Microsoft News Tracker

Last night was the kickoff of the D6 conference and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were the opening act. Aside from a little light comedy and some reminiscences, the big news was a teaser for Windows 7 which will have multi-touch support for PCs with the requisite touch screen hardware.

The applications shown seem to be PC versions (e.g. no bar coded foreign objects) of those demonstrated with Microsoft’s Surface table kiosk system (aka "Big ass table") which was demoed last year at D5. Touch screens have been around for Windows seemingly forever via third parties and while it may be useful for kiosk builders to have the support baked into Windows 7, it is hardly the kind of thing that will draw the crowds. Still, it makes a nice demo and that’s the point after all.

After the embarrassment of the early public promises for Vista that were never realized, Microsoft’s Windows boss Steve Sinofsky has been keeping a tight lid on all information released about the upcoming Windows 7. Therefore, it was quite a coup for CNET’s Ina Fried to get an interview with Sinofsky about Windows 7. The only problem is that he didn’t really say anything beyond the following:

• Windows 7 is planned to come out in January 2010
• Windows 7 is an evolutionary improvement upon Windows Vista, not a big rewrite

Actually, I am a little surprised Sinofsky said anything about a date.

It’s a bit of a yawner, but Microsoft has apparently confirmed that Windows 7 will be available in 2010 barring unforeseen quality issues:

Officially, the Redmond company has only been saying that Windows 7 development would take an estimated three-year timeframe. However, Microsoft always failed to specify the moment when the three-year timeframe started.
…
Well, this is no longer the case. Microsoft explained that it would deliver Windows 7 three years after the consumers launch of Vista. “We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA. The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release,” a Microsoft spokesperson revealed to Softpedia via email.
…
In this regard, Microsoft has merely reconfirmed what it has in fact said since mid 2007, that Windows 7 is planned for 2010.

Windows 7 seems to be a just a tune up of Vista, but I’m still a bit surprised that anyone is doing much public talking about it at this stage given the sad history of Vista.

I was going to post a cranky comment about the current epidemic of Windows 7 hysteria, but Ed Bott has beaten me to it:

All the kerfuffle over Windows 7 - leaked memos, shaky handheld video clips of leaked builds, equally shaky tentative release schedules - is amusing. I don’t have any inside information to offer, only a perspective drawn from 17 years of watching the Windows development process in action.

I hate to admit, but I have a couple of years on Ed and I guess we are fated to relive history as well as remember it:

All of those predictions miss one big point: There’s nothing “early” about the rumored H2 2009 release date of Windows 7. Last June, I argued that Windows Vista was the functional equivalent of Windows 95, with plenty of wrenching architectural changes that spelled pain for early adopters. Most of those problems were fixed with Windows 98. Likewise, despite the current love fest for XP, most people forget that its first years were plagued with bugs, driver hassles, and security problems (remember Blaster?) that weren’t stamped out until XP Service Pack 2.

Windows 7 is following perfectly in the footsteps of those two releases.

Hit the link for much more, but the punch line is Ed’s title: Windows 7 = Vista Release 2. Or as we used to say in the old days, Vista Second Edition.

At Microsoft’s internal “MGX” global sales meeting last week in Orlando, the troops were given an early word on Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Vienna) including an availability date of 2010. Despite Vista’s checkered history which would seem to preclude excessive reliance on such a prediction from Microsoft management, the whole point is apparently to assure customers and partners of the regularity of product delivery:

(more…)