Windows 7 (also known as Blackcomb and Vienna) looks to be released mid next year.
The way I see it, a company like Microsoft is going to be in a tight position. It can go one of two ways: Under promise and over deliver. This is what a good project manager does. Calculates the worst case scenario, promises that they will deliver within this timeframe and anything inside of that is simply a bonus.
Where am I going with this? Well, Microsoft blow caution to the wind(ows) and does the complete opposite. From a marketing perspective this makes sense because of course you want people to purchase your product. But they over promise and under deliver. Between Windows 95 and XP; people have come to expect blue screens. It’s still one of the giant joke of the internet. Which reminds me, it’s Fact Vs Fiction time:
Fiction: Macs never crash. This has always been one of the strong selling points due to any MS-related OS was about as stable as a woman’s emotional state, francium, the American Economic state or caesium-137/DS 267 (which is metastable - which has a lifespan of 3*10^-6 seconds). That’s a little science joke for those who got it.
Fact: Suck on my nuts. MS try hard to make an OS that doesn’t make poor use of your computer resources. XP doesn’t crash much at all which is a vast improvement on 95/98/XP and to a degree 2000. Plus let’s face it, if you were really sick of Microsofts shit, you would have moved to Linux many years ago and delt with any limitation it might have (if any). Plus this:
After forking over your hard-earnt cash (or an internal organ on the black market if you are way too po’) or better yet wait 4-5 hours the day it comes out for someone to rip and anti-engineer all 4 editions and put them into a torrent for free downloading after MS spend weeks coding anti-piracy protection. But when you crack open that case and it has that awesome smell of Chinese-produced plastic and install the fresh OS and download a gig of updates which didn’t come with the software and then disable a whole bunch of pre-loaded options which no one except a computer novice would use and then change the shit theme it comes with, only to find out the computer upgrade you just purchased is still under performs compared to your previous machine with about a third of the processing power running XP (or perhaps Linux running a Windows Emulator).
Of course I am talking about Vista. But you can easily see how I can transcribe Vista into Windows 7. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice? Shame on you. Plus the images I see on the net, a whole lot hasn’t changed. Bigger icons? That equates to someone not understanding you because you speak English and their first language is Russian. So you shout in English at them. They fuckin heard you the first time, you dick. They don’t understand what you mean. Screaming isn’t going to solve anything.
MS were talking about having a service-based operating system which essentially ment you had a dumb terminal and in order to do anything you need an internet connection for MS to allow you to do anything. In Aus, that shit won’t fly. It would take far too long to do just about anything with the shit internet connections we have. Plus, I am sure they will reverse engineer that shit in the first day or two after it is release.
Plus, I love the way they market an new operating system. They use extremely positive but vague statements like, “We’re also trying to make their everyday tasks easier, like connecting and syncing devices, browsing the web, and managing a home network.” In other words, we’re going to make tasks idiot-proof. Which will be next to impossible. I think the way you do things in XP is already easy. And if people haven’t figured out how to do it by now, I think it is about time to give up. Alternatively they could do it the Mac way and make mice one button and when an error happens give a vague description of the problem and tell the user to reboot. If the error still persists, either try and fix it on your own OR contact your system administrator on 555-9232.
Or statements of genius, “We’re paying particular attention to the things they’re telling us are important to them and will make their PCs work the way they want them to—things like enhanced reliability, responsiveness, and faster boot and shut-down.”
In other words, they are going to deliver something worth while. Hey MS, it’s only been 15 years coming but we might get there. People, please don’t get me wrong. I would love to see Windows 7 perform on a machine that doesn’t require a $1500 upgrade. Or come with options which are pointless and take away useful options I use now. Or have complete incompatibility with previous…well, anything prior to the new stuff. A bad start is by running a compatibility test to ensure everything I have now is going to work on the new platform. People have been saying Vista was like Windows ME so if history is anything to go by Windows 7 should be like Windows XP. My only problem with this logic is for every 2 operating systems MS release only one is worth getting.
