Microsoft: Vista successor may not arrive until 2011

[AppleInsider]

However well customers are taking to Windows Vista, its replacement is only in the earliest stages of development, according to a statement from Microsoft.

The Redmond, Washington-based software giant dashed hopes of an early release of Windows 7 in 2009 in an e-mail message from a company spokesperson, suggesting instead that the operating system was too far away to be ready for a commercial release next year.

"We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and expect it will take approximately 3 years to develop," said the spokesperson. "The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release."

Microsoft also dismissed notions that it was stepping up the development process for the software. The company was "confident" that businesses appreciated Vista and justified any initial hesitation in the segment by arguing that the OS was only just entering mainstream adoption and that it was typical for only a small number of companies to become early adopters of a new Windows release.

The company sold approximately 100 million copies of Vista during 2007 but did so in a much larger market that saw sales of 269 million PCs, according to research firm IDC, indicating that most PCs shipped with Windows XP or other versions of the software released before Vista.

The estimate may place Windows 7 as far away as 2011, or four years after Vista's January 2007 launch, though Microsoft is not known to have indicated whether the three-year timeframe began this year or just after the completion of Vista.

If begun in 2008, Windows 7's development time will be only slightly shorter than for its predecessor. Vista was originally intended for a 2004 introduction but encountered major code rewrites and other delays that pushed it back three years.

By contrast, Apple released Mac OS X Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger in between Microsoft's non-server OS releases and unveiled Leopard in October of last year. The next major release of Mac OS X is due to arrive within 12 to 18 months of the Leopard, according to statements by company chief executive Steve Jobs. That would put its release sometime between late this year and the spring of 2009.

[MsNly]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

"We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and expect it will take approximately 3 years to develop," said the spokesperson.

Thats a typo he said 5-10 years I believe...

[fm008]

This is good news for Apple. Pick Vista or Leopard for the next few years...what's your choice?

[internetworld7]

I mean honestly, who really believed that the airheads at Redmond, Washington were going to actually deliver an OS that was less bloated and offering a more advanced computing experience than Vista by 2009? I knew that was crap when I first heard of this several months ago. If Microsoft is saying 2011, expect 2013 or 20014 but no later than 2099.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by fm008

This is good news for Apple. Pick Vista or Leopard for the next few years...what's your choice?

Better, pick Vista or large-feline-to-be-named-at-a-later-date for the next few years after that.

[solipsism]

I don't see MS having this ready before 2013. With ding such massive rewrites instead of small upgrades to code as technology changes they will probably have to do another major rewrite like they did to Vista just to keep up. That is assuming that MS has not learned from their mistakes and will be repeating their mistakes over again.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

The next major release of Mac OS X is due to arrive within 12 to 18 months of the Leopard, according to statements by company chief executive Steve Jobs. That would put its release sometime between late this year and the spring of 2009.

So by arrive, AppleInsider means Steve will demo it and the first developer alpha/beta will be ready.

[TiAdiMundo]

The first milestone was released to key partners. So the developers are working on that for a while. 2011 wouldn't make sense IMO. Vista was the only OS so far that did not ship after 2 or 3 years after a previous version.

If Windows 7 is not planned to ship before 2010, there will be a Windows Vista R2 next year but I doubt this.

And please keep in mind that XP SP2 could be called a new version of XP, because the second Service Pack was different to previous ones and a lot of key features of Vista are now also available to XP users (like IE7, Search, Defender, .Net 3.0, Windows Mail and Photo Gallery within Windows Live).

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by addabox

Better, pick Vista or large-feline-to-be-named-at-a-later-date for the next few years after that.

Now that Mac OS X has matured I think the next name should be Cougar.

[blastfamy]

I hate to be a skeptic, but didn't Jobs get on stage to say that they were going to increase the time between OS releases? Given that, I would project leopard's successor to come out two years after Leopard. This estmate would give a late 2009 release.

It would be just in time for Apple to ship 10.7 at the same time as Windows 7! Oh the humanity!

[addabox]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Now that Mac OS X has matured I think the next name should be Cougar.

You know, it almost has to be-- they're running out of big cats, and "Lion" just seems sort of flat, for some reason. Ocelot is too esoteric, and then there's....... what? Saber tooth?

[MsNly]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Now that Mac OS X has matured I think the next name should be Cougar.

How about...

Alley Cat

or Pregnant Alley Cat

[TiAdiMundo]

Originally Posted by solipsism

I don't see MS having this ready before 2013. With ding such massive rewrites instead of small upgrades to code as technology changes they will probably have to do another major rewrite like they did to Vista just to keep up. That is assuming that MS has not learned from their mistakes and will be repeating their mistakes over again.

I really doubt that. You can see why the development of Vista took so long, it was because they wanted too much; it was a personal thing with Allchin as the director; it was caused because of the development of XP SP2 and the whole "security development lifecycle" change inside of MSFT.

They will not make the same mistakes twice now with the new Windows team.

[aplnub]

Originally Posted by TiAdiMundo

I really doubt that. You can see why the development of Vista took so long, it was because they wanted too much; it was a personal thing with Allchin as the director; it was caused because of the development of XP SP2 and the whole "security development lifecycle" change inside of MSFT.

They will not make the same mistakes twice now with the new Windows team.

You say that, but let's see. I bet they do make the same mistake. The mistake of trying to be to drastic in the changes every time a new OS is released. They should be more like Apple and develop through gradual changes instead of placing you in an environment that is totally alien. This is MS's fault, not the time between releases.

[blastfamy]

Originally Posted by TiAdiMundo

I really doubt that. You can see why the development of Vista took so long, it was because they wanted too much; it was a personal thing with Allchin as the director; it was caused because of the development of XP SP2 and the whole "security development lifecycle" change inside of MSFT.

They will not make the same mistakes twice now with the new Windows team.

It had more to do with the fact that Microsoft was trying to bolt on more to the old codebase of Windows. Adding features is one thing; but with their old codebase, stability and the new features could not coexist. Vista was delayed so many times for the rewrites of the core. The features that were cut were casualties of these rewrites. MS just didn't have time to implement these features properly.

It will, however be interesting to see what really goes into Windows 7, because I expect a deal of it to be from the original feature list of Vista (the stuff that can be practically added). Hopefully there is actually something interesting in this release besides more eye-candy and management tools.

[hmurchison]

I thought 2009 was far too optimistic for Vienna too. 2011 sounds about right and I wouldn't be surprised to see MS hit this date a lot easier than they delivered Vista.

It does dovetail nicely with what could be a 10.7 vs Windows 7 battle. It's only a few years away but I think we're just now beginning to see some serious potential in the OS Wars. I'll be interested in seeing what Apple's direction is for 10.6 and thus momentum into 10.7.

At any rate by the time both OS ship in 2011 or so they will certainly need to manage so many virtual and hard CPU threads I expect the the OS should be always responsive and we may just have the utopian's dream of fluid multitasking.

[backtomac]

This really surprises me. It's easy to bash MS, but there still is talent at MS.

However with Apple now on the verge of leveraging OSX across multiple platforms and integrating multi-touch across their product line, I don't see how they can wait till 2011 to release the next version of windows (which will presumably have these features).

Can MS afford to give Apple that big of a lead?

[coolfactor]

I think Time Machine was a first sign that the identity of OS X will be shifting away from cat names and will begin using space-related names. Maybe planets or constellations, or even concepts like warp speed.

[MsNly]

Originally Posted by coolfactor

I think Time Machine was a first sign that the identity of OS X will be shifting away from cat names and will begin using space-related names. Maybe planets or constellations, or even concepts like warp speed.

OS XI Cosmos

and have a special Carl Sagan Edition?

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by addabox

You know, it almost has to be-- they're running out of big cats, and "Lion" just seems sort of flat, for some reason. Ocelot is too esoteric, and then there's....... what? Saber tooth?

Originally Posted by addabox

You know, it almost has to be-- they're running out of big cats, and "Lion" just seems sort of flat, for some reason. Ocelot is too esoteric, and then there's....... what? Saber tooth?

According to Wikipedia they have trademarked the names Cougar and Lynx, but not Cheetah, Puma or Jaguar. Of course Puma and Jaguar already came and went.

Below is a refresher of Mac OS X release dates:

10.0 Kodiak —2000.09.13 — (1st Public Beta)
10.0 Cyan, Cheetah — 2001.03.24 — 6 months lifespan
10.1 Puma — 2001.09.21 — 11 months
10.2 Jaguar — 2002.08.22 — 14 months
10.3 Panther — 2003.10.24 — 18 months
10.4 Tiger — 2005.04.29 — 18 months
10.5 Leopard — 2007.10.27 — 3 months, so far

Of course there was NeXTSTEP between 1988 and 1996, and of course that goes back to Unix. Who know how old the oldest code is that is still in Mac OS X. I feel old!

Anyway, it seems likely that we will see a preview of 10.6 at the WWDC.

I had a joke about the last 10.x build being called Sabertooth because OS X has become "long in the tooth", but since my cougar joke didn't pan out so I'll skip it... except for this mention here.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by backtomac

This really surprises me. It's easy to bash MS, but there still is talent at MS.

However with Apple now on the verge of leveraging OSX across multiple platforms and integrating multi-touch across their product line, I don't see how they can wait till 2011 to release the next version of windows (which will presumably have these features).

Can MS afford to give Apple that big of a lead?

Yes primarily based on Apple's woeful penetration into SMB and Enterprise markets. Microsoft will coast on the new flavors of Windows 2008 server, Unified Communication and other burgeoning tech. They'll be fine.

[timothyjay2004]

Originally Posted by blastfamy

It would be just in time for Apple to ship 10.7 at the same time as Windows 7! Oh the humanity!

Battle of the 7's... interesting. For Microsoft, I honestly don't see them putting out Windows 7 honestly until late 2012. We'll see if I'm right on that. I expect them to have even more setbacks with this release. They will try to differentiate themselves and innovate on that release, to set themselves apart from Mac OS, and it will take a long time to do that, if at all.

As for Mac OS X, here is my hope. I hope that that 10.5 will be the end of Mac OS X and Apple will move forward with Mac OS XI (11) what ever they want to call it. My hope for Apple is that in that move to OS 11, they make a monumental leap forward with new innovative features, and finally implement the ZFS file system (should they not with 10.5.. here's hoping though). That's my wish for Apple in the next couple of years. I love 10.5. I think it's the best release yet, but there is always room for improvement in 10.5 though. Such as: damn it, why can't the iSub still work? it does in Vista... why can't I define what spotlight can include in it's searches through system preferences? I hate having to go to the finder and selecting search system files every time I need to locate something. It'd also be nice to have the timemachine icon in the dock to include a progress bar when it's doing backups (like roxio's toast). Stuff like that would be nice to have. But all in all, I think 10.5 is awesome and would prefer it over Vista, even if I had to use it until 2012 until Microsoft unveils the plans of their new OS, in development.

[blastfamy]

The cat names started as an internal names. When it became known on the outside, Apple started using these monikers on the retail releases. Apple will continue to release OSs under the cat names. There is really no reason to not.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by coolfactor

I think Time Machine was a first sign that the identity of OS X will be shifting away from cat names and will begin using space-related names. Maybe planets or constellations, or even concepts like warp speed.

Careful what you wish for. Most heavenly bodies have complex and boring names like Intel chip models.

In fact, there aren't very many companies that use their in-house code names in production and for marketing the way Apple does. I wonder if this was just an accident because I don't recall that happening with System 7.

We use Intel code names like Penryn and Harpertown but these are not common words and certainly not household names.

PS: Apple has already used constellations before with System 7 (in bold below)


Pre-OS X codenames that you never heard about:

System Software 6.0 — Antares, Big Deal, SixPack, Terminator
System Software 7.0 — Blue, Big Bang, M80, Pleiades
System Software 7.1 — Cube-E, Tripoli
System Software 7.5 — Mozart, Capone
System Software 7.6 — Harmony
System Software 8.0 — Tempo
System Software 8.1 — Bride of Buster, Scimitar
System Software 8.5 — Allegro
System Software 8.5.1 — The Ric Ford Release
System Software 8.6 — Veronica
System Software 9.0 — Sonata
System Software 9.0.4 — Minuet
System Software 9.1 — Fortissimo
System Software 9.2 — Moonlight
System Software 9.2.1 — Limelight
System Software 9.2.2 — LU1

[TBaggins]

Originally Posted by blastfamy

The cat names started as an internal names. When it became known on the outside, Apple started using these monikers on the retail releases. Apple will continue to release OSs under the cat names. There is really no reason to not.

Except that they're starting to run out of good cat names, anyway.

After all, who the frak wants something called Mac OS X Ocelot?

Cougar, Lynx, and Sabretooth are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head that are good. And they probably wouldn't use Sabretooth... too many easy "that OS is prehistoric!" jokes for the Windows fanbois to use.


.

[backtomac]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Yes primarily based on Apple's woeful penetration into SMB and Enterprise markets. Microsoft will coast on the new flavors of Windows 2008 server, Unified Communication and other burgeoning tech. They'll be fine.

Don't get me wrong. I not saying that they're going bankrupt.

However they are allowing Apple a huge lead in the cell phone market (where iPhone already surpasses winmobile) and likely soon in the UMPC market where Apple is expected to release products (in addition to the iPod touch).

Could be a repeat of iPod vs Zune where MS was so late to the game they're irrelevant.

[TBaggins]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Now that Mac OS X has matured, I think the next name should be Cougar.

Flawless victory by Solipism. Finish him!






.

[daniel84]

They should start naming their OS releases after the planets in our solar system. That'll keep them going for a few generations.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by TBaggins

:Flawless victory by Solipism. Finish him!

Thanks.

Originally Posted by daniel84

They should start naming their OS releases after the planets in our solar system. That'll keep them going for a few generations.

8?

Jupiter's moons would be excessive and they some good names. The Galilean moons come to mind: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. With Io being a excellent name sense it also means Input/Output.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by backtomac

Don't get me wrong. I not saying that they're going bankrupt.

However they are allowing Apple a huge lead in the cell phone market (where iPhone already surpasses winmobile) and likely soon in the UMPC market where Apple is expected to release products (in addition to the iPod touch).

Could be a repeat of iPod vs Zune where MS was so late to the game they're irrelevant.

Wouldn't THAT be sweet?

You know I kind of get the sense that Apple's going to make some large steps toward some new markets. UMPC would be a step in the right direction and I'd love to see Apple create a new Business Unit that's sole goal was to focus on delivering product to SMB and Mid Market Biz customers.

Xserve, XSAN, Xserve RAID, Apple Remote Desktop, OS X Server, and more would all come under marketing and delivery control of this BU. I certainly love to see Apple do well in the consumer sector but I get tired of the stock gettng flaky because iPods didn't have a bangup quarter.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Wouldn't THAT be sweet?

You know I kind of get the sense that Apple's going to make some large steps toward some new markets. UMPC would be a step in the right direction and I'd love to see Apple create a new Business Unit that's sole goal was to focus on delivering product to SMB and Mid Market Biz customers.

Xserve, XSAN, Xserve RAID, Apple Remote Desktop, OS X Server, and more would all come under marketing and delivery control of this BU. I certainly love to see Apple do well in the consumer sector but I get tired of the stock gettng flaky because iPods didn't have a bangup quarter.

I believe MS' net profit was more than Apple's gross profit for the Q1-2008. MS may be losing a little marketshare and be hemorrhaging money in other areas but they are still very successful and too entrenched to become a Xerox anytime soon.

[satchmo]

Originally Posted by TBaggins

Except that they're starting to run out of good cat names, anyway.

Mac OS X Liger

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by solipsism

I believe MS' net profit was more than Apple's gross profit for the Q1-2008. MS may be losing a little marketshare and be hemorrhaging money in other areas but they are still very successful and too entrenched to become a Xerox anytime soon.

Indeed. In ways both companies need to learn a bit from each other.

Microsoft needs to learn how to generate the sizzle and excitement that Apple does and with Windows 7 I think they'll be a bit more secretive than they have been in the past.

Apple needs a strategy that allows them to divulge roadmap info while keeping the exciting nuggets secret for the big bang stuff. I mean come on it's not that hard to state "we're moving towards this direction" for people to at least do some cursory planning.

[TBaggins]

Originally Posted by satchmo

Mac OS X Liger

God I love Napoleon Dynamite.





.

[timothyjay2004]

Originally Posted by TBaggins

God I love Napoleon Dynamite.





.

I f*en love that! That's great! That would definitely be the most memorable Mac OS X release. I love that movie! Lol.

[blastfamy]

Originally Posted by TBaggins

God I love Napoleon Dynamite.





.

Graphite across the board anyone? No thanks,

But there are some perks!

Instead of the startup chime, the mac politely asks you for your tots.
Photobooth would take hours rendering the shading on your upper lip.
Help system teaches users karate!

I LOVE THIS OS!!!

[Guartho]

Originally Posted by daniel84

They should start naming their OS releases after the planets in our solar system. That'll keep them going for a few generations.

In 2037 they'll release OSX Pluto. In 2038 they'll declare that it wasn't actually a major OS release and was merely a boxed system update.

[-Nova-]

I like Ocelot.

[timothyjay2004]

Originally Posted by blastfamy

Graphite across the board anyone?

Instead of the startup chime, the mac politely asks you for your tots.
Photobooth would take hours rendering the shading on your upper lip.
Help system teaches users karate!

I LOVE THIS OS!!!

I love that! The "You gonna eat your tots?" would be great. I'd laugh every time I turned it on lol.

[skittlebrau79]

Originally Posted by solipsism

I believe MS' net profit was more than Apple's gross profit for the Q1-2008. MS may be losing a little marketshare and be hemorrhaging money in other areas but they are still very successful and too entrenched to become a Xerox anytime soon.

Not to mention that Vista has sold 100 million copies in about a year. At WWDC07 Apple told its developers there are 30 million Mac OS X machines out there, so Microsoft sold almost 4x more copies of Vista in 1 year than Apple has sold copies of Mac OS X in 6 years. And that's without Windows 2008 Server and Vista SP1 (which most enterprises are waiting for before deploying Vista). I don't think Windows is going anywhere. Microsoft's Xbox division also posted a profit this quarter of around $400 million, which means the console is no longer a loss leader for the games. That will be interesting in the next couple of years, since the 360 is going to have staying power.

But it is nice to see Microsoft stumbling.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by skittlebrau79

Microsoft's Xbox division also posted a profit this quarter of around $400 million, which means the console is no longer a loss leader for the games.

That is 400M in the black for the quarter. They still have many billions to recoup before the 360 is in the truly in the black.