Windows Tips and Tricks

A piece at CNET suggests that Microsoft’s recent hiring of an Adobe programming expert means an improved Windows interface:

It looks like Mark Hamburg, an Adobe Systems Photoshop and Lightroom programming guru, will be leading work to give Microsoft Windows a better user interface.

And given the dramatic user interface differences between earlier and later Adobe projects that Hamburg worked on, that raises some very intriguing possibilities.

According to CNET, those possibilities include “elegance and personality”, whatever that means.

Todd Bishop at Seattlepi asked Microsoft to comment on when Windows 7 might be available. The answer came in Microsoft-speak:

We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA.

Development is scoped? Incidentally, GA seems to mean “general availability. I continue to marvel at the strange ways that Microsoft finds to contort the English language. I have a number of readers from other countries and I want to assure them that normal Americans do not talk that way.

The volume of talk about Windows 7 is getting louder and louder. Some have interpreted a comment from Bill Gates that the release will be in 2009. Gates’ comments can be interpreted in a number of ways so I don’t think that they prove a whole lot. However, a credible case is made by Ed Bott for delivery of Windows 7 in time for the Christmas, 2009 buying season. Even Bott, a fan of Vista, concedes that the Vista brand has become a marketing failure. Thus, he (and others) feel that Microsoft will bring out Windows 7 as soon as possible. Bott writes:

Vista’s brand value is near zero. From a branding perspective, the Windows Vista name is practically toxic. Although the Vista experience has improved tremendously in the past year, the damage is already done, and the best solution is to get its replacement ready sooner rather than later.

Although it may not carry the Vista name, I have to wonder if Windows 7 isn’t really going to be Vista SP2. The previous development cycles for Windows have alternated major and minor upgrades. For example, both Windows 98 SE and Windows XP SP2 represented substantial changes while keeping the name and basic framework of the preceding operating system. An accelerated date for releasing Windows 7 would support the idea that there will be no really big changes like changing the file system to the long-promised WinFS.

Actually there is more speculation than news, but if you are interested in the next Windows operating system, here’s a digest of some recent articles and posts.

There’s been speculation (wishful thinking?) that Windows 7 might have a reduced kernel and be more modular (like Linux) but Ed Bott makes a good case that this is not likely. Oh well, I had hopes but it did seem like a big change of direction for Microsoft. Maybe some day.

That’s the contention of Ed Bott. He makes a good case that Windows 7 will not be a complete overhaul but more like an upgraded Vista. He argues for something like Windows 98 compared with Windows 95. Bott gives some statistics to make a case that Microsoft tends to take around 1000 days after the release of a new operating system before it finally gets it right. He concludes:

I certainly don’t expect any big changes in Windows 7. In fact, I’m willing to bet that one of its key design goals is that any driver or app written for Windows Vista must work perfectly on Windows 7. All of the compatibility and reliability fixes that have already gone into Windows Vista will be part of Windows 7 from day 1, making it much less likely that users will experience the sorts of headaches that early adopters experienced in the first six months after Vista’s release.

I expect to see Internet Explorer 8, a bunch of new digital media features, and some tweaking of User Account Control to make it less obtrusive. Mary Jo is right to call this “a smaller, more finite release,” not a big bang like Vista. Those who are predicting that Windows 7 will include some radically stripped-down kernel (the so-called MinWin project) or a new file system are missing the point completely.

It is clear that, outside of Redmond flackery and a claque of fanboys, Windows Vista is not generally regarded with much affection. This helps explain all the interest in the upcoming Windows 7. The blogosphere seizes on any morsel of information, no matter how tenuous, that surfaces about the future OS. The place to keep up with the latest, however, is Long Zheng’s blog. Today, he posted:

Hot on the heels of the humble Windows 7 Milestone 1 review at Neowin yesterday, an anonymous commenter appropriately named “MSBob” on this blog who appears as a Microsoft insider has wrote a fairly extensive comment essay confirming the authenticity of that review as well as revealing many other details about the current and future state of Windows 7.

Read Zheng’s post for a rather interesting piece on Windows 7.

You may have barely gotten used to the idea of Vista but the next operating system is starting to loom on the horizon. Steven Bink posts:

While it has generally been believed that Windows 7 was scheduled for a 2010 debut, Microsoft has revised the roadmap and apparently moved up the release date by a few months: A recently distributed roadmap of the OS lists a release to manufacturing in H2 2009. Microsoft declined to comment on this date.

What will be new in the next OS? Bink says:

There are very few pieces of information about Windows 7 and the features it will bring available at this time. So far, we have heard only about new touchscreen features as well as – and probably most interesting – MinWin, a much smaller kernel of the operating system that takes up only 40 MB of memory.

If true, this last bit about the mini-kernel is especially interesting. Can it be possible that Microsoft is relenting on its insistence that everything, including the proverbial kitchen sink, be integrated into the operating system? Actually, it started to move away from that previously tenaciously held position in Vista. After battling governments and enduring long years of litigation to maintain the integration of Internet Explorer into the operating system, Internet Explorer 7 was isolated from the OS in Vista. Of course, the fact that the integration of IE into previous systems was a security disaster had something to do with it.

Vista’s lukewarm reception has led to enhanced interest in Microsoft’s next Windows version, which at this stage is called Windows 7. Long Zheng comments on a blog by a member of the Windows 7 development team that is refreshingly frank:

One could ponder and speculate about Windows 7 all day and night, or they could read about it straight from the horse’s mouth. Not to imply parts of the Windows group is made up of domestic animals, but one Windows 7 developer is telling it like it is. The blog is called Shipping Seven and is described as “random thoughts from somebody working on the next Windows OS”.