Joe Wilcox the misunderstanding Microsoft and Windows as usual

Joe Wilcox over at Microsoft Watch is on the rampage again about Windows Vista being a failure and the lack in transparency from the Steve Sinofsky interview at CNET. Here's at what he had to say:

 

"Steven Sinofsky's motto should be, in the spirit of Memorial Day: "Loose lips sink ships." Office development proceeded with scant disclosure under his tenure. Little has changed since he assumed the role as Microsoft's senior veep for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering group. Open disclosure and dialogue punctuated past Windows development—not that the process did much for Vista.

Now Steven is talking Windows 7 to CNET News.com. But he's not saying much. There's even a Microsoft "Communicating Windows 7" blog post, credited to Chris Flores, defending the say-no-more interview.

Microsoft seemingly has plenty of reasons to keep mum about Seven, starting with freezing Vista sales. The company claims 140 million Vista licenses shipped. But that number is deceptive. Based on interviews with analysts and enterprise IT managers, the majority of licenses are on new PCs where Vista is never deployed. Most businesses are stripping off Vista and using downgrade rights to install Windows XP."

Read the rest here

Joe, sometimes I think there is a bottle of whiskey sitting beside your monitor. Because you utter so much garbage its unbelievable. You speak with such lack of understanding it shows throughout your entire writing when it comes to talking technology.

First of all, Windows Vista is not a failure, 140 million licenses sold (recently bumped to 150 million) is not a failure its actually astounding. Next, how do you know that the majority of those licenses have not actually been deployed? Did you check every business in America and around the world to come to that foolish conclusion?

Building Windows 7 on the solid foundation of Windows Server 2008 SP1 means reassurance to customers who have invested heavily in Windows Vista can have the confidence to deploy their existing infrastructure on Windows 7 when its released. This means existing hardware and applications will work on Windows 7 without any alteration. Windows 7 will use the same driver framework as Windows Vista. How in heavens name is this wrong or risky????

Building a new kernel from scratch is the stupidest idea I have ever heard from you? What solution will this offer Windows developers and customers? Re-engineer applications for a new platform that will take years, incompatibility with existing investments in hardware and software? Just because you think the idea of a modular Windows client is better? Windows is already modular in a significant way, the different Windows Vista SKU's offer customers the choice they need and the features they want. How is Windows Server 2008's roles based approach going to be relevant to a client OS? Come on, think before you speak.

You say that Windows Vista is causing certain customers to downgrade to Windows XP? What is the catalyst for this? The only one I can think of is compatibility, yet you say that they need a brand new kernel to fix Windows. You talk ridiculous crap without reading it, it seems. As Steve clearly noted in the interview, Windows 7 will bring compatibility forward. The evolution of Windows 7's kernel will insure that.

Quote:
"But we're actually going to bring forward the compatibility, and we're going to make sure that there's a lot of value for everybody who's a customer of Windows 7." - Steven Sinofsky

The silence on Windows 7 is important, its the right approach and other company's are doing it, look at Adobe with the next release of Creative Suite, they are releasing information in a timely relevant manner.

Other reasons to consider, over discuss Windows 7 now what does this say about Vista, that Microsoft has lost faith in the product and admitted defeat? Also, Windows Vista was just released world wide a year and a half, Windows 7 won’t be here until at least early 2010. Why would they want to jump the gun so early and start shooting themselves in the foot like they did with transparency of the Longhorn project?

Joe, this is the most disturbing, disappointing, pointless, hotheaded, sensationalist article I have read from you.