D6, the sixth annual All Things Digital conference, kicked off yesterday with a session starring Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Discussion spanned topics ranging from the failed Yahoo acquisition to the lukewarm reception Windows Vista has had to the impact that Gates’ imminent departure will have on the company. It was for another reason, however, that this session was so keenly anticipated: it was to contain the first public look at Windows 7. Recent revelations from Microsoft have suggested that Windows 7 will be far more evolutionary than its radical predecessor; this was confirmed by last night’s demonstration.
Gates: Windows 7 will “take less memory, be more efficient”

Whereas Windows Vista had a huge amount of public build-up, Microsoft has so far kept pretty quiet about Seven. Details about Vista were talked about in public seemingly non-stop from about 2003 until its eventual release in late 2006. As is now well-known, Vista didn’t deliver all of the features promised during its extended development, and the widespread negative perception of the OS has undoubtedly hurt both the Microsoft and Windows brands. The tack being taken with Seven is very different. Microsoft is deliberately keeping quiet about Windows 7 to attempt to ensure that the company can actually ship everything it promises in late 2009/early 2010.

What was shown at D6 was rather less than hoped. The big feature—in fact, the sole feature—demonstrated was multitouch, the same technology as found in Microsoft’s multi-thousand-dollar Surface table and Apple’s iPhone. The demonstrated software was more or less the same demos we saw with Surface—photo scaling, finger painting, splashing about in water—along with a Virtual Earth/Google Earth-style mapping program. And that’s the extent of it. That’s all that was demonstrated. The demoed software appeared to have a new taskbar, but no details on this were forthcoming; when quizzed on it, the demonstrator replied, “It’s something we’re working on for Windows 7 that I’m not supposed to talk about right now.”

Posted by Zoov on 29 May 2008 08:21 am
Filed Under: Business, Sci-Tech |