ago now on Slashdot a discussion on the topic "MS doesn't matter any more" - doesn't matter, as in you don't need to use any MS software to run your business and communicate with the outside world. They are of course still a major player in the software arena, but far from as all powerful as they were. There are plenty of alternatives, they are viable, and indeed a key reason for companies to stick to MS is because they are already with MS. New businesses that still have the choice, have an alternative.
That was basically the argument, and mostly I agreed at the time. But it was ahead of time, it was before Android and the iPhone even.
Now it seems to me that MS is really risking becoming just "one of the options". And probably MS feels the same. They took nearly a decade to come with a viable successor to WinXP, and in the meantime both OS-X and various Linux distros made great strides in UI design, general usability, and indeed market share.
They completely lost control over the www - partly thanks to Firefox, Chrome, Safari and the others on the desktop, partly thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices which are pretty much all non-Microsoft devices (Windows Phone is really small compared to Android and iOS).
They will lose control over their Word lock-in, again partly thanks to mobile devices: people do want to view and edit their documents on their tablets, which means some application running on iOS or Android. MS doesn't have such an offering yet. OpenOffice in it's various incarnations is gaining significant ground at least in Europe, and Google Docs is also a major competitor sucking people away from MS Office.
And surely people will start thinking. "Why is my iPad working so much nicer than my desktop? Aren't there alternatives to Windows?" They see Apple's offerings in the stores. "That's nice but out of my budget, any cheaper alternatives?" They may have heard about Linux, about Ubuntu or Red Hat. "Hey, geek friend, how about that Ubuntu thing that I recently heard about? Can I still watch videos on YouTube, and edit some Word documents? Can I try it out a bit?"
Not many people at first, sure, but there are always people curious about what's out there, and nowadays you can see there is more out there than Windows.
MS is definitely feeling the heat of the competition. First they finally picked up development of their web browser, and made great progress there. Then after the debacle of Vista they quickly came with Win7 and now Win8. And now planning a new major release every year, that's going to be interesting. They'll have to start offering intersting features to keep people on their platform, and give people a reason to use Windows and not one of the alternatives. I'm looking forward to it.
I can't see this working well. The masses and in particular businesses have a hard time upgrading for various reasons. It is such that they tend not to unless forced or a new computer is necessary. Manufacturers and in particular the companies designing the chipsets and selecting the chipsets for use in a particular system don't take into consideration future support. They don't provide adequate support beyond the period the system is for sale which is generally less than a year. Unlike with 100% free operating systems that are shipped with systems not dependent on proprietary drivers there is no assurance the hardware will even work with the next version of the operating system.
ThinkPenguin's the only company whom really has a system worked out that can work well with this approach on a massive scale. They only ship free software friendly hardware so there is some assurance the hardware can be supported going forward without a commercial industry supporting it. Apple's a niche player and has similar issues with support long term as Microsoft does. While it works for the niche that they have it doesn't work well for the larger population. Apple would have an impossible time gaining mass adoption with its current approach. Trying to do with Microsoft Windows what Apple does with OS X in a niche market is never going to work well for users.
I definitely agree with Enterprise shops not wanting this - unless there is some type of LTS cycle rolled in (a la Ubuntu). Usual enterprise cycles are 3 to 5 years. Nobody wants to retrain their staff every year on OS changes. Also, there are applications that don't cycle each year and would need to be retested. A lot of shops haven't even phased out Windows XP and are planning upgrades to Windows 7, not Windows 8.
More and more I see Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot with this. They want Apple and Androids market - which is appealing because they are huge markets - but they are distancing themselves from their core strongholds. That could leave them loosing ground in all areas. Even Apple knows you don't but a tablet OS on a desktop. Microsoft has seemed intent on doing that and there still is a huge market for the desktop Market. Don't care how you slice it, spreadsheets, word processing, and content development is still all best done on a traditional desktop. I wouldn't be surprised if some linux distribution pushes to fill in the holes. Too bad Canonical is also trying for a slice of the already stuffed tablet and mobile market (face it, that's where the Unity interface has been headed) as there seems to be a looming gap that could actually make 2013 or 2014 the year of the linux desktop. No joking.
I have an nvidia optimus/k1000m on a shiny new thinkpad w530. The kernel-included nouveau and intel drivers work fine. Switching between these without restarting is even theoretically possible with vga_switcheroo (though it apparently doesn't entirely work on the w530 specifically). Using the "optimus" bit is also perfectly possible with bumblebee.
However, even with bumblebee, the drivers are included with the kernel, allowing you to fully use KMS, bootup logos, etc. For full 3D, you can even still rely on the builtin intel drivers and use the proprietary nvidia drivers with bumblebee (or not, if your system allows you to switch fully to discrete mode).
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
When I report a bug to Microsoft they don't tell me to fix it myself.
When I report a bug to Microsoft they don't tell me anything at all.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
1. Brand new hardware will have Windows drivers. That doesn't mean it will be auto-detected and work out of the box. You may just have a PCI ID and are struggling to find what device it is and hunt down drivers online. I don't think I've had a single Windows install in the past 10+ years where all the hardware worked out of the box unless I slipstreamed the drivers myself. Conversely on Linux, new and old hardware alike usually just work out of the box.
2. A good chunk of wireless devices work out of the box with Linux, whereas I'm not sure I've once in my life had a wireless adapter work without a driver install on Windows. The primary reason certain wireless dongles don't work out of the box on Linux is that they need a proprietary binary blob that can't be legally included out of the box with most Linux distros.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Does this mean that you have to upgrade each and every year to get the upgrade cost? Can you wait 4 years and still only pay $25 for the latest? Because if not, it doesn't sound much better than what it costs now. Sounds more like a way to charge for service packs.
I'd actually prefer a daily rental model for Windows as I only ever use it anymore for flashing devices, turbo tax or the occasional game.
True... It's funny you get that bloody "send report to Microsoft" every time some software crashes for whatever reason. I think they have a dedicated server cluster called "Trash" for all of those messages.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Considering that XP is just barely three versions old, it's really not that generous. RHEL 3 and Solaris 9 are still supported as well, which have been around for about as long as XP.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
A fairly large number of the oil rigs and processing plants in Norway still run on OpenVMS for servers and winxp for clients... Scarily enough...
Those who have upgraded the servers are on win2003 R2 mostly, and upgrading to anyone else is a 2-5 year process of testing and upgrading.
Even with support ending for XP in 2013, we're not scheduled to begin testing for an upgrade until mid 2014.. And even then it is to Win7.
Going to be a joy I bet... *wraps his lips around a shotgun barrel*
In the OSS world, I can file a bug ticket, email a developer and get a new feature request or bug taken care of.
that's pretty much crap in most cases, and telling people that aren't familiar with OSS is really misleading. common sense tells you that there isn't an army of software devs out there working for free waiting to fix your specific problems.
you can get your bug fixed in the OSS world if the project owner / contributors can take time from their paying jobs, if the project if actually still supported, and if the project owner cares about your bug.
you paid for 64bit window 7 when you had 32bit?
You just needed to download a ISO and REUSE the key on the BOX.
It takes enterprises years to move from one release to another. Heck, I still see businesses still on XP because "it works", even though to bring a new XP install up to speed, it takes hundreds of patches.
Enterprises would not be happy with MS, especially if a service life of a Windows release drops. It takes a lot of time for an OS to work through a company, because it takes training, security, and in some cases, legal approval for anything to be added or modified on a gold corporate image.
MS's bread and butter is the enterprise. Honking those guys off is not a good idea.
What I can see MS doing is splitting Windows into three releases: Server, Consumer, and Client. (This is different from editions.) Server and Client would be released on a four year cycle, while Consumer would feature all the latest bells and whistles and get updates on an annual basis. Presently, the closest it would be like would be XP Pro, and XP Media Center Edition.
Support for XP ends April 8th, 2014, not 2013. FYI. We actually had to roll out another phase of XP upgrades to 2014 because of cuts to our operating budget - so I know the date very well.
According to the Microsoft Lifecycle page, you will have support for Windows 7 until 2020.
No, it means he probably knows 'how' to file a detailed bug report. Most people can't, hell, I'm not sure how many techs can even do it right. It also means he probably tests all kinds of things before submitting a report.
Filing a bug report that says 'When I do $a, $b happens' it totally different from.
'When I do $a, $b happens in configurations $w, $x, $y, but not $z when using components $1, $2, and $3.'
A bug report with a detailed test case, and possible solutions (in the open source case) goes a long way.
I was still getting patches for Win2K long after my old Mac became a doorstop.
Additionally, XP is still getting security fixes 11 years after release.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun