Windows Vienna follows Vista

Isn't Vista scheduled to be released in late 2006? I think it's in beta now.

With Microsoft's Vista track record, it serves them well to start planning ahead. Vista was originally slated to be released in 2004, and they still had to strip out a good number of features to meet the holiday 2006 shipping date.

I have to say I'm rather worried about Microsoft already thinking about what comes after Vista. I would prefer them to put all their efforts into making Vista as good as it can be.

You can't have all your programmers work on the same think. Or actually you can, but it won't get any better that way. So you can hire extra staff, or staff not necessary for your current projects, to plan ahead and start building the (next-)next-generation stuff. This way, those get better too, and besides: if you don't start working on the (next-)next-generation stuff, the competition will beat you ferociously. Plus what boomslang said.

I think it shows a bit of poor planning from Microsofts side, even though planning well ahead isn't all that bad. But maybe they should start thinking about a launch date for Vista before they start planning a new OS to follow Vista.

Paul writes:

"I'm not yet sure why Microsoft is worrying about the OS after Vista, when Vista isn't anywhere near getting out the door."

WilcoWilcox writes:

"I would prefer them to put all their efforts into making Vista as good as it can be."

Jesper writes:

"But maybe they should start thinking about a launch date for Vista before they start planning a new OS to follow Vista."

These are all false distinctions. Microsoft can and should be doing both, and the separate efforts do not detract from each other. Perhaps you are all under the impression that Microsoft has a limited pool of resources.

It's like saying "I wish Microsoft would put more effort into their Office software before they start on Windows-for-palm-devices." Guess what, they did both, and each group has plenty of manpower and resources to succeed or fail on its own regardless of what other projects the company is working on.

Microsoft's OS group is not a six-man team either. They have multiple teams of hundreds of programmers. As Jaap noted, combining all of these efforts would make things worse, not better.

They're trying to follow Apple's footsteps... You know, whenever Apple releases a new OS, the next Dev. Conference they get, they introduce another one.

Oh boy can't wait for Windows Vienna to be released......what in like the year 2020.

I must say that I have waited for Vista and watched it get pushed back, and back.....and back. Thats when OS X caught my eye and I decided to taste the fruit on the other side. It is some pretty good stuff and I am never going back.

by working early they would be building Vienna off of Vista's currently buggy codebase.

Not so. Vienna has plenty of stuff to get to work on even without any codebase at all. Producing an operating system involves a lot of steps before you even get down to coding - think design vs. implementation. The user interface changes alone (mentioned in the neowin article, which you should have linked instead of just to your own blog) will hopefully get a lot of thought before a line of code is even written.

A lot of you guys do not seem to understand software design.