“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.”]
This may be a ground (grass roots) up new operating system with former Windows apps running in a “classic” mode. That rumor is bouncing around somewhere. If this is true then they may actually be able to create a modern OS.
OR they could try to write a newer and “better” Vista and as such keep slogging around in mud of legacy code. If so, they are doomed for sure.
Even if they attempt to write a fresh new OS, they are likely doomed. Writing an OS from the ground up is apparently a more-than-enormous undertaking. If they do this, they will be lucky to get the project out the door by 2012 or more. Even then, if they did a great job, it would still be in it’s infancy like OS X 10.0. It would likely take future versions to be truly usable.
And even if is was the most fantastic OS out there, It would be tough to generate adoption for many years.
Furthermore, they would have to develop all the server software, and other enterprise utilities and apps plus a decent SDK.
So again, either way, they are doomed, truly and utterly.
@ Ampar: “Windows Never” Heh. WINNER!
Windows 7 might be modular, in which case Bill Gates has just delivered the vaporware module.
They are drawing attention away from Vista to Windows 7 very early in the development schedule. This is a public admission that Vista is a train wreck.
What never ceases to amaze me is that in the face of all of MS’s blatant f*ck-up and never-ending displays of incompetency, Windows Sufferers will defend them to the death, as evidence of the feedback thread of the ZDNet story. And they honestly have the nerve to call Mac Users “fanboys”! Wow…
Right you are, Jason!
I think MDN have really messed up on this one.
“Um, did anyone notice this article was published on July 20th, 2007?”
Why, that would require more reading than foaming at the mouth…and that’s just not typical for this crowd, generally speaking.
Do you all use Apple napkins to wipe the spittle from your lips?
@Connor Macbook
That’s a really good one!!!!
@Harvey,
“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.”
Apple doesn’t need to (and probably will never) have “more” marketshare for Microsoft to play catch up; the’ve been doing that for years.
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I can’t wait!
Your potential. Our passion.™
My theory is that Vista is really a transitional operating system. Instead of having two operating systems overlap for a few years, like Apple did, they put out a version that could do things both the old way and the new way, but doesn’t do either one very well. Imagine a hybrid OS 9 and OS X. That’s what I think Vista is.
Windows 7 may be the operating system they were intending to transition to.
Microsoft began to end quirkiness about 2005. Many of its web sites now render correctly in browsers other than IE. They have to be standards-compliant to avoid sanctions and fines from the EU. (What a shame we don’t have a consumer watchdog like that in the US.)
The longer the gap between Vista and Windows 7, the more credibility they lose with the enterprise. So they are under pressure to deliver it early to repair their image and to deliver it late to make sure it is right. (I’d hate to be a developer at Microsoft these days.)
By the time Windows 7 comes out, the damage to Microsoft’s credibility in the enterprise will be irreversible.
I will tell you what i think. I think right now all the IT guys are looking at this and saying – yes we can hold off, we dont need to get vista – and MS is begining to bow to the pressure and is continuing to support XP as a platform. You will see that they will actually reverse course and continue to sell boxed versions of the OS even into 09 and 2010.
What does this mean? Well this just gave Apple another 3 years to convince more and more people, particularly in the enterprize realm that OSX is a viable alternative to moving into the next MS OS which is stated to be Windows 7.
By then Apple might have more support for enterprise solutions that will fit in with the corp. requirements. By then apple might actually license out is OS. A lot of development for enterprise solutions comes in the form of cross-platform at this point anyway.
@ Another IT Guy
You think that makes it better — that MS was already talking about the next OS that soon after the release of Vista? Any spittle around here is from laughing so hard.
This is great news for Rush Limbaugh! Viagra for all the old white kiddy-diddlers!
@Zune Tang
Sorry, but you have to wait.
Our potential. Your passion.
Jason is right … July 2007! So … “at least three years” would mean – minimally – late 2010. As this precedes the Gates statement, the MDN headline is worse than incorrect, it is the reverse of the truth. Well, it would be if we believed anything Gates says. But … that’s not really the point, is it?
Tommy Boy, 10.6 should be entering its EOL about then. If Gates is correct, 10.6 will be squeaky-clean and snappy and anywhere from a few months to maybe a year old. Remember, the pressure is off Apple! Vista doesn’t compare well to Tiger, never mind Leopard, so Apple can take it a bit easy as “there IS no competition”. Now … if Win7 DOES slip, we could be getting into 10.7 territory – or even 10.8, if Longhorn is any guide.
That quality bar is lower than a limbo contest winner’s.
Ampar!
What have these Bozos done?
Where is Chrissy????
@DLMeyer
Taking it easy goes against Apple’s corporate culture. “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest…” and someone else will run off with all your business.
If Apple continues with cat names, what will they use? Will we have OS X 10.6 Ocelot? OS X 10.7 Tabby?
What will we call OS X 10.10.10? Oh ess ten, ten ten ten? What comes after OS X? OS XI? Or some new naming scheme?
Quality bar??? They must have forgotten that concept when Microsoft let Vista out the door.
By 2011, the next big cat will be on the prowl.
This one is a little more up to date… http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1314
but the general idea of the article posted in ’07 does not seem to have changed…. Windows 7 is slipping and there is no real date.
Further, the major change between Vista and Windows 7 is …. a new task bar! (not kidding)
from http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1136&tag=btxcsim
“One of my sources close to Microsoft weighed in recently with this observation: “Windows 7 is cleaning up some UI (user interface) and will feel more like a SP (service pack) than (Vista) SP1. In fact, it looks like the only changes will be around the Task Bar (’the tray’) and not much else. There is a big push to take more (out of) Windows,” not to cram more features into it.”
Mary Jo Foley is either a FUDster or an idiot (or a little of both). She is the same one who wrote back in June that Apple “copied” the Vista desktop because the desktop picture (the blades of grass) that Steve had on the Mac was similar to a Microsucks grass “wallpaper” photo in Vista.
My sense is that she is more of a clueless idiot than anything else.
(Dripping with sarcasm)
I’m confused. Is this as bad as Leopard being postponed a couple of months (for good cause)?
@ Zung Tang
What’s with the 3 word posts. You’re letting us down, buddy. I was looking forward to long essay of how revolutionary this new version of Winblows will be. Maybe you just have anything to be inspired about, hence you lack of words to express yourself.
Windows 7. Yep that’s about right. About two steps below Mac OS 9.
Considering how OLD the source article is (July 20, 2007, as in SEVEN), I don’t see the point in MDN bothering with it.
We already know that Jo Foley is one of the few hold out Win-Droids in tech journalism. The days of ‘Microsoft can do no wrong’ are dead and gone, and yet she keeps right on track with the LUV and anti-Mac FUD. Talk about drinking the cool-aid.
Anyway, Gates clearly (despite blethering otherwise) said that Windows 7 will be out, at least as a beta, in 2009. What Jo Foley says is total bullshite on a good day, she is not an MS exec, and has no credibility. Her prediction is also OLD.
Therefore, when (not if) Windows 7 does not appear in some form in 2009, we have total permission to LAUGH AND LAUGH at Microsoft, especially since Big Brother Bill tossed out the date himself. Lucky for him he’ll be out of the picture in July, so what does he care? He’s a consummate liar. It’s all about appearances for him. Dunderheads eat it up and pray to him. HAHAHAHAHAHA!