Friday, 9 January 2009
The Vista Blame Game
CNET News: Obviously, Microsoft didn't necessarily get everything it might have hoped for in terms of the critical response for Vista. What are you guys planning to do differently with Windows 7?
Ballmer: Well, I think we made some choices in Vista to improve security at the kind of expense, if you will, of compatibility. ...
I get nervous when I hear someone say "Our product flopped because we put in too much security" especially when there's no way to know what kind of train wreck it would have been if they hadn't gotten serious about security. We often hold up the Gates memo as the Platonic ideal for executive buy-in, but "when we face a choice between adding features and resolving security issues, we need to choose security" is what got us Vista. Let's hope people understand that, had they chosen features, there wouldn't have been an XPSP2 either, and that would have been an even bigger world of hurt as people fled to other operating systems, or simply decided that computers weren't a reliable way to do business.
