FIRST WORD LANCE ULANOFF
Windows 7 Is What It Has to Be Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is right. Windows 7 is Windows Vista, just better. And this is a good thing. Yeah, I know. It’s heresy. Everyone hates Vista, and no one wants the next version to be little more than a sequel—and, potentially, a bad one at that. When I railed against Microsoft for not doing a complete overhaul, I brewed up a complete analogy about how Windows is like the Star Trek movies. It went something like this: Think of all the versions of Windows like the Star Trek movies, generally good, but with occasional missteps like Star Trek III. For the most part we look forward to each new movie or OS update, but over time, even the good movies (and releases) aren’t that good. Finally the series needs a reboot: a new cast, a fresh director, and a new story line. And that’s what Windows needs, a reboot. Not another refresh, but a full restart. Sounds wonderful, but it’s also ridiculous. Microsoft can no more reboot Windows than you can change the engine on a moving car. Windows is in billions of PCs around the world. Even the “failed” Vista is on 180 million desktops. A reboot, a full scrapping of the code (dare I say kernel), and complete overhaul of the interface could result in chaos. Obviously, no one would run out and buy the Windows Reboot, but as with all previous and current versions of Windows, it would simply arrive on new PCs. Look, love or hate Vista, it maintains most of the computing metaphors we’ve grown to love from Windows 95 to present. I can’t imagine a single user who would warm to an experience that scraps everything we know and love or hate about Windows. Plus, ripping out the entire subsystem could mean the compatibility issues that existed with Vista on launch would be magnified a hundredfold. But Microsoft is not going to do that. It ignored the advice of dozens of pundits and is now playing out a script that, in the 8 PC MAGAZINE JANUARY 2009
end, could make the company look like a band of geniuses. It started with the marketing campaign: Even Microsoft executives admit The Mojave Experiment made a lot of people in the blogosphere really angry. Thing is, Microsoft doesn’t care about the blogosphere. It cares about its customers. Mojave respondents were more like typical Windows customers than some tech geek blogger. Microsoft execs are also pleased with the “I’m a PC” campaign—many of
like reducing the amount of memory each window uses could very well have been implemented in Windows XP. Perhaps the difference between Windows 7 and previous updates is that Microsoft is finally being transparent about its plans. Instead of promising “Wow” (big mistake), Microsoft is coming right out and saying that this OS will be a lot like the last one, but in the best and most important ways. Windows 7 will work with everything Windows Vista did—and now that
Windows might need a reboot rather than a refresh, but Microsoft can no more reboot Windows than you can change the engine on a moving car. the presenters at the Windows 7 Reviewers’ workshop introduced themselves by saying, “I’m a PC.” Recently, I’ve seen blog posts and messages from some Windows Vista customers who like the OS and wonder what all the fuss is about. Obviously, they have Vista SP1. Some folks at Microsoft think that the release of SP2 will complete Vista’s resurrection and that it will become an operating system people like and want. That happened with Windows 98 and XP. If that’s the case, then Windows 7 obviously can’t be vastly different from Vista. Certainly not if, by the time Windows 7 arrives, Vista is the darling of millions. This is not to say that Windows 7 is a carbon copy of Vista. With its simplified taskbar and gesture-based interface, it’s obviously not. Microsoft clearly spent a lot of time finding the specific pain points not just in Vista but in XP as well. This has led to smart solutions like the Device Stage, which finally addresses the total disconnect of clicking on a printer icon only to end up in a list of print jobs instead of the printer properties page. Deeper changes
Vista works well with most existing hardware and software, this is especially good news. It’s not some failure that Microsoft didn’t give in to the blog echo chamber and make more radical changes: It’s a design win for Microsoft and its customers. I’m sure, by the way, that right now, that echo chamber is gearing up to blast a hole through my midsection. If I had to describe most of the changes Microsoft made to Windows in version 7, I’d say they were thoughtful. They’re smart, intuitive, sometimes obvious, and most are certainly welcome. Microsoft no longer needs to reinvent the wheel. Maybe Windows Vista is the operating system, in its still somewhat rough form, we need it to be. If that’s the case, Microsoft goes from being the miner, blasting out rock to bring forth each successive new operating system, to the sculptor, chiseling, polishing, and even sometimes mortaring to make Windows just work. FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER! Catch the
chief’s comments on the latest tech developments at twitter.com/LanceUlanoff.
