“Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ words are being parsed for hidden meanings. According to my News.com colleague Ina Fried, Gates said this week during a speech before the Inter-American Development Bank: ‘Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new (Windows) version,’ Mary Jo Foley blogs for ZDNet.
“Microsoft officials are insisting nothing has changed: Windows 7 is due out roughly three years after Windows Vista’s consumer launch (which was January 2007), meaning in early 2010,” Foley reports.
MacDailyNews Take: So, Gates said “2009” last week, but now it’s already slipped to “2010.” Please see related article: Microsoft figurehead Bill Gates sees next version of Windows ‘sometime in the next year or so’ – April 04, 2008
In an earlier report from last July, Foley explained, “Microsoft officials told MGX attendees that the company is currently internally planning Windows Seven. So far, the company has determined Windows Seven will come in both 32- and 64-bit flavors.”
MacDailyNews Take: It’s amazing (and sad) that Microsoft still won’t be able to figure out how to do 64-bit right by 2011. Please see related articles:
• Apple does 64-bit right, Microsoft… not so much – August 03, 2007
• Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard is 64-bit done right, unlike Microsoft’s Windows Vista kludge – August 14, 2006
Also, from that earler report, Foley continues, “Microsoft officials confirmed the veracity of this Windows Seven information… Short answer: Yes, it is going to take us at least three years to release Windows Seven. Longer if it’s buggy and doesn’t hit the ‘quality bar.'”
It’s a good thing for Microsoft that Windows has slipped, according to Foley, “If Windows 7 were to hit in mid-2009, a number of users (especially corporate ones) would likely just wait for the next Windows release, hoping that the driver and application incompatibilities that plagued Vista might get ironed out and that changes that might introduce new problems would be kept to a minimum.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Beverly M” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: When you drop the “quality bar” on the floor, as Microsoft does, how difficult is it to hit, much less clear? Maybe that’s the problem. Perhaps Microsoft’s spaghetti coders are slipping and sliding (like Windows release dates) on those “quality bars” rolling around, then crashing over backwards and cracking their heads on the floor?
[UPDATE: 1:10pm EDT: Updated article with excerpts from Foley’s April 4, 2008 posting and fixed headline to reflect 2010 is the current target year for “Windows 7.”]
The quality bar was set with Windows ME and it hasn’t moved much since then.
Geez, Mary Jo is a bit of FUDster, isn’t she?
Mary Jo wrote this on a big-ass desk.
“Yes, it is going to take us at least three years to release Windows Seven. Longer if it’s buggy and doesn’t hit the ‘quality bar.'”
ROFL – I didnt even know actually had any sort of ‘quality bar’.
If so, it has’nt been apparent for the last 20+ years!
The more people Microsloth hires the slower their programming gets.
Which cat will Apple be on in 2011?
Will Microsloth have made Vista even passably useable before Windows 7 is released?
What will OS X’s market share be on Windows 7 release day in 2011?
@MDN:
When they say 3 years, they are talking about 3 years from the Vista ship date, which would be January 2010.
Not that it matters. We all know it won’t go out by then, but let’s not give Microsoft an extra year of leeway.
’11? By then Apple will have turned it up to XI!
P.S. Maybe MS can do a cross-promotion with 7-Eleven…
The aliens must be laughing at us because as a species we’ve allowed Microsoft to become so big. We went to the moon, then Microsoft, now they must have written us off as a stupid race unworthy of their attention, who got lucky once. Thanks Gates, you’ve doomed the human race from gaining the enlightenment of the older races of the galaxy.
So is Bill even checking in at Redmond anymore?
MDN secret word ‘here’ as in “He don’t come round here no more.”
I hit the Quality Bar with a couple MS engineers last night. I don’t know about them, but my head is still spinning and my coworkers are talking way too loud.
But the guys from MS claim this is what they do to meet their release dates. I guess we all need a little fortification sometimes.
And Bill Gates just promised Windows 7 it in 2009.
Quality Bar? WTF is that? High? Low? In the Middle? Who are they kidding? (besides users and shareholders)
DOS 6.0 was the last time Microsoft could make the claim of hitting a quality bar.
Microsoft aims high. If they EVER make it to the mere level of mediocrity, it’ll be deemed a major success.
Wake me up in 2015.
So if you do the math, 3 years plus the quality thing were looking at 6 years plus or 2014!
By the time MS releases “7”, Apple will probably release OS X in HD and 3-D. The Microsoft sandcastle will be washing out to sea.
The quality bar used to be painted on the floor. They’ve gotten smarter now, and currently use tape.
It used to be painted on the floor of the ground floor, but has moved lower on each new release. For Windows 7 it will be on the floor of the seventh circle of hell.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”
note — there are only 9 circles.
This is certainly FANTASTIC news for Mac OS X!
It’s BAD news for the legions of MS Shills and Apologists. Everyone knows, even MS-lovers, that it’ll keep on slip-sliding away.
Mac sales will be UP!
Hmmm. My watch says half past 2016.
Will it be snappy?
Or they could just be honest and call it Windows Never, charge the saps a hefty annual subscription to keep Ballmer happy in his cage with a plate of ribs and a stack of jelly doughnuts and then occasionally throw the soiled masses a Service Pack bone to shut them up. It’s not much different from their business plan today.
@M.X.N.T.4.1
Maybe it’s good the aliens are not interested in us. If Apple was the one in lead instead of microsoft then we probably would have been probed and killed off years ago.
Um, did anyone notice this article was published on July 20th, 2007?
They can release Windows 7 any time they want to. They will just have chop it a bit. But I bet they are pushing it back because otherwise no one will buy Vista.
Just you wait, you, you … DOUBTERS!
Boy, when Microsoft releases its NEWEST OS, it’ll be so, it’ll be better than … ooooo, just you WAIT!
Because of the Vista debacle, Microsoft will make sure that Windows 7 is smaller, faster, and more efficient that Vista. (Not all that hard to do when you think about it.) It will also copy OS X even more than before. Windows 7 will be great! But who cares?
By that time, Apple will have an insurmountable consumer market share and will have made significant inroads into the enterprise. Microsoft will find itself playing catch-up.
(The US Army already uses Macs, and an Army web site is hosted on OS X.)
“Boy, when Microsoft releases its NEWEST OS, it’ll be so, it’ll be better than … ooooo, just you WAIT!”
Because the packaging will be design on a Mac?