Microsoft News Tracker

Some Microsoft news items from this week that did not find a post of their own.

Microsoft’s Ben Fathi says Vista’s “no public codename” successor (until recently called Vienna) is coming in 2 to 2.5 years and will have some “fundamental piece of enabling technology” although Microsoft isn’t exactly sure what it is. There’s always WinFS! Update: Microsoft backpedals on 2/13 in a statement from Kevin Kutz, Director, Windows Client:

We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than we’re working on it.

If you’re collecting Vista compatibility glitches there were some doozies reported this week including Apple’s iTunes (and more), Nvidia graphics drivers, and MIT tech staff warning professors and administrators at the school “not to upgrade desktops or laptops to Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system because the software isn’t yet ready for ‘productive and safe computing,’” due to incompatibilities with their standard commercial and internal applications.

Aside from Nvidia who should have been better prepared for the launch, these are actually pretty much par for the course despite the adverse press. Commercial application owners like Apple have bigger fish to fry than tracking the exact ship schedule of a Microsoft operating system, but will generally catch up within 90 days of shipment. Internal institutional applications like those at MIT and elsewhere are unfortunately often treated as merely expense items and developers are forced to take a even more leisurely approach.

Microsoft Says They Like DRM in response to Steve Job’s open letter. Meanwhile, big four music publisher EMI appears to be testing the DRM free download waters.

Paddles, CLEAR! ……………THUMP! MSFTextrememakeover waxes indignant over the recent decline in Microsoft’s share price.

EC rebuffs Microsoft over open-source report:

The European Commission has resisted efforts by Microsoft to make it abandon its report into open-source software, it was revealed this week. But the Commission was swayed into allowing a 10-day period for feedback before completing the report.

Previously mentioned here.

Microsoft Speaks Out on Russian Piracy Prosecution and frankly they need to work on their story. So far Microsoft had avoided the headlines like “RIAA sues grandma” but that can’t last forever.

Microsoft to Share Ad Revenue With Casual Game Developers. Good idea.

Windows Live OneCare fails VB100 test.

Microsoft bumps support prices for Windows, Office.

Microsoft today released Windows Mobile Device Center 6 for Windows Vista. It was one of the missing pieces noted yesterday and allows portable devices to synch with Vista PCs.

Bink.nu reports that the Microsoft Home Use Program is broken for Vista and Office 2007. That’s the program where employees of Microsoft volume license customers get free Microsoft software for home use.

George Ou figures out a security exploit of Vista’s voice recognition feature that can actually be explained to the average person. More here.

Jim Allchin seems to be enjoying his retirement.

Bill Gates is on a European promotional tour for Vista and stopped by Bucharest to open a technical support center. As part of the festivities, the Romainian President told him that software piracy worked out great for his country.

Chris Pirillo says Microsoft: Give me a Million Dollars to market Windows Vista for you. He figures he can do it better and cheaper than the expensive and lackluster efforts so far. I don’t doubt it.

Mary Jo Foley says to forget the Vienna codename because Microsoft is internally calling the next client Windows OS ”Windows 7″ and the next Office will be “Office 14.” How incredibly boring! For those who have never had the joy of dealing with OSVERSIONINFOEX, Windows does have internal version numbers and 7 is up next. I’m sure there is something similar for Office, but I’ve never had the pleasure.

Ina Fried has the full story at CNET, but here’s the net:

Now that Senior VP Steven Sinfosky moved from Office to run a major portion of Windows and Windows Live development, he has brought in a number of his previous Office associates:

- Julie Larson-Green who was in charge of the Office 2007 users interface, will head program management for Windows Experience
- Grant George who led Office testing, will do the same for Windows
- Arthur DeHaan moves over from Office to run testing for Windows Live

and a related move:

- Chris Jones who currently heads Vista client development work, will move to shift to “overseeing the ‘Windows Live Experience’ program management” when Vista ships

Separately, Microsoft is creating a new unit within its Mobile and Embedded Devices business call the Consumer Media Technology Group to be headed by Corporate VP Amir Majidimehr which will “deliver Microsoft digital media technology to mobile operators and consumer electronics manufacturers, and owns Microsoft’s digital rights management and advanced media strategies, including HD DVD.”

Sony just announced new Vaio PC models ([1], [2]) complete with “Vista capable” stickers. There will shortly be many more from all the OEMs.

Mary Jo Foley speculates on what the Vista delay will mean for the nominally biennial follow-ons Fiji and Vienna as well as the Windows server operating systems.

Microsoft posted and then a pulled a massive 313 page Windows Vista Product Guide.

New Microsoft hire, Niall Kennedy, recently of Technorati, discloses that “Live.com is the new default home page for users of the Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system.”

Microsoft’s UACBlog explains Vista Parental Controls.

Brandon LeBlanc explains the new Vista Windows PC Accelerators:

Windows SuperFetch™ is a memory management innovation in Windows Vista that helps make your PC consistently responsive by tracking what applications are used most on a given machine and intelligently preloading these applications into memory.

Windows ReadyBoost™ (formerly code-named “EMD”) makes PCs running genuine Windows Vista more responsive by using flash memory on a USB drive, SD Card, Compact Flash, or other memory form factor to boost system performance.

…

Windows ReadyDrive™ (formerly code-named “Piton”) enables Windows Vista PCs equipped with a hybrid hard drive to boot up faster, resume from hibernate in less time, and preserve battery power. Hybrid hard drives are a new type of hard disk that integrates non-volatile flash memory with a traditional hard drive.

Microsoft is working on a Vista only product for amateur musicians called Monaco that competes with Apple’s GarageBand.

And last but not least, the Gartner Group has some Vista adoption news for Microsoft, but it’s hard to tell whether it is good (Gartner: Half of Current PCs Will Show All of Vista):

Microsoft’s Windows Vista will run on just about any PC available today, but it will only show its true colors on about half of them, according to a new report from Gartner.

or bad (Half of Corporate PCs Can’t Handle Vista):

A new research report from the Gartner Group finds that about half of all corporate PC’s don’t have what it takes to run all the features in Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista operating system when it becomes available, suggesting that companies will, to a great extent, have to roll out Vista as they acquire new computer systems, rather than installing the new operating system on existing PCs.

Frankly, Gartner seems obsessed with the unlikely idea of large numbers of folks upgrading existing hardware to Vista.

As everyone comes to terms with the shock of the dual schedule slips of Windows Vista and Office 2007, more stories are surfacing about the current state of Vista.

David Richards at SmartHouse.com reports 60% Of Windows Vista Code To Be Rewritten:

Up to 60% of the code in the new consumer version of Microsoft new Vista operating system is set to be rewritten as the Company “scrambles” to fix internal problems a Microsoft insider has confirmed to SHN.

In an effort to meet a dealine of the 2007 CES show in Las Vegas Microsoft has pulled programmers from the highly succesful Xbox team to help resolve many problems associated with entertainment and media centre functionality inside the OS. The team are also working closely with engineers from the Intel Viiv team. and it is now expected that the next version of Viiv could be delayed to line up with the launch of the consumer version of Vista at the 2007 CES Show in Las Vegas.

CES starts January 8, 2007, but rewriting 60% of the Vista code in 9 months sounds like the proverbial software death march.

If that wasn’t enough, one of the anonymous commenters at the Mini-Microsoft blog has this stunner:

Ok let’s take a look back at the great mgmt decisions in one Windows test org: Not an important group; just appcompat. (It’s not like anyone really cares about appcompat - who cares if customers’ 3rd party apps (and especially MS apps) really don’t work that well on this new fustercluck.

In the last 18 months this org:

[see the original for the list of 9 boneheaded management moves]

Results: Client appcompat % hovering at <40% (GASP - INTERNAL INFO… better moderate this one out!!!!)

Translated: less than 40% of the 3rd party and Microsoft Windows XP applications that were tested are compatible with Vista. That’ll certainly dim the luster and make the customers cranky!

Finally, despite the widespread expectation that Steve Sinofsky was brought in to shape up Vista development, it’s not clear, as I observed yesterday, that he really has much control over it. Brandon LeBlanc does some digging:

A Microsoft spokesperson today was able to confirm for me that this isn’t the case. “While Jim (Allchin) and Brian (Valentine) finish the work on this year, Steven and team will be squarely focused on the future planning for Windows and Windows Live,” the Microsoft spokesperson tells me. Think of it as if Steven Sinofsky taking charge right at Windows code-named “Vienna”. I would assume that any development beginning on “Vienna” now will be supervised under the direction of Sinofsky while Allchin focuses on just getting Vista out the door.

That would certainly clarify the reorganization. Sinofsky is working on the next Windows client OS (Vienna) , not Vista.

Update: Microsoft is forcefully denying the first of the above items. Ed Oswald at Betanews:

Microsoft slammed an article by Australian technology publication Smart House on Friday, calling it “speculation.”
…
“This is speculation with no demonstrable basis in fact,” a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews on Friday. “There aren’t any Xbox developers moving over to the Windows Vista team,” he said, disputing the core premise of the story.

Actually, the core premise is that a large chunk of Vista needs to be rewritten, but we get the idea.