What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.182 Comments
- Vanadium, on 10/12/2007, -5/+47Nowhere in the email from Kevin Johnson does it say anything about a vista re-write. This is still a very interesting article however detailing all of the management changes that are taking place within the executive team at Microsoft.
- dongiaconia, on 10/12/2007, -4/+37Which would work REALLY well [sarcasm] with all the myriad device drivers that need to be supported to work in non-apple hardware. One of the greatest reasons for Apple software to run so efficiently and robust is because they know the target hardware at design time, and base the software optimizations around that.
Running OSX on non-apple systems would require a lot more legacy code needed for older devices, and support for all the current devices and configurations possible for PCs. Licensing OSX out to non-apple hardware would destroy the efficiency and reliability of the operating system. I prefer OSX to windows, but for what Microsoft has to support, they do a pretty decent job. Where I feel they completely fail is in terms of security, and from what I have seen, this issue is seriously addressed in Vista. But that's just my opinion... - bobertfishbone, on 10/12/2007, -6/+27Which will come out first? DNF or Vista?
- ThankTheCheese, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23Windows Vista had better be the best friggin' OS in the history of the world after all this waiting.
- Wiggles2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19"I think Microsoft should start buying baboons instead of paying their programmers, baboons would for sure make less mistakes."
That's FEWER mistakes, baboon-boy =D - Writher, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Actually, they are REMOVING technologies (EFI , .NET code, etc) as it gets closer and closer to the expected release date.
- spling, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21That's ridiculous! Baboons can hardly even type.
- mfearby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16But it ain't gonna be, that's the problem. I've used the second beta and it's GOD AWFUL. The one thing in Windows that I use the most - the file browsers - are so frigged-up and horrible that I'm going to end up being a Windows XP hold-out until I either lower myself to Vista or Son Of Vista or switch to Linux. I cannot use an operating system that offers me a cutesy, dumbed-down, mega-bloated file browser. Hec, I'd even consider Mac OS X on Intel if Apple ever grew a brain and decided to relent to the millions of people dreaming about using their OS without having to pay a fortune for their hardware.
Case in point: the new Vista file browser highlights the entire row when you select a file in details view, yet, I can still click anywhere in the highlighted area (not on the file name itself) to begin drawing a box to select more files. This is so frigged-up that it will confuse people even more: "why won't the file drag? I'm dragging on the blue highlighted area?! What gives?"
Another case in point: most Windows do not have a visibly-discernible control-menu-box (you know, the one in the top left corner). If you click there, you still get the control-menu, but you just can't see that one is there, unless you know to look there. This is also extremely dumb, Microsoft!
Please, Microsoft, give us an option to make everything look like classic, normal, Windows 98/2K/XP! Making life difficult by turning decade-old paradigms on their heads is no way to engender enthusiasm for an upgrade - or even to encourage people to stick with your platform if you back them into a corner such that they'll start considering even the most poorly-put-together Linux distribution!
I need a new exclamation mark key on my keyboard, now... Microsoft is making me so angry with this Vista crap!!!!!!! - drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17Vista 2008? They are still 9 months out from Jan but with 60% rewritten, oh man its gonna be another year on top of that.
- Kazrog, on 10/12/2007, -10/+21Microsoft is losing its foothold very quickly. This is a great opportunity for Apple to leap even farther ahead with 10.5. It's time to burn the empire down!
- MarcTheLad, on 10/12/2007, -13/+24I invite you to read Raymond Chen's blog http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/
He's a senior Win32 engineer at Microsoft, and one of the most well known software developers in the industry. He basically is responsible for making sure that every piece of software will work between major updates of the OS, among other things.
Anyway, it seems like a bunch of Diggers lack computer science knowledge and love Apple. - DigitalDud, on 10/12/2007, -15/+24Yeah the article is full of *****. Just another clueless journalist reporting on things he doesn't understand. It would take a decade or more to rewrite all that code not to the mention the whole idea is absolutely ridiculous in itself.
- funkytaco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Unless you were a fan of Windows 95, I suggest you wait for the first service pack for Windows Vista before you buy it.
- grogan, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14Article headline is completely inaccurate. The article does not mention a rewrite of the Vista code beyond the headline, and this would be completely impossible in 9 months. Windows Vista is the largest software project ever attempted, and so almost all of the time is spent debugging, not actually writing new code.
As far as I know, Windows Vista is the largest software project (in terms of lines of code and man-hours) ever attempted. No one knows how to control development of something this large. OSX and Unix are much, much smaller, so it's much easier to produce updates. Apple couldn't even produce their own OS from the ground up.
The engineers in Windows at Microsoft are some of the best in the world. It's not their fault, it's the management there that has been consistently asking far too much of them. Take a look at http://minimsft.blogspot.com for more on that. - DEFSMAC, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1260% seems a bit high. 6% maybe would be possible. they did do a complete rewrite of directX for directX10 though. so who knows what they are doing.
- statmobile, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Um, where the heck does 60% show up in the article? Searching the text for "six" and "60" only show references to that number in the title and in the author's comments at the beginning.
The only real meat in the article seems to be the memo where they discuss new business strategies for the upcoming release, and future development. It's all just business jargon talking about how much they want to stress digital media. Sounds like a good idea, if Microsoft starts getting real involved with online media we'll have someone compete with itunes. Being a linux and OS X user myself, I just hope I can get in on that kind of fun. - GotGoose, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I can imagine what happened:
Boss: "Guys, it has come to my attention that our code isn't high quality. We're going to have to redo a lot. I figure around 60%, is that too much?"
Programmers: (jaw dropped, eyes gazing)
Boss: "OK, get to work" (smile on face)
But, 60% is Entertainment? - elpayo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9"In an effort to meet a dealine of the 2007 CES show in Las Vegas Microsoft has pulled programmers from the highly succesful Xbox team to help resolve many problems associated with entertainment and media centre functionality inside the OS."
Is Media Center 60% fo the Vista code? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7More quotes from Microsoft employees here: http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03/vista-2007-fire-leadership-now.html
--------------------------------------------------------------
(It's not like anyone really cares about appcompat - who cares if customers' 3rd party apps (and especially MS apps) really don't work that well on this new fustercluck.
Client application compatability % hovering at less than 40% (GASP - INTERNAL INFO... better moderate this one out!!!!)
Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again What do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs...
...
This is simply another example that the top-down "quality" process put into place during Vista development was a hideous mistake.
Quality has gone down, not up, since the emphasis was changed from individual developer accountability to heavy-handed process initatives that allow little time for real work on improving quality.
...
hi there, nice blog. Today's announcement is of course no surprise to anyone inside MS. The only surprise is that it was such a short delay announced.
Basically we do not believe Vista will make January 2007 or even March 2007. Anyone with any access knows what a frankenstein's monster NT is on the inside. At some point there is a law of diminishing returns trying to do anything to it at all, it seems like that limit is being reached today. The release is pushed back because of bugs but fixing those bugs will create more bugs. It is just godawful to be honest. And the process gets in the way at every step.
At some point we will have to do something and i know at least some in my team privately agree with me. We will have to throw out everything and start again. This is what Apple did with OSX, and sure it was painful, but it worked and now they're kicking our asses. We should have done that in 2000. Now it is even more obvious we should do it. Start again and just run a compatibility layer on top. Apple did it with classic why can't we???
IF we manage to ship vista at ALL then it is a miracle and the absolute last rev we can possible do working like this. It is insane the manhours wasted rearranging a house of cards. We need to START AGAIN PEOPLE.
I honestly do not believe we can ship another OS in this way. Either we do an OSX or Vista is the end of the line, YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE!!!
And BTW mini PLEASE enable https on your comments page. You would have to be nuts to post here from inside the network via plain http. Anyone else wants to do it, do what i do, email the comment (encrypted) to a friend and get him to post it. Anyone who thinks SMG doesn't have a filter looking at anything to or from minimsft is kidding themselves.
...
I worked my ass off at Microsoft making it BILLIONS along the way. I am being paid fairly for my work and intend to enjoy it.
I was hoping to bring a Vista tablet, and use media center to power my 60" runco plasma, but for the first time in my career, I am seriously contemplating powering my life and home with Apple products.
...
What's the difference between OS X and Vista?
Microsoft employees are excited about OS X... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8"Exactly. My friend is an 'internal' person at Microsoft. He's on the development team for Vista, and he says that this is crap. Stupid journalists... this is worse than that Nintendo DS story."
Well no offense, but this article also cites an internal person at Microsoft. - pabster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+660%? Come on. If that's REALLY the case, we'd be looking at Vista 2010, which I highly doubt.
That said, I would not be surprised if LARGE sections of Vista code WERE rewritten. Anyone who has taken a look at the RAM requirements for a fresh Vista install can see that some serious optimization needs to be done.
In these days of $299 desktop PC's, Vista's ridiculous (read: gargantuan) hardware requirements will be suicide for the "average Joe" market.
And guys, quit complaining about Apple fanboys. I think they balance out nicely with the plethora of Linux and Microsoft fanboys we've got here. - starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5>Warning: The Content in this Article is Under Review
geez. this stuff is going to kill digg. if religions post we hammer it. if you post something against microsoft it gets reported. apple... reported.... i guess the bottom line is we really want digg to have editors... - alevel27mage, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11Exactly. My friend is an 'internal' person at Microsoft. He's on the development team for Vista, and he says that this is crap. Stupid journalists... this is worse than that Nintendo DS story.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"Case in point: the new Vista file browser highlights the entire row when you select a file in details view, yet, I can still click anywhere in the highlighted area (not on the file name itself) to begin drawing a box to select more files. This is so frigged-up that it will confuse people even more: "why won't the file drag? I'm dragging on the blue highlighted area?! What gives?"
Interesting, that's OS X's behavior in the Finder. To drag a file, you have to drag from the file's name. Dragging from empty space in the highlighted row will select other rows the cursor passes over. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Vista is based off Windows Sever 2003, right?
- starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7>n't get me wrong I love OS X (I own an iBook), but what does this have to do with the article?
i think they are just offering microsoft some advice. a way to turn it around. dump windows and just stick to making office and stuff... xbox. stuff they seem to be ok at. or at least they don't suck at it. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4>When was the last time you ever heard something like-
>" (software company) releases product 6 months early."
>Wow, that would be nice for a change.
WELL.... Something does come to mind now that you mention it..
"Apple's Jaguar leaps ahead of schedule for early release"
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-941394.html
"Apple ships Intel-equipped iMacs early"
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=9662381 - wilf_brim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Zoinks, Shag. I doubt that they have to rewrite 60% of the code. Given the millions of lines of code in the OS, a 60% rewrite would take years, not months. Forget 2007, try 2009.
Nonetheless, it looks like Vista (along with Microsoft) is in big trouble. If they don't get this under control most riki tic, it is going to cost the company (and the shareholders) billions. - giggins, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I'm not much of a Microsoft fan but it's actually kinda nice to see Microsoft working hard on Vista. They are trying not to make the same mistakes as *insert windows version here*. I just hope this delay is for the better.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3And NOW we find out that Office 2007 is DELAYED as well. Things are falling to peices at Microsoft. I would be very pissed if I was a shareholder or employee in the way that company is being run.
"The delay in Windows Vista will affect the next version of Office, too. Microsoft said Thursday it will put off the consumer release of Office 2007 so it is in line with the new release schedule for Vista."
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/03/23/76769_HNofficevistadelay_1.html - starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3>hen was the last time you ever heard something like-
>" (software company) releases product 6 months early."
i think it was apple in january... - ryogahibiki, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4If this is true, I'm definitely waiting until at least service pack 1 before I use Vista.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3>It does, on the other hand, say that it's pulled a rather large group of people from the xbox development
>team, which is really cool.
I guess one man's cool, is what appears to another as an act of total desperation. - mckinnej, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Well no offense, but this article also cites an internal person at Microsoft."
That could be a secretary in HR. Without a better definition of "internal person," there is no way we can evaluate the credibility of the author's source.
Having done some programming back in the day, I can tell you that this story is either bunk, or very misleading. They may be rewriting 60% of some portion of the OS, but not the whole OS. Since Windows is made up of several million lines of code, an effort to rewrite 60% of it would take years. Of course, this could also be a partial truth. The source may be talking about a version of Windows that is years down the road and the author put his own spin on that. All in all, it's too vague to be trustworthy. It's worthy of the Weekly World News and that's about it. No digg. - leftfoot, on 10/12/2007, -24/+27They REALLY should rewrite from the ground up, but they are being considerate enough to rewrite this much anyway.
+digg - ctheory, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I agree with vanadium. The article says nothing about a re-write of vista. It does, on the other hand, say that it's pulled a rather large group of people from the xbox development team, which is really cool.
Like someone else said, they should have redone it from the ground up. I don't understand, from a business perspective, why they didn't do it. They've got the resources, financially, and everyone knows that money talks, BS walks, which also means you can usually pull just about every "best" programmer around into working on it.
Really, the fact that they didn't do that since XP was released is a big...kick in the chest from a company that won't shut up about innovation. Innovation isn't about releasing a new browser every year or anything of the sort - innovation doesn't necessarily have a release schedule, it's based on creativity. Innovation isn't upgrading the last kernel of windows that you sold years ago, it's rebuilding and starting over with new focus. Great job Microsoft, you've done nothing truly innovative this time around, which sucks. I had big, big hopes for vista.
PS - If vista takes a 100mb commit charge for explorer.exe, that's retarded. I saw screen caps with resource usage and it was outrageous. This coming from a strictly windows user, and not-so-much a fan anymore. Christ...that kind of money and those resources, going to waste. - jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yah milo, OS X is just a nice GUI to a rip of a Unix back-end. THAT took them 7 or whatever years to come up with, and OS X was screwy at the start to be sure. As for your wrong ideas about what Vista is, well, whatever, I don't know how to convince you it isn't, since neither of us has the source code to both.
- Lynxpro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5
I wonder what it would take to get Microsoft to license a port of DirectX over for OS X... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Okay, now honestly. 60%? That is pretty much the whole damned thing minus solitare and outlook express. Here's an idea. Take Unix. Create pretty GUI. Use prexisiting MS Unix compatible software. Now you have a rock solid OS, short development lead times and no more blue screens. Didn't a company from Cupertino pull this off?
- jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3People who created accounts in the last 2 hours shouldn't be allowed to rate comments or articles or probably even post. Whenever there's a frontpage article that deals with wacky Scientologists or Mormons, I see a flood of posts from people with accounts with no other diggs or comments except that one story.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Vista is apparently DISASTER...Read here what Microsoft employees say is going on there.
Read the blog where the Microsofties hang out:
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03/vista-2007-fire-leadership-now.html
Some Choice Quotes:
---------------------------------------
Vista is the biggest software development failure of all time, outside of the federal government. What's the cost of Vista to date? Five, six billion in direct costs, and maybe another hundred in opportunity costs?
...
Being a 10 year vet I feel ashamed and sad. This company is a mess on so many levels.
...
Vista is a disaster. The "reset" you mention is nothing less than a FAILURE to SHIP. What you're working on now isn't Longhorn, it's SP4. Don't kid yourself.
If you want to salvage your career, flee to Office, or better yet, get the heck out of the company before it all collapses.
...
Is this what Windows has become? An upgrade no one wants, forced upon them because the new hardware they're buying doesn't support anything less?
Compare this to OS X, where people fall all over themselves trying to get the newest version running on their old hardware because there's actual value in the new features.
So Vista has its guts ripped out, slips, and we wait another 5 years for a potentially insipring version of Windows, meanwhile Apple ships another 3 updates to OS X.
I hope to God Office 12 steps up and kicks some ass.
...
(It's not like anyone really cares about appcompat - who cares if customers' 3rd party apps (and especially MS apps) really don't work that well on this new fustercluck. - idntunknwn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6isepic, I think you're the one who needs to read the article closer. The headline mentions 60% code rewrites, but then the article only talks about "problems associated with entertainment and media centre functionality inside the OS". There is *absolutely* no way that "entertainment and media centre functionality" is 60% of the Windows Vista code.
The article also talks about "major problems in [Microsoft's] Windows division". However, if you read the memo at the end, the memo doesn't suggest that there are any "major problems" at all. It only seems that way once you put spin on it.
I personally think that this article is sensationalist BS. - drilldown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The only question I sent: Will IE7 be compatible on older/other systems? Gramps is used to IE on Win98.
You can bet the "60%" refers to security after buying out a hacking/security specialist company and finally listening to their screaming. It'll deal with rootkit and filesharing system takeovers by hackers through sharing coding with vulnerabilities and a balancing act with the music/video industry in DRM (Digital Rights Management)
I'm just interested in one thing. Is their web browser going to stay in the competition. NEVER spellcheck anything in IE7/Beta2 on DIGG. It just got uglier than usual. - Burns, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The word "scrambles" tells me to back off of this for atleast a year
- DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yogurth, that is very similar to my experience with it. Except instead of explorer crashing every 5 minutes, the system was rebooting every 5 minutes.
- Yogurth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Well For what it's worth, I was running Vista 5308 for a week to test it out and see what is new, how is Vista's performace...etc. It was to my grave disapointment that I found out that work in Vista is almost impossible.
Unfortunately the performace was so appaling that I believe there was no way of optimizing that code, and I understand the move to rewrite part of it...there was simply no alternative if MS wants to sell Vista at all.
That said MS is going for yet another delay and task of this proportions can't be done in 8 months even with new xBox team working on it, since they will need time to familiarize themselves with the code and that by itself is a huge task, not to mention how big of a task is rewriting an OS.
Good Luck MS, You'll need it with all these wrong decision during Vista development cycle! - vvvv, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The article states that Microsoft has pulled programmers from the xbox development team to work on Vista. I assume this is because at present Vista code does not do a good enough job of inducing hardware to scratch up DVDs.
- cosmovi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Isn't Kevin Johnson an ex-basketball player who is now involved in charity work? What the hell is he doing working at MS?
- cheapdaddy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If there's any buffer overrun problems with any Vista subsystem, we're dropping back to XP. If they try to convert to a subscription based Windows Live! it's on to Linux.
- Jetfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Didn't they do a Total rewrite last year when they switched managers. I remember reading about how they started to do almost real time bugchecking instead of waiting until it was done. Plus how can they release a coporate version this year if their doing a rewrite.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 177 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is