I Told You So!

It takes the world a while, sometimes. A year ago (almost to the day) I wrote an entry here about the repeated delays to Microsoft's new version of Windows, dubbed Vista. I noted the number of (major) consumer OS versions Apple had produced for the Mac before it stalled out between System 7 and MacOS X. MacOS 8 and MacOS 9 were stopgap measures, but both were more about unfulfilled promises than delivered features, much as what we are seeing with Vista.

More recently, the folks over at Mac 360 addressed much the same issue (I like to think that a message I sent to Tera helped inspire the piece, but I can't be sure). The simple fact is that after seven consumer versions of Windows—to review, they are 1, 2, 3, 95, 98/ME, 2K, and XP—Microsoft has stalled, just as Apple did. Now the aggregators over at osViews have picked up on this little gem at ars technica. Guess what: commenters are making the same comparison I made 365 days earlier (I love being right—ask anyone who knows me about that).

Here's the problem: they are misremembering history in a few cases. User "Geg" writes, "it took apple 6 years to make OSX workable." Others hint at that, but the fact is that it did not take six years. Apple did not start working on what became OS X until Jobs returned to Apple, and within two years had the OS working, starting from an entirely different code base. Microsoft is using legacy code as its foundation, and that is causing problems.

It gets worse, however. Microsoft's plan to enter the digital music realm with its Zune (Microsoft, despite publicly naming its product leads and rough release timeframe, has yet to put a page together for Zune), and now there is more chatter out of Redmond that Vista may be delayed . . . again. It may ship in winter 2007, but it is now a little confusing. This article includes a bit from Microsoft VP Kevin Johnson that has Vista on track for "2H 2007" (note that the quote is from the article, not Johnson). Many might hope that "2H" is meant to be "2Q"—second quarter, which could refer to the second quarter of Microsoft's July-to-June fiscal year (coinciding with the proposed November/December release of the corporate version) or to the second quarter of calendar 2007 (a quarter later than the proposed release of the consumer version). If it is "2H," meaning second half, then it might coincide with a first- or second-quarter release in calendar 2007 (second half of fiscal 2007) or already signal a delay to the second half of the calendar year.

Anyone wanna bet on what it means?