Microsoft Submits Windows 7 for Antitrust Review 166
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has submitted the follow-up to Windows Vista to the committee that oversees its US antitrust compliance, to ensure the operating system is meeting the terms of the company's agreement with the government. According to last week's status report on the US antitrust case, Microsoft "recently supplied" the Technical Committee (TC) with a build of the OS, code-named Windows 7, and the TC will "conduct middleware-related tests on future builds" of the software. The move was revealed in papers filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Those on the TC so far are the only ones privy to what the follow-up to Vista will look like, and Microsoft is mum on details of the software. But recent company moves and revelations hint at what can be expected from the software, which is due for release in late 2009 or early 2010. Lets hope Microsoft learns some lessons from the "Vista Capable" dilemma!!"
Vista? They learned from ME but so did we. (Score:2, Insightful)
As usual, M$'s software lags hardware by five to seven years. Expect a continued messy transition to 64 bit computing that will favor Intel, the other monopoly laggart.
This is a lot like the transition from 95 to XP. How many times did Bill Gates declare the "death of DOS" or "16 bit computing"? The messy steps between included 98, NT, ME and W2K. It took that long to marginalize competing software vendors but the real cost should be measured in intentionally wasted hardware. Non free and free software competitors continued to produce technically superior software such as DRDOS, Lotus, Word Perfect, OS/2, BeOS and Apple, of course. The competitors all won the race to 32 bits by years but M$ used it's market position to shove them all aside. This is the lesson they thought they learned then.
Free software has handed M$ it's ass for 64 bit software and architecture independence. Almost as soon as there were 64 bit platforms GNU/Linux and BSD were running on it, Alpha, AMD, Intel, Sun and more exotic stuff. Lesser computers are also working. Thanks to the fantastic work of GNU it's just a compiler switch.
The problem for M$ is that we have all learned the same lesson and are sick of it. People are not going to just go along with things. They are not going to throw their hardware out again for another buggy version of Windows. Free software works all of it better now, so Windows 7 is just as dead in the water as Vista was. The industry is losing money, and their trust in M$ is gone.
Re:Vista? They learned from ME but so did we. (Score:4, Insightful)
how will they test 3rd party apps behaviour? (Score:5, Insightful)
If windows media player is able to achieve better performance through some type of black magic that other media players don't have access to, how will this be tested on a pre-release secret platform? Same with browsers, office suites, or any other MS application.
Have these copies been distributed with the complete source code so secrets can be uncovered? Even if that was the case, who would pay for the man hours to sift through millions of lines of code? Even with a full source code audit, the released binaries could be completely different anyhow.
I think the only solution to restore fair competition is massive fines that go directly to marketing and development of competing platforms. Paying consumers who have been locked into the MS trap still leaves them trapped.
You keep using that word (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:how will they test 3rd party apps behaviour? (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the scheduled slip date? (Score:3, Insightful)
So why worry about Windows 7 now? It's years away - and it'll be essentially stillborn when it finally does arrive. By then, other better alternatives will be readily available for a far, far lower price.
2009/2010? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vista? They learned from ME but so did we. (Score:3, Insightful)
>>Expect a continued messy transition to 64 bit computing that will favor Intel, the other monopoly laggart.
Vista and XP both shipped with 64 bit versions, specifically x86-64, which was developed originally by.....drumroll.....AMD! How exactly is ignoring IA64 for x86-64 favoring Intel?
>>Some nonsense about 32 bit computing
Windows 95 was 32 bit software. Maybe you mean using a protected memory model and pre-emptive multitasking(which is an operating system concept and has nothing to do with application software). Even Mac OS 9 didn't have this, and WinNT(which predates it by several years) did!
>>Free software has handed M$ it's ass for 64 bit software and architecture independence.
Guess what! Windows runs on more than x86: IA64, DEC Alpha and x86-64 come to mind as current and past platforms.
I think your point is that people don't have an incentive to buy a new computer or upgrade their operating system. You really need new killer apps to drive an upgrade cycle; lacking that, why should people upgrade?
Re:Code Names? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wrong attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leak? (Score:1, Insightful)
Ah well. Wannabe geeks who treat their OS of choice as if it were a religion are at least amusing, don't you agree?
Re:Microsoft's revenue schedule (Score:1, Insightful)
The Windows for Warships was just the first step some hacker form the out side of the usa may try to take our war systems down buy go after windows systems or by trying to trigger a NMCI / EDS lock out and no one in the navy has the admin right to fix with calling the help desk. If they can take out the help desk then they can kill navy ships at sea.
Re:Leak? (Score:3, Insightful)
this annoys me... (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing with Vista is; what it does well, it's really really good at. Windows Explorer finally does what I want it to do, and the audio mixing panel is a boon from the gods... it's just that all this is overshadowed by the stuff it doesn't do well, which is arguably not entirely Microsoft's fault.
I'd like to see what Vista would have been like if everybody kept their noses out of it during development.
Re:dupe (Score:-1, Insightful)
Hope, that's a good one.
Even if MS did, it wouldn't be accepted by the FOSSie community. They whined that Windows wasn't stable, so WinNT and Win2000 were created and instantly became the most stable OS. Then they whined that it wasn't secure, so XP and Vista were created and instantly became the most secure OS. They whined the browser wasn't good enough, so IE7 was released and instantly became the best browser on the market. And yet... none of it was good enough for the FOSSies, people who worship an OS with a sub-1% market share.
The only thing that would please teh FOSSies is if MS disolved their corporation, gave all their money to Richard Stallman, destroyed all their buildings (with their workers in it), and gave all their source code to Teh Lunis so he can finally figure out how to fix Teh Lunix. Anything less will never please Teh FOSSies... which is exactly why nobody at MS should be listening to Lunix users.
Re:Does it matter any more? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup, market will choose a better solution. But it takes sooooooooo looooooooong. :/
Re:Leak? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of people are hoping that Vista was just a stopgap and windows 7 will have all the cool stuff promised (virtual registry, WinFS and other stuff I'm sure other people can remember)