Overshot? Or a complete miss?

Michael Urlocker writes that Vista is "overshot." That may be a generous assessment.

Before vista even came out, it was already being called "XP warmed over." A pretty negative review for a company that has spent the last five years working on the replacement. After five years of no updates (save patches to XP's horrendous security, but that's a subject for another post altogether, and no SP1 and SP2 don't count), one would expect an amazing new system that would blow the socks off of reviewers, impress the users, and function in a way never before conceived, giving Vista a unique place in the OS world as a system that was a pleasure to use and generated more productivity than ever thought possible. Instead, what users are getting is a system with relatively minor eye-candy upgrades, and a restrictive digital rights management system that can actually degrade the playback quality of certain media. Wow...that's really compelling.

Something really sad about Vista, especially considering how little of an upgrade it really is, is the considerable hardware requirements that come with it. Vista will mostly likely only come with new computers, and systems sold even a year ago may have trouble running it (consider, for example, low-end systems sold with "only" 512MB of RAM and a built in sufficient--but not spectacular--video card). While I am not a greenie by any stretch of the imagination, I do somewhat agree with them that Vista will unnecessarily obsolete thousands of computers. I highly doubt upgraded systems will have a pleasent user experience.

Another theme among the chatter regarding Vista was the fact that its "new" features were features that were already in Apple's Macintosh operating system, and had been for some time. When Mac OS X was released in 2001 it already had much of the polish and eye candy that Vista is bragging about now. And over the nearly six years since, every time Apple has released an update, most users and reviewers have reported that the operation of the system has actually sped up. Something that stands in stark contrast to the slower operation and new hardware requirements of many of Microsoft's past "upgrades." Another interesting point to note is that the most recent release of Max OS X [at least the most recent version that could run on PPC (G4/G5) hardware] is that it could run on systems that were released when OS X was initially released, and in some cases, even systems released before OS X's initial release.

Let's look for a moment at the "other operating system:" Linux. Built on Open Source principles, and developed by hundreds of developers around the world, it has grown from a "hobbyist's operating system" to an operating system upon which fortune 100 companies depend. While large companies are supporting it now, it attained its status and proved its worth without the corporate backing which MS-DOS and MS Windows enjoyed since the beginning. While OS X and Linux still can appeal to widely different markets, Linux has gained popularity for the same reason Apple's OS X has: it delivers an experience which enables the user to be productive, efficient, and "just get things done." In short, delivering what the user wants.

So why is Vista a miss and not simply and overshot? It's because Microsoft is aiming at the wrong thing. In his article today, Scott Finnie points out that Microsoft's two main priorities have become

1. Avoiding negative publicity (especially about security and software quality)
2. Making sure the largest enterprise customers are happy

If you have the time, go read Scott's article. No need for me to reiterate all the excellent points he makes.

There are many reasons for this, but it comes down to retaining market share. Apple and Linux are biting at Microsoft's heals like never before. OS X and Linux are serious business competitors. And once a user uses a system at work (possibly because they're forced to) they will then be comfortable using that system at home. If you lose the business market, you're well on your way to losing the home market. [Merrill Chapman, in his book "In Search of Stupidity" shows that this is how the PC took over the home market some 20-25 years ago: businesses used PC's first, so people wanted them at home.] Thus, Windows cannot appeal overwhelmingly to the consumer market, or else businesses will no longer want to use it, and will happily chose something else. On the other hand, Vista cannot appeal overwhelmingly to the business market, or it will be dead dull at home (witness Apple's I'm a Mac/I'm a PC ads). No really, go witness them...they're worth it...I'll wait. Apple and Linux, who have nowhere to go but up, don't really care about appealing to one market or the other, they just care about making a secure, easy-to-use operating system. And that philosophy is winning converts.

It seems Microsoft's aim was all (or at least mostly) wrong in this release. Instead of focusing on eye candy and crippling digital rights management (something done to keep media companies happy), there should have been more efforts invested in stability, usable security [Vista's User Access Controls is already becoming a joke. Linux and Mac OS have prompts for additional privileges (when needed, like at software install) down pat], and a better user experience (read Joel Spolsky's rant about the Vista shutdown menu for a good example of features designed by committee).

No...I don't think Vista overshot the market. I don't even think it was aiming at it.

UPDATE (2007-02-02 11:00): Zack Urlocker (Michael's brother) has more observations and humor regarding the Windows Vista launch at his blog.