Windows 7 Release Candidate is Hitting the Milestones
Client OS Development Matures at Microsoft
By Roger L. Kay
The Windows 7 development process, which produced its first release candidate (RC1) this
week, bears little relation to that which produced Vista, Microsoft’s most difficult launch ever.
Things have gone smoothly this time, and the company has managed to balance its “ecosystem
approach” — whereby it reveals design details early and in detail to hardware and software
partners to allow them time to ready their portions of the “experience” — with the need to
generate some sort of buzz for this latest revision of the Windows operating system.
While Microsoft has disclosed much during the development process, it has done so to a
relatively small audience: partners, developers, and analysts, rather than to the public at large.
But the company also reserved a couple of surprises for the actual RC1 event (the “release”
release, so to speak, April 30, 2009), so as to generate increased interest. These little gifts
include Windows XP Mode, which allows XP legacy users to run applications in a virtual
environment within Windows 7, and Remote Media Streaming, which allows consumers to send
their content around among their own machines and over the Internet as a viewable or
listenable stream.
Windows 7 is like Vista in some good ways: the work done on security and device-driver and
application compatibility in Vista (and beaten on these past two years until it’s solid) benefits
Windows 7 users directly. The “back end” of Windows 7 essentially is Vista.
But Windows 7 is better than Vista in important ways, ways that users perceive:
Steven Sinofsky gets big kudos for keeping the team on track. It wasn’t all magic. Some was
just sticking to the script, notably locking in all but a couple of “surprise” features early in the
process, which both gave the ecosystem a clear idea of what OS features to surface in their
applications and devices and convinced them to move ahead with compatibility projects.
Staying disciplined kept things moving, and the builds didn’t fall apart with each subsequent
change.
Windows 7 code has actually been quite stable for several months now, and some field testers
are using it in production systems already.
Since the code will be released at the right time of year (summer), the ecosystem will have
plenty of time to prepare for high season (back to school through holiday), and consumers will
find Windows 7 systems in the stores about the time they’re ready for them. The consumer
cutover later this year should be rapid and smooth.
Commercial customers must voluntarily adopt a new OS — rather than having it handed to them
as a fait accompli in retail, the way consumers do — and for that reason they are perhaps a
better measure of true acceptance. And the winds are favorable this time for commercial
adoption. Demand is more pent up than ever, since many commercial buyers still haven’t
moved to Vista and are running their infrastructure on an historically old fleet. Also, the
demonstrably stable code will encourage earlier adoption. Enterprises want code to be stable
before committing to it. Because Microsoft did so much of the hard work in advance this time,
corporations will be less hesitant to adopt the new OS than usual — and certainly less hesitant
than they were with Vista.
Enterprises typically wait for the release of the first service pack (SP1) before upgrading, but the
uptake of Windows 7 is likely to be much more rapid and widespread among commercial
customers than usual. This dynamic bodes well for the computer industry, which has been
sorely in need of some good news of late.
© 2009 Endpoint Technologies Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
week, bears little relation to that which produced Vista, Microsoft’s most difficult launch ever.
Things have gone smoothly this time, and the company has managed to balance its “ecosystem
approach” — whereby it reveals design details early and in detail to hardware and software
partners to allow them time to ready their portions of the “experience” — with the need to
generate some sort of buzz for this latest revision of the Windows operating system.
While Microsoft has disclosed much during the development process, it has done so to a
relatively small audience: partners, developers, and analysts, rather than to the public at large.
But the company also reserved a couple of surprises for the actual RC1 event (the “release”
release, so to speak, April 30, 2009), so as to generate increased interest. These little gifts
include Windows XP Mode, which allows XP legacy users to run applications in a virtual
environment within Windows 7, and Remote Media Streaming, which allows consumers to send
their content around among their own machines and over the Internet as a viewable or
listenable stream.
Windows 7 is like Vista in some good ways: the work done on security and device-driver and
application compatibility in Vista (and beaten on these past two years until it’s solid) benefits
Windows 7 users directly. The “back end” of Windows 7 essentially is Vista.
But Windows 7 is better than Vista in important ways, ways that users perceive:
- Smaller footprint — The new OS takes up less disk space and runs with less main
memory; part of the release surprise is the actual hardware specifications, which are
similar to those for Windows XP, Vista’s less-resource-hungry predecessor.
- Faster — Everything is faster: boot time, application loading, overall performance.
- Quiescent — A lot of the old “chattiness” of Vista, particularly of user account control, is
gone; the user interface stays out of your face and does what you tell it to do.
- More elegant — There are many fun and intuitive features that work well, stay in the
background otherwise, and look good; the interface can be personalized more easily and
to a greater degree.
Steven Sinofsky gets big kudos for keeping the team on track. It wasn’t all magic. Some was
just sticking to the script, notably locking in all but a couple of “surprise” features early in the
process, which both gave the ecosystem a clear idea of what OS features to surface in their
applications and devices and convinced them to move ahead with compatibility projects.
Staying disciplined kept things moving, and the builds didn’t fall apart with each subsequent
change.
Windows 7 code has actually been quite stable for several months now, and some field testers
are using it in production systems already.
Since the code will be released at the right time of year (summer), the ecosystem will have
plenty of time to prepare for high season (back to school through holiday), and consumers will
find Windows 7 systems in the stores about the time they’re ready for them. The consumer
cutover later this year should be rapid and smooth.
Commercial customers must voluntarily adopt a new OS — rather than having it handed to them
as a fait accompli in retail, the way consumers do — and for that reason they are perhaps a
better measure of true acceptance. And the winds are favorable this time for commercial
adoption. Demand is more pent up than ever, since many commercial buyers still haven’t
moved to Vista and are running their infrastructure on an historically old fleet. Also, the
demonstrably stable code will encourage earlier adoption. Enterprises want code to be stable
before committing to it. Because Microsoft did so much of the hard work in advance this time,
corporations will be less hesitant to adopt the new OS than usual — and certainly less hesitant
than they were with Vista.
Enterprises typically wait for the release of the first service pack (SP1) before upgrading, but the
uptake of Windows 7 is likely to be much more rapid and widespread among commercial
customers than usual. This dynamic bodes well for the computer industry, which has been
sorely in need of some good news of late.
© 2009 Endpoint Technologies Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
Practice Makes Perfect
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