Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic Ballmer: Vista “not a failure” but here’s a Windows 7 demo
Fuzzy Logic Ballmer: Vista “not a failure” but here’s a Windows 7 demo | Ballmer: Vista “not a failure” but here’s a Windows 7 demo |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Thursday, 29 May 2008 | |
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Last year Steve Jobs and Bill Gates shared the stage at the same event, this year Steve Jobs was replaced by Steve Ballmer, so the hype just wasn’t as big as last time. That said it’s nearly the end for Bill Gates’ day-to-day life at Microsoft, so the event started off with an extended version of the fake ‘goodbye’ video that Gates showed at CES, but soon the Q&A got into full swing. The full interview is certainly worth reading, but one highlight is where Mossberg asks Ballmer if Vista has been a failure. Ballmer says: “Vista is not a failure. Is it something we’d like to improve? Of course. Is it something that with 20/20 hindsight we’d do differently? Sure. But Vista has sold a lot of copies.” Mossberg also asked if Vista has damaged the Windows “brand”. Gates replies that “Microsoft’s philosophy is to ‘do things better’. And Vista has given us lots of opportunity to do that” – which is followed by audience laughter. “There are plenty of lessons out of Vista–compatibility and other issues vendors are concerned about”, continued Gates. A demo of Windows 7 was also shown. First, a stick figure was drawn on a touch screen, then two fingers were used to zoom the image larger or smaller. Given the fact it was something Steve Jobs showed on the iPhone over a year ago, no-one was terribly impressed, and Gates had to remind the crowd that he’d shown a similar demo a year ago too with the Surface PC. So, what’s clear is that multi-touch technology is now going to be a major part of Windows 7 – but obviously only if you have a computer with a multi-touch screen or a multi-touch touchpad of some kind. A blog posting at the Windows Vista Team Blog goes into more detail on the multi-touch nature of Windows 7 and has a cool video showing off some demo apps. But given the fact Apple says it has 200 patents on the iPhone, some of which must cover multi-touch technology, while Microsoft clearly has developed its own multi-touch technology with Surface, I wonder if the lawyers are getting ready to stand off at the cyber OK Corral? Please read on to page 2. |
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