Is Vista dead in the water?
Blogger and Microsoft pundit Mary Jo Foley has suggested that the renewed Windows 7 speculation may be more due to a desire by computer manufacturers to have new software, and the new marketing support that comes with it, ready for the generally lucrative holiday shopping season. But a still more higher-level reason could be at work.
Cherry disagrees with the whole premise of "promising" releases by a certain date, saying it only leads to trouble. "Microsoft shouldn't be promising when it will be done," he told BetaNews. Such promises have already gotten the company into trouble with Vista at the very beginning, he said, as it was more than two years past its initial promised date.
Plus, he said, since Vista was billed as a major release, Microsoft shouldn't be following it up with another major release so soon. "A major/minor release pattern is good," he added.
Gartner seems to be suggesting such a resolution to Microsoft's conundrum. It calls for radical change, something consultant Stowe Boyd of /Message seems to agree with. Boyd doesn't hold much hope for it, however.
"I just doubt that Microsoft has the resolve to build a new OS, breaking the tie to Windows, which is really what is needed," Boyd told us. "In the meantime, anticipate an increasing defection to Mac OS X and Linux."
The question still remains, is Vista really collapsing? Perhaps not. It could be argued that Microsoft has just failed to develop the OS' value proposition enough. With the early problems, such as a definitive lack of supporting drivers and its technical difficulties early on -- not to mention the whole "Vista Capable" debacle -- that job has been made much harder.
Some will argue that the security enhancements included within Vista are reason enough to make the jump. Several have argued that these enhancements resolve one of the key problems within Windows overall in recent memory: its seemingly neverending list of security problems.
In fact, Cherry told BetaNews that when he first started urging his clients to upgrade, User Account Control (although annoying at times) was a major factor. Not allowing everything to run under administrative privileges closes a great deal of those holes.
He still stands by his support, even though like Gartner, he is also now advising a hardware upgrade path to Vista adoption.
But some of these much needed changes have come at a cost. While the marketing of Vista calls it "agile," most likely many don't perceive it as such when a UAC dialog seems to appear on their screen every few minutes.
It is with Windows' treatment of the "standard user" with UAC that Microsoft may need to improve most for Windows 7. Take out these perceived shortcomings, and things could get back on track.
"I don't envision Windows 7 is going to be drastic," Cherry said. "Although the first clue as to whether it will be a major release is PDC."
Cherry's referring to the company's next Professional Developer's Conference, currently scheduled for late October. Quite possibly at that point we will find out what Redmond's next steps will be, and whether Vista is indeed the lame duck that some have made it out to be.