Windows 7: Microsoft Peeks Inside
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News Commentary. After months of silence, more Windows 7 information pours out of Microsoft: It's the second blog post in four days. Quick, where's the Twitter feed? |
The post, called "The Windows 7 Team," was blogged sometime today. My RSS reader dates the post as 4 p.m. yesterday, even though it wasn't there a few hours ago. The timestamp on the blog site is 12 a.m. today, but the first comment isn't until 4:46 p.m. Whatever the time, it's one long inside-baseball kind of post, presumably written by Steven Sinofsky, senior veep of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering group. I'll take—and you should, too—insidery stuff over nothing.
My writing here is a bit snarky—simply can't resist—and will be so for the rest of this post. So, this is as good a place as any to praise the Engineering Windows 7, or E7, blog. It's good to see such an influential Microsoft executive as Steven Sinofsky blogging about Windows Vista's successor and using the blog as means of soliciting community, customer and even competitor feedback. The Windows Vista Team Blog, by comparison, is a marketing vehicle. So far, E7 is looking like a place for two-way conversation.
Now, returning to the regularly scheduled snarkiness--Steven sets the record straight, and I am just so pierced because of it:
To the surprise of both Jon and I a number of folks questioned the 'authenticity' of the post. A few even suggested that the posts are being 'ghost written' or that this blog is some sort of ploy. I am typing this directly in Windows Live Writer and hitting publish. This blog is the real deal—typos, mistakes, and all. There's no intermediary or vetting of the posts.
Since I was one of those people suggesting the PR "vetting of the posts," I'll take that as a well-deserved slap in the face. Oh, but it hurts. I really didn't need the slapping. Reading this paragraph convinced me there could be no ghost writer:
In general a feature team encompasses ownership of combination of architectural components and scenarios across Windows. 'Feature' is always a tricky word since some folks think of feature as one element in the user-interface and others think of the feature as a traditional architectural component (say TCP/IP). Our approach is to balance across scenarios and architecture such that we have the right level of end-to-end coverage and the right parts of the architecture.
PR folks gag over sentence structure like this. Damn, the paragraph reads like how I sometimes write. Mercy me.
By the way, the above paragraph is kind of important. Steven looks inside organizational areas where the Windows development team is working. He additionally observes:
Some have said that the Windows team is just too big and that it has reached a size that causes engineering problems. At the same time, I might point out that just looking at the comments there is a pretty significant demand for a broad set of features and changes to Windows. It takes a set of people to build Windows and it is a big project.
I've never heard that said. Have you? There have been loud complaints that Windows, meaning the code base, is too big. But the size of the team developing it—I dunno.
I'm pulling a long quote/alphabetical list from the post, because of what it reveals about Windows 7.
"Some of the main feature teams for Windows 7 include (alphabetically):
- Applets and Gadgets
- Assistance and Support Technologies
- Core User Experience
- Customer Engineering and Telemetry
- Deployment and Component Platform
- Desktop Graphics
- Devices and Media
- Devices and Storage
- Documents and Printing
- Engineering System and Tools
- File System
- Find and Organize
- Fundamentals
- Internet Explorer (including IE 8 down-level)
- International
- Kernel & VM
- Media Center
- Networking - Core
- Networking - Enterprise
- Networking - Wireless
- Security
- User Interface Platform
- Windows App Platform
"I think most of these names are intuitive enough for the purposes of this post--as we post more the members of the team will identify which feature team they are on. This gives you an idea of the subsystems of Windows and how we break down a significant project into meaningful teams."
That's a whole lot information. It's refreshing to see the core areas laid out so nicely. No surprise, this list could easily apply to Windows Vista. A couple of the categories are revealing, like Applets and Gadgets and Media Center, about what's really important to the Windows team. While I generally like Media Center, it's got a limited future at best. DVR functionality has moved to the cable set-top boxes. But Microsoft is not giving up yet on TV.
Conceptually, gadgets should have really extended the Vista user experience. I'm really surprised at the small number of Vista gadgets compared with widgets from Yahoo or other third parties. Maybe these gadgets need legs, so they can walk around—from Windows to Xbox to Windows Mobile to the Web.
Forgive my asking, but what about marketing? Steven identifies four areas that cut across all areas of 7: Content development, product planning, product design and research, and usability. Marketing should be there, too. Putting aside my snarky attitude again, I really would recommend that a marketing team be involved with every single product team.
Like most other high-tech companies, Microsoft focuses too much on features and not enough on user benefits. Marketing planning shouldn't start during late-product development but in the early stages. Better explained: Benefits should be the goal product design tries to achieve. Benefits and their marketing should be identified early on and incorporated into the entire development process.
Apple, Nokia and Sony are examples of marketing done better, or right.
[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at live.com]
Comments (14)
Cable set top boxes? MS Wants Windows PCs to be the set top boxes. With cable-card, that's at least theoretically possible...especially if they can get support from the cable companies.
If you can have a real computer in your living room, and watch YouTube on the big screen as easily a you can watch Lost...that's just something you'll never get from your cable box. BlueRay? Not on your cable box. Streaming radio-OK...a handfull of stations, but nothing like Internet radio. Games? Not on your cable box. Video conferencing? Not on your cable box.
There are a LOT of living room applications that you will just never get from your cable box. You really want a PC there....you just don't know it yet (but MS does).
Posted by ed | August 18, 2008 9:11 PM
Maybe they need a different name and shade of lipstick for the pig called Vista? Lets called it Windows Seven for now, the new Vista2.
So ask yourself what new features will Seven have that will make it a compelling OS compared to where Vista failed? Touchscreen? Nope. Blueray? Nope, they are going put them in both Vista and XP. USB 3.0? Most likely drivers will be released for XP and Vista as well. Extra widgets and Mac like taskbar? The real lipstick, as Billy G. says, "if you can't make it good, at least make it look good."
Only improvement I can possibly see that might happen to Seven, is some bug fixes, and MS might have learned something from the MinWin experiment. Mostly the thing they might have learned to to turn off a bunch of services to use less memory and cpu cycles. This could make Vista2, whoops, I mean Windows Seven more efficient. Still, one would be better off with XP, or even far better off with Linux than Vista, or Seven.
Posted by chips | August 18, 2008 9:26 PM
Joe, as a marketing professional, I couldn't agree more with the last few paragraphs of this article. Most people think of marketing as advertising only, or promotions, or just the pretty bow we wrap around the product when it's done. But marketing "done right" also includes requirements definition, as you've noted. And that doesn't mean I want to tell development how to code, I just want to help them build a product that people want to buy (and use). Don't they want that, too? Apple HAS got it right, I agree. That's the key difference between the folks in Cupertino and those in Redmond. One group builds products for people. The other group builds nifty things for themselves--and luckily, up to now, other people often find them useful, too...
Posted by Rick C. | August 18, 2008 10:16 PM
"I've never heard that said. Have you? There have been loud complaints that Windows, meaning the code base, is too big. But the size of the team developing it—I dunno. "
My guess? He was referring to Mini Microsoft who makes/made this exact claim pretty often.
Posted by Brandon Paddock | August 18, 2008 11:47 PM
Rick...from talking with the MS folks, they know that Apple is better at marketing and advertising. The problem is not that they don't know this....it's not that they don't know how to do better....it's the lawyers.
Their lawyers are telling them to not to do any advertising which would hurt Apple, or other competitors. The lawyers do not want MS involved in any more anti-trust issues.
The lawyers are telling them to just sit there and take it from Apple....they can't push too hard without raising red flags.
Posted by ed | August 18, 2008 11:51 PM
So you guys really think its the marketing, not the fact that Apple has hit the nerve in that Vista is just a bad piece of software? Then again, maybe ed is correct, and it is the lawyers? After all, Microsoft maybe does a few things that leaves them open to possible lawsuits, so this is a little more believable? Either way a company that is run by Marketing and or lawyers, and not by engineers who develop the software, the product is going suffer. This is clearly the case with Vista.
Posted by Carl | August 19, 2008 12:35 AM
Found this interesting item from a recently-ex-Microsoft employee, giving some insight into how the company is structured internally. The problem isn't the size of the teams, it's the power struggles between them for control of the code. As Conway's Law says, any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/carroll/?p=1868
Posted by Lawrence D'Oliveiro | August 19, 2008 6:49 AM
@ed: You're missing Rick's point. Apple's product is a collection of elements most useful to users, packaged in a consistent framework, and presented in an elegant fashion. Microsoft's product is a bunch of stuff thrown together in a haphazard fashion. Blaming the lawyers is avoiding the problem.
@Carl: Don't blame Vista, it started long before Vista. Vista was a gift (to Apple).
Windows 7 is a conundrum. If it's due out in less than two years, why is Microsoft just now setting up a blog to solicit feedback? How can Microsoft expect to fix Vista, tell developers that Windows 7 won't change significantly from Vista, and get it out in a short period of time?
Windows 7 is shaping up to be Vista SP2. The reason for the name change is that the marketing folks at Microsoft ran out of lipstick.
Posted by Info-Dave | August 19, 2008 7:28 AM
I looked at that alphabetical list. I did not see DRM listed, so the question some of us are asking. Will Windows 7 contain DRM in the OS like Vista did?.
Or did MSFT finally learn from the Vista mistakes of having a DRM encumbered OS that demands high RAM requirements, huge hard drive requirements and overall poor performance?
Some have said that Server 2008 makes a great desktop, and there have been some claims that it does not have the DRM built in the OS. IF that is the case as some claim....and Windows 7 is really a desktop version of Server 2008. Then there is hope for MSFT.
If MSFT screws up Windows 7 with the DRM nonsense like they did with Vista...then expect even more mass migrations from Windows altogether.
Its one thing for IBM and other important and a few leading edge companies to thumb their nose at MSFT. If they (MSFT) screw up Windows 7, and you can bet MSFT will have a market share around 70 to 80% by 2012. At that point Ballmer will be lucky if he can get a job at Red Hat or Canonical.
MSFT made two mistakes with Vista in regard to the IT Corporate World.
#1 They should have made that particular version (Vista Business) compatible with existing XP programs. MSFT knew full well (or should have) that there were and are specific specialized programs that were made with XP in mind. Forcing Vista on the corporate world where some specific applications cannot run on Vista is fruitless for MSFT and made MSFT look like they rushed Vista out the door without keeping their core customers in mind.
#2 in regard to the above comment (in addition to above). MSFT should have also made a (Windows for Fundamentals for Vista) WinFLP...like they did with XP.
(A light weight version of XP was produced for the corporate world, so companies could upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP and not have to shell out good money for extra hardware just to run the OS.)
They could have, should have made a lighter version of Vista that would run on lighter weight hardware...much like what XP can run on now and have backward capability with XP programs. (After all..the Corporate IT World IS MSFT's cash cow).
That didn't happen, and MSFT is paying the price for it. "Make the software and they will buy it" might have worked five or ten years ago. Times are different, the economy is suffering, companies are cutting back, budgets are reduced and the money that blindly would have been spent on a new OS and the required hardware upgrades isn't as free flowing as it once was.
Lets hope that Windows 7 is success and that MSFT actually took notice this time and listened to the not so good reviews. More importantly, hopefully MSFT listened to their Corporate Clients this time around. We as consumers and the Corporate IT expect MSFT to live up to their reputation as a world class company.
If Windows 7 is another Vista SP2, and nothing more. Then expect Red Hat, Canonical and other alternatives to move in. (Well they already have in some parts of the world...but can't mention that...that would be Micorsoft bashing... lol)
Recent posts about how new Vista machines are being sold with 3 GB RAM, 4 GB RAM speaks volumes...some new Vista desktops even have as much as 6 GB RAM. Four or even Six GB of Ram to run a operating system properly? That alone speaks volumes about the bloat. And if Windows 7 has the same bloat, expect it to sink from its own weight.
Will there be a lighter weight version for the corporate world, will it be backward compatible with existing XP applications?
Lot of unanswered questions, a lot of speculation, and...a lot of doubt....
Posted by Ralph | August 19, 2008 9:01 AM
@Ralph
After reading your post I took the time to read the feature list again paying attention to detail.
I was surprised to find the following listed as features:
* Devices and Storage
* File System
* International
* Kernel & VM
* Security
* User Interface Platform
* Devices and Storage
* File System
Will a version of Windows 7 be released as a network boot only OS?
* International
Will there be an English only version of Windows 7?
* Kernel & VM
Didn't know you could have an OS without a kernel. Maybe there will be a Windows 7 with a BSD kernel or maybe the kernel will be swappable?
* Security
As always it is great to hear Microsoft will be shipping an OS with security as a "Feature". I'll have to make sure I get the SKU with this feature included.
* User Interface Platform
Its always good to have a way to interact with your computer as a feature. Most OSs include a means to manage a display, mouse and keyboard. Wonder what the SKU without this feature would be for. The Mars rover maybe?
Posted by Gerardo Tasistro | August 19, 2008 10:04 AM
Yes, there has been a lot of talk about the Windows *TEAM* being so large. There are thousands of people in it! This has been the subject of many blogs for many years, including MiniMSFT and other clone blogs. The whole Longhorn fiasco was all about how complex managing the large windows team was.
The size of the code base? How could YOU have heard of that? Do you have access to the code base? What do you count as being 'in' windows? All drivers? All applets that come with the OS?
Do you have engineering experience to know what 'big' is? The application I work on has 30 milions lines of code. We're 20 people. That's not enough, that's a lot. Microsoft doesn't have that problem, they have tons of engineers and code testers
Windows is a collection of independent module and layers, the code size is irrelevant. A team doesn't have to scan and update all the source code of windows to do their job. In any software project, most of the source code is stable and doesn't need to be touched. Line counts are mostly irrelevant, it's the code ownership that matters.
Posted by fred | August 19, 2008 10:46 AM
@Fred
Thanks for your insight and experience here. I also would like to that TheBorg for giving us the facts about things. It was a long post, but loaded full of outstanding material. I wonder if and when TheBorg returns, "they" should think about creating their own blog.
@Joe Wilcox.
Joe a wonderful topic especially towards the end like someone already mentioned. However, there sure is a lot of anti-microsoft resentment and FUD in the commentary.
I am a code writer and developer myself and understand where Fred is coming from and I agree. I also must admit, I jumped into Vista about three months ago and love it. It just works and I don't have the problems that many (here) are whining about. Say, if you don't like Vista, or for that matter, Microsoft, get something else and just live with it. I begin to wonder that many complaining about it on the Internet has really truly tested it for themselves. Maybe they did and it was on some sort of older machine. It's obvious to me that Vista is for the newer machines and for people that want to take advantage of all the higher end equipment like myself.
Now I DO realize that there are people out there that are quite happy with their older software and hardware -- I say cool to that, good, life's too short to be unhappy. But if you really want to experience Vista, you gotta pay for better PC hardware and the price of staying up top. If you don't go Linux, it's free and you can use it on low end and old PC's so what?
I am looking forward to MS Windows 7, 8, 9, and 10. If you guys don't like expensive hardware, then you got to dislike Apple too.
Posted by Arius | August 19, 2008 7:57 PM
@Arius: It's nice to know you'll be there to support anyone going to Linux. I sure can't, and I work in IT.
As to "just upgrade the hardware", easier said than done. Imagine a company with 200 Pcs that run XP fine. Now they need 1 more PC. Oops, can't buy XP anymore. They are forced to buy Vista PCs (which cost more because of better hardware), train the employees on Vista, hope the apps work on Vista. Oh darn, that machinery that CAN'T be upgraded has no Vista driver. Guess they'll just go out of business.
Or maybe they'll just pirate the damn thing. I wonder what the stats are since July on that?
Posted by Rick | August 20, 2008 2:14 PM
i love Windows 7 already xD
Posted by puppet | August 20, 2008 9:08 PM