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.
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Member since:2007-02-17
Not at all. Ubuntu gets pretty much the same reception when planned features get deferred. Anyone remember how the deferment of composite by default for Edgy went over? Not well, and I happened to be one of those who had my pitch fork and torch in hand. Ubuntu is pretty transparent when things get deferred and users always know what going to make it and what is not. The reason people are so very disappointed with Vista is because they were expecting a lot more than what was given to them. It had nothing to do with features not being implemented or released (cause frankly there weren't that many to begin with). What WAS implemented isn't up to par with what people were expecting. People wanted something exciting and new and all they got was the same stuff with a new coat of paint.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2006-07-04
"This list looks complete to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista#Removal_of_...
It should be pretty obvious that it's a short list."
OK, so let's go through the list. Apart from WinFS, we have:
1. Next-Generation Secure Computing Base aka Palladium, which MS critics despise anyway. Surely MS critics that constantly refer to Vista's missing features don't actually wish that Palladium were in Vista, do they?
2. Powershell, which, as the article states, is available separately.
3. SecurID Support, an RSA security mechanism, the wikipedia article of which says is flawed anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID
4. PC-to-PC Synchronization. I know nothing of this feature, so I'll give the critics the benefit of the doubt and grant that it's a hugely important feature that was stripped.
So that's it. I'm disappointed, I expected a humungous list of very desirable features, given the oft-asserted "Vista was stripped of 99% of its features" proclamations. :p
The real problem regarding "stripped features" is not the stripping of features, but that Microsoft has such a huge user and develper base that they are compelled to provide guidance as to what they are working on for future releases, so when features are stripped, they are stripped publicly. Apple, on the other hand, doesn't announce what it's working on (until just before shipment), and can get away with it because of its smaller user/developer base. Apple can therefore strip planned features at will without any bad PR. I'm confident that any version 10.N of OSX contains new features that were originally planned for version 10.N-1, and has had features cut and postponed for version 10.N+1. But we just don't know about it.
Incidentally, I think there is actual (if circumstantial) evidence of Leopard being stripped of key features. Last August (I believe), Jobs did announce at a WWDC that that Leopard would have fantastic tops-secret features that he couldn't talk about at the time for fear that they'd be copied. Almost a year later, at the recent WWDC, there were no such features revealed Oh, there were some new things revealed, but nothing that even began to live up to the super-secret feature hype, leaving one to conclude that those features were stripped and postponed for OSX Ocelot (assuming that the features do indeed exist to begin with).
Note that I'm not bashing Apple, I'm just saying that I highly doubt that Microsoft is the only one that cuts features from particular releases of software products, postponing them for future releases (or deciding to cut them for good).
Edited 2007-07-23 15:20