from Tommy Hilfinger of all people, who Microsoft decided to use to pitch Windows Vista at a recent conference:

“When you combine people and technology, you have a very powerful combination.”

Well there you go. I wish I’d thought of that.

Forbes columnist Daniel Lyons rips into Microsoft and Vista here. (the column is also the source of the above quote).

This column quotes an insider source saying that up to 60% of Windows Vista code must be rewritten before it’s January ’07 launch. That just doesn’t make sense. Either the source is wrong, or he’s misquoted (perhaps some subsystem needs heavy work), or Vista will NOT hit January ’07. You can’t rewrite 60% of an OS you’ve been working on for 4.5 years and ship it in 10 months. My guess is it’s the middle scenario – one section of Vista is a mess and needs heavy rewrite.

Overall, signs bode poorly for MS’s software capabilities.

Vista is WAY late. Internet Explorer is dead in the water (When they resumed work on I.E. in January ’05, they promised 7.0 would be delivered in summer ’05. But there’s no sign of even a public beta yet. [Edit – the public I.E. beta was just released 3 days ago]) The .NET initiative had underwhelming results. What has MS delivered in the last 3 years?

This entry was posted on Friday, March 24th, 2006 at 11:10 am and is filed under Game Biz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.