Microsoft Delays Vista and Its Employees Are Ashamed (And Relieved)

23 Mar 2006

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, then you probably missed the story that Microsoft has delayed its next generation OS, Vista, until January 2007. MacDailyNews ran a story which details some “vents” from a Microsoft insider blog called Mini-Microsoft. The (apparent) quotes they have over there are pretty funny to say the least. Here are some of my favorites:

Being a 10+ year [Microsoft] vet I feel ashamed and sad. This company is a mess on so many levels.

Compare this to OS X, where people fall all over themselves trying to get the newest version running on their old hardware because there’s actual value in the new features. So Vista has its guts ripped out, slips, and we wait another 5 years for a potentially insipring version of Windows, meanwhile Apple ships another 3 updates to OS X.

God, we look like DEC more and more every day.

Want to see Vista ship? Get rid of 90% of the Process that goes between writing the code and getting it checked in.

What’s the difference between Mac OS X and Vista? Microsoft employees are excited about Mac OS X.

I’m a firm believer in not shipping a product until it’s done, but I think Microsoft is in a position where taking this attitude could tarnish their already “stellar” reputation. (tongue in cheek) There’s a nice article on Newsvine that discusses this delay further. I just want Vista to be released so I can reap the benefits of DirectX 10. 30% improvement in games over Windows XP?? Hello.. get Vista out the door!

Oh, and one last gem:

This is simply another example that the top-down “quality” process put into place during Vista development was a hideous mistake.

Quality has gone down, not up, since the emphasis was changed from individual developer accountability to heavy-handed process initatives that allow little time for real work on improving quality.

This looks like a job for Braytek. I know this person would thank me:

After three weeks of 9-to-9 plus an occasional weekend, today I’ve been informed it was too late for me to catch the would-be-last RI for B2. It was gut-wrenching, unbelievably frustrating and I felt dejected.

Not an hour later, Brian V sent his email and I found out there would be slippage and more RIs.

You know what? That felt right. It’s just not ready – just as my stuff isn’t ready, shell isn’t ready, the drivers, the perf.. The screw up did not occur now, not one year ago but way before that. Making Xmas with what we have now would be disastruous, moreso than being late.

Ok, I lied. This stuff is too good. This post on the blog says it best. Having lived in this world for almost 10 years, I believe every word of it:

Today’s announcement is of course no surprise to anyone inside MS. The only surprise is that it was such a short delay announced.

Basically we do not believe Vista will make January 2007 or even March 2007. Anyone with any access knows what a frankenstein’s monster NT is on the inside. At some point there is a law of diminishing returns trying to do anything to it at all, it seems like that limit is being reached today. The release is pushed back because of bugs but fixing those bugs will create more bugs. It is just godawful to be honest. And the process gets in the way at every step.

I love the brutal honesty of good QA people. Good luck Microsoft. You’re going to need it.