Vista Followup Already in the Works 482
DesertBlade passed us an InfoWorld article, which has the news that Microsoft is already hard at work on the next version of Windows ... and we may see it as early as 2009. Possibly codenamed Vienna, the next Windows iteration will be coming a brief two and a half years after Vista's launch. This is the same timeframe Microsoft claims it would have utilized for Vista, had they not put Longhorn 'on the back burner' to deal with security issues in XP. Corporate Vice President of Development Ben Fathi is already discussing features for the next OS: "We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is ... Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers. It's too early for me to talk about it ... But over the next few months I think you're going to start hearing more and more."
Re:Delays because of doing other work (Score:5, Informative)
They do [directions...rosoft.com]. After Windows is finished, the dev team proceeds to work on the next version, while a team called Windows Sustained Engineering takes over the released version. From the link:
Re:Fundamentals. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why announce now? (Score:4, Informative)
The simple answer is that Windows buyers fall into 4 groups:
1) Upgrade whenever IT feels like it.
2) Early adopters, bought Vista already.
3) Slow upgraders - will buy Vista in a year or so (when SP1 or whatever comes out)
4) Gets Vista with the regularly scheduled new computer.
Groups 1 and 4 are unaffected by Windows scheduling - they'll buy based on non-MS factors. Group 2 will likely buy any version of Windows early (either because they have to for their job [like developers], or because they're enthusiasts). By 2009, Group 3 will largely be on Vista anyways. Unless you bought a computer in Q2 2006 or later, the way processors are moving now, you'll be obsolete in 2009*. Not to mention that groups 2 and 3 are utterly dwarfed in size by groups 1 & 4. Therefore, 90% of MS sales are independent of how often they release their software.
* = note that this is accelerated by Vista. If everyone must have very high requirements to run Vista, then developers can soon start targeting more powerful computers.
Re:Fundamentals. (Score:5, Informative)
It was more than just 13 people at Microsoft. It was based on feedback from a lot of customers as well, not to mention multiple rounds of testing. The philosophy behind it was to make the menus more context sensitive, to reduce the number of clicks necessary to get something done. I've been at some demos where they discussed the number of clicks it takes to complete various tasks in Office 2003 versus Office 2007, and in many cases they've seen a 50-60% reduction in clicks (for example, the number of clicks it takes to insert a picture into a Word document). I agree that the ribbon takes some getting used to, but after using it for a few months I find that it is actually much easier and faster to use than navigating the old menus. The biggest problem is the learning curve for people who were used to the old way of doing things.
A well-cited example from the usability tests that they did while Office 2007 was in development: The testing team brought in two groups of people, one a group who had little to no MS-Office skills, and the other a group who used Office extensively. They sat them both down in front of PCs with Office 2003 loaded and assigned them a list of tasks to complete within a specified timeframe. Most of the "Office Experts" completed all of the tasks, and none of the "Office Newbies" completed all of the tasks. Then they sat them down in front of PCs with Office 2007 loaded and the same list of tasks. In this case, most of the "experts" completed most of the tasks, though it took them a little longer to do it. But most of the "newbies" also completed most of the tasks as well. This relatively simple test underlines to me just how much of an improvement the ribbon interface is (not to mention my personal experiences with it). If you take the time to use it you will undoubtedly find it faster over time.
Of course, the kicker to the experiment that MS did was that they offered the participants a free copy of MS Office for doing the test. They could have their choice of a full version of Office 2003, or a beta copy of Office 2007 and a free copy of the gold version when it was released. Most of the "experts" took 2003, while the "newbies" took 2007. Just goes to show you how entrenched some people get.
Re:Fundamentals. (Score:5, Informative)
That said, a slightly more useful filesystem (is WinFS still due with Vista SP1 later this year?) would be lovely.
FFS. How many times has this been said ?
WinFS is not a filesystem, it's a database.
Re:grrrr (Score:2, Informative)
Abit NF95
AMD64 3700+
BFG 7600 GS OC 25mb
Creative Audigy SE 7.1
2gb Cosair Value DDR ram
I tried everything but Vista would hang on the install almost every time and the few times it installed I had the exact same errors you've listed. as far as I can make out it was the ram/chipset driver, unplugging one of my ram sticks (leaving 1gb) allowed Vista to install properly. Using anouther motherboard and all the other same components on a Asus A8n-SLi Deluxe motherboard (Nforce 4 chipset)and it installed fine. Trying the same components on anouther nforce 410/430 chipset board (a DFI Lan Party) caused the exact same error.
The really weird thing is now Vista is installed I can put the second 1gb stick in my Abit Nf95 and don't suffer the issues you mention. Since its only happened on one chipset and two boards which support a maximum of 2gb DDR ram I'm assuming the installer is seeing somethign different and going wrong when it configures Vista.
In short if you have 2gb of ram and a Nforce 410/430 chipset try removing a 1gb stick and installing again, then once its installed replace the 1gb stick.
[ot] manglement tips (Score:2, Informative)
But... I'm in a pessimistic mood and will point out the throw-away attitude pervading capitalistic western culture, which means that bugs are a motivator for people to pay money for an upgrade to the next edition.
Re:Fundamentals. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fundamentals. (Score:1, Informative)
So much for you claims in that department.
Vista is selling fairly well at my store, though it is being outsold by lawn chairs.
Hypervisors! (Score:5, Informative)
Palladium got embroiled in the whole DRM controversy but there are good reasons to go this way independent of DRM. The idea is that you have a regular OS running, a Vista type OS, and then you launch your hypervisor. The hypervisor digs its way under the OS, takes control, and the OS is then packaged up and is running in a virtual machine. This is what they call "Late Launch" and is the key to one aspect of the technology I will explain below.
Now, here is the big win. You can create a new class of software, "applets" (maybe "virtlets" would be a better name) which interface directly to the hypervisor instead of the big legacy OS. These run in separate VMs so are immune to corruption of the big OS. They are simple and use a minimal API from the hypervisor so the chances of getting the code right and bug free are much greater. You can now use these for security oriented features you'd never dare to dream of on a monolithic OS. Think of Internet voting as a good example of what kind of security we are talking about. A more prosaic example is ecommerce - in a future world where people get their credit card numbers stolen all the time by malware there will be a real need for a secure way to shop online. Hypervisors and virtlets give developers a chance to start with a clean sheet of paper on the security front, while still maintaining full legacy backwards compatibility.
Then there's the kicker. Part of the goal of Late Launch is to use the TPM chip to measure (hash) the hypervisor and each VM separately. It means that each VM has an identity that it can securely attest to using a certified key embedded in the TPM chip. That Internet voting app? It can connect to the voting server and the server can verify that it is running in a clean state. Any corruption would be detected and show up in a bad hash report from the TPM chip. Malware can't fake that report because nobody can fake it, not even the user (meaning, he can't be fooled into faking it either - this is the flaw in EFF's "owner override" proposal, but that's another story).
This is all happening, folks. Intel's Lagrande Technology, now called TXT or Trusted Execution Technology, is rolling out as we write. This was the gating factor for all this technology and is probably the real reason it didn't appear in Vista - the hardware wasn't ready. But it's going to be there and it will be ubiquitous in a couple of years (at least, as ubiquitous as Vista-ready PCs are today). The next OS will take advantage of these features (and analogous ones on AMD, code-named Presidio) and will provide a whole new paradigm for security. This will leap beyond anything Apple can do and they will be playing catch-up, unless of course they start heading in this direction themselves.
To me as a security person, this is the obvious, inevitable path of OS development and is the only plausible thing Microsoft could be talking about. It should be very exciting to see these ideas brought to market in real systems.
Re:Fundamentals. (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft tries to use 'RC' the same way many other development companies do - 'release candidate [wikipedia.org]' for a particular product. (some teams have a little trouble realizing that an RC is not just 'an extra beta' it seems). RC2 would be the 2nd such release candidate. In my opinion having a few (less than 4) is fine, and having two is perfectly reasonable. You release your release candidate, thinking you are done based on all the feedback you would have received on your betas, but then a customer finds some issue that they believe should be a ship blocker. If it is that important you fix it, and you throw out another release candidate - hopefully you only iterate once, if you have to iterate a dozen times you should probably rethink whether or not you are actually done with betas!
The use of the term 'R2' came with a Server 2003 add-on pack, with an incredibly unimaginative name. It wasn't a 'service pack' (it didn't fix bugs in the core server 2003 product), and it wasn't a 'roll-up' (it was not a collection of previously released hotfixes/qfes). It added several new, optional, features and I guess they didn't want to call it a 'feature pack' or an 'option pack' (both terms which seem to have a cloud over them)
So, if there was going to be some new set of things, like a file system, delivered for vista it would more likely be called 'Vista R2' than 'Vista RC2'
note, I have no idea if there is a Vista R2 or not, I'm just talking about terminology
Re:haha, tag this Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, whate (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fundamentals. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fundamentals. (Score:3, Informative)
Also, in Windows 2000+ (unsure about NT4) it's possible [microsoft.com] to mount a partition into a folder. So, it's not like a drive letter is a requirement.