“Imagine this. One of the world’s most powerful monopolies puts 10,000 people to work for five years to create one new product. And nobody is really sure if anyone wants it,” Dean Takahashi reports for The San Jose Mercury News. “How’s that for a gamble?”
“That’s what we have with Windows Vista, the new computer-operating system from Microsoft that debuted last week for businesses and, next month, for consumers,” Takahashi reports.
Takahashi reports, “Already experts are predicting Vista may be the last of its kind. Obsolete before it’s out the door? Geez, we haven’t even had a chance to open our wallets yet.”
“BusinessWeek estimates it took 10,000 employees about five years to ship Vista,” Takahashi reports. “So many things went wrong with the building of Vista that it’s hard to know where it all started. The original code name was Longhorn, kicked off in 2001 after Windows XP shipped.”
“The company tried to pioneer on a lot of fronts, trying to change the code language used to write the operating system and fiddling with the basic file system the software uses as its foundation,” Takahashi reports. “It pondered many ideas for 3-D interfaces that would help users navigate the computer more easily. Not everything worked. After a few years, the company aimed lower.”
Takahashi reports, “I’ve been playing around with the test version of Vista. It appears to accomplish things we ought to take for granted: better reliability, compatibility, security, search capability and task management. That said, it doesn’t feel like a product that is the fruit of 10,000 brilliant minds and $10 billion in resources.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve been accomplishing things and taking for granted better reliability, compatibility, security, search capability, task management, and much, much more for over half a decade now.
Get a sneak peek Apple’s next Mac OS X, Leopard, here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/
Related MacDailyNews articles:
InformationWeek: Now that Vista is the past, let’s look at the future: Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard – December 02, 2006
Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Office 2007 releases generate yawns – December 02, 2006
Dave Winer: ‘Microsoft isn’t an innovator, and never was – they are always playing catch-up’ – December 01, 2006
Microsoft’s Windows Vista vulnerable to malware from 2004 – November 30, 2006
Microsoft Windows Vista developers used Apple Macs for inspiration – November 27, 2006
Microsoft’s Windows Vista is basically Microsoft’s version of Mac OS 9.3 – October 11, 2006
Microsoft Windows Vista: If you can’t innovate… try to impersonate Apple’s Mac OS X – August 10, 2006
Ballmer: I’m Microsoft’s ‘primary champion of innovation’ – July 27, 2006
Microsoft botches another copy job: Windows Vista Flip3D vs. Apple Mac OS X Exposé – June 26, 2006
Windows Vista rips-off Mac OS X at great hardware cost (and Apple gains in the end) – June 13, 2006
Computerworld: Microsoft Windows Vista a distant second-best to Apple Mac OS X – June 02, 2006
Thurrott: Microsoft going to get eaten alive over Windows Vista’s resemblance to Apple’s Mac OS X – March 09, 2006
NY Times’ Pogue on Gates’ CES demo: Most of Vista features unadulterated ripoffs from Apple Mac OS X – January 05, 2006
Analyst: Windows Vista may still impress many consumers because they have not seen Apple’s Mac OS X – January 05, 2006
Apple’s talent and innovation vs. Microsoft’s hype – October 25, 2005
Microsoft’s Windows Vista strives to deliver what Apple’s Mac OS X already offers – October 10, 2005
Thurrott: many of Windows Vista’s upcoming features appeared first in Apple’s Mac OS X – September 26, 2005
Microsoft’s Ballmer: It’s true, some of Windows Vista’s features are ‘kissing cousins’ to Mac OS X – September 18, 2005
PC World: Microsoft innovation – an oxymoron – September 14, 2005
As usual, Apple leads, Microsoft tries to follow – June 02, 2005
eWEEK Editor Coursey: Longhorn so far ‘looks shockingly like a Macintosh’ – April 25, 2005
Due in late 2006, many of Windows Longhorn’s features have been in Mac OS X since 2001 – April 25, 2005
Microsoft’s new mantra: ‘It Just Works’ ripped straight from Apple’s ‘Switch’ campaign – April 22, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Microsoft’s Longhorn: ‘They are shamelessly copying us’ – April 21, 2005
Microsoft’s Windows Longhorn will bear more than just a passing resemblance to Apple’s Mac OS X – April 15, 2005
Steve Jobs: Microsoft copied original Apple Mac with Windows 95, now they’re copying us again – February 08, 2005
Where Apple leads, Wintel follows years later – January 31, 2005
Novell CEO: ‘Microsoft sucked $60 billion out of IT industry that could have used for innovation’ – September 13, 2004
Apple CEO Steve Jobs: Mac OS X Tiger ‘is going to drive the copycats crazy – June 28, 2004
PC Magazine: Microsoft ‘Longhorn’ preview shows ‘an Apple look’ – May 06, 2004
Charles Arthur: Microsoft’s definition of ‘innovation’ different from everyone else’s – April 27, 2004
Windows ‘Longhorn’ to add translucent windows that ripple and shrink by 2005 – May 19, 2003
“BusinessWeek estimates it took 10,000 employees about five years to ship Vista,”
More like 10,000 maniacs…because you had to be to crazy enough to do this.
Unfortunately too many people will end up using Vista because they are forced to do so at work…
Luckily the tide is turning to OS X…
It would be nice to get this quarter’s market share at 6.5-7% to keep the momentum…
..and all 10,000 had a Mac in front of them to show them what to aim for.
Microsoft = tax collection.
Wow, I didn’t see this coming…
Everything that rolls off the assembly line, whether from Microsoft or Apple or anyone else is already obsolete.
Nature of the beast.
The brutal truth. The reign of Microsoft has topped and it is all down from here. Good riddance to these cyber schlockmeisters.
” yawn “
why waste your time on a lemon, when you can have an Apple.
Fools! Vista is the greatest ever! Very Impressive System To All!
January 30, 2007. Welcome to the Social.
Infomercials, don’t bet on it. I’ll wager my 25¢ that Windows XP outsells Vista in calendar 2007 (and remember Vista will be available for the entire year).
“It appears to accomplish things we ought to take for granted: better reliability, compatibility, security, search capability and task management.”
Now if windoze had actually accomplished those things, it would have been exciting indeed. New vista viruses, susceptible to malware dating back to 2004….it looks like we will have to wait another 5 years.
Unlikely. MS will likely stop selling XP once Vista is out there.
An average of 95 dollars an hour per employee for the last 5 years: 22 working days a month, 12 months a year, 5 years by 10,000 employees.
A million dollar per person or 200,000 dollars average each a year. That is some 100 MacBook Pros 15″ a yer per person.
I wnat mine!
MW: thats. Like in a lot of money bad spent…
“Fools! Vista is the greatest ever! Very Impressive System To All!
January 30, 2007. Welcome to the Social.”
. . . who let the idiot into the room?
well, the answer to joeldm when he asks “. . . who let the idiot into the room?” probably is: another idiot,i presume.
Now seriously, obsolete or not, Vista will rule marketshare. Time, as always, will tell.
Yes, Vista is D.O.A. Microsoft should have euthanized NT years ago.
Vista has already failed in the security department so I would say mission accomplished. Vista is already a complete failure, congradulations Microsoft.
just basic thing. why is it not easy to install like mac os x? for usual users want simple less errors, want OS to work without stress. I installed vista last night with Parallels. it took two hours to comlete. then I tried to get access. it denied because admin password was not correct. it’s funny. why? I didn’t even set up for admin user name, password beore. even during installation process, it never asked or showed it. I ended up with erasing all. vista is just sucks. don’t use this crap.
Ten billion dollars?! That’s chump change for Microsoft. As much as I hate to admit it, Microsoft will make that money back in a year selling Vista. Too bad for Vista users; however, being stuck with Longhorn-Light.
Frankly, I feel sorry for all those Microsoft employees. Certainly there are very talented people there, wanting to do good work. But they’ve been “emballmered”.
Maybe Apple won’t need those TOP SECRET features after all…
January 30, 2007. Welcome to the Suck…
I work for a large Amaerican based international engineering company and we still use Windows 2000 company wide. We are only now starting to migrate to Windows XP. Because we have a large IT department who maintain all our PCs Windows 2000 has actually been very stable and capable. Windows XP does not really offer anything new that we need but they are slowly moving to it anyway. Vista is 10 years away from us implementing it.
May be next big thing for MS will be Win64 API for MacOSX
10,000 minds, even brilliant ones, still equals too many cooks in the kitchen
It is unlikely that Microsoft would stop selling XP to force users to purchase Vista. Microsoft is all about choice and selling as much Microsoft crap as it possible can.