Future Windows Live Applications to become optional apps for Windows 7

From News.com

 

Its official, those applications that came with Windows Vista such as Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Windows Mail will now become optional downloads when Windows 7 is released. This is a good move I believe that will save the Company a lot of hassle from both its customers, competitors and partners. New opportunities will arise by giving the consumer the choice whether they want those features or not, but with improvements I see so far in Windows Live Wave 3, it shouldn't be so hard to get people to download what will be "free" applications that you would normally buy. Here is a quote from the article on CNET:

 

"Microsoft has decided that Windows 7 won't include built-in programs for e-mail, photo editing, and movie making, as was done with Windows Vista, CNET News.com has learned.

The software maker included Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Mail, and Windows Movie Maker as part of Vista, but later chose to offer separate downloadable Windows Live programs that essentially replaced those components with versions that could connect to online services from Microsoft and others." 

Read the entire article here, Mary Jo Foley also has her take on the changes here

Brian Hall from Microsoft goes on to say, this will also make new releases of Windows come to market much faster providing less complexity for Microsoft's own developers. It seems this approach to providing so many built in multi-media and productivity tools in Windows was either clogging innovation and slowing down the pace at which Microsoft can deliver updates compared its competitors, not necessarily for the OS, but for applications themselves. With this new approach, new updates of the existing applications will be released much faster and Microsoft can focus on improving the core OS experience.