“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.”]