Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky Talks About Windows 7...Sort Of

[Jason Dunn]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9951638-56.html

"Since taking over the Windows development reins from Jim Allchin, Steven Sinofsky has chosen to fall almost completely off the public radar...Well, Sinofsky is breaking his public silence, slightly, to offer a few important details about 7 (he reiterated that it is coming by January 2010) and to explain why he is saying so little publicly. In an exclusive interview with CNET News.com last week, Sinofsky talked about how the new version of Windows is designed to build on top of Vista's architectural changes without adding things like new driver models that can increase compatibility challenges. Below is the edited, but still rather lengthy transcript, of our conversation."

This is an interesting interview, in some ways because of what isn't said rather than what is said. You can tell that Sinofsky is very aware of the dangers of naming specific features that Windows 7 will have - we all remember how the feature list for Windows Vista started out long, and got shorter and shorter as it came closer to launch. Anyone remember WinFS? Ina Fried from C|NET does his best to get specifics out of Sinofsky, and near the end it gets kind of uncomfortable, but Sinofsky manages to say a lot without revealing much. What I take away from this article is that Windows 7 is underway, the teams are working hard on it, but no one is ready to talk about specifics yet - and I think that's fine. Vista still feels quite new in the overall ecosystem, and I'm certainly continuing to learn things about it (not all of them good mind you).

I think the concept that Microsoft should be talking about Windows 7, in detail, two years before it arrives to be slightly ridiculous - when was the last time Apple gave the world a two-year peek into its operating system plans? As usual, there's a double-standard that is applied to Microsoft, and there's no good reason for it. If Fried interviews Steve Jobs next, I hope he'll ask the same types of questions.

[Jason Dunn]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9951638-56.html

"Since taking over the Windows development reins from Jim Allchin, Steven Sinofsky has chosen to fall almost completely off the public radar...Well, Sinofsky is breaking his public silence, slightly, to offer a few important details about 7 (he reiterated that it is coming by January 2010) and to explain why he is saying so little publicly. In an exclusive interview with CNET News.com last week, Sinofsky talked about how the new version of Windows is designed to build on top of Vista's architectural changes without adding things like new driver models that can increase compatibility challenges. Below is the edited, but still rather lengthy transcript, of our conversation."

This is an interesting interview, in some ways because of what isn't said rather than what is said. You can tell that Sinofsky is very aware of the dangers of naming specific features that Windows 7 will have - we all remember how the feature list for Windows Vista started out long, and got shorter and shorter as it came closer to launch. Anyone remember WinFS? Ina Fried from C|NET does his best to get specifics out of Sinofsky, and near the end it gets kind of uncomfortable, but Sinofsky manages to say a lot without revealing much. What I take away from this article is that Windows 7 is underway, the teams are working hard on it, but no one is ready to talk about specifics yet - and I think that's fine. Vista still feels quite new in the overall ecosystem, and I'm certainly continuing to learn things about it (not all of them good mind you).

I think the concept that Microsoft should be talking about Windows 7, in detail, two years before it arrives to be slightly ridiculous - when was the last time Apple gave the world a two-year peek into its operating system plans? As usual, there's a double-standard that is applied to Microsoft, and there's no good reason for it. If Fried interviews Steve Jobs next, I hope he'll ask the same types of questions.

[whydidnt]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

I think the concept that Microsoft should be talking about Windows 7, in detail, two years before it arrives to be slightly ridiculous - when was the last time Apple gave the world a two-year peek into its operating system plans? As usual, there's a double-standard that is applied to Microsoft, and there's no good reason for it. If Fried interviews Steve Jobs next, I hope he'll ask the same types of questions.

I think you have to blame Microsoft for this, not the interviewer and some sort of perceived double standard. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer introduced Windows 7 at the "All Things Digital" conference. If MS doesn't want to be subjected to questions about OS plans 1 1/2 years prior to release then they shouldn't announce it, show screen shots, etc. so soon. I don't think you'll see Steve Jobs announcing the next version of OSX 2 years ahead of the scheduled release.

[Felix Torres]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

I think the concept that Microsoft should be talking about Windows 7, in detail, two years before it arrives to be slightly ridiculous - when was the last time Apple gave the world a two-year peek into its operating system plans? As usual, there's a double-standard that is applied to Microsoft, and there's no good reason for it. If Fried interviews Steve Jobs next, I hope he'll ask the same types of questions.

On a pure fairness level, you are quite right; MS is the whipping boy of the industry that makes a living off them with nary a kudo for any of the good things they do, only scorn for the missteps or worse, misrepresented missteps. At a minimum, they deserve kudos for not whining.

But, there is the unavoidable strategic reality that MS has a long *testing* cycle for their OS products (needed to support the broad range of hardware, development partners, and customers they have to support) which means that in the time MS debugs and tests a whole new innovative feature, their competitors can copy it and pretend to have invented it, even when the copy is less functional--as happened in the process from Longhorn to Vista. So there is no benefit to MS to play nice with the media any more than they absolutely, positively have to.

On the other hand, many of MS's corporate customers and development partners really do need a long lead time to plan for new OS releases which is not a concern for companies with no significant presence in the corporate market. So while it is to their benefit to keep the press in the dark, they can't do the same with developers or customers.

Pretty much a lose-lose situation, no?

Hence the current policy of revealing as little as possible to the press and keeping as much as possible under NDA as long as possible, which leads to useless interviews like this and even more bad press.

But since they're going to get bad press anyway...

And, of course, Jobs is never going to be grilled like that, but then, in the larger scheme of things it doesn't matter; free rides are never fully free. There's a reason Apple's computing market share lags their visibility and they rely so strongly on their put-down ads...

Rest assured that what goes around comes around.