Vista was not ready - Microsoft

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Admits-Windows-Vista-Was-not-Ready-for-the-World-in-January-2007-59681.shtml

The Redmond company twisted the confirmation so that Vista wouldn't be at fault.
"Compatibility is now at critical mass with Windows Vista. You know, when we introduced this product on January 30, like all platform introductions, we had introduced it to a world that wasn't quite 100 percent ready for it. There were compatibility issues that remained, there were driver issues that remained."

I was intrigued that Microsoft would say it wasn't their product that was at fault for those incompatibilities. Literally they are blaming the hardware/software manufactures instead.

 

"Compatibility is now at critical mass with Windows Vista"
What does that even mean? That it's about to explode?

 

Heh, heh. I think the more consumers that are using it, the more incompatibilities are coming out of the woodwork (and MS is getting overwhelmed).

My week-old Vista machine already has logged 88 issues in the Error Reporting app, over 50 of which are recurring compatibility problems. The list is growing day by day apparently (and I report all of them).

 

I can definitely see blaming some hardware/software developers. Vista was pushed back a long time for various reasons. There were also public Betas. Most manufacturers were well aware of compatibility needs ahead of time. Just look at ATI, they had a great graphics driver for Vista with time to spare. nVidia did not do nearly as well. Is it because Microsoft likes ATI/AMD better?

People were complaining that Vista was delayed so long, and now they're complaining that it wasn't ready. You can't have it both ways. I think it was good to get the product out there, and developers are starting to come around with drivers and apps that work.

 

Not really.
Remember how RC2 suddenly broke all the existing drivers?
Microsoft basically changed the driver model a month before release. And perhaps, since it is Microsoft's OS, and they are the ones with the knowhow, it is up to them to help other companies figure out how their drivers should be written to work with Vista. If driver support for Vista isn't good enough, in the end, it's Microsoft's fault. They changed the driver model, they caused the headaches for the companies trying to write drivers. And they're the only ones who can answer these companies questions about how the driver should behave to work with the OS.

It could be because ATI didn't have a DX10 product, so they only had to write a DX9 driver.

Has it occurred to you that they might have been different people complaining? Or that they were complaints about two different things?
One is about Microsoft's incompetence at developing Vista. They misjudged the time it took to develop the OS, and a cut down, hacked-together version ended up taking 5 years, where as I recall, the full-featured version was originally intended to take 3.
The other complaint is that when, after 5 years, they released it, it wasn't ready.

Ok, so maybe they aren't two different complaints. Maybe they're actually the same. Complaints that Microsoft apparently don't have the skills to develop the software they're selling. They take ages to make something that isn't ready.

 

Well, RC2 was released the first week of October. That's nearly 5 months before the final release. I agree that Microsoft should have a hand in helping with compatibility, but that is almost impossible with the amount of companies trying to write drivers and software. I guess I'm lucky that all of my hardware worked like a charm.

The thing that really bugs me is that a ton of software became incompatible with Vista. For instance... Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006 (obviously released in 2006, when Vista was in RC mode). This program does not work with Vista at all. It runs on SQL2000, which is also not "supported" on Vista. Until early April, if you called MS the only option would be to pay $99 and upgrade to 2007. This was changed, and it became a free upgrade, but a lot of people were basically screwed. That's Microsoft's own software! There are many other manufacturers that had the same issue and didn't issue free upgrades.

I wouldn't say Microsoft is incompetent at developing the software. They developed a great product (in my opinion). I think they should help make Vista universally compatible, but I understand the amount of time that can take. Maybe MS should be more focused on compatibility than reaching a deadline.

 

Well, if it is so impossible, perhaps Microsoft should have either used a more familiar driver model (gradually moving towards something like Vista's model, instead of doing it in one jump), or at least stabilized the driver model much earlier, so companies had time to get used to it. My point is just that it was MS who decided to switch to this driver model, it was MS who decided to do it very late in development. And so it's MS who has to take the blame if there isn't enough support for it yet.

In a lot of people's opinions (primarily the ones complaining that it was released too early), it's not a great product though. In any case, the fact that they could misjudge it so badly isn't exactly something they can be proud of.

5 months isn't much to develop a stable, mature, high-performance driver.
(And some versions of Vista were released long before that)

 

I agree with you here, but I don't think Microsoft does.

 

Translation: We have an awful lot of Vista licenses to sell, so you driver vendors better get on the ball!

Translation: Like always, we at Microsoft release products in what would be beta state for most other companies, then blame the vendors and customers for the problems.

Translation: So, to repeat ourselves, you driver vendors better get on the ball, and all you customers still running perfectly good software that does not work with our newest more perfect image of the world need to get new, more expensive software that does conform.

 

I agree with ttupa, I guess because all my drivers worked. The only program Vista said had "compatibility" issue was Visual Studio 2003 (another MS product!), but it works on my machine. Microsoft has been blamed a lot for problems caused mostly by third-party drivers. That's nothing new.
Well, I just did a quick search on Wikipedia and Vista apparently supports the old driver model ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Driver_Model#Criticism)
And I didn't see anything about all drivers being broken in RC2 (I only read Wikipedia though http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista#RC2 )