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Microsoft's problem bringing Vista online

John Naughton

IT WILL not have escaped your attention that Microsoft is labouring to finish the next version of its Windows operating system, Vista. A version aimed at the corporate market is supposed to be ready for Christmas, with the consumer edition following some time later (missing the Christmas market, which has irritated computer manufacturers and retailers more than somewhat). This month, Gartner, a leading IT consultancy, predicted that Microsoft would miss those shipping dates.

"Microsoft's track record is clear: it consistently misses target dates for major operating system releases," the firm wrote. "We don't expect broad availability of Windows Vista until at least the second quarter of 2007, which is nine to 12 months after Beta 2." Microsoft challenged this. A company spokesman told CNET News: "We remain on track to deliver the final product to volume-licence customers in November 2006 and to other businesses and consumers in January 2007."

So there! The significant thing about Vista, however, is not the shipping date but the fact that it has been an unconscionable time in the making. And while all this has been going on, Apple has released several major upgrades of its OS X operating system, and the programmers behind Open Source Linux have significant upgrades over the same period.

The difference between Microsoft and Apple can be largely explained by two factors. One is structural: Apple's OS X is based on Unix, which has a different architecture from Windows, and may be inherently easier to upgrade. The other is that Microsoft is a victim of its past monopolistic success: any new version of Windows has to be "backwards compatible" with the thousands of programmes and hardware devices built to work on earlier versions of the operating system. Apple has much less of a "legacy" problem in this sense.

The really interesting comparison is with Linux, a product of comparable complexity developed by an independent, dispersed community of programmers who communicate mainly over the net.

How come they can outperform a stupendously rich company that can afford to employ very smart people and give them all the resources they need?

Here is a possible answer: complexity.

Microsoft's problems with Windows may be an indicator that operating systems are getting beyond the capacity of any single organisation to handle them.

Therein may lie the real significance of Open Source. Open Source is not a piece of software, and it is not unique to a group of hackers. It is a way of building complex things.

Microsoft's struggles with Vista suggest it may be the only way to do operating systems in future. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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