Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Tuesday 28 October 2008, 7:05 PM
Microsoft Windows 7 - the reviewers' guide, reviewed
But what's most interesting isn't the size, nor the gleaming industry-standard happy people photographed in various conditions of bliss. It's what the company can't quite bring itself to say straight out. For example:
"Windows 7 provides regular progress updates throughout the upgrade process, with those progress updates replacing the “Your upgrade may take several hours to complete” text at the bottom of the screen in Windows Vista."
"Ooops", anyone?
And this: "Microsoft continues to work with closely with it ecosystem partners, beta testers, and early adopters to improve the overall compatibility experience for customers. Given the significant progress the software ecosystem has made in Windows Vista compatibility— and the continuous feedback and telemetry data that
Microsoft expects to receive from beta customers—the Windows 7 engineering team believes that Windows 7 is on the path to deliver a high degree of application compatibility"
Comes close to "Yeah, we messed that up too. Big time. But it's getting better. Really."
And then there's the ever-useful innate belligerence of inanimate objects: "Today, there are dozens of Microsoft Web sites that offer you information about Windows, making it hard to know which one has the information you need." It's the sites that make it hard. Not, you know, anyone in particular
But it's not all trying to say sorry and not quite managing. A lot just wasn't Microsoft's fault: ""When Windows Vista was initially released, not all of Microsoft’s partners had adapted their products to run well on the Windows Vista platform. This diminished many customers’ first experience with Windows Vista."
In fact, did you realise that Vista had been the starting gun for unparalleled innovation in, er, "devices"? Tell 'em, Microsoft! "In the short time since Microsoft launched Vista, the world has seen amazing changes in the nature of devices. They’ve gone from being single-function peripherals to complex, multi-function devices with a large amount of local storage and the ability to run applications"
Any idea what they're on about? It continues: "And they’ve evolved from a single type of connection -- such as USB -- to multi-transport devices that support USB, Bluetooth, and WiFi." Ah. Wonder if they're related to the devices mentioned here - "Although Tablet PCs with touch screens were introduced more than five years ago, new devices have revitalized the role of touch in the user experience." Can you tell what it is yet? Here's another clue:
"Windows 7 also introduces support for new multi-touch technology, enabling you to control what happens on the screen with more than one finger. For example, you can zoom in on an image by moving two fingers closer together, like you’re pinching something, or zoom out by moving two fingers apart"
Yes! It's just like an iPhone (there, I said it). Except - zoom in by pinching? Isn't that the diametric opposite to the way the iPhone multitouch does it? Egad. If only Microsoft had seen an iPhone - instead of one of these mysterious 'devices'…
Lots good in there too, of course, but the most interesting stuff -- application virtualisation, diagnostics, Powershell, security policy management -- is at the back. No happy smiling people. Which is odd, given that if that stuff works, it'll cheer up millions.
PreviousComments on this post
Rupert, since you've seen the demo they gave (I assume) did they talk at all about the hardware that implements the multi-touch screen?
I talked to a touch screen controller vendor for the systems we buy and he indicated that the multi-touch screens required new hardware design. I'd like to know if that's true. It seems to me that since multiple mice can co-exist, be active and be plugged in simultaneously even into Windows XP, that a "multi-touch screen" may not be that big a deal at least in hardware.
No, I haven't seen the demo - but multitouch does indeed need new hardware. It's not like having two mice, it's closer to having a mouse with two independent balls.
As it were.
LOL! I actually prefer trackballs myself!
Conceptually I have a pretty good handle on what would be needed to make a multi-touch screen to work. The big issue is how to implement a scan mechanism with sufficient resolution without too much complexity. Something like a PC keyboard scanner using rows and columns. The current keyboard device requires a special signaling protocol to enable the micro and the keyboard interface in the PS to speak to each other. The multi-touch screen will probably require something similar. I anticipate that there will be a new peripheral handled by the HID, Human Interface Device, driver.
There are lots of multi-touch technologies; I particularly like the ones that use the transistors within the LCD itself to sense touch. You can make those work right up to the resolution of the screen itself, and you only need a single extra line of IO (basically turning the thing into a read/write memory mapped device) - although sensible implementations don't do it that way, for loads of very good reasons. Mostly that you don't need megabytes of memory to map onto two or three very large, very slow events!
Something I'd like to see would be a device that maps portions of your physical desk into a pointing device. Some sort of IR scanner along the bottom lip of the keyboard would seem to be a way to do that.
