PDC 2008: The hard job of moving on after Vista

Later during the Day 2 keynote at PDC 2008, Microsoft Senior Vice President Steven Sinofsky -- the man essentially in charge of Windows -- took a very different tack. He went for the mea culpa, stopping short of declaring the current version of Vista (SP1) as flawed, but openly accepting the notion that the RTM version was flawed so long as users and developers said it was.

"As we set out to build this release of Windows 7, we really did have to recognize the context in which we were releasing Windows 7 and in developing it, and that's in transitioning from Windows Vista," said Sinofsky frankly. "We certainly got a lot of feedback about Windows Vista at RTM."

And then he paused, for several seconds, knowing the snickers would come. He stood there and took the blows, then continued, "We got feedback from reviews, from the press, a few bloggers here and there...oh, and some commercials." Another pause, this time to a louder response.

"So as an engineering team, we had to do what engineers do, which is to build a product, you build a service, you step back and you say, 'Okay, what did we learn from that? What can we do better? What went well? How do we build on our experiences?' And that's really what all of engineering is about, building on the experiences that we share together."

Sinofsky believes Vista SP1 already is the company's answer to the problems encountered during Vista's initial release, effectively solving the two main problems of user irritation with User Account Control, and too few device drivers to cover the wide range of available hardware.

"The ecosystem is really what Windows is part of: hardware vendors, software vendors, the people that make personal computers, all the elements that really bring a PC to life for a person at the end of that PC," stated Sinofsky. "And with Windows Vista, we changed a lot of things that require a lot of work by the ecosystem: the device driver model, and so on. And with those, we really weren't ready at launch with the device drivers that we need. Today, we know that well over 95% of PCs can get all their drivers with Windows Vista, and we got into a better job of being ready up front with Windows 7."

For Sinofsky, the fact that Windows 7 does not change the system kernel to any significant degree, is perhaps its most significant benefit: "Because Windows 7 is built on the same kernel as Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, there are no changes that are going to require a reworking of that ecosystem. So all of the devices and all of the compatibility work that have gone on in the past two years of Windows Vista, will pay off with the work that we've done with Windows 7."

Microsoft has learned a valuable lesson from Windows Vista, Sinofsky said Tuesday morning. He said it adroitly, with pauses rather than words. He communicated the company's intent without stepping over that boundary that separates "We get it" from "We goofed." And that, in the end, may be the message Windows 7 has to take from this point forward: We get it. And we're moving on.