MS Upgrades To Be Smaller And More Frequent 267
duplicantk8 writes "Following the numerous delays to the Vista launch, MS is planning to have more frequent and smaller incremental upgrades, according to the Financial Times." From the article: "Those delays are set to end late next year with the simultaneous launch of new versions of Windows and the Office suite of PC applications in the company's most significant new product cycle since Windows 95. The new versions of the company's key PC software are likely to rekindle higher growth after a period that saw its growth rate slip below 10 per cent for the first time last year, according to Wall Street analysts. Mr Ballmer's comments are the most public sign yet of the dent to Microsoft's confidence in its core development process that resulted from the Vista delays."
Re:scratching head (Score:5, Insightful)
2008: Upgrade to Windows Vista version 2.0 for only $200!
2009: Upgrade to Windows Vista version 3.0 for only $225!
2010: Upgrade to Windows Vista version 4.0 for only $275!
2011: Upgrade to Windows Vista version 4.0 for only $350!
2012: Upgrade to Windows Vista version 5.0 for only $1000!
Re:nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Beleaguered (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else remember in the mid 1990s when Apple announced the same thing? It was around 1996 [lowendmac.com], and Apple was finding it impossible to get its next generation Copland/Mac OS 8 operating system out the door. I think it was then-CEO Gil Amelio who announced after several years of delays that Apple wasn't going to do monolithic releases any longer. They would do little ones to be more manageable. Eventually, they came out with Mac OS 7.6, Mac OS 8 (what many considered to be 7.7), and Mac OS 9. That's also when they started shopping around, looking at Be and NeXT.
As Apple discovered--and now, I guess Microsoft is discovering the same thing-- it's really hard to keep backwards compatibility, drive new features, and do it within a reasonable budget when you have a big installed base. Apple's installed base was never more than a small fraction of Microsoft's, but Microsoft's resources were also proportionately more extensive.
Microsoft is having as many (or more) delays with Longhorn/Vista as Apple had with Copland/Mac OS 8. In the mean time, Apple bit the bullet with NeXT/Mac OS X back in 1997, and now they're seeing some pretty good returns on their investment. Releases have been fairly rapid, and they've introduced lots of innovative features.
So as far as coming up with their next OS, Microsoft, you can use the word now. Apple doesn't need it any more.
Re:It won't help (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:scratching head (Score:2, Insightful)
Incremental upgrades: another Apple idea Microsoft likes and plans to borrow?
Re:Smaller changes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Something tells me that with the increasing popularity of broadband internet in the home, Microsoft can hold back features and release them as 'special' or 'premium' updates to make up for an otherwise sub-standard OS upon its launch. As long as enough people can reasonably download it, they'll feel like they're getting the royal treatment, but in reality, that patch is a company using faster downloads to make up for thier own inadequacies.
It may be backhanded to deliver a $200 product over the span of a year or so, but at least now, it can finally be delivered.
That's just my thoughts, though.
It feels strange... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, they feel competition, and I thank any single Linux/BSD/Solaris distro, Firefox, Apple for that. Because it is all what we need to get IT really work for common crowd - to be useful, productive, etc.
If I am honest, I have seen new screenshots and well - they don't impress me. So far I have seen a habbit to even KDE guys admit that less is more, don't even talk about GNOME and OS X guys. And here comes Windows Vista with what can I call - detail overblown. Yeah, nothing in the stone yet and I hope they will get rid of that "so-much-details-that-my-destkop-looks-like-page-
p.s. I'm not Windows user, I'm Linux/OS X advocate, but still I can't ignore what happens to
Windows world as lot of my colegues and friends uses it.
p.s.s. and yes, I think GNOME/KDE guys can create
much better and more functional eye candy than that.
NOT FUNNY!! Re:Reboots (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the folks who suffer with Windows are used to rebooting for all sorts of reasons. E.g. IE runs too slow, my app just crashed, I need to install a new program, something is not working,
Due to their inability to admin their own machine, some resort to throwing it out and trying again, with new hardware.
I think it is the Unix admins who have the fetish for the no-reboot. Or perhaps a single, precisely done reboot [daemonology.net], to remotely bring up a machine with an entirely new OS.
Similary, folks who use windows think they need anti-spyware, anti-virus, extra-special firewall crap --- because they think there's no way a computer can withstand the tide of crap without extra-special help. It is just impossible to imagine that an OS [openbsd.org] could withstand it all.
Lately it seems that hardware companies are in the game -- e.g. Intel processors with features designed to make up for the deficiencies of Ballmer's bunch in Redmond.
Re:nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:scratching head (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems to me they are still using the "update" line on the public where they should be using "oops, we f***ed up", it will just be more frequent.
Re:scratching head (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe Microsoft has come to the realization that the rest of the world has - that every new version of Windows isn't as "revolutionary" as Windows 95 was. Ever since the end of the .com era when computers really just became commodity items, Microsoft has been trying to convince us that their next new OS will also be the next greatest thing in computing. Much of what I've read about Vista isn't all that interesting, and it's good to see the computer industry give Vista the coverage that it deserves. If Microsoft hopes to avoid going down in flames altogether, it has to adopt the incremental strategy that everyone else uses. What will be interesting to see is if Microsoft can manage this well. With 7 new flavors of Vista alone, throwing more versions of the OS into the mix at a rapid rate is just going to confuse the market even further. To be at all successful, the first thing that they'll have to do it switch back to a numbering system like Mac or their old year-based system (95/98/2000) so that people can keep tabs on their OS. This is good not only from a marketing standpoint where people feel like they've got an old copy of the OS that they want to upgrade, but it's also good from a patch standpoint. How are people to know whether ending the life cycle of a named OS is going to impact their version?
Personally, I think that Microsoft will continue to implode under the weight of Windows. The testing alone on all the various current and future versions of Windows will suck up a significant amount of their resources. I'd be willing to bet that just a few years after Vista is released that Microsoft starts talking about end-of-life for XP because they can't sustain all those different releases. Of course so few people will have paid to upgrade their machines from the last release that there will still be a huge number of people running old code. Then they'll need to have a discounted upgrade program, which further erodes earnings, leading to even less support, and the cycle goes on...
Just last night . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
The catch is that if you need to patch a critical system file, it's orders of magnitude more simple to just replace it upon reboot (since nothing's running). Otherwise you need to close down any applications and services that are using that file. Some system files are used by the GUI interface itself, at which point you're crossing your fingers and hoping it pops back to reality during the patch process.
It's probably technically possible to do certain patches without rebooting, but you'd have to have a savvy enough user to shut down and bring back dependent services. Linux admins are used to that sort of thing. For home users, it's far easier to simply reboot.
Re:Smaller changes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista's big marketing is about security (which most users wouldn't care about if they weren't told that they should) and how pretty it is. The fact that it looks so shiney and new is what makes people think it's a bold new product with all new...things that they can't explain, but they're in there! People are mostly going to pay for it because it looks like it's something new and then the 'updates' will give the illusion that they bought a whole OS with benefits. If you want people to pay for downloads, you don't tell them them that. This is where marketing comes in.
For Jill and Joe Sixpack, they won't know the major changes in the codebase and most of them and have never even heard of Longhorn. So they (in most probability) won't even know what they were supposed to get in the first place.
Deja Vu? (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC, wasn't almost the very same sentence used in 2001 prior to the launch of Windows XP?
Re:never give it automatic control (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows update.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Geek: Ok Grandma there is a security vulnerability in GNU/Linux you need to update.
Nanna: Oh dear, maybe I should just turn off the computer until the vulnerablity is over.
Geek: It doesn't work that way you have to update it yourself.
Nanna: OK sweetie, you made me switch to leenucks and even though I can't see pictures that people email me anymore you said that's better.
Geek: Yes it is better becuase is open source.
Nanna: Yes sweetie. In my day we were concerned about having enough food to eat, but your concern about your computer thingie is just as important.
Geek: Open a terminal,
Nanna: What?
Geek: Just click everything at the top of your Gnome desktop until you get black window that you can type in.
Nanna: My desktop has my tea on it.
Geek: No, your computer screen.
Nanna: Oh, yes dear, you are so smart.
Geek: now type in soodo apt dash get...
Nanna: what is soodo?
Geek: no its ess you dee oh space a pee tee dash the word get space then the word update.
Nanna: Ok I put all that in and now it's asking for a password
Geek: Yes, that's the root password
Nanna: (after about 20 minutes) the password you gave me z23sDRT8sPdU32 doesn't work. I know security is so important for some reason so I typed the password just as it is on the sticky note on my monitor.
Geek: No, not your password the root password.
Nanna: Oh, I've kept the computer inside, do I need to keep it outide with my plants so the roots will grow?
Geek: Ok, just boot into windows like I showed you for now on, it will update for you automatically.
Nanna: pwned!
Re:NOT FUNNY!! Re:Reboots (Score:3, Insightful)
Back scratching at it's finest. Microsoft bloats it's OS and applications, so people have to purchase a new computer and pay the Intel and Microsoft tax.
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Smaller changes? (Score:3, Insightful)
What difference does it make? You're either going to have to keep doing it the old way, or Microsoft is going to have to make the new way work on Windows 2000 anyway otherwise you'll cut yourself off from 60% of your market.
Re:I can see this as only a good thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, right. Besides, ever wonder how many IT folks would be out of a job if everything Just Works?
Re:I can see this as only a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, those that are lost probably weren't meant to be there in the first place. The helpdesk support guys either bone up their skills and become full blown developers or network admins, or they get the fuck out of IT. Either way, I call it progress.
Re:Just last night . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Raise your hands all who have wasted an hour trying to delete a directory that was in use can couldn't find the magic program that was using it? How many wish they had "lsof" under windows?
And nothing like deleting a large directory only to have it come back with "Could not delete, destination file is in use". Which file? Go figure it out yourself. The system doesn't care enough to tell you...
Sorry. Bit of a rant there. But running into the silly Windows file locking over and over again has made me pretty bitter on the subject.
Just more for company IT depts. to test (Score:3, Insightful)
No large company is going to install any update or software without some testing first. Short-cycle incremental releases are just more to test, and most companies will probably only bother to test/roll-out when a new feature set looks compelling.
This sort of release schedule works for Apple because they do not have the huge corporate installed base that MS does--most of their customers are individuals and small businesses.
Churn Churn Churn (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see why MS wants to churn their user base to increase profits, but all this is going to do is piss people off.
Not only that, but software quality will go down - with SP2 Windows XP is just starting to become good. Now with flavor du jour the OS will never become old enough to be stable.
Re:Smaller changes? (Score:3, Insightful)