14 DAY TRIAL // There’s no doubt that Windows 8 planning is in full swing, and has been in fact for the most part of 2009, but additional aspects of Windows 7’s successor are less clear, as whether actual coding has kicked off, and then some details are down-right unknown even to Microsoft, such as a specific general availability deadline. Microsoft has confirmed unofficially on numerous occasions that the focus is slowly shifting to Windows 8, but has not yet delivered any clear details. Nor will the company shed any light on the Windows 8 project until the end of 2010, the start of 2011, with Steven Sinofsky, president, Windows and Windows Live Division, at the helm.
Still, silence must not be mistaken for inactivity, and the software giant is in fact laboring to top Windows 7, according to Sinofsky, via TechRadar. "That is the essence of product development," he said. "All product development is like that in all industries. You make a movie and it's the right movie for the right time and then you have to write a sequel. And the sequel can be The Godfather Part 2 - or it can be Ernest Goes To Camp. There's no answer to that; that's what we do and that's the work we're going to do."
Sinofsky denied rumors indicating that the Windows team is guided by a six-point plan when it comes to the direction in which Windows 8 will be taken. The Windows President emphasized that narrowing down the evolution of the Windows client to just six pillars was not the way he operated. However, at the same time, he did not wish to disclose any details about where the next generation of Windows is heading.
"One, that wouldn't be how I would work; I have a whole book that explains that! The biggest problem is figuring out what to do and getting it done,” he added. “"In a way nothing could be less how I'd work - that's like 180 degrees wrong. The very last thing great product development needs is one person saying how it should be. If you think about the complexity of our industry, there isn't one person who could do all of this. How could you understand touch technology, networking technology, graphical user interface, application development? There's just so much. I mean, the hubris required to say 'these are the six things we're going to go do'?"
One thing that Sinofsky indicated about Windows 8 was that the operating system needed to strike an equilibrium between delivering innovation and resolving problems that the end users have come across. In this regard, developers will need to focus intensely on their area of expertise, in order to ensure that innovation is delivered.
"We have a process that we go through where we work to make sure the people who are experts in certain areas, that their ideas bubble up - and then part of the process is to understand how does it all hang together,” Sinofsky said. “Really it's not 'can we do x, y and z?', but can we have them all come together in a way that x, y and z is really a big thing. One plus one is three - or at least 2.25."
At the same time, each new Windows version is expected to evolve along with consumers, and to deliver solutions to the problems end users face on a daily basis. Not only this, but with the evolution of Windows, Microsoft also needs to deal with issues that survived in past versions of the operating system in Windows 8.
“Enthusiasts or people who know lots often just come up with their list of things that they would fix in the next version. But you can't really sell a product based on 'we fixed all the things that a small set of people thought were broken'. On the other hand it's really hard to sell a product where 'everything is different but it's all better; trust me!' That's a tricky sell, too. So you always have to have this portfolio of 'here are the things we fixed, that we understood' and 'here are the things that are new'. If you think about it like a car, it's cool to buy a car that has built-in navigation but you don't want it to also have jet engines and steering throttles instead of a steering wheel," Sinofsky explained.