Vista Is The New Windows Me

http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/04/windows...ays-bill-gates/

WinXP's lifeline has been extended to 2010, and Windows 7 is due to arrive 2009. MS will still talk up Vista, but actions say more than 1000 words here. Vista is a turd, and now it's official.

I think two recent developments are behind this slighting of Vista at Microsoft's own hands: iPhone and Eee PC. Both devices show how a lean, mean, well designed operating system can succeed where a bloated giant can't.

The Eee PC is behind extending WinXP because this is a very important new device category and Vista is by design too bloated to run on it. The iPhone is behind Windows 7 because it runs OS X and comes with OS X development tools, and that's so big an advantage over rival OSs that Steve Job's prediction it would take others 5 years to catch up may not be far from the truth.

There's OpenGL on the iPhone, and there are sophisticated 2D and animation frameworks there, as well as a professional and proven development environment. This blows all other mobile operating system clear out of the water. OS X has some of the most sophisticated graphics frameworks of any OS, and it's all on the iPhone now as well. Synergy! (*)

Vista would offer an equivalent set of frameworks, but it's way too monolithic and way too large to even consider running it on a cell phone. Windows 7 will address this with a small kernel (and perhaps even a decent architecture) and my prediction is that before long it will replace Win Mobile. Or a pared-down Win7 will just become the next WinMobile with some compatibility layer.

(*) I am playing with the iPhone development kit right now