Submitted by Windows 7 has been making waves around the net for a while now, and we already know some of the more encompassing goals of Microsoft’s next operating system release. It’s going to be built on top of the foundations laid out by Vista and Server 2008, but it will not increase hardware requirements. There’s going to be a multitouch framework, and a new mystery taskbar. That’s more or less all we know. Microsoft also said they were going to be more tight-lipped during the development process, something they will continue to do, but they did open a blog today: Engineering Windows 7. The E7 blog is written by Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product.
The first entry to the E7 blog reveals some interesting commitments by Microsoft, most notably they will no longer get all excited about possible features that in the end don’t make the cut – like WinFS. As Sinofsky and DeVaan explain:
Related to disclosure is the idea of how we make sure not to set expectations around the release that end up disappointing you – features that don’t make it, claims that don’t stick, or support we don’t provide. Starting from the first days of developing Windows 7, we have committed as a team to “promise and deliver”. That’s our goal – share with you what we’re going to get done, why we’re doing it, and deliver it with high quality and on time.
This little paragraph is yet another upfront, explicit admission from Microsoft that they more or less frakked up the development process of Longhorn and Vista, by promising features they couldn’t deliver, or couldn’t deliver to their fullest potential. However, this is not the only interesting thing found in the blog. Microsoft will also use the blog to communicate directly with the various different types of parties who have stakes in what the next Windows will look like.
The audience of enthusiasts, bloggers, and those that are the most passionate about Windows represent the folks we are dedicating this blog to. With this blog we’re opening up a two-way discussion about how we are making Windows 7. Windows has all the challenges of every large scale software project – picking features, designing them, developing them, and delivering them with high quality. Windows has an added challenge of doing so for an extraordinarily diverse set of customers. As a team and as individuals on the team we continue to be humbled by this responsibility.We strongly believe that success for Windows 7 includes an open and honest, and two-way, discussion about how we balance all of these interests and deliver software on the scale of Windows. We promise and will deliver such a dialog with this blog.
While Microsoft has been very enthusiastic about using blogs to discuss upcoming products (most notably, the Internet Explorer blog which has already pushed Microsoft to revise certain development decisions), having such a blog centred solely on Windows is something new. The Windows Vista Team Blog was different – it informed users of Vista, yes, but it didn’t really influence where Vista was going. The E7 blogs promises that us normal folk can exert a more direct influence on where Windows 7 is going.
Vista was Windows 6.0 and Windows 7 will be Windows 6.1.
What an insanely bright comment.
Loving the evident frustration there Thom :-). I also love the irony of the sarcasm and it actually being true. Classic.
Sadly, it’s true. We get lots of lovely hype and non-delievered features at the end of five years, and all Windows 7 will be is what Vista should have been to start off with, quietly solving their bugs, wrong turns (let’s use Windows Server as a base, no wait, we can’t, let’s use XP SP2, no wait, let’s get one codebase and use Windows Server!) and trying to come up with something to plug the gap of missed features.
This is why businesses in particular simply haven’t bought into Vista because they know for a fact after all this time that this is true. Quite clearly, it’s going to take a longer time scale for it to sink into peoples’ skulls around here. 🙂
It rather puts the whole development model leading up to a major .0 release into perspective, doesn’t it? 😉
Edited 2008-08-15 08:54 UTC
Hey Thom, we know you have to deal with a lot of crap from lot of ignorant muppets but it might be helpful to be a little less sensitive about (sarcastic) jokes about Vista? That way your neutrality you strive for as an editor remains unquestioned. And yes, it was a daft joke, but some people are amused by such things (even if it isn’t you or I).
Ironically, it wasn’t meant as a Microsoft or MS style joke (oh, what a surprise, dollar signs are converted to S here so you’ll have to use your imagination – how original!), and there are an awful lot of different ways of justifying it. I didn’t really think I’d have to go through them………………..again.
$$$$$$$ – Mmmmm, but they seem to come out OK here. I wonder………..
O$News – Hmmmmmmm, that looks OK.
MS – Yes, there was a dollar sign there…….. Hmmm………
Microsoft – Yes, I did put a dollar sign where the ‘s’ was. Hmmmmmmmm, that’s not coming out edited either. Strange. OSNews isn’t looking for instances of MS and Microsoft with dollar signs and doing some swift string replacement, is it?
Cheers Thom. I did circuit training last night, but you’ve just given me the biggest stomach muscle workout I’ve ever had :-D.
Edited 2008-08-15 09:24 UTC
Cool huh? Technically, we could replace each of your comments with comments that actually matter, and we could replace my comments with ones that aren’t totally pointless.
My, wouldn’t that improve OSNews.
Sigh……….. Not really. It’s just exceptionally……………….sad. At first it was funny, but I do feel just a tad sorry for you.
It’s sad on one level in the blase manner in which you admit it. It’s even more sad on another level in that it is far more sad that code would be written to protect you and us from all those ‘unfunny’ jokes and comments than those very same ‘unfunny’ jokes and comments you want to try and eradicate.
One can only hope that other companies, individuals and projects are getting the same equal and completely even handed treatment from all those dastardly ‘jokes’ people might make.
I didn’t know comments ‘mattered’. What would be even better is posting articles that matter and having an even handed and knowledgeable attitude to each, and accepting what you don’t agree with. That might help even more ;-).
Besides, I don’t know what kind of comment you think will ‘matter’ to this article.
Too late.
You take all this way too seriously, dude. I knew you did, but god, sometimes it becomes ever so apparent and it still amazes me at just how much value people can put into computing.
I assume it is easier and less time-consuming to write comments here than to deploy code which does really silly and quite exposing text replacements. Not to think about the preceding decision making process, or did you falsely skip that one?
I also assume that you, Thom, should listen more to the critics of your site, while they still dare to bother you with their criticism. In the end it should be in your very own serious interest to improve or sustian the quality of your website.
In the end it is you and your team that put most efforts into the success of this really great website. You don’t want to waste these just by not handling it professionally, do you? I understand the discrepancy between the expectations your readers put into you/OS News and your attitude on it as a fun project. But these expectations should make you proud and caring instead of resisting. 🙂
“OSNews is Exploring the Future of Computing”… And you are ‘Managing Editor’? Perhaps it’s time to rethink your role here.
Reverse psychology mate ;-). I’ve just proved to you how seriously you take this because you’ve got a site here that searches for MS and Microsoft and takes out dollar signs because you don’t like those kinds of jokes. That’s sad. Really.
And technically all of us can stop reading this website if it’s censored by some Macbook swinging artsy student that doesn’t have a clue about computers.
Technically this website is for entertainment only, news site, with little of other value so reading it is not a good time investment.
Linux users are much better served by going to Linux oriented sites, and likewise Windows and Mac users.
And it’s not like there aren’t tons of other competing sites with content very similar to OSNews.
So, yeah, OSNews can die as fast as it came to be popular if you piss off enough people Thom.
You should be grateful, they’re helping prevent you from coming across as a drooling moron.
It’s not about sensitivity, it’s about bad humour. That joke was barely funny the first time, but the 234239432949th time? Still ain’t funny.
And seeing the moderations, most agree with me anyway. And we all know that moderations are the end-all-be-all popularity contest. Cough.
I’m not aware that we’ve heard that *joke* 234239432949 times. You know why? Because it’s true, it wasn’t intended as a joke and I didn’t think I’d need to justify it. It’s only what we’ve learned with many Windows releases, and it’s only, you know, the reason why businesses, amongst others, saw Vista as what it was – a prelude to the real release a few years after. You might not *get* the *joke*, but an awful lot of people do judging by actual *events*, and it’s entirely justified.
It was also a subtle jibe at the content, or lack of it, in the article. At least when we saw Windows 7 before someone actually did a bit of a demo. At worst, that is a PR job for Microsoft. What do you want people to say about it?
You’d have been better off not mentioning the moderations Thom. It’s as subtle as a brick through your windscreen ;-).
I believe the phrase is be-all and end-all.
first it is sarcastic humor and then its not…
nice.
Seriously though, the sarcasm about Windows is stupid.
Vista works great. It did not at first and then they fixed it and since then weenies have been putting it down so much that you have people who have never sat in front of Vista spreading the crap but then liking it under a different name.
That’s because it’s possible for a comment to have two different meanings taken different ways. Pffffffffffffff…………
Fixed what, exactly? 😀
Yer, and people still aren’t moving to it in any great numbers……….
Yes, because a number is clearly the result of engineering prowess, and not the actual functionality.
you have been watching too much battlestar lately …
The only thing I want to read from those guys about Windows 7 progress is, “We’re going to take everything that sucks about Vista and dump it. The result is Windows 7.0”
what sucks exactly?
Primarily the needlessly ginormous memory requirements, for my part. You know it’s bad news when your XP computer can’t even play Vista’s startup jingle without stuttering. There’s also the incessant hard disk activity, which seems to be a combination of search-indexing and malware-scanning.
The sentence “It’s going to be built on top of the foundations laid out by Vista and Server 2008, but it will not increase hardware requirements” is depressing for the implication that decreasing hardware requirements (or “[dumping] everything that sucks about Vista,” as Phloptical put it) is not gonna happen. I wouldn’t hold my breath for the “not increase” part either. At this point, the only factor with any chance of slowing the bloat is the 32-bit 4GB memory limit, if MS keeps putting off 64-bit until the last moment.
So, basically, you are mad because vista ultimate will not run on your P4 with a gig or ram and get more infuriated when it has to page to the disk a lot in order to run in its memory starved environment.
because memory is expensive or something.
got it.
I have an AMD x2 4400+ and 2 gigs of memory. My hard drive activity is no different than my old XP machine.
No, I think he’s actually mad because Vista is such a poor effort that it won’t run quickly on anything.
I have mentioned this a few time on OSNews, but I’ll say it again because it highlights just one of the many problems with Vista.
I can copy a large file faster from an XP box running as a virtual machine than I can from the Vista machine hosting it. And that is after I have installed all available updates from MS.
Not good enough.
I think it’s very telling that you consider 1GB a pathetic amount of RAM. Actually, it’s worse than you think: I run an early Pentium M on 512MB of RAM*. But you know what? XP runs just fine on it, and Vista has no features worth switching for. Even if I got a RAM upgrade, I’d stick with XP instead of letting Vista eat up all the would-be gains.
*: Although, I have also tried Vista on an AMD 64-bit dual-core with (lol) 1GB RAM. It didn’t have the stuttering-startup-jingle problem, and it could actually run Aero, but it had the same HD-thrashing problem until I spaced out the malware-scan schedule.
You really need to ask that question?
Another dose of vaporware?
All I want is a Windows File dialog that doesn’t freeze for 15-30 seconds while my external drives and or CD drives spin up. If I get that in Windows 7, I will be completely happy.
Unfortunatelly not gonna happen.
Fot that Microsoft would have to have some programmers with brains, not the morons that came up with Vi’$’ta.
Looking at the quality of Vi’$’ta it’s mind blowing how such crap could ever come out the door of the largest software company in the world.
Sounds like a driver problem.
Drivers? For a generic USB hard drive? Nope.
The damned common file dialog just hangs as soon as I open “Computer”, until both the USB hard drives have spun up. God forbid I have a CD in the CD Drive, that’ll add another 10-15 seconds of freeze time.
I printed the first blog entry, printed it, and took it with me to the bathroom. I look forward reading more entries to help relieve my bowel movements.
You might to better to eat the print-outs so you get some fiber in your diet if you’re having that much trouble.
Edited 2008-08-15 21:21 UTC
Here’s hoping the various segments of the development team actually communicate this time. The series on Ars, “From Win32 to Cocoa”, pointed out quite a few areas of duplicated effort thanks to a lack of communication. Running three different programs in Windows, each of those programs has it’s own menu bar code, rather than giving each program it’s own menu with the same code. Not only does it waste time in development, but it wastes time for every user when it bogs their computer down.
I’m a Linux user, but not a Microsoft hater. I work at an internet cafe, and overall, I’m pleased with the vista machines we have (they’ve been there longer than me, admittedly). But an internet cafe really isn’t heavy duty use, even with the games we have available; and we do daily maintenance (defrag, clean the registry, clean out the spyware), something which I couldn’t be bothered doing more than once a week at home on my Windows machine, and something most Windows users probably haven’t heard of doing.
Edited 2008-08-15 04:44 UTC
This is actually a criticism that is completely valid.
MS is awful about communication and synergy. The different groups have such NBH syndrome that they don’t even use other groups products!
Apple integrates their products vertically very well and their OS is better for it.
Honestly, I gave it a try. I tried to respect it.
But that was drivel.
“The audience of enthusiasts, bloggers, and those that are the most passionate about Windows represent the folks we are dedicating this blog to.”
The trolls, then?
“The E7 blogs promises that us normal folk can exert a more direct influence on where Windows 7 is going.”
I’m quite sure that’s bullcrap. Some people wrote Windows 7 will be what Windows Vista should have been.
It will not, it’s more like a bigger service packs.
Service packs won’t help the Windows-ecosystem to be ready for the future. Sadly enough
The windows Ecosystem of the future is .net and silverlight.
The problem with vista is that it doesn’t solve the problems with XP:
We still have then same stupid USB stack(try plugging in and out a USB-Serial converter a few times and you’ll end up with a COM28).
The console still sucks, you can’t resize it the way you want.
The shutdown process can still hang when installing updates. That’s irritating when you arrive at the office on Monday morning and the computer is sill shutting down.
The boot up processes is still, well lying. I mean Vista boots up fast to the desktop, but that doesn’t mean you can use it then. It might take another minute before the OS is responsive.
We still have drive letters.
The command to unmount a USB device is still “hidden” down in the right task bar. That’s not very intuitive for new users.
Windows update only updates Microsoft software. Microsoft should take notes from the apple App store.
The bundled utilities like notepad could use some love.
Windows update should respect the fact that i don’t want to reboot when it says so.
These are just some of my irks with VISTA (And XP). I really hope Windows 7 goes the Snow leopard route and just makes the current OS better.
Mostly agreeing with what you said, two nitpicks however:
Windows update only updates Microsoft software.
Windows Update Center seems to offer an option to search for updates to 3rd party software. I’ve personally never used that function, I just don’t trust it yet like the tried and proven apt-get.
Windows update should respect the fact that i don’t want to reboot when it says so.
Windows Update offers you to postpone the reboot action. This is exactly what I’ve done right now 🙂
But don’t the dialog come back after a while? You can’t postpone it until you wish to reboot. But i could be wrong here.