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Early look at Windows 7 confirmed and detailed by Microsoft?

by Parm Mann on 24 January 2008, 10:41

Tags: Windows 7, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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Yep, the Windows 7 hype has started

This is about as far fetched as rumours come and yet somehow, Windows 7 manages to draw me in.

Earlier this week, a user on the Neowin forums going by the name of "kenipnet" provided what he claimed to be a short review on Windows 7 build 6.1.6519.1. Though uncertain of its authenticity, the review was generally in tune with what the build is said to contain.

Following kenipnet's contribution, a supposed Microsoft insider, going by the tactful name of "MSBob" responded on the istartedsomething blog. MSBob, or indeed Bob as we like to call him, detailed the design of Windows 7 and the teams behind it. His contribution could of course be a figment of some cruel Apple user's imagination, but nonetheless, here is Bob's rather lengthy statement:

"The review is real. Without Aero, however, the reviewer missed some of the good stuff that’s in the builds (mostly some new effects with the taskbar, and thumbnails).

The thing to remember, however, is that this is the end of M1 (i.e. milestone 1), and there are three milestones. There won’t be any major visual refresh until after M2 (i.e., everything will be implemented with the Vista look-and-feel until after M2). Whatever the new visual look of Win7 will be will be kept under wraps for quite a while. This is no different from Luna for XP and Aero for Vista.

Windows 7 is also the product of two teams working together: the WEX (or Windows Experience) team, which has primary responsibility for client releases as well as most user-focused features, and COSD (Core Operating System Division), which has responsibility for the kernel, networking, device support, and so on. COSD operates on a longer runway than WEX, meaning that work from that team will show up later in the cycle than work from the WEX team. Note: SteveSi is only in charge of the Windows team. Jon DeVaan runs COSD.

The other thing that should be considered is the relationship between Windows and Windows Live. Windows Live has taken ownership of most of the “service connected” features in Windows — Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery, at a minimum. You can expect to see a Windows Live release in the same timeframe as Windows 7 that makes the “Windows + Windows Live” combination a killer one. Important note: Windows Live will be a strict add-on to Windows and it will take advantage of hooks provided by Windows that will be available to anyone. That was the promise when Windows Live was announced, and it will remain that way. So you will be able to install Yahoo stuff and have deep integration with Windows just as easily, as long as Yahoo chooses to take advantage of the new Win7 hooks.

That said, Windows Live is focused on more near term releases, so they are not doing deep planning for the Windows 7 release right now. So it’s impossible to say exactly what that combination will look like. SteveSi is also in charge of the Windows Live Experience (WLEX or just LEX) team.

Finally, it’s important to understand one aspect of the SteveSi philosophy, which might be phrased as “there is always another version” or, more generally, the philosophy of developing release-rhythm. Under Allchin, Windows tended to get into the “big-bang or dot-release” mindset — each release either qualified as a dot-release (i.e. 6.0 to 6.1 — a minor update or refresh, usually ignored by the senior folks) or a “big-bang” release, which would try to change the world in one go. Very few dot-releases every lasted as such. Longhorn was supposed to be a dot-release to XP( that’s why it was named after the half-way point between the two big releases - Whistler and Blackcomb). The vision and scope changed drastically for reasons I was in no position to really understand. Big-bangs tend to collapse under their own weight (see: Longhorn :).

SteveSi is a much more measured guy and believes in regular releases (though his idea of “regular” might still be long for some people). So teams will have visions that stretch to Win8, and you’ll see a first, thoughtful implementation in Win7, that sets the stage for Win8 (and also gathers important data about how the feature is used, to ensure that the complete implementation is better). Different parts of the product will get focus with each release, ensuring that there’s always *something* that is a killer feature, but there’s no attempt to make sure that *everything* gets an overhaul in every release. Over time, the whole OS will show improvements across the board, but the focus and long-term planning ensures that it’s a smooth upward path, not a series of spikes and (unfortunately) valleys.

This is the model that has been followed by Office for years — compare any release of Office with it’s successor and you’ll find small improvements everywhere and major improvements in one or two areas. Compare releases of Office over a longer time period and you’ll see huge improvement (say, Office 2000 to Office 2007). Even in Office 2007, while it looks drastically different, very few new features were added to the individual apps — the focus was on adding the ribbon to the core apps (many old features were exposed by the ribbon, which makes it look like much more was added than actually was).

Oh, and calc/paint/notepad are getting updates (i won’t say what), but they are pretty simple apps and don’t need to be re-written in WPF to get new features. Besides, everyone at MS is deeply aware that these apps are useful precisely because they are simple, focused and start up near-instantaneously. No one is going to rewrite them in WPF just because they can and sacrifice the utility of those tools. Wordpad is a different story — it has no real purpose in Windows (it was originally more-or-less a sample app for MFC back in the Win95 days and really hasn’t been touched since, except to do security reviews), so part of updating it is to figure out how it fit it back into it’s natural place as a simple word-processing tool that sits between notepad and Word in functionality."

Could this be Microsoft's new marketing strategy for Windows 7? To make anonymous posts around the web, generate buzz and cause confusion whilst they're at it? You never know, it could work.

Taking into account Bob's comments, he emphasises an already clear ambition from Microsoft, to integrate its Windows and Live platforms closer than ever before. Whilst personally I like the idea, I can already sense a whole set of new EU antitrust suits ready to be filed.



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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Surely the deeper integration of Windows with Windows Live will be fine provided the hooks are made available to competitors (Yahoo, as defined in the article).

That said… this still looks and smells like a fish to me.
Maybe, but there's actually quite a lot of sensible sounding stuff there. If it's a hoax, what would be the point?
Wasn't the last microsoft viral marketing attempt a total flop? I can't think of any other than the origami platform.
Oooooh it's exciting…

From a viral marketing point of view, there seems to be little point in starting this early? Only the real geeks will hear of this…
Hey I found this vid of supposedly longhorn and loads of the features matched up with the ‘review’:

YouTube - Longhorn concept

If you go through, it's got all the nice features he's describing, how the sidebar is integrated into the desktop now, etc.

It's just a youtube vid though, but a lightbulb went up on my head.

It's possible microsoft dropped loads of the features for vista to save them for windows 7, it's equally possible the reviewer just looked at these kind of videos and made a review up based on them.