Microsoft has tried its best to be as hush-hush as it can be about the forthcoming Windows 7. We know little about its features, nor its delivery date. Why the secrecy? Most importantly, Microsoft doesn’t want a repeat of all the criticism it got for Vista. The theory goes that Microsoft said too much, too early about Vista and consequently set expectations too high–both internally to the company and its customers and too-low for its partners.
So this time around, according to Windows lead Steven Sinofsky on his Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsoft is keeping things under wraps and working with select partners rather than a larger pool of users and developers. Once they get it right, they’ll start releasing things to the public.
And we’re getting closer to that point. Next week, a community build of Windows 7 will be released to PDC attendees. We haven’t heard yet if the build will be under NDA, a la Apple style, but given that nothing’s been said to this point I can’t imagine that would be the case.
So expect the Windows 7 features lists to start cropping up across the blogosphere. Poeple will want to know what’s new. Actually, we may not know though. The build to be released at PDC is said to be more like a technology preview than a real beta. So it probably won’t be feature complete. Who knows, it may look exactly like Vista with a few twists here and there. Then again…
Now we do already know that there’s some form of multi-touch to be supported in Windows 7, though we have no idea how far Microsoft is taking this concept. Earlier this year Microsoft demoed some custom apps and Microsoft Paint using multi-touch. And the online PDC agenda speaks of “multi-touch gestures.” But what all this means, we’ll have to see.
What’s kind of surprised me is that despite this pending release, there’s very little chatter online about Windows 7. Yeah, Microsoft isn’t saying anything, so there’s nothing to report, but still I’m surprised. I would have thought there would be more enthusiasm.
The scarcity of information in itself, does not seem to have inspired that however. This may be in part because Microsoft has set expectations already via its statements that Windows 7 will not create undo instabilities (keep current driver models) and will address some issues in Vista. Nothing has been said by Microsoft that this is to be a knock-out, innovative product. That doesn’t appear to be the focus this time around.
I think people’s expectations are in line with this. I’ve informally been asking around and most people I know don’t seem to care one way or another about what’s in Windows 7–as long as it fixes the Vista issues they say. In other words, Microsoft doesn’t have to reach a very high innovation bar this time around. Instead it’s all about getting it to work–right out of the box.
This is all in Microsoft’s favor. Make things stable, fix up some loose ends, and keep it simple. A sustaining engineer’s dream job description if I ever heard one as well as an admins ticket to paradise.
I hang out hope though that Windows 7 will excite. Maybe there will be some amazing multi-touch demos. Maybe something about support for new, small form-factors. Maybe something about better wireless connectivity. Maybe something about better webcam support. Maybe…
So at least for this blogger, I’m eagerly awaiting what Microsoft has to show us. What do you think? Will PDC’s Windows 7 release ignite excitement?