
Six months ago, after a long gestation period, Microsoft finally released Windows Vista. Vista is a huge release; not only because of the long list of new features, but also because of its sheer size, and number of bugs and other oddities and downsides. The development process that lead to Vista has left many with a very bitter aftertaste; features were cut, codebases were scrapped, release dates postponed. A few days ago, Microsoft
released some sparse details on Vista's successor, internally dubbed 'Windows 7', and in order to prevent another Vista-like development cycle, here is what I would advise Microsoft to do.
Update: APCMag
reports that Julie Larson-Green, who was the driving force behind Office 2007's new Ribbon user interface, has been transferred to the Windows 7 GUI team.
Member since:
2006-07-04
"Apart from WinFS and Monad, there's little I can think of that was scrapped."
I don't know that I'd consider Monad (aka Powershell) "scrapped" since it's freely downloadable for both Vista, XP, and Windows Server 2k3 (I use the XP version (well, I play with it, anyway)).
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/msh/download.m...
I think Exchange Server 2k7 bundles it (and indeed, requires it, as it's used to perform administration operations).
I think the reason it's not bundled with Vista is that Powershell 1.0 was completed towards the end of (or even after) Vista's RTM schedule and they didn't feel it was important enough to hold up Vista's release.