Windows 7 Begins 3-Month Countdown to RTM
Microsoft has officially declared what everyone should have expected. Windows 7 will ship for holiday 2009. This morning, Steven Sinofsky, senor vice president of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering group, blogged:
If the feedback and telemetry on Windows 7 match our expectations then we will enter the final phases of the RTM process in about 3 months. If we are successful in that, then we tracking to our shared goal of having PCs with Windows 7 available this Holiday season.
While that sounds pretty clear, Steven explained that release to manufacturing “is not one point in time but a “process.’” Perhaps he simply means the three months aheador maybe what follows, which would give wiggle room to push RTM later.
Three months from today puts RTM some time in August, which is much later than I had hopedand maybe even some people at Microsoft. June 30 RTM would have made the end of Microsoft’s 2009 fiscal year. The date means clarity looking ahead to Windows 7’s release. Windows 7 will miss back to school, but surely there will be discounted, if not free, upgrades for people buying Windows Vista PCs this summer.
August RTM puts Windows 7’s official launch sometime in October. Microsoft expects that OEMs will need six to eight weeks to qualify and build Windows 7 PCs. Then there is the timing precedent set by Windows XP, which RTMed in August 2001 and launched in October 2001.
Today’s announcement gets Microsoft ahead of Apple, which convenes its developer conference on June 8. If Apple is going to ever announce the release of Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard), June makes most sense.
Should Snow Leopard and Windows 7 release around the same time, I expect the cat will get a good whack. Whatever momentum Macs had in the PC market is rapidly declining. For example, in March, Windows PC year-over-year unit sales growth was much greater than Macs at US retail, according to NPD. PC sales grew 29.5 percent versus 2.9 percent for Macs. For laptops, Windows unit sales rose 41.8 percent, while Macs declined 10.3 percent.
I predict that Snow Leopard will be moribund to the cold altitudes where the real cat lives. Some reasons, and many quite obvious:
- Windows 7 is a great operating system, much better than its predecessors and even Mac OS X Leopard.
- The Windows ecosystem is ready for Seven, in ways it wasn’t for Vista. Application and hardware support will be broad and deep.
- The Great Recession favors value, which the Windows ecosystem offers more of than Macintosh.
- Macs cost too much, particularly in this recession.
- Microsoft’s $300 million Windows marketing campaign already is paying off in increased Windows PC sales.
- Windows 7 will be everywhere this Christmas. Microsoft and its application developer, OEM and retail partners will advertise like crazy; then there will be the zillions of blogs, news stories and reviews about Windows 7.
Need I bullet-point more? Apple had a great run between 2006 and 2008 for many reasons, with Windows Vista nearing top of list. But Windows 7 is a bad-ass operating system.
Do you have a software story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.
“The Great Recession favors value, which the Windows ecosystem offers more of than Macintosh.”
Snow Leopard runs on legacy Intel Macs with a smaller footprint, parallel processing and uses less RAM. So, for the price of half a netbook, owners of older Macs are going to get faster, better machines. As most Windows users skipped Vista, they won’t experience the optimisation benefits shipping in 7 on older hardware – because most of them are still on XP. They’ll just get all the gee whiz, don’t-really-need-that stuff. You know, the stuff Microsoft stole from OS X.
# Windows 7 is a great operating system, much better than its predecessors and even Mac OS X Leopard.
I don’t think greatness is relevant. Look at the surging popularity of Windows 3.1, even though it was a technical piece of garbage compared to even the low-end Unix (such as Xenix and Mark Williams) at the time. Even a piece of junk like Windows 3.1 rode to prominence on applications and back-room arm-twisting deals.
# The Great Recession favors value, which the Windows ecosystem offers more of than Macintosh.
The “Great Recession” demands value, but focused value means fragmentation, and fragmentation means choice. A “one Microsoft size fits all” can no longer deliver value to 98% of the market.
# Macs cost too much, particularly in this recession.
This fully depends on the value that is delivered. For low-cost but serious HD video production, only Final Cut will do. And only a Mac will run it. For iPhone application development, only a Mac will deliver the goods.
Yes, Windows isn’t going away. But it can’t deliver all of the needed value to everyone. And for those who need value as a business investment, the cost of a tool is not measured against the cost of other tools; the revenue and profit generated is the measurement.
Yeah, the reason I continue to run Windows is, like the N96, my BlackBerry Curve is tied to Windows.
Joe, I do offer a theory as to why I don’t agree that valuable costs too much. Value in a tool has two parts: The capability of the tool, and the skill of the user of the tool. Likewise, value in an employee has two parts: The ability of the employee to deliver, and the ability of the employer to take full advantage of the employee’s deliveries.
For example, I do not personally employ nuclear physicists in my home. It is not because they have no value, but only because I have no need for what they produce and cannot afford them. But they are valuable, and there are jobs for which they contribute far more than they are paid.
Likewise, large and successful companies tend to become laced with incompetence (the so-called “Peter Principle”). In a small successful company, incompetence stands out and is dealt with, else the company becomes a small unsuccessful company. But a large company can tolerate its legions of “Peter Principled” bureaucrats. At least while credit is cheap and money flows.
But formerly successful large companies don’t fully utilize the value they get from their valuable employees. Why do companies outsource? If you have one highly-paid valuable producer but let the bureaucracy kill that producer’s output, then a cheaper overseas producer who produces less is seen as more cost-effective. It’s back to my former analogy: To hire someone to weed and trim the hedge, the teenager next door is cheaper than a nuclear physicist. But it’s not that a valuable physicist costs too much. He just costs too much relative to the amount of value I am able to get from him.
Likewise, Joe, your value only cost too much because your former employers were unable to use it. But where am I now? Posting over on eWeek? Ha! I haven’t gone back since you left (other than to read the waning posts on MSWatch). As I promised you, I am here now.
And when the “Great Rebooting” is completed and we’re back to our “National Desktop”, it will feel very different from the previous “National Desktop”. And valuable people should have a much better chance of being recognized and rewarded. As long as the dying off of the Peter-Principled dinosaurs doesn’t take the entire country with it.