Very intersting Vista article

[Helevitia]

Ultimately, Mr. Allchin's warning proved cathartic and led to what he and others call a transformation in Microsoft's most important product. A key reason: the growing threat from rivals such as Google Inc., Apple Computer Inc. and makers of the free Linux operating system. In recent years these companies have been dashing out some software innovations faster than Microsoft. Google has grown particularly effective at introducing new programs such as email and instant messaging over the Internet, watching how they perform and regularly replacing them with improved versions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112743680328349448,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

[borat]

Google has grown particularly effective at introducing new programs such as email and instant messaging over the Internet

must admit i have not read any more of the article other than what you quoted helevitia, but i'd say MSFT were pretty effective at aquiring/improving/introducing hotmail and messenger long before google could dream of a revenue source to fund those kind of projects.

Not having a bash at google here- fantastic company, but microsoft is also fantastic, and a lot richer, and to think that they have been sitting there twiddling their thumbs for the post XP years is a little hard to swallow. I'm not saying there vision of the future fits with other peoples, but they do help to move things in the direction that they see as the way of the future all too often.

[Jammrock]

Eh gads ... you mean, MS might not ship a giant bloated virus filled OS when Vista is released?!?!?! I'll believe it when I see it Though it's good to know that coding purists have started to gain the upper hand at MS.

Jammrock

[DGhost]

meh, thats not that interesting of an article... the struggle has been going on for years inside Microsoft... unfortunately ME and XP were both semi-resultant from them.

now... if you want an interesting article, go read some of the MS Dev blogs. Thats some interesting shit.

needless to say, Vista is going to be *VERY* different from anything released so far.

[Claymonkey]

different how? Everytime I hear about Vista they've yanked another new feature. I'd like to see something new but from what I've seen it's going to be Windows XP redux

[DGhost]

different how? Everytime I hear about Vista they've yanked another new feature. I'd like to see something new but from what I've seen it's going to be Windows XP redux

*conspiritorial grin*

nope, not quite. it's not about new features, it's about the things that should have been changed a long time ago. although there are still enough new features to make it worth it.

Depening on how hardware support goes, i think Doc might like it a lot.

[Nowhere]

But wasn't *ANY* windows released so far supposed to be totally different?

...

Depening on how hardware support goes, i think Doc might like it a lot.

?

[cjolley]

Interesting read.

but

It could take years before Windows can be as flexible as Microsoft needs it to be to pump out new features quickly.

This would violate Chuck's First Law of Programming Entropy:
"Barnacles only accumulate."

The base design is either flexible in a usefull way or it isn't.
If they are thinking that the same code base is going to get more flexable over time.
Well, Good Luck.

Seems like they should have just learned that lesson.

Or, it could be the writer just threw that in as rhetorical fluff, and it doesn't mean anything.

[Claymonkey]

tease

I am looking forward to it though. However, I've gotten into the habit of not using an OS as my primary until the first service pack.

[Jessterw]

Well when you consider Windows has always been a rush job in the programming department, it's easy to see why a change and a clean start is desperately needed; however, I don't see this as being quite as clean a base as they need to move forward in the way they are intending to.

That said, if MS can deliver a base Windows that is secure, robust, and extensible then any change is a good thing. This of course assuming that they can deliver the "add-on" components in a timely manner after this base release. I'm not so sure on this given how long the database file system (WinFS or whatever the heck it's called) has been underdevelopment (pre-NT4 if you are scratching your head).

Hopefully the further distinction between the various groups will also help the other applications move outside of the shadow cast by Windows. Not so much meaning unto other OS', but rather not having some of their development dictated by the Windows platform group.

I've lost a lot of faith in MS to deliver a product I actually want to and enjoy using. Here's to hoping Vista can repair some of that faith.

[DGhost]

Well when you consider Windows has always been a rush job in the programming department, it's easy to see why a change and a clean start is desperately needed; however, I don't see this as being quite as clean a base as they need to move forward in the way they are intending to.

thats because you have yet to see the things they have up their sleeves

all of the 5xxx builds that have been released up to this point have been feature test builds - generally for developers or microsoft internal. basically someone has merged parts of what the developers are working on ontop of a modified Win2k3 SP1 code base. the Beta 1 and PDC builds were forks off of the main code tree so that they could merge certain features (not even complete features) into them

everything up to this point has been keyed towards getting several key features into the hands of developers so that they can start working on an actually platform and start providing feedback.

from what I understand at this moment, very little of the "final" code that will comprise longhorn has acctually been checked into the main source tree. there are a ton of code that they have demonstrated internally that will completely replace large chunks of code that dates back to even the NT days.

some will get more attention than others - IE7 will not not be as huge of an upgrade over IE6 as the new audio stack will be compared to XP's. but a lot of very fundamental things are being re-written too enable some pretty cool technology.

oh well, it will be interesting to see where it goes. i have my reservationos with their dev process - hopefully they won't **** it up.

[Jessterw]

*snicker* I have a very good idea what they have up their sleeves. I however, do not have faith that they will be able to live up to their own internal hype.

[Jon P. Inghram]

It's Microsoft, of course it'll be a highly innovative product with the sheen of professionalism we've all come to know and expect. I for one will be buying Vista as soon as it's available to help encourage the development of software of such caliber.

[Sasq]

It's Microsoft, of course it'll be a highly innovative product with the sheen of professionalism we've all come to know and expect. I for one will be buying Vista as soon as it's available to help encourage the development of software of such caliber.

do you have any idea how hard it was to read that, and keep a straight face

[Claymonkey]

It's Microsoft, of course it'll be a highly innovative product with the sheen of professionalism we've all come to know and expect. I for one will be buying Vista as soon as it's available to help encourage the development of software of such caliber.

how many service packs do we have to install on that deadpan before it's stable?