The hot (or maybe it strikes you as lukewarm) news this week is that
Microsoft is delaying its next-generation operating system called Vista, for
the second time, to 2007. Supposedly they are going back to the drawing
board and rewriting portions.
Let’s face it, Microsoft always delays new software releases multiple times.
Nothing really new there. I’m curious if anyone really cares. Did you wake
up this morning wishing you had an entirely new OS on your PC?
I’m not a big fan of Microsoft anymore. However, let’s keep in mind
that writing software, especially operating system software, takes
time. And given the burden they created with every previous software
release, they have to develop software that is compatible (or attempts to be
compatible) with a wide range of hardware platforms.
Microsoft is also under the gun to release a new OS that is more
secure.
The big question I suspect we’re all wondering is – will Vista run on my
existing PC or will I have to upgrade?
Toss in the fact that Apple is clearly on a huge rise in popularity,
that the need for RSS is critical to include in a new OS and
all new applications, along with all the other Web 2.0-type changes occuring
so rapidly on the Internet — and well, I can imagine Microsoft is feeling a
need to wait and do it all right. But given the huge size of Microsoft, I
can also imagine that it’s an extremely slow internal process to make
decisions and tricky to navigate the changing tides of trends on the
Internet.
Still, I’m glad to see they are going back and rethinking Vista. Takes guts
to say you’re wrong, to step back and revision your goals. I
haven’t a clue what they are ‘redoing,’ but I’ll assume it’s for the best
and worth the wait.
In the meantime, do you care? Isn’t your Windows XP working well enough -
albeit slow and at times burdened with virus protection software that causes
as many problems as it fixes? But each morning when you boot up, aren’t you
getting your work done?
Or maybe you’re like so many other people lately who have told Microsoft
products goodbye. You moved on to Apple’s OSX or some version of Linux. I
suspect we’ll see more of that in the next 9-12 months, given it’s already
occurring at a rapid pace.
So good luck, Microsoft, in 2007.
Tom
