The doctors and technicians called it at 1:00pm on June 23rd 2006. The critically acclaimed, technological marvel known as WinFS passed on. It was truly a sad day.
I posted this link to an email forum that I’m on and it generated the obvious question ‘From a business perspective, why will a company want to upgrade from XP? What business advantage does Vista offer?’
I posted the response below and it generated an off list request for me to blog it. So let’s talk about the blogging thing.
I just can’t get into it. Sorry. I tried. With the email lists, I can get back instant feedback on a topic and real, meaningful discussion will often occur. I find these discussions enlightening. Over a good number of years now, I have learned copious amounts of technical information, as well as political, cultural and various other ‘als’, in this format and I value it.
Blogs and Forums just don’t deliver the same way email delivers. So any posts here (I took down my personal blog) will be informative stuff like this, and I suspect they will be rare occurrences.
So that said, the answer I posted (with some minor edits).
Business will upgrade because they are locked into software assurance licensing agreements. OEM will support it because they are obligated under contract to ship current Windows versions. There is no compelling reason to purchase outright a Windows Vista upgrade for almost all businesses and the majority of consumers.
For the first time ever a company is releasing an operating system where the primary design goals benefit someone other than the computers owner. The only new technology in Windows Vista that survived the toppling of the three pillars is the secure kernel architecture designed to enable DRM.
Windows Vista will ship with technologies called the 'protected process' and the 'trusted installer'. These two technologies are designed for the media industry. They create a segment of your computer that you cannot tamper with. The architectural changes left in Vista are the only 'features' of the Longhorn era to see the light of day.
Vista, to be as blunt as possible, is not being built for consumers or businesses. It's being built so Microsoft and Verizon can make money selling you movies.
For almost 2 years, I've asked every Microsoft employee that I can find involved with Vista the 'my mom' question. It goes like this, "In one simple statement tell me why my mom should run Windows Vista over Windows XP".
I have never gotten a honest answer, which is fair; it's a loaded question.
Anyone familiar with Vista knows that outside of some new eye candy and the DRM kernel mods there is no beef on the Vista bone. On a personal note, IMO the eye candy is pathetic compared to the now aging visuals included with Mac OS 10.x.
Don't get me wrong. The work they did on the new video API and audio API is amazing stuff that really revolutionizes some things in OS architectures. But these changes are completely transparent to the end user and don't provide any immediate compelling benefit. Again, the only thing the changes enable is DRM - you need application specific audio and video channels if certain applications are going to be encrypted and will be required to run under a special process model.
The 'benefit' to the end user that Microsoft is selling is "per-app mixing", the ability to set one applications volume different than another applications volume. Per-app mixing is weak. In fact it is an absurd reason to perform a major reimplementation of critical subsystems in an operating system of any scope, much less one as large as Windows. Now call me crazy, but I don't get the feeling the 'my mom' crowd is out there clamoring and begging to get per-app mixing onto their computer.
The stock answers I get from Microsoft to the ‘my mom’ question are "it's more secure" and "it's a platform for future technologies". These are half truths.
What Microsoft really means is Windows Vista is secure from the threats presented by the consumer to content owners and that it provides a platform for digital distribution.
Microsoft really missed the mark. They had a innovated vision that would propel the next generation of personal computing technology into the mainstream. The three tier stack of Avalon, WinFS and Indigo were compelling and forward thinking. The watered down version of Indigo, the poorly performing and *unused by Vista* Avalon stack and the complete evisceration of the relational file system are a complete about face from that original vision.
Why they 86'd that plan and decided to get into the movie distribution business is beyond me.
So that's my nickels worth. IMO if you don't care about having licensed high definition audio and video running on your computer, then Vista doesn't provide you with any benefit; business or consumer.
That was my post. Now for something else that is getting under my craw…
It’s that friggen date. It just seems way to coincidental for a post like this to go live at 1:00pm without foresight and planning. Now go read the previous post.
So as early as a few days prior Microsoft was hyping WinFS with sessions and classes at TechEd. They were energizing a base of hard core developers about a technology they knew would never see the light of day. It’s this behavior that has pitted me against myself when it comes to Microsoft.
Our relationship is now love-hate. I love Office, Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Windows XP. I hate the company, the decisions they make and the way the conduct business. I hate the way they treat me as a developer and an enthusiast about their products.
It is simply misleading and wrong, and it flies in the face of transparency (remember that MS buzzword) to do things like they have done. It’s sad really. That arrogance and disrespect for ethics and honesty will cripple a great company.
I have no options. There are too many benefits to sticking with tools like Visual Studio and the CLR to do something radical like switch to Linux and start programming Java. But I would if they presented a viable option and I never thought I would make a statement like that.
WinFS was the nail in the coffin for Microsoft and I. They are no longer a company I respect and revere. They are now someone I have to watch out for and be weary of. They have lied to me one too many times.
Watch out Microsoft, Google understands the consumer whom you so arrogantly abuse.