 |
• August 16, 2008 •
Last Thursday Microsoft finally started some form of communication about its next Windows version - currently code-named "Windows 7" - on a blog called Engineering Windows 7 (or E7 for short).
Microsoft has already been heavily criticized for not having any public channels of communication open for Windows 7, and even Microsoft's own partners complained that the company isn't telling them much, while they're the ones that really have to know the details so they can align their products accordingly.
According to the opening entry on the blog, E7 is hosted by the two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky. Steven Sinofsky is in charge of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group and Jon DeVaan heads the Windows Core Operating System Division. Jon and Steven, along with members of the engineering team will post, comment, and participate in this blog.
It'll be interesting to watch if some useful information will be disclosed. When I read the opening post, this piece kind of said it all for me:
"In leading up to this blog we have seen a lot of discussion in blogs about what Microsoft might be trying to accomplish by maintaining a little bit more control over the communication around Windows 7 (some might say that this is a significant understatement). We, as a team, definitely learned some lessons about "disclosure" and how we can all too easily get ahead of ourselves in talking about features before our understanding of them is solid. Our intent with Windows 7 and the pre-release communication is to make sure that we have a reasonable degree of confidence in what we talk about when we do talk."
Sinofsky hasn't been known to freely share his thoughts on Windows 7, so it'll be interesting to see if this blog will actually divulge some useful information.
