What a difference a week makes! Just last Friday I was dissecting Microsoft's latest pro-Vista marketing spin and lamenting the lack of corroborating evidence to my "ready for Windows 7" missive over at the Windows Sentinel blog. There must have been something in the Kool-Aid at that annual Memorial Day picnic, because when the employees returned their previously hog-tied tongues were suddenly loosed.
First, there was the interview with Steve Sinofsky, in which he emphasized how Windows 7 would build on the foundation laid with Vista. Then came the Windows Vista team blog posting by Chris Flores stating that there would be no "new kernel" in Windows 7 (sorry "MinWin" fans) and that their goal was to run on the "recommended hardware" they specified for Vista.
In other words, I was right. About Windows 7. About its Vista underpinnings. About everything. My detractors (and by now you are legion) may commence with the crow consumption.
But the "piece de resistance" had to be the Windows 7 "demo" conducted during a Walt Mossberg/Kara Swisher interview of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
Though the video (scroll down the page a bit) of the demo portion of the event is a bit grainy, you can at least make out some aspects of the cool Surface-derived UI direction that Microsoft is taking with Windows 7. Someone else mentioned seeing a Mac OS X-like "dock" in the video, however, I couldn't make it out - though I did glimpse a couple of objects that seemed similar to the "wheely" things you can see in this collection of supposedly leaked Windows 7 screen-shots.
Bottom Line: Nothing revolutionary - just a logical integration of multi-touch principals into the core Windows interface. More importantly, it's all stuff that you could build easily using the Vista/2008 code base as your foundation, which is encouraging from a "can they really pull this off" perspective.
What we've learned this week:
Windows 7 will be built upon the foundation laid down with Windows Vista. No real surprise here. I've been saying this for months (though it's always nice to be proven right).
"MinWin" and other "academic exercises" are just that: Research projects. The real Windows 7 kernel is a natural evolution of the Vista kernel, including seamless support for Vista device drivers. After the debacle of Vista's early driver compatibility woes, this is a good thing.
Microsoft's Next Big Thing (NBT) will be touch...and voice, and digital ink, and all forms of alternative input metaphors. Combined with the next generation of touch-enabled PCs, this could be a game changer. After 20 years of mice and keyboards (and all manner of ergonomic tweaks to make them less crippling to our weary hands), I think the human race is ready for a change. Multi-touch could be the next "killer app," the one cool, must-have feature that drives Windows 7 adoption. I know I want it!
Have the floodgates finally opened? Has Microsoft finally turned the corner on Vista in order to focus full-time on promoting Windows 7? Maybe yes, maybe no. There's still way too much we don't know about the next Windows - like how the UI will change for us "touch-challenged" users with older PCs. However, if Microsoft continues on its current path of revealing tidbits though myriad outlets, we'll have plenty to dissect in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
Original Source : http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2008/05/windows_7_gets.html
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