Vista to be Further Delayed?

[JediSanf]

CEO Steve Ballmer has decided to take a "multicore" approach to Microsoft's business practices and, as such, it looks like Vista is going to be pushed back yet again. TGDaily (
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/07/27/ballmer_prepares_analysts_for_vista_delay/) has the story.

What investors noted today was another ominous resurrection: specifically, of the term "on track," which Microsoft hauls out of its marketing closet whenever it needs to explain a delay, as in "Vista is on track to deliver in the first half of 2007." Today, Microsoft co-president Kevin Johnson would not even entirely confirm that second half date. Sources quote Johnson as saying, while Vista remains "on track" for 2H 2007, it will only ship "when the product is ready." Later during the meeting, Reuters quoted Johnson as slipping that commitment even further, stating, "We will ship Windows Vista when it is available."

[agentgray]

Why am I not surprised.

I hear they are waiting for Duke Nukem Forever.

[Slack3r78]

Introducing Microsoft Copland.

[JazGalaxy]

Well.. people complain about buggy windows, and then they complain about windows with too long of a development time.

I say there's no rush for an OS. So long as it doesn't hold up Direct X X, it comes when it comes...

[Deadend]

So... Is there a reason to get Vista besides DirectX10?

[Last of the Red Hot Mamas]

"We will ship Windows Vista when it is available."

Maybe this is why they keep delaying it -- they're waiting for it to appear in stores before they actually ship it.

[gzsfrk]

There's really no positive spin on this. Even the claims of "Take as long as it needs to get it right" have fallen on all but deaf ears nowadays. They've had 4 years to get it right; time's up.

I guess this is yet more evidence that the most talented developers at Microsoft have been working on the 360 (and perhaps Zune) for quite some time now.

[Bumbuliuz]

If this is true it´s a bit of a bummer. Beta 5472 is a good step in the right direction. I hope this will not delay games like Crysis :cool:

[shnastybiznastic]

So... Is there a reason to get Vista besides DirectX10?
pro: numerous security updates (really, go look it up on wikipedia, there are a ton), removal of legacy code, mabye not piggybacking off the old BSD TCP stack ;)

con: Still no metadata journaling filesystem, numerous skus, more overhead, removing legacy code means implementing bunches of things again, which means more room for bugs.

[Deadend]

oh and can't forget to mention another Con...

DRM EVERYWHERE.

Prepare to have your copy/paste abilities to be nerfed.

[Varsity]

I guess this is yet more evidence that the most talented developers at Microsoft have been working on the 360 (and perhaps Zune) for quite some time now.
It's actually to do with the sheer size of the project (http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/archive/2006/06/14/631438.aspx). It's stretching the limits of a human's management capabilities.

[bboy]

Just give us Direct X 10 for XP already. I don't even want to use Vista thanks.

[Goronmon]

Delay Vista until the end of time for all I care, I really don't want to purchase a new OS anytime soon.

[51|RandoM]

Called this one, not like it took a crystal ball to figure it out.

they're shipping the corp edition before the consumer edition anyways, don't expect to see Vista this year.

[Frogleg Special]

It's actually to do with the sheer size of the project (http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/archive/2006/06/14/631438.aspx). It's stretching the limits of a human's management capabilities.

Yes, and somehow Microsoft has to understand its core business which is Operating Systems, and the software that supports it. Not Zune, not Xbox 360, not its search engine, not online ads. As much as they want to go for more revenue on many of the spinoff businesses, they can't leave the core business behind. Expect to see MS stock falls if they do that.

[Wyrm]

Apple has had time to refine their operating system almost three whole times since XP came out, and what have we gotten? Fuck MS, just cut some of the features that I could give a shit about and give me Direct X X. X.

[Citizen Philip]

There's really no positive spin on this. Even the claims of "Take as long as it needs to get it right" have fallen on all but deaf ears nowadays. They've had 4 years to get it right; time's up.

I guess this is yet more evidence that the most talented developers at Microsoft have been working on the 360 (and perhaps Zune) for quite some time now.

Urm. The world does revolve around games. I find it hard to believe myself sometimes, but I am told by reliable sources that it is entirely true. The regular Mircrosoft rackets (OS, business software, etc) is what pays for the 4 billion dollar price tag that is continuing to mount with their console endeavours.

As mentioned elsewhere MS is trying to get their tentacles into every possible market, but seem to forget all their tentacles all come from one source: their PC monopoly. All this means to me (including their other tentacle attacks into new markets) is that MS has gotten so big and bloated, encumbered with it's own bureaucracy that it no longer functions well as a whole, strangling itself in it's own red tape.

MS has turned itself into a goverment: it has no idea what it's doing, but it keeps on steamrolling.

[Frogleg Special]

Urm. The world does revolve around games.

Erm, NOT! The world revolves around money. Financial system developers salary > Gaming developers salary, as much as slackers want to say otherwise.

[Slack3r78]

Really, Vista does have some nice UI improvements over XP. I've been running Beta 2 on my work notebook for about a month now. Keep in mind my notebook only has GMA915, so I'm running with the Basic theme, not the super translucent Aero Glass.

Little things like hitting the start button on your keyboard and typing to find/launch programs are awesome. Explorer's interface is hugely improved over previous versions of windows. (The file manager, not IE). Wireless connectivity is vastly more stable. Etc, etc.

There are still places that need major work, though. The network control panel is a total mess, though I've heard newer private builds have improved it. They've totally broken hibernate - it's faster for me to just shut the thing off and do a cold boot than to wake it from hibernation. And a bunch of other small issues here and there.

That said, its biggest problem is there is no real focus. You can't just say "Vista is..." and name off a few hallmark features anymore. I don't think that's bad, per se, but it is bad when that isn't the way the project was meant to be in the first place. It's a sign of what we all pretty much already know - project management had a complete and total breakdown along the way here.

Honestly, my biggest problem with Vista is Microsoft's plan to overly segment the market. 7 SKUs is just absurd. I have a hard enough time supporting customers with 3 XP SKUs. And what idiot decided to rename Media Center Edition to 'Home Premium'? MCE was clearly differentiated and it was easy for consumers to grasp the difference between the two. Now it's vague as hell for no good reason. The fact that Microsoft is trying to segment the market so much suggests to me that they're going to try to charge some absurdly outrageous prices for the higher SKU levels. Vista Ultimate is nice, but if they're going to try to charge $250-300 for it like I'm getting the feeling they will, I'll pass, stay on XP 64, and put the money toward a Macintosh.

Speaking of, for those of you who don't know, my post earlier was actually a reference to the Mac. Prior to Vista, one of the largest software project management fuckups in history was Apple's next-generation OS, codenamed Copland. It suffered from delay after delay and had one ambitious feature after another stripped from it, until finally Apple realized it was beyond saving and cancelled the project. This was after several years in development and cost in the billions range. It's what lead Apple to acquiring NeXT and their OS, that eventually became OS X.

The more we hear about Vista, the more it mirrors the Copland project. The difference is, MS can't really afford to give up on Vista at this point, which means sooner or later, they're going to shove something out the door.

P.S.: The loss of WinFS doesn't bother me, personally. I always thought it was a stupid idea. But it's definitely a sign of poor project management and unrealistic expectations. MS has been promising WinFS or something like it since the early 90's.

[Kadoo]

Wow, on topic and informative awesome
When I read windows copland
I thought of a misspelled douglas copeland and microserfs
thanks for the clarification/history lesson

[shnastybiznastic]

Really, Vista does have some nice UI improvements over XP.
Man, they lost the main UI element that was beaconing me when I learned what a hog MONAD is (I think it's called powershell now). How they got a commandline interface to be slower to launch and use than explorer i'll never know.

The loss of WinFS doesn't bother me, personally. I always thought it was a stupid idea.
I don't think the average consumer will ever notice it, and that is the whole point. A stateful filesystem allows an OS with stateless file management to function more smoothly when something goes horribly wrong.

[Slack3r78]

Man, they lost the main UI element that was beaconing me when I learned what a hog MONAD is (I think it's called powershell now). How they got a commandline interface to be slower to launch and use than explorer i'll never know.
It may be more me being set in my ways with preferring UNIX-style stdin/stdout piping, but I never really got that excited about MONAD. The whole object oriented nature of it seemed like overkill and too much like trying to jam COM into the CLI for my tastes.

I don't think the average consumer will ever notice it, and that is the whole point. A stateful filesystem allows an OS with stateless file management to function more smoothly when something goes horribly wrong.
My biggest beef was Microsoft was marketing it largey on the idea of 'you can just search for everything' and that it would somehow obsolete having a directory structure. This relies too much on the user providing metadata, IMO, and would be a disaster waiting to happen. I also really didn't like the fact that what they were implementing was essentially a hack involving an SQL layer on top of NTFS.

I don't have a problem with the search mentality itself, per se, it's just that, at this point in time, I feel the indexed hash search used by things like Spotlight is a superior approach to the problem. Which is what Vista ended up actually using. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that MS still managed to create a braindead implementation where the search indexer likes to occassionally bring the machine to a crawl and consume every ounce of memory it can get its hands on, rather than a sane background service like Apple uses.

Really, I mostly feel search is a complementary technology to a hiearchial directory structure, not a replacement for such. Even Apple's marketing for Spotlight has engaged in such hype, and I just don't see it happening. It's usually much faster for me to know I have a document stored in (User Home Dir)/Documents/Work/Forms/ than to spend time trying to stumble upon the right set of keywords to get to result I'm looking for.

But that's just my opinion. Like I said, my objections to WinFS stemmed more from the fact that it was a stupid database-layer on top of a pre-existing filesystem hack than the actual concept of an easily searchable filesystem itself.

[shnastybiznastic]

It may be more me being set in my ways with preferring UNIX-style stdin/stdout piping, but I never really got that excited about MONAD. The whole object oriented nature of it seemed like overkill and too much like trying to jam COM into the CLI for my tastes.
I totally fell for it, set up a Passport account just so I could download it.

Didn't even put it through it's paces due to the interface being slow on a P3 :( .

I was even willing to learn C# to make it go...

But that's just my opinion. Like I said, my objections to WinFS stemmed more from the fact that it was a stupid database-layer on top of a pre-existing filesystem hack than the actual concept of an easily searchable filesystem itself.
Oh, I can certanly understand. Design issues aside, their way of going about things was like developing feasable thermonucular fusion and using it to power only wristwatches.