Steven Sinofsky, who oversees Windows 7 development, has really committed to keeping us in the loop on the new Engineering Windows 7 blog. In today’s post, “Measuring the Scale of a Release,” he discusses whether or not Windows 7 will be a “major” or “minor” release. It’s a pretty good piece that really makes some good points. Read on for our perspective.
As a Windows Vista user at work and a Mac user at home, I have just a few thoughts on this. It doesn’t matter whether Windows 7 is actually NT 7.0 or NT 6.x. Really, no one cares outside of IT professionals. There are just a few things I’d focus on if I were leading the Windows 7 team.
- Make certain that hardware works
- The drivers thing, whether Microsoft’s fault or not, made Vista embarrassing. Either make sure drivers work or force manufacturer’s to obey stricter standards to display a “Compatible with Windows 7” sticker. I don’t think it’s so bad to force people to buy new stuff; but it’s frustrating to only find out there’s a problem after you’ve made the purchase and tried to install on your existing hardware.
- Dump the confusing versions
- I can’t buy a version of Vista that can make shadow copies and do media center unless I buy Ultimate for… what is it now… 400, 500 bucks? This is price gauging, plain and simple, as you peddle me software you’ve intentionally crippled or force me to dish out more cash for the proper version. Make one simple version, and if you can’t do that, no more than two versions: home and professional.
- Focus on what you know people need, not what they say
- How cool is Time Machine? People need backups, but many just don’t realize it. As digital photo collections grow, mp3 libraries get fat, and people begin the switch to purely digital media, features like this will become critical. I expect that over the next few years, we’ll start to see stores on the ‘net about people whose Mac crashed, but their butts were saved by Time Machine. I don’t know anyone who properly backs up a home install of Windows, and those that do use Explorer to drag huge folders to a mounted external drive. Know what the Mac enterprise email client is? Mail.app, the same thing on the desktop. Windows Mail (Ed. Note: Fixed: it’s Windows Mail, not Windows Live Mail) – as good a rewrite as it is – is widely perceived as a failure, yet Outlook, the for-charge add on, is a huge hit. So ditch the “home” or “lite” versions of your programs and deliver real value the first time with the already expensive initial investment. This type of behavior will begin to restore Windows in many people’s eyes.
As it stands, most Windows users I know are bound to Windows primarily because they’re scared to switch to a Mac. That’s pathetic. Microsoft should be embarrassed. Windows 7 is a chance to rectify that. Will they do it? I don’t know. But transparency via the blog can’t be seen as anything but a good thing.
I’m currently a Windows user and I’m not scared to switch to a Mac I’m just not willing to pay such a premium for their hardware. I would gladly run Mac OS X if I could but I’m not going to pay for hardware that I don’t particularly like (for the price) to do it. Apple laptops are about right price/performance-wise after a significant refresh but normally they carry a premium, especially on RAM.
After I move this October I’m planning to completely reformat my computer and I will probably have a Windows XP SP3 partition and some kind of Linux Partition. Can all Linux distros read/write to NTFS now? It’s been a few years since I had time to play with Linux at university. Also does anyone know any good back up solutions for Windows XP?
Exactly, I’m not buying a $2000 laptop. It’s not happening!
Yes, any recent one can.
Look for SyncToy (one of the free PowerToys). You setup a local folder and a remote folder (or an external drive). In the backround it syncs the folders. A good use would be to have your “My Documents” folder synced with a folder on the network drive. It’s brain-dead easy to setup.
$2000?
Try $1099 for a MacBook. And RAM? Throw any PC2-5300 SODIMMs you can find into it. I believe the going price is about $35 for a 2 GB stick.
The Apple bashing is leaving something to be desired this morning.
I’m sorry, it’s still too much. For $1099 I can get the “I’m sorry I can’t afford the COOL Mac, please don’t look down on me” basic Mac laptop. For $500-$600 I can get a similarly spec’d PC. As PsyStar has shown us, it is a very closed game Apple is running, where people pay twice the money for the “coolness” factor. That is why it is imperative to Apple that the OS never be available on other hardware. They are nice products, but I can’t do my computer shopping at Tiffany’s. Some people can. But as Jerry would say, “Not That There’s Anything Wrong with That”.
1100$ is going to buy you a toy.
MBPs aren’t that bad price wise when you compare them against similar higher end low-weight/low-noise laptops, like vaios or lenovos. The problem is you have far more choice in the pc world, so unless you buy right after an apple refresh, chances are you can get better components for a few hundred dollars less at any given time.
My problem is I dont care about uber portable, I buy machines that I can move around the house, or take to the coffee shop (basically just not be tied to a desk), and I dont care so much about weight when I can buy something at least twice as good for the same price, albeit closer to 8 lbs. I love osx, and I have an iMac, but until apple offers at least moderately powered mobile machines, my primary computer is always going to be a pc.
Thanks for the info
Besides hardware cost for a Mac, many people who pirate software know that it’s harder to find their favorite programs for free. Windows has made pirating a breeze, why change anything?
Also does anyone know any good back up solutions for Windows XP?
I would recommend Norton Ghost.
Edited 2008-08-21 15:43 UTC
Kind a crappy points you make to be honest. In first I think it’s up to HW maker to make sure drivers work. Keep mind that Windows7 will use Vista driver model so they have plenty of time. If some HW maker makes bad drivers, don’t buy that shit.
In second you kind a shoot yourself on foot. First you claim that you want something with both Shadow copy and Media Center but in the end you say make two versions. Do you think professional people want Media Center or regular users something like Shadow Copy? No, also most people will buy Vista, even if it’s Ultimate, as OEM and that costs 160€. In reality there is only 3 versions of Vista for regular user Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. I think they are well focused althou Ultimate is overlypriced if you buy it in box version, which no sane person should.
On third point I really started to think have you ever even used Vista. Seriously Vista has backup solution that works automaticly and is easy enough to setup.
Earth to Karitku:
I’m sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please re-check the number and try again. Beep.
I’m starting to wonder if you’ve ever used Vista. Are you calling that ridiculous joke of a backup program a “solution?” Puh-lease.
What’s wrong with it, exactly? It does incremantal backups, uses shadow-copy under the covers, and supports automatic backups that can be scheduled a frequently as the user wants. What’s the problem?
While I’m at it, you suggest bundling Outlook (or something as powerful) rather than Winows Mail (which you mistakenly referred to “Windows Live Mail”, which is a downloadable desktop client for hotmail and other Live services). There are two problems with this:
1. If Microsoft were to do that, the EU would be levelling a two billion dollar fine the very next day.
2. It makes no sense for Microsoft to do this because Outlook is, as you say, “a for charge add-on that is a huge hit”. If it’s a huge hit that people are willing to pay for, why give it away for free?
If it’s a huge hit that people are willing to pay for, why give it away for free?
Ah… gotta love the Microsoft mentality. Why put something of value into a product when we can gouge our customers for more dollars?
How about because 33% of Vista sales are immediately downgraded to XP? How about because Macs are now the #1 selling laptop in the USA? How about because when people sink their dollars into something as mundane as an OS, they expect it to be truly useful, not come with a shoddy second rate program that they will then have to pay to upgrade to the proper program?
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid.
As for the backup, why can I only select broad categories for backup? Does it backup system files? And can I restore my entire PC from it? Who knows? Time Machine works like this:
* plug in external drive
* Do you want to use for Time Machine? Yes.
* Backup
Windows works like this.
* Plug in external drive
* “No, I don’t want to open the volume or execute any files”
* Go to Start > Programs > Windows Backup… wait, that’s not there
* Go to Start > Programs > Accessories, wait… not there
* Go to Start > Programs > Administrative Tools, wait… not there
* Go to Control Panel
* Click on Backup and Restore Center
* Choose Backup Files (or choose Backup Computer, which creates an image)
* Check things I want to backup
* Set schedule, which can be run once a day at most
Remind me why this is better? Do you know ANYONE AT ALL who uses this as their primary backup method?
I see you didn’t bother to respond to the antitrust issues that would arise were Microsoft to bundle Outlook. How about actually adressing the issues I raised before starting with the insults?
BTW, you accuse Microsoft of having a mentality of price-gouging while praising Apple, who has a history of charging people for the ability to watch videos in full screen mode??? Which is more petty?
(Regarding your claim that 33% of Vista sals are downgraded to XP, no, it’s 35% of “Business” computers that are supposedly downgraded to XP.
http://weblog.infoworld.com/sentinel/archives/2008/08/bursting_the_…
This is not a shock since many business wipe whatever is on the drive and install a standard setup provided by the IT dept. I’m surprised that the number was that low.)
Second, I never said Vista’s backup functionality was “better” than Time Machine, I just asked you what you thought was wrong with it. Despite your problems with the UI or whatever, many people are using it for backup.
In Vista you simply push the blue orb(aka start menu), write backup and tadaa 2 choices which both open what you needed. But I give credit for you since Vista should ask “Do you want to use this as backup” when you plug external HDD.
I know you’re getting modded down, but you’re so right.
People should try actually owning a Mac before making such comments about them.
“I expect that over the next few years, we’ll start to see stores on the ‘net about people whose Mac crashed, but their butts were saved by Time Machine.”
Apple: hmmmmmmmmmm should we tell those stories or not?
“I’m sorry, it’s still too much. For $1099 I can get the “I’m sorry I can’t afford the COOL Mac, please don’t look down on me” basic Mac laptop. For $500-$600 I can get a similarly spec’d PC. As PsyStar has shown us, it is a very closed game Apple is running, where people pay twice the money for the “coolness” factor. ”
You are talking crap and the worrying thing is that maybe you are not knowing it.
I can’t believe that you come up with PsyStar. PsyStar only showed one thing to us: they sell crappy hardware. PsyStar sells you unreliable hardware, it sells you noisy hardware, it sells you poorly designed hardware (inside and outside), it sells you poor support an it sells you poorly valued hardware. No way that you can compare PsyStar’s computers with Apple’s macs. No way… A little bit of honesty would be welcome here….
And even PsyStar dudes knows that they are selling crappy computers and when they realized that Vista won’t help to sell a lot of them they decided to steal Mac OS X. Crazy business practice i would say…
So now let me get it strait. Apple sells you first class designed hardware, inside and outside, Apple sells you quality, Apple sells you style, Apple sells you custom motherboards design to fit into those nice designed computers, Apple sells you a kick ass OS, Apple sells you a kick ass software suite, remember iLife, and Apple sells you good support.
How a hell you can expect that Apple’s computers would be prized as PsyStar ones even if the so called specs are close? And by the way those trolls like to speak about specs but they forget that a computer is not only numbers describing the processor speed and the size of the disk, and that’s why they can’t get it. Look at the facts, there is no way that you can compare the prize of a computer like the iMac with its design, style, performance and operating silence with PsyStar’s crappy boxes. There is also no way that you can compare the prize of a Mac Pro with his hundreds of sensors for reliability and performance with PsyStar’s crappy boxes.
And recall that there is the software, Apple does an operating system, and it seems to be the best one out there. Apple does most of its return on investment for developing OS X by selling macs, Apple sells a platform, so is it so surprising that Apple’s computers cost more than a computer which only gets assembled together before it gets to the user?
I don’t think so, i mean, is it a new concept? You pay more for better quality, it is simple and it has existed since humans started to sell objects. It applies to cars, to bikes, to bicycles, to houses, to TVs, to sounds systems, to video cameras, to cameras, to food, to planes, to trains, to shirts, to trousers, to socks, to under wears… you name it. Why it should not be applied to computers?
And yes it applied for pcs too.. Look at Lenovo, they are trying to add value to their computers, and result they cost more. Same thing for japanese companies like Sony or Hitachi, here in Japan, their laptops cost most of the time more than macs…. and even with weaker specs and without the Apple’s design.
But if you prefer to buy cheap, poorly designed computers with bad quality, it’s fine, no problem with that, you are free to do that. Or maybe you can’t just afford higher quality products, this is totally understandable. But the point is that get your fact right!!
Edited 2008-08-22 07:55 UTC
This reminds me of a comic strip I read once called, I think, “When status backfires”. It went pretty much like this:
Guy A: My shirt costs more then you pay in rent each month for your apartment.
Guy B: That’s because you’re an idiot.
Yup, because paying extra to get a quality product which will not only work better than the cheap product from day one, but also keep working long after the cheap product has ceased to function is a sure sign of an idiot.
It’s pretty stupid to pay loads of cash for something that isn’t really of higher quality though.
That entirely depends. Even if two items are more or less of the same basic quality, one may be worth money to a person for all kinds of intangible reasons. A lot of people care about aesthetics and design for example and are willing to pay for things to look nice while it’s being functional. Then there are things like clever industrial and usability design that makes the item more easy/fun/effective to use, many people happily pay extra for that. There are even more abstract concepts like certain items simply make the owner happy and content for reasons he cannot quite articulate. Hard to explain, but for many worth paying for.
Of course trying to explain any of these abstracts to a person with purely practical and utilitarian concerns is more or less impossible. So suffice to say if you don’t get it you don’t get it, but that doesn’t make the other person stupid, they just value things differently from you.
PROPOSAL TO OSNEWS ADMINS:
Can we have a MTBMPR (Mean Time Between Mac Pricing Row) stat on the front page? It would be interesting to track how many days we can go between those debates.
Other proposals:
MTBLF (Mean Time Between License Furores) – the amount of time between a discussion of what “free” means, BSD vs GPL style
MTBORMS (Mean Time Between Opinions on Richard Stallman) – self explanatory
MTBUBCBOT (Mean Time Between Ubuntu Bashing Comments By Old Timers)
MTBBGPP (Mean Time Between Bad Gentoo Politics Posts)
MTBFUDA (Mean Time Between FUD accusations)
MTBLIAACNDD (Mean Time Between Linux Is All About Choice Not Dilution Discussions)
MTBILRFTDA (Mean Time Between Is Linux Ready For The Desktop Articles)
I would also like to propose support for system-wide XML-style entity declarations to save space on the OSNews.com hard drives. For example:
&yougetwhatyoupayforwithamac; and &macsareforrichkids;
&rmsisaneccentricvisionary; and &rmsisagnuzealotonewindowsreleasefromsarinsubwaybombing;
&gplfreeasinfreedomsuckitfreebsdfreedomtohordedouchebags; &gpliscommunistswhathatecapitalism;
And so forth. This way, these debates could be had much quicker and it’s not as if the text is anything but static anyway.
Just a…modest…proposal.
Edited 2008-08-22 21:19 UTC
voted you up for that.
I would say signal to noise is already at least as bad as slashdot or digg. The reason I come to this site at all any more is down to one mac guy, 3 linux guys, and one microsoft gal, which is pretty sad cause it used to be a hell of alot better then this.
Im about ready to call it quits, and am actively looking for somewhere with people with more intelligent things to say then a rehash of one of those seven things.
Except when anybody here tries to discuss anything else they either get ignored and no healthy debate develops or people complain that they are way off topic.
Except I wasn’t talking about Apple or Macs. I was talking about the general problem of perceived value and the futility of pricing items purely on their practical merits. Sure it applies to computers, but only in as much as it applies to everything one can acquire for a price where there are two or more interchangeable choices.
I’ve used quite a few laptops over the years (Mac and Windows), and have observed a fairly consistent rule-of-thumb: Laptops last no longer than 3-4 years. Desktops last 5-6 years (and possibly even longer). You can dance around these statistics (yes, they’re anecdotal, your mileage may vary, etc), but I think that you’ll find that most people will disagree with your idea that Macs will “keep working long after the cheap product has ceased to function”. Laptops just aren’t built to last, no matter how much you pay. Part of the problem is the need that laptops are designed to meet. They need to be lightweight, so they lack a lot of things that would be present in a desktop. For example, they don’t have a steel chassis, they move around a lot and are exposed to lots of shock and vibration, they run hot because they lack a sufficient fan. You could fry an egg on the bottom of some of them. Seriously. So, really, this idea that you’re going to get a lot more mileage out of a Mac laptop than a low-cost Windows laptop is just pure fantasy. You may be able to find people that can use a laptop for more than 3-4 years but, then again, they’re probably the kind of people that only use the machine sparingly or not at all, not your typical user.
This is very true of today’s new laptops with the hotter running CPUs we have. I still have a functioning 500 and 700Mhz laptops which I have no clue to their age now. The average lifespan of every newer (2Ghz+) laptop has been 3 years. I have two sitting on the side of my desk at the moment that are going to be stripped of their drives and then junked. Age=3 years. I could go on and on with anecdotal stories, but my point is not only to back up what tomcat says, but to say this:
Regardless of manufacturer, I would not buy a laptop these days without a good extended warranty unless it was an ultra low price model that was to be used infrequently. Every time a laptop was sold with an extended warranty, whether by our own use or for clients, that warranty paid for itself within 2-4 years.
p.s. WTF does this Mac vs. PC argument have to do with the topic anyways lol, is it a requirement for anything Microsoft related to always lead to some rant regarding Apple, Linux, etc.?
Edited 2008-08-23 19:24 UTC
Quality is a highly subjective criterion, and it needs to be balanced by other factors, such as cost, usefulness, availability, customer needs, etc. For example, my Mom doesn’t need a $2000 laptop. Nor a $1099 laptop. When a $500 laptop will do. She primarily does email, manages recipes, browses the Web, and listens to her music collection. Considering that the average laptop lasts between 3-4 years, the economics just don’t make sense, and I think that that is what has held back Mac market share. Apple likes high profit margins. That’s fine. They made their choice. But they (and you) can’t expect people to blindly swallow their definition of quality without considering other important factors.