4 ms·

Microsoft’s Next OS To Be Called “Windows 7″. Seriously

19 points by jasonlbaptiste 18y ago

mixmax 18y ago
Going by the numbers this should be a serious downgrade from windows 2000
- unalone 18y ago
  It's a sort of reversal of how they expanded their numbers with the XBox 360, so it wouldn't be a 2 versus the PS3. Still, I like it. It's no-nonsense and it's got a nice ring to it.
brianherman 18y ago
I love it!
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  Functional. Simple. Easier to get businesses to buy 7.5 or 8.0 instead of switching from "XP" to "Vista". I like it.
jmtame 18y ago
I better be impressed, or I'm sticking with XP.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  not for long you won't, unless you're going to start writing your own security patches and backporting apps.
  - jonny_noog 18y ago
    Or he'll have moved to a Mac by then? Disclaimer: I don't own a Mac... Yet.
    - newaccountname 18y ago
      How would that be "sticking with XP"?
      - jonny_noog 18y ago
        It's not. The assumption - following on from cstejerean's comment - being that once XP is no longer receiving security updates, any reasonably knowledgeable person would feel compelled to move to something else. I know I will be. My comment was really just a facetious one, coming from my personal point of view, which is that Mac's are looking better and better these days.
        cstejerean 18y ago
        Vista is a big part of why I made the switch to a Mac (for my laptop, I'm running Linux on the desktop).
        jonny_noog 18y ago
        I'm almost the opposite, Debian on my Laptop. XP Pro on my desktop (until my next big hardware upgrade, anyway). But as I'm very partial to Linux, I'm starting to think Mac might be the way to go for my next big upgrade. I use my laptop almost purely for development work, but my desktop I use for work/multimedia entertainment. While I know it's certainly doable to set up a Linux machine for multimedia capabilities, I'm somewhat attracted to the (hopefully) more "batteries included" functionality of a Mac if say, I want to watch a movie piped out to my TV or whatever. In cases like this, I'd prefer to just be able to click a few buttons and make it happen rather than trawl through mailing list archives looking for the right combination of xorg.conf directives for my particular graphics card. My XP box works fine for this kind of stuff already, but with a Mac, I get the bonus of the familiar Unix-like underpinnings. Still probably be a while before I might say goodbye to Bill, though.
        cstejerean 18y ago
        Linux on a laptop has never worked out well for me every time I tried. Getting an external project to work usually has issues, wireless is sometimes flakey and battery life typically sucks. I highly recommend checking out OS X on a laptop. I always found the Mac desktops to be too expensive for what I need (since I already have a laptop I don't need heavy multimedia just an always-on workhorse).
whacked_new 18y ago
MS's blog post linked: http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/... This did not need an entire blog post. The title's one liner sums it up fine.
- dmix 18y ago
  That blogs design hurts my eyes. Its pure form over function. Who decided to use white text on a nearly white background for the navigation?
  - icey 18y ago
    The same people who thought UAC was a good idea.
jrockway 18y ago
it’s probably going to confuse everyone and couldn’t be more bland Probably not. It is a little bland, but there is nothing all that exciting about an OS like Windows. Its most exciting function is drawing window decorations and showing icons on your desktop. Who cares?
- breck 18y ago
  Agreed. I think it couldn't be less confusing. I love the name and look forward to it coming out(still on XP, definitely going to skip Vista). I hope it has built in version control, faster file search, and no stupid security pop ups. Also, could we please get a better version of Paintbrush?
RKlophaus 18y ago
I'm not the first one to say this, but I'm worried about Windows as a platform. The code base has now been recycled 5 times over, and they keep adding layers to it instead of cleaning it up. (One thing I admire about Apple. When the OS code got old and crufty, they weren't afraid to start at the beginning and do it right.) Windows has had to promise and deliver complete backward compatibility to retain their market share. They've painted themselves into a corner, and at a certain point, they are going to have to break that promise or figure out some clever way to unchain themselves from that anchor. (I think I read something about them trying virtualization as a possible solution.)
- snprbob86 18y ago
  Windows 7 is breaking application binary compatibility. My understanding is that if your executable's manifest does not specify 7, then you get <= Vista. The next version will provide <= Vista, 7, and 8. And so on. I may have misunderstood, but this seems like it will relieve many compatibility woes.
- Zev 18y ago
  Apple's start-from-the-beginning effort was Copland. That turned out pretty badly for Apple. (Which is part of the reason they abandoned it in favor of buying NeXTSTEP (Which turned into OS X))
  - helveticaman 18y ago
    But in a way, Copland wasn't Steve Jobs, but NeX was. Apple is Steve Jobs.
    - raganwald 18y ago
      By way of agreement with you, I will say there's no "but in a way" about it. As I recall--I was a Mac developer at the time--Copland was everything Jobs is not. A large, bureaucratic team. Infighting and feature poaching between the Pink and Blue teams with nobody to step in and provide Adult Supervision. No hard ship date with a command to abandon anything that wouldn't fit (real artists ship, Copland did not ship). Much has been made of how little Jobs contributed to the original Macintosh. However, looking back we see what he did contribute: the all-consuming focus on shipping a product, and the willingness to make the hard decisions needed to do so. This was entirely unlike the Copland effort in every which way. http://tinyurl.com/2lrwzd http://tinyurl.com/2lrwzd (Wikipedia article on Copland) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent (and Taligent)
schtog 18y ago
Windows 7 != Midori ?
- snprbob86 18y ago
  No, Midori is something very different...
bigthboy 18y ago
Personally, I think Vista should have kept the name "Longhorn" from development. I like the sound of "Windows 7" but I too am a bit concerned with how Windows in itself will fare with a future that looks like Vista which was, in my opinion, a step away from the enterprise class that Windows has always had a firm grasp on. As someone who works in IT for a university and has worked for other schools in the past, I found Vista showed no reasons to be used in an enterprise setting. Vista tailored WAY too much to a home user perspective. All pretty pictures and no power. Windows 7, we can perhaps expect a step back in the right direction. I've seen rumors but nothing official that suggested Windows 7 was going to be Microsoft's first Operating system since Windows 2000 to not use the NT core? Anyone care to confirm that? Also... just some funnies... http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/13/windows-7-the-search-for-a-good-headline/ http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/13/windows-7-the-search-for-a...
timcederman 18y ago
3.1, NT, 95, 98, ME, XP, 2000, Vista, 7 -- just pick a scheme and stick with it guys.
- icey 18y ago
  You forgot about Bob
  - Zev 18y ago
    Wasn't that just a new UI, not a new OS completely?
    - icey 18y ago
      Hmmm actually, that's possible. I only remember hearing about Bob and seeing some screenshots. I wasn't fortunate enough to have bought a copy of it.
greenagain 18y ago
But they told me it was going to be called Mojave.
trezor 18y ago
Next up we hit Windows XP, which has served most of us reasonably well since 2001. It sounds sort of cool, it’s catchy, and we have no idea what it means. I thought it was commonplace knowledge within the geek community that XP was short for "eXPerience"? If he is going to go on a long rant commenting on the name of different Windows-releases, he should at least know the topic he is talking about ;)
- baha_man 18y ago
  "I thought it was commonplace knowledge within the geek community that XP was short for "eXPerience"?" It's news to me. I think it's still fair to say that the name "doesn't really mean anything".
  - pmjordan 18y ago
    That makes the rant even more pointless.
newt0311 18y ago
Seriously, why does the name matter?
crowbar 18y ago
Darn. And I had all my money on Windows EX Hyper Fighting Alpha: The New Challengers Turbo.

mixmax 18y ago

Going by the numbers this should be a serious downgrade from windows 2000

unalone 18y ago
It's a sort of reversal of how they expanded their numbers with the XBox 360, so it wouldn't be a 2 versus the PS3. Still, I like it. It's no-nonsense and it's got a nice ring to it.

brianherman 18y ago

I love it!

Prrometheus 18y ago
Functional. Simple. Easier to get businesses to buy 7.5 or 8.0 instead of switching from "XP" to "Vista". I like it.

jmtame 18y ago

I better be impressed, or I'm sticking with XP.

cstejerean 18y ago
not for long you won't, unless you're going to start writing your own security patches and backporting apps.
- jonny_noog 18y ago
  Or he'll have moved to a Mac by then? Disclaimer: I don't own a Mac... Yet.
  - newaccountname 18y ago
    How would that be "sticking with XP"?
    - jonny_noog 18y ago
      It's not. The assumption - following on from cstejerean's comment - being that once XP is no longer receiving security updates, any reasonably knowledgeable person would feel compelled to move to something else. I know I will be. My comment was really just a facetious one, coming from my personal point of view, which is that Mac's are looking better and better these days.
      - cstejerean 18y ago
        Vista is a big part of why I made the switch to a Mac (for my laptop, I'm running Linux on the desktop).
        jonny_noog 18y ago
        I'm almost the opposite, Debian on my Laptop. XP Pro on my desktop (until my next big hardware upgrade, anyway). But as I'm very partial to Linux, I'm starting to think Mac might be the way to go for my next big upgrade. I use my laptop almost purely for development work, but my desktop I use for work/multimedia entertainment. While I know it's certainly doable to set up a Linux machine for multimedia capabilities, I'm somewhat attracted to the (hopefully) more "batteries included" functionality of a Mac if say, I want to watch a movie piped out to my TV or whatever. In cases like this, I'd prefer to just be able to click a few buttons and make it happen rather than trawl through mailing list archives looking for the right combination of xorg.conf directives for my particular graphics card. My XP box works fine for this kind of stuff already, but with a Mac, I get the bonus of the familiar Unix-like underpinnings. Still probably be a while before I might say goodbye to Bill, though.
        cstejerean 18y ago
        Linux on a laptop has never worked out well for me every time I tried. Getting an external project to work usually has issues, wireless is sometimes flakey and battery life typically sucks. I highly recommend checking out OS X on a laptop. I always found the Mac desktops to be too expensive for what I need (since I already have a laptop I don't need heavy multimedia just an always-on workhorse).

whacked_new 18y ago

MS's blog post linked: http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/... This did not need an entire blog post. The title's one liner sums it up fine.

dmix 18y ago
That blogs design hurts my eyes. Its pure form over function. Who decided to use white text on a nearly white background for the navigation?
- icey 18y ago
  The same people who thought UAC was a good idea.

jrockway 18y ago

it’s probably going to confuse everyone and couldn’t be more bland Probably not. It is a little bland, but there is nothing all that exciting about an OS like Windows. Its most exciting function is drawing window decorations and showing icons on your desktop. Who cares?

breck 18y ago
Agreed. I think it couldn't be less confusing. I love the name and look forward to it coming out(still on XP, definitely going to skip Vista). I hope it has built in version control, faster file search, and no stupid security pop ups. Also, could we please get a better version of Paintbrush?

RKlophaus 18y ago

I'm not the first one to say this, but I'm worried about Windows as a platform. The code base has now been recycled 5 times over, and they keep adding layers to it instead of cleaning it up. (One thing I admire about Apple. When the OS code got old and crufty, they weren't afraid to start at the beginning and do it right.) Windows has had to promise and deliver complete backward compatibility to retain their market share. They've painted themselves into a corner, and at a certain point, they are going to have to break that promise or figure out some clever way to unchain themselves from that anchor. (I think I read something about them trying virtualization as a possible solution.)

snprbob86 18y ago
Windows 7 is breaking application binary compatibility. My understanding is that if your executable's manifest does not specify 7, then you get <= Vista. The next version will provide <= Vista, 7, and 8. And so on. I may have misunderstood, but this seems like it will relieve many compatibility woes.
Zev 18y ago
Apple's start-from-the-beginning effort was Copland. That turned out pretty badly for Apple. (Which is part of the reason they abandoned it in favor of buying NeXTSTEP (Which turned into OS X))
- helveticaman 18y ago
  But in a way, Copland wasn't Steve Jobs, but NeX was. Apple is Steve Jobs.
  - raganwald 18y ago
    By way of agreement with you, I will say there's no "but in a way" about it. As I recall--I was a Mac developer at the time--Copland was everything Jobs is not. A large, bureaucratic team. Infighting and feature poaching between the Pink and Blue teams with nobody to step in and provide Adult Supervision. No hard ship date with a command to abandon anything that wouldn't fit (real artists ship, Copland did not ship). Much has been made of how little Jobs contributed to the original Macintosh. However, looking back we see what he did contribute: the all-consuming focus on shipping a product, and the willingness to make the hard decisions needed to do so. This was entirely unlike the Copland effort in every which way. http://tinyurl.com/2lrwzd http://tinyurl.com/2lrwzd (Wikipedia article on Copland) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent (and Taligent)

schtog 18y ago

Windows 7 != Midori ?

snprbob86 18y ago
No, Midori is something very different...

bigthboy 18y ago

Personally, I think Vista should have kept the name "Longhorn" from development. I like the sound of "Windows 7" but I too am a bit concerned with how Windows in itself will fare with a future that looks like Vista which was, in my opinion, a step away from the enterprise class that Windows has always had a firm grasp on. As someone who works in IT for a university and has worked for other schools in the past, I found Vista showed no reasons to be used in an enterprise setting. Vista tailored WAY too much to a home user perspective. All pretty pictures and no power. Windows 7, we can perhaps expect a step back in the right direction. I've seen rumors but nothing official that suggested Windows 7 was going to be Microsoft's first Operating system since Windows 2000 to not use the NT core? Anyone care to confirm that? Also... just some funnies... http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/13/windows-7-the-search-for-a-good-headline/ http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/13/windows-7-the-search-for-a...

timcederman 18y ago

3.1, NT, 95, 98, ME, XP, 2000, Vista, 7 -- just pick a scheme and stick with it guys.

icey 18y ago
You forgot about Bob
- Zev 18y ago
  Wasn't that just a new UI, not a new OS completely?
  - icey 18y ago
    Hmmm actually, that's possible. I only remember hearing about Bob and seeing some screenshots. I wasn't fortunate enough to have bought a copy of it.

greenagain 18y ago

But they told me it was going to be called Mojave.

trezor 18y ago

Next up we hit Windows XP, which has served most of us reasonably well since 2001. It sounds sort of cool, it’s catchy, and we have no idea what it means. I thought it was commonplace knowledge within the geek community that XP was short for "eXPerience"? If he is going to go on a long rant commenting on the name of different Windows-releases, he should at least know the topic he is talking about ;)

baha_man 18y ago
"I thought it was commonplace knowledge within the geek community that XP was short for "eXPerience"?" It's news to me. I think it's still fair to say that the name "doesn't really mean anything".
- pmjordan 18y ago
  That makes the rant even more pointless.

newt0311 18y ago

Seriously, why does the name matter?

crowbar 18y ago

Darn. And I had all my money on Windows EX Hyper Fighting Alpha: The New Challengers Turbo.