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WWDC Day 1: Vista Under Fire

Well, I’m back in my hotel after a big Day 1 at Apple’s WWDC. Before the keynote was even started, people gettig on line were greated by three huge banners promoting Leopard. Makes sense, this is after all the big unveiling, but what was more interesting is that the taglines for these banners, rather than touting something cool about Leopard itself, all poked fun at Vista. They read:

Introducing Vista 2.0.
Redmond has a cat too. A copy cat.
Hasta la vista, Vista.

If you watched the keynote, you also saw them poke fun at Vista UI enhancements and other features that resembled things already in OSX. This was a common theme throughout all the presentations today. While I have no problem finding humor in it, it does at time get repetititve and I can’t help but wonder what their obsession with Vista is. They’ve got a great product and the future sure looks bright (though I’m not allowed to talk about anything I’ve seen outside the keynote, but that’s a subject for the next post). I think they need to move on from the whole MS bashing fascination and start promoting the product for what it is on its own.

Of the things I can talk about, the coolest thing they showed is the Time Machine backup mechanism. Not because the backing up technology is all that exciting or even new, but because of the intuitive and fun interface they slapped on it. This is where Apple beats Microsoft every single time and will continue to do so until Microsoft focuses more on the user experience and less on delivering new plumbing technologies so frequently. I sincerely hope this will happen post Vista. Once Vista is delivered, Microsoft needs to do nothing but focus on visible, end-user enhancements for the next six or so OS releases and those six releases should happen in the next three to four years. They’ve invested in the future by building a great foundation with the Vista kernel, .NET and W*F pillars. Now all they need to do is put it them use.

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  1. re: MSFT focusing on UI, I think they will. They’ve started talking more about designers, and I think they realize that the way to really distinguish your application (and your platform) is to make it possible to build great UIs and intuitive, interesting experiences. Hopefully they’ll do that with WPF.Big fan of the blog, keep it up.

  2. Totally agree. I think MS have some internal issues about making some drastic changes to their cash cows (Office and Windows). MS seems to be more like a collection of smaller companies than a co-ordinated single company these days.

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