DailyTech - Ballmer On Vista: "When It's Ready"

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Software Ballmer On Vista: "When It's Ready"
Purav Sanghani - May 24, 2006 2:15 PM

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51 comment(s) - last by jtesoro.. on May 29 at 5:58 AM

If anyone is even keeping track of Vista's release anymore, congrats

Recent news has hinted at yet more delays in Microsoft's Vista launch in January of 2007. If anyone actually believed that Vista would be released at that time they obviously did not follow Microsoft's previous delays of the upcoming operating system.

As Ballmer himself states "Certainly, when Windows Vista comes to the market next year, and it will be next year, we will make sure that we make a high quality product, ship a high quality product, when it's ready."

The last few words, "when it's ready" are reminiscent of the old Duke Nukem Forever days but hopefully it won't take Microsoft as long to release the final versions. Ballmer went on to later add "What we are discussing ... with hardware partners is when they would really like it -- early January, late January, February. We are on track for shipping early in the year."

Last week Microsoft announced official hardware requirements to run Vista which give us something to hold on to and plan with for migrating our environments to Vista...eventually. The requirements seem very high compared to those of our current beloved Microsoft operating systems but at the rate hardware is advancing these base requirements will probably be standard at the time Vista is launched.

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I'm an indie kid

By Mudvillager on 5/24/2006 2:20:07 PM , Rating: 4

My opinion is that Microsoft should take as much (reasonable) time as they can to make Vista as great as possible!

RE: I'm an indie kid

By TomZ on 5/24/2006 2:26:18 PM , Rating: 2

I agree - for now, WinXP is working just fine. MS should make sure that the first release of Vista is a good one.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By das mod on 5/24/2006 2:56:06 PM , Rating: 3

why not focus on finishing once and for all the so long waited for Service Pack 3 .... XP still has potential and a great future..... who cares when vista is released :P

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By Griswold on 5/24/2006 2:58:08 PM , Rating: 2

Well I want vista, because it will do many things much, much better than 2k or XP. But I dont want another rush job that forces me to wait for SP1 or SP2 before I can use it.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By akugami on 5/24/2006 3:54:17 PM , Rating: 2

It seems more and more likely there will be a SP3 for Windows XP. One must remember that the majority of users will still be on XP and not Vista well into 2007 even if it was released in Jan'07. Especially with the delays on Vista which sound more and more like it might not hit till the second half of 2007. Even if Vista is released I will wait for SP1 when the bugs are worked out.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By ncage on 5/24/2006 10:34:07 PM , Rating: 3

I'll tell you why it makes no sense. Sure it would be great for XP users but for microsoft to put a lot of resources towards this makes absolutly no buisness sense at all. XP is going out and vista is comming in. It makes no sense to spend all kinds of resources on something that microsoft is going to want to phase out in the near term. Its all about revenue. How much revenue push do you think xp has left? Not much.

On the discussion of moving to vista makes no sense because it really doesn't offer anything of use. I heard the same discussions when xp came out and was replacing win2000. Well how many people run win2000 anymore? Probably not that many.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By segagenesis on 5/24/2006 3:56:57 PM , Rating: 2

Just curious... what would you mean by "many things much, much better"? I seem to do everything I need in XP or 2K. But YMMV.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By OrSin on 5/24/2006 4:05:46 PM , Rating: 2

I was thinking the same thing. I don't see Vista doing much for me at. All I can think of is better 64 Support. The rest is eye candy and junk for the the AOL types.
Really I want my desktop OS to do is to process programs. If I want the other junk I download from a 3rd party or even MS, but I hate OS blot. I think the hardware people want it the most so they can justify 4Ghz for word processing.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By OrSin on 5/24/2006 4:08:19 PM , Rating: 1

Oh yeah I forget we really need a SP3. I reload windows and put on SP2, then I had to Download another 140MB of updates. That crazy. I'm fine becuase I'm on broadband but what about the the dail up people. And thier are still allot of them. That what 3 days just to update?

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By Griswold on 5/24/2006 5:23:24 PM , Rating: 2

I said "It" does many things better. UAC (while annoying to some) beats the crap out of the rights management of 2k and XP for example. I mainly mean internal stuff not the GUI.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By hadifa on 5/24/2006 6:58:02 PM , Rating: 3

"Just curious... what would you mean by "many things much, much better"? I seem to do everything I need in XP or 2K. But YMMV."
That's the as I thought when MS introduced win 95. I thought DOS would do everything I need. I seriously thought that. The same as thinking no one can fill a 240MB hard drive ever -I thought the same about 40MB earlier- and so many other genius ideas I had. Hahah.

Nope, XP does not cut it and MS knows it. You think XP is good enough probably because you haven’t seen something better or you got used to the way you are doing things.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By segagenesis on 5/24/2006 8:13:27 PM , Rating: 3

quote:
Nope, XP does not cut it and MS knows it. You think XP is good enough probably because you haven’t seen something better or you got used to the way you are doing things.

I agree because I thought the same, but I really have come to prefer the "if it aint broke dont fix it" mentality come of late when it comes to Windows so I'm still somewhat skeptical. I'll likely wait a year first...

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By Garreye on 5/24/2006 10:39:13 PM , Rating: 2

For me the sidebar and the virtual folders (or stored searches or whatever you want to call it) is enough incentive to upgrade to vista. I'm really picky when it comes to having my PC organized and these features should be a big plus. I'm also big on mutlitasking so the taskbar previews as well as flip and flip-3d should be really useful for this. The new security features look pretty good too.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By Pythias on 5/24/2006 6:32:16 PM , Rating: 3

DX10!!!

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By anandtechrocks on 5/24/2006 2:47:27 PM , Rating: 3

I think they should make sure to release a high quality product, but I wish there were some competition in the OS market to help make newer, better products...

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By michael2k on 5/24/2006 3:35:49 PM , Rating: 1

Competition only exists when there are people buying the competition.

As much as I love my Mac and iPod, the existence of competition has made both much better. It is too bad that the reverse isn't true for Windows; Linux and Mac OS X don't register high enough to be true competitors for Windows (yet). The unveiling of affordable Intel Macs, and hopefully soon CHEAP Intel Macs, may change that yet.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By TheBaker on 5/24/2006 5:24:42 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
Competition only exists when there are people buying the competition.

As much as I love my Mac and iPod, the existence of competition has made both much better. It is too bad that the reverse isn't true for Windows; Linux and Mac OS X don't register high enough to be true competitors for Windows (yet). The unveiling of affordable Intel Macs, and hopefully soon CHEAP Intel Macs, may change that yet.

You're missing the one thing that could make Apple a real player in this game:

Stop trying to be a glorified hardware vendor and sell the OS to anyone who wants it!

There's no competition right now because Apple determines exactly what will be in their boxes so they don't have to come up with a bunch of drivers and provide as much tech support as Microsoft does. If they will get past that hump and sell the product to anyone who already has a Windows box and wants to change to OSX without having to buy a new computer, we have a whole new ball game.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By Pirks on 5/24/06, Rating: -1

By Pirks on 5/24/2006 6:38:51 PM , Rating: -1

Nope, there is competition, it's just more original and creative than merely selling OS boxes, which is what Microsoft was doing all the time. Nobody besides Apple sees personal computer as a friendly thing, which you just yank out of the box, plug it in and enjoy immediately. No need for drivers and stuff like that. There's a friendly Apple store near you, you can go for help there if you're stuck, and you can plug some certified by Apple hardware in your box and no need to insert driver/setup CD and answer some questions if you're total noob with that. It's a major selling point for Apple - not to offer kind of DIY box where you, the end user, are responsible for all the technical details like drivers, antiviruses, software DVD players and firewalls and so on. They offer integrated solution where everything possible to take care of was taken care of, no need for you, the end user, to think about where to get DVD software or drivers or where to go today to update your antivirus or something. This is called full service and so far Apple is the only company who does it. Now, it's technically possible and actually pretty easy to make your Vista PC look and feel like that, like novice user friendly Mac, it takes a willing vendor and some work with MS on the central update site (to update everything on your computer in one run, Apple update-style) and that's it, nothing like launching a rocket to Mars. Why there are no such vendors yet? Two easy answers 1) PC vendors just don't get it yet why Apple grows so blazingly fast these days, they're get accustomed to the old ways of doing things - selling DIY boxes with Windows quickly slapped on, and 2) Dell seems to start understanding it first, from all the major vendors I know. Did you hear about Dell deciding to open two retail stores, and copying other Apple ideas? If yes, then stop being naive and see through the blinds - it's PCs adopting Apple way, not the vice versa. Apple's not going to separate Mac OS and Mac because this will immediately make Apple just another DIY box vendor. But now Dell and soon others will run after Apple trying to open their stores and such... and they will fail, because they, like you, just not getting the story yet. Opening retail store won't help IF you still sell DIY boxes. Read my detailed post in the comments for the recent AT article about Falcon North West and also replies to it from Jarred Walton, one of AT editors, we got pretty interesting discussion going, where Jarred was denying the facts first but kind of understood the picture later.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By TomZ on 5/24/2006 7:07:18 PM , Rating: 2

The flaw in your reasoning is that you assume that everybody wants a simple, vertical solution provided by a single vendor, at a higher cost.

There are lots of us out that that like DIY, we like mixing HW and SW from lots of vendors, and we like the cost savings due to this model. We like lots of choices.

Apple is like IBM in the old days. Yes, there was growth and momentum, but they eventually got stomped when things opened up and lots of vendors started playing together. That is the uphill battle that Apple faces going forward.

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RE: I'm an indie kid

By Pirks on 5/24/06, Rating: -1

By Pirks on 5/24/2006 7:51:42 PM , Rating: -1

There are three flaws in your reasoning.

1) There are more casual non-geeky noob users than techies, hence potential Apple market is inherently larger than Windows market, just like Windows market is even larger than Linux market, for the same reason - Linux in general is a bit more geeky and techie-oriented OS. While at the same time Mac OS is Unix inside so it also attracts a portion of Unix/Linux/BSD crowd who can live there just like they live in Linux or FreeBSD or whatnot. So even more potential marketshare than Windows, which is not Unix like and not as simple/friendly as MacOS.

2) Higher cost - compare prices for Sony monoblock PCs that look small and stylish like iMacs. Sony's all-on-one TV-PCs are much more expensive with similar hardware specs. Compare Dell XPS with the iMac with same hardware specs - same price. Compare Dell Inspiron with MacBook with the same hardware specs - MacBook has slightly more features like webcamera, ability to run both Windows and MacOS and only $100 more expensive - so here we can also say "same price". So "higher price for Mac" is basically a myth since Macs went Intel.

3) IBM PC brand going bust by opening things up and being stomped on by myriad of clones. This is precisely the reason why Apple will never open its hardware and sell MacOS separately. Apple saw what happened to IBM because of PC hardware and software being totally open for cloning, and Apple of course learnt their lesson. Keep dreaming about seeing MacOS openly sold for clones - people forgot what happened to IBM, but you didn't... and Apple didn't forget too.

Note also that your flaw number three also answers the original poster who asked why Apple for god's sake isn't opening MacOS. You basically answered his question and helped my arguments by mentioning IBM, that's a rea