Programming Windows: End Game (Premium)

On September 20, 2005, Microsoft announced a corporate reorganization that would see Windows lead Jim Allchin effectively demoted before his retirement at the end of 2006, once Windows Vista was made generally available. It was a strange end for the man who had been responsible for Microsoft’s most important platform for 10 years, and it ensured that his final year at the company would be a poignant one.

Allchin’s fate was no doubt sealed the day he had walked into Bill Gates’ office a year earlier and admitted defeat, pushing the reset button on Longhorn, which was later rebranded as Windows Vista. But the executive team at Microsoft allowed Allchin to make things right, and to go out on his own terms.

The reorg was a major one, with Microsoft restructuring the company around three businesses: the Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division, to be led temporarily by co-presidents Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin; the Microsoft Business Division, to be led by Jeff Raikes, and the Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division, to be led by Robbie Bach. Microsoft also revealed that Ray Ozzie, who had joined the firm six months earlier when the software giant acquired his Groove Networks for $120 million, would “expand his role as chief technical officer by assuming responsibility for helping drive its software-based services strategy and execution across all three divisions.” (Ozzie would succeed Gates as Chief Software Architect a year later.)

Kevin Johnson would succeed Allchin when the latter retired, taking control of a business that included Windows, Windows Server, developer tools, and MSN, and was then responsible for over half of Microsoft’s revenues. But they would work together in the meantime to “ensure a smooth transition.”

Microsoft announced the changes at a press event that alternated between moments of awkwardness and levity. For Allchin, however, it was mostly just awkward.

“Jim Allchin has been chatting with me last year or so about his plans and his desire to retire after we get Vista launched and out in the market,” Ballmer said at the event. “Jim has done an absolutely fantastic job over many, many years, and I don’t want to see Jim go. But I respect Jim’s personal decision. And the combination of Jim’s desires plus where we are and what we’re thinking about says, we really need to think about the leadership of the company. The most important thing we set in front of ourselves was making sure that we have great leaders in charge of the most important things we get done as a company. A lot of great things happen when you have great leaders in charge, and … the flipside is also true. Some of our biggest issues develop when we don’t have the right leaders running the right businesses.”

Given the many problems with Vista, it was hard not to view Ballmer’s words as an implicit condemnation of Jim Allchin, who was sitting near Ballmer onstage as he uttered them. And one naturally wonders if Allchin’s “personal decision” was really just about how and when he wanted to exit the company: immediately and in disgrace or in a year or so with a successful product launch behind him.

Allchin spoke breezily when prompted, and when asked about Microsoft’s perspective on Apple as a competitor—the firm was riding high with the iPod at the time and had created a technically impressive Mac platform that competed with Windows—Allchin tried to differentiate what he was doing from what Apple had accomplished with the Mac.

“There are many different factors [when it comes] to Apple,” he started. “And they are doing some amazing innovations … In terms of what we’re trying to do in Windows Vista, we are going to a new level that they haven’t been at. Fundamentally, they have a different philosophy than we do. We’re a platforms company. We believe in helping other people, and in building an ecosystem. That’s not their strategy. And just coming back from the PDC, where there were, give or take, 5000 people, there’s no question that there’s a huge ecosystem for the Windows system. We’re fundamentally a different focused organization compared to Apple. I think there are synergies that we haven’t taken advantage of within the company. And that’s an opportunity for several of the groups that are up here.”

And with that out of the way, Allchin returned to the task of finishing Windows Vista.

As we discussed previously, Microsoft did end 2005 on something of a high note, with a series of Community Technical Preview (CTP) releases that further improved the quality of the product. And when Bill Gates again keynoted the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas the following January, he devoted a good chunk of his time to Windows Vista. Windows group product manager Aaron Woodman showed off such things as Windows Flip and Flip 3D, the Sidebar, the Windows Sideshow interface that would bring small exterior displays to laptops, Internet Explorer 7 and its tabbed browsing interface, Windows Media Player 11 and its integrated content stores like MTV URGE, and new Media Center and Tablet PC functionality and hardware.

Intriguingly, the Gates keynote also introduced the notion of a new PC gaming push with Windows Vista. Microsoft had launched its next generation video game console, the Xbox 360, the previous November, and it was off to a blockbuster start. And so Woodman demoed a normally wireless Xbox 360 hand controller plugged into a Windows Vista-based PC using a USB cable, noting that “gaming is going to be awesome on Windows Vista.” The initiative to bring Xbox to Windows was later branded, sadly, as Games for Windows, so the Xbox Live equivalent went by the even worse name Games for Windows – Live.

Later that month, Microsoft released the WinFX January Community Technology Preview (CTP), bringing production-ready versions of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to developers. (With WinFS out of the product, WF had sort of replaced it as another “key part” of WinFX even though WF is unrelated to storage or WinFS.) Microsoft described WinFX as “a superset of the Microsoft .NET Framework” and “an evolution of the .NET Framework,” suggesting that it would replace the .NET Framework when it was finalized. The firm also addressed how and why it had ported WinFX to Windows XP and Server 2003.

“Initially, we envisioned WinFX as the programming model for Windows Vista and beyond,” Microsoft director Ari Bixhorn explained. “But early in the development cycle, many of our customers made it clear that they wanted a consistent programming experience for WinFX, regardless of the Windows version it runs on. So while Windows Vista continues to be the flagship delivery vehicle for WinFX, we are also making it available for Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. This down-level support will allow more developers to use WinFX in their existing environments. Customers frequently tell us they want to run their applications in more environments, and making WinFX the programming model for all platforms—Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003—helps us meet this request. As for the developer experience, that will be identical across all three platforms.”

(WinFX wasn’t the only Longhorn-era technology that Microsoft would make available “down-level”: in January, I received a private demo of the Sidebar running on Windows XP, complete with Calculator, Launcher, Recycle Bin, RSS, Slideshow, Timer, and World Clock gadgets.)

In late January, I interviewed Jim Allchin, and he discussed how he had switched the Vista development process from large and infrequent beta milestones to a series of monthly CTPs. (I’ll publish the full interview soon.) At that time, it had two future CTPs in the schedule, a “feature complete” release in February and another in April that could be thought of as Beta 2.

“Beta 2 is really the culmination of the three previous CTPs,” Allchin told me. “It’s really just a different approach for developing the product. We think about Windows Vista only in terms of CTPs. But you can think of it as Beta 2, or the final Beta 2, or even as RC0. We think the quality is going to be good enough there that we won’t even have to do an RC0 release. And then the next CTP will be RC1 … The difference is that, instead of having a beta and then huge amounts of dead time, and then another huge drop, you have more constant updates. And we think that will speed up the development process.”

That same day, a source at Microsoft gave me more insight into the new schedule: Microsoft planned to ship the feature-complete version of Windows Vista internally on January 31, followed by Beta 2 on April 12, and RTM (release to manufacturing, the final release) in August.

“The current internal Vista dev site has a Flash control that does a rotating list of ‘buzz’ quotes from the industry,” he told me. “Paul Thurrott is the author of at least two of the current 6 quotes! They LIKE your latest CTP reviews!” (It’s amazing what can happen when you don’t ship crap.)

Microsoft shipped the February CTP candidate—build 5308—internally on January 27, and it was indeed provided to external testers in February, and was billed as “feature complete,” as promised. It was a significant advance over previous builds, and was, in fact, the first build of Windows Vista/Longhorn that was stable enough to use regularly on production hardware.

“Vista suddenly works,” I wrote. “Yes, it’s still a bit performance challenged—leisurely, if you will—but then, Microsoft has only just started doing the performance work that will continue well into the third quarter of this year. And yes, User Account Protection (UAP) is still present and as annoying as ever. But there have been some interesting changes under the hood that make Vista better than ever.”

One of the more interesting changes in this build is that Microsoft completely backed away from its previous plans to use virtual folders (now called “saved searches”) for special shell folders like Documents, Pictures, and Music. Now, they were just normal folders again, erasing any hint of WinFS. And Microsoft would also allow testers to install any of the available Vista product editions for the first time: the February CTP included Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate Editions. That latter version was a subset of the others and would allegedly come with other perks.

Windows Vista suddenly felt like a real product. The user interface was refined, and the built-in apps had been bulked up with many more additions, including Windows DVD Maker, Windows Photo Gallery, and a new Windows Movie Maker. The new Sidebar was available, too.

A week later, Microsoft went live with its Windows Vista product lineup.

“The Windows Vista product lineup consists of six versions, two for businesses, three for consumers, and one for emerging markets: Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Windows Vista Starter,” the software giant announced. “The number of offerings is the same as the number of offerings currently available for Windows XP,” it added, somewhat disingenuously. Each edition, except for Vista Starter, would ship with both 32-bit and 64-bit install disks.

In March, a source sent me another internal schedule update: Microsoft now planned to ship Windows Vista Beta 2 in late May (instead of August), and RC1 in August, and then release the product to manufacturing in October. That meant that it wouldn’t release in time for the PC holiday selling period.

Oops.

“Since the fall of 2004 we’ve been targeting August as our RTM date,” Microsoft’s Brian Valentine told the troops in an internal email. “People have been working very hard to deliver the greatest release of Windows yet. However, over the last month, I’ve heard from many of you that as we drive to close down Beta 2 we need a little more time in order to get the quality bar right.  Given this feedback from you, I have been meeting with the [Longhorn leadership team] and Feature Leads to drill on all of the project data. What I have heard from everyone is that certain teams need 8 more weeks to get the quality right and confidence is extremely high by all teams that with an additional 8 weeks we will be at RTM quality.”

Yep. Microsoft had delayed Windows Vista. Again.

“As of this email, we are committing to RTM Vista on or before October 25th,” Valentine continued. “This will give us the time you asked for to deliver the quality and our marketing team and partners the time they need to execute on a worldwide business launch of Vista with Office 2007 in November and a great worldwide consumer launch of Vista in January. Based on the [PC maker] feedback and our RTM date, splitting the consumer and business launches make a lot of sense. We will RTM Vista on or before October 25th.”

And with that, Microsoft immediately announced another leadership change in the Windows division. Former Microsoft Office head Steve Sinofsky was moving over to Windows, where he would report to Kevin Johnson and focus on Vienna, the codename for the follow-up to Windows Vista, then called Vista R2.  (Windows Vista Service Pack 1, SP1, was codenamed “Fiji” and was already in development.)

“Mr. Sinofsky is the wrong person to put in charge of Windows,” I wrote, prophetically. “In fact, this reshuffling simply proves that Microsoft hasn’t learned a thing from the problems its Windows division has faced over the past several years.”

“Mr. Sinofsky joined Microsoft in the mid-1990s when the Office Product Unit was first formed, and he’s been described as a faithful and trusted lieutenant of Bill Gates. For this reason, he is absolutely the wrong person to lead any attempt to turn Windows around. Instead, Microsoft should look for new ideas and new blood. Microsoft needs new leadership in its Windows Division, and one opportunity to find that leadership comes from other groups within the company. Two of its businesses still practice the rapid-fire innovation that used to drive all of Microsoft: the MSN and Xbox teams.”

“The folks at MSN and, to a lesser extent, at Xbox, understand the new world order. It’s not clear that Sinofsky understands any better the problems the Windows division faces than he did the problems the Office division had. After all, this is the man who killed Net Docs, an attempt to bring office productivity to the web several years ago. That’s right, he snuffed out exactly the kind of software services that Microsoft is now promoting with Windows Live, and he did so not because it had no merit but because it threatened his Office cash cow. I wish Sinofsky all the best. But I’m afraid that Microsoft is simply putting on appearances and not getting to the root of its problems.”

The new delays were big enough news that Microsoft acknowledged them in a press release.

“Microsoft today confirmed that Windows Vista, the next generation of the Windows client operating system, is on target to go into broad consumer beta to approximately 2 million users in the second quarter of 2006,” the release noted. “Microsoft is on track to complete the product this year, with business availability in November 2006 and broad consumer availability in January 2007.”

In late March, Microsoft released an interim build, 5342, of Windows Vista, which it billed as a February CTP Refresh. It didn’t include much new functionality, but there were minor updates to some components, including Media Center.

But another interim build, 5365, would bring some security improvements to UAC while not making it any less annoying for users, plus updates to Windows Backup and the Windows Recovery Environment. “Microsoft is preparing to finalize Windows Vista Beta 2 (currently set to be build 5372) on May 22, two days earlier than the previous schedule,” I wrote at the time, using information provided by a source. “Microsoft is planning to distribute Beta 2 at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), which is being held that week in Seattle.”

Build 5365 arrived in April. The Sidebar was now on by default, and it features new wallpapers and cleaner and more consistent UIs throughout. As promised, Media Center was improved and looked less muddy than the previous versions in Vista. And for the first time, Disk Defragmenter was configured to run automatically in the background; in previous Windows versions, you had to run it manually.

This was good news for enthusiasts, but Microsoft was dealing with a problem it had not experienced before: no one—not Microsoft’s customers, partners, or shareholders, nor any analyst or member of the press—seemed to be all that excited about Windows Vista. The product had been perpetually delayed and now it wouldn’t even make the holiday selling season, killing PC makers’ best chances at maximizing the new upgrade cycle. It seemed like Microsoft was suddenly always playing catchup to Apple, technically and aesthetically. And years of antitrust issues, in the United States, Europe, South Korea, and elsewhere, had also taken their toll.

“Windows Vista will be the most significant advance in PC operating systems in a decade,” CEO Steve Ballmer argued to employees in the wake of a record earnings announcement. “New offerings in enterprise search, unified communication, business intelligence, and collaboration will make Microsoft a leader in developing solutions for businesses of all sizes, in every corner of the globe. So what accounts for the negative reaction that we’ve seen from analysts and investors?”

Ballmer spoke of the “big, bold bets” that Microsoft had always made, with the inference being that it always won in the end. “Our opportunities are greater than ever, [but] we also face new competitors, faster-moving markets, and new customer demands,” he explained. “Now is not the time to scale back the scope of our ambition or the scale of our investment.”

Unfortunately, Ballmer was backing the wrong horse: he would direct Microsoft to conduct what he called “the largest launch in company history by every measure” and push it with “considerable marketing and sales investments.” Success was ensured because “Windows Vista will drive growth as PC shipments increase in developed markets, through upgrades across our installed base, and through the new higher-value premium versions we are bringing to market.”

Finally, Beta 2 approached.

In early May, Microsoft sent out invitations to a Windows Vista Professional Reviewers Workshop that would be held the day before WinHEC later that month at the W Hotel in Seattle and feature sessions with Chris Jones and Jim Allchin. And to prove that Beta 2 was almost ready, Microsoft shipped a new interim build, 5381, that day to provide a preview of the upcoming milestone. There were no major changes, just a lot of fine-tuning as Microsoft struggled, internally, to arrive at the official Beta 2 build for WinHEC.

At the Windows Vista Beta 2 workshop, Microsoft made its pitch and laid out the many dozens of improvements that this release would bring. After almost three years of disappoints and waiting since the Longhorn PDC in 2003, it was easy to forget just how much Vista would deliver. But Microsoft enumerated through a gigantic list to drive home the point: Windows Vista was an incredible, feature-packed release.

Just looking at the low-level changes, Windows Vista would provide Windows SuperFetch application preloading, Windows ReadyBoost for using flash memory to improve system performance, a new XML-based XPS document format, speech recognition capabilities, a Windows Meeting Space application for peer-to-peer sharing, offline folders for roaming support, integrated Media Center and Tablet PC functionality in all SKUs except for Home Basic and Starter, new power management features, a presentation mode, Windows Service Hardening, BitLocker Drive Encryption, improved Network Access Protection, User Account Control, Windows Defender, a new wireless networking architecture, policy-based Quality of Service for network traffic, IPv6 support, improved automatic recovery features, a new event logging infrastructure, the new file-based Windows Imaging format, Virtual PC Express virtualization, Windows Easy Transfer for PC migrations, and a new parental controls infrastructure. And that was before we got to the eye candy, and all the new end-user applications.

Still, few were convinced. Windows Vista had been in testing for so long that it felt like Microsoft had already released it years ago.

“This is a scary time for Microsoft,” I wrote of Beta 2 the week before it was released publicly. “The company has gotten a lot of bad press lately for the delays, and the missing and broken features. And now, it’s unleashing Windows Vista on the public.”

As expected, Beta 2 didn’t differ from the previous few CTPs and interim builds, though there was one big change: it was surprisingly buggy. But it would head out to a much larger audience of millions of testers via the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP), and so it would be the first peek, for many, at a feature-complete version of the next Windows.

Microsoft opened the program with a special videotaped message from corporate vice president Chris Jones on a community website called The Hive.

A few weeks later, Microsoft delivered yet another Vista interim build, 5456, providing our first look at a build from the release candidate tree. It offered dramatic improvements in reliability, usability, performance, and fit and finish, Setup was much faster, and there were many UI refinements throughout, including several new icons (a hint at a major coming change).

Then, on June 9, Microsoft announced a not-so-subtle name change for WinFX, the managed code framework that developers would use to target Windows Vista (and XP and Server 2003).

“The WinFX brand helped us introduce the incredible innovations in terms of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and the newly christened Windows CardSpace (WCS) formerly known under the codename InfoCard,” Microsoft corporate vice president S. Somasegar wrote in his personal blog. “The brand also created an unnatural discontinuity between previous versions of our framework and the current version. With this in mind, we have decided to rename WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. .NET Framework 3.0 aptly identifies the technology for exactly what it is – the next version of our developer framework.”

In July, Microsoft addressed one of the most common complaints that testers had about Windows Vista: the non-Aero themes looked terrible, and since most PCs then in use couldn’t run Windows Aero, most people who were testing Vista weren’t having a good visual experience.

So Microsoft promised some changes. The Windows Vista Standard theme had been an ugly, brownish-gray color, but it would become a light blue color that more closely matched the default Windows Aero theme’s colors. The firm would also let users select a mid-level Aero Basic theme that used Desktop Composition, but with opaque and colored glass windows frames. (Aero Basic would be what Windows Vista Home Basic customers got, even if they did meet the Vista hardware requirements.)

In late July, Microsoft released another interim build of Windows Vista, build 5472, to Windows Vista Technical Beta program participants, select Technology Adoption Program (TAP) customers, and MSDN subscribers, but not the CPP. There wasn’t much new, but it did at least include the new Windows Vista Standard and Aero Basic UIs, and it continued the quality trends we saw in the previous build.

On August 14, Sven Hallauer—known as Vista’s “ship monster” internally—alerted the troops to some good news: Windows Vista build 5520.16384 had passed the escrow quality bars, paving the way for the product’s release candidate and final builds.

“Great progress again last week!!!” the internal announcement noted. “Over the last two weeks we integrated a total of 2,772 bug fixes directly into the Vista_RC1 branch in addition to [flighting] 18 VBL payloads, and we only had a single day without a build being released!  This just demonstrates the amazing quality improvements we have made in our infrastructure and speaks to the high quality of fixes, and the hard-working dedication across all the teams to keep this great product on track – we can feel very proud of this amazing achievement.”

According to Hallauer’s new schedule, Microsoft now planned to ship the RC1 Escrow build by September 1, lock down the RTM Escrow build by September 6, and ship the RTM Escrow build by October. Windows Vista RC1 was, in other words, on track.

Microsoft released interim build 5536 to testers in late August. I described this build as “a humdinger.”

“I’ve been like a bipolar pit bull when it comes to Windows Vista lately,” I wrote. “Some builds have been fantastic (at least compared to what came previously). Some have been positively embarrassingly bad. I just spent the past three weeks in France with two Windows Vista-based notebooks and it was like being imprisoned with vipers in the dark: I never knew when I was going to be bit. Windows Vista build 5472, the previous milestone testers received, was, shall we say, performance challenged … If this build represents the quality, performance, and functionality that users can expect to see in RC1 and the final release, then Microsoft will have gone a long way towards making up for its mistakes and miscalculations. My only question is why we had to wait so long to see a build this good.”

Vista build 5536 offered improved performance, numerous in-box ads for various Windows Live products and services, dramatic UAC improvements, Microsoft Update integration in Windows Update (so you could receive updates for Microsoft’s non-Windows products), and many other improvements.

Shortly thereafter, on September 1, Microsoft issued Windows Vista RC1 publicly, right on schedule.

“Windows Vista has suddenly turned a corner,” I wrote. “Gone are the egregious and annoying bugs. Gone is User Account Control’s most painful and frustrating behavior. Most application and hardware incompatibilities? Gone. Performance problems? Gone. What we’re left with is a highly usable upgrade to Windows XP with tremendous security and deployment advantages. And now anyone can get it, literally: Microsoft plans to ship RC1 to millions of people around the world beginning next week. If you want in with Windows Vista, your time has come.”

I was told that Microsoft would expand the Vista CPP to over 5 million customers.

“Windows Vista RC1 is a critical milestone for the Windows ecosystem,” a Microsoft representative told me. “Many partners are already testing core products based on Windows Vista, ensuring the availability of a wide range of solutions for businesses and consumers in conjunction with the Windows Vista launch. All partners should prepare for the final availability of Windows Vista now by testing Windows Vista RC1 to develop secure, reliable, and connected applications and hardware devices.”

Microsoft also used the RC1 milestone to announce that it would price the many Windows Vista product editions “at the same prices as comparable Windows XP versions.” Microsoft, I was told, was “committed to keeping prices low for customers.” But that was nonsense: Windows Vista’s product mix was purposefully “SKUd” to ensure that most customers would want the pricier, premium versions.

Two weeks later, Microsoft said it would soon release its first post-RC1 interim build to testers. Build 5728 included many fixes, the firm communicated internally.

“Getting [the] right feedback from the outside community is critical for our success,” Microsoft’s Tokuro Yamashiro explained. “We are now in the last phase of the project we’ve been working on for a long time. It’s very important to make sure that fixes we have made are good and if something were missed, we need time to react. This release will give us that chance to fix critical customer issues.”

As promised, Build 5728.16387 arrived a few days later. The focus was “any critical issues that prevent you from installing or running Vista as your main operating system.” And unlike with previous interim builds, this one was made available to the millions of CPP users too.

In early October, Microsoft issued build 5744 as a surprise Release Candidate 2 (RC2). Another surprise: It changed all the key app icons to a new glass-like theme.

“Microsoft expects the RC2 build to be the last interim release before the product is released to manufacturing,” I was told. “As we stated from the beginning of Windows Vista development, the quality of the product will always be our first priority. That said, Microsoft continues to target Windows Vista availability for volume license customers in November 2006 and general availability in January 2007, although the final delivery will be based on quality.”

In truth, RC2 was just another interim build, but Microsoft was under pressure to deliver something called RC2, and it arbitrarily did so with this build. (It should be noted that build 5744 underwent none of the normal testing process attributed to a true release candidate.) But no matter: RC2, like RC1 before it, was an excellent build with improved fit and finish and it was notable only for one reason: it would be the last build that external testers would see before Vista was finalized in mid-November.

But Microsoft had other issues with which to contend.

After revising the Windows Vista end-user licensing agreement (EULA) to allow customers to transfer the OS just one time to another PC, the firm had to reverse course and remove the limit to silence the criticism. Worse, it was racing against time to make changes to Windows Vista in response to antitrust requirements in the European Union (EU) and South Korea. And to do so in a way that would not delay Vista’s release yet again.

Back in 2004, the EU had charged Microsoft with antitrust violations, forcing the firm to ship versions of Windows XP that did not include Windows Media Player (WMP), and to release documentation describing to its competitors how they could more easily create solutions that integrate with the software giant’s server products. Microsoft appealed, shipped the so-called Windows XP N-editions, and was fined again for not releasing the documentation. But then the EU turned to Windows Vista, thanks in part to an Adobe complaint about Microsoft’s XPS format, which was suspiciously similar to Adobe PDF. (There were other complaints, too: Google complained that the search bar in IE 7 would unfairly push people towards Microsoft’s search service, and McAfee and Symantec complained that Vista security technologies like Patch Guard/Kernel Patch Protection and Windows Security Center were anti-competitive and would prevent them from delivering features they needed.)

And in South Korea, after a complaint from the country’s biggest ISP in 2001, the country charged Microsoft with antitrust violations related to the unfair product bundling of Windows Messenger with Windows XP. In late 2005, Microsoft settled that case and released unique Windows XP K Editions there that do not include Windows Media Player and Windows Messenger. The K Editions also added links in the OS to competing media players and instant messaging software.

To prevent regulators in the EU and South Korea from delaying Windows Vista, Microsoft in mid-October announced changes to the system that it said would address all concerns, despite having never conferred with those governments.

Microsoft said that it would ship the European and South Korean versions of Windows Vista on schedule with the worldwide availability of Vista in other locales. This announcement ended any chance that Microsoft would artificially delay Windows Vista, blaming antitrust issues, or just delay Vista in the EU and/or Europe.

It would, however, delay some versions of Windows Vista in South Korea. Though the “standard” (non-K) versions of Windows Vista, and Windows Vista Home Basic K and Business K would ship on schedule in January, Microsoft would release the “premium” K versions (Home Premium K, Ultimate K, and Enterprise K) whenever Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) became available, probably in the second half of 2007, and alongside Longhorn Server. “All five SKUs and Vista Home Basic K and Business K will come out as scheduled,” I was told. “The premium SKUs in the K versions—those without Media Player or Messenger—won’t come out until SP1.”

Microsoft planned three primary changes: It would create new Patch Guard APIs so that third-party security vendors could access the new technology, and it would let these vendors replace Security Center with their own dashboards. Windows Live would remain the default search provider in Internet Explorer 7 for clean installs, but when users upgraded to Vista, they would be prompted to select a search provider from a list that included both major search services (like Google and Yahoo) and lesser-known options (such as Lycos or Ask.com). And Microsoft would open up XPS as an international standard, and still ship it with Windows Vista (but not Office 2007).

With that, Microsoft announced that it was “on track to deliver Windows Vista for worldwide availability to its volume license business customers in November and worldwide general availability in January.”

On October 25, the day that Microsoft was supposed to finalize Windows Vista, the firm instead announced the Windows Vista Express Upgrade program, which allowed PC makers to provide free or low-cost versions of Vista to customers who purchased PCs with Windows XP preinstalled during the coming holiday seasons.

As it turns out, Microsoft had missed its self-imposed October 25 deadline because of a set of unexpectedly buggy pre-RTM build of Vista the week before. Microsoft had pushed Vista build 5824 into escrow the previous Friday, hoping that the build would qualify as the final shipping version. But a catastrophic problem with the build destroyed any systems that upgraded from Windows XP, requiring complete reinstallations. After several frantic days of trying to find the bug, Microsoft finally fixed the problem and reset escrow. And the next Friday, it internally released build 5840, which didn’t include the bug. Testing over the weekend produced positive feedback, and Microsoft reset its clock for a November 8 RTM date. This was, according to internal documentation, the last day that Microsoft could finalize Windows Vista and meet its November and January launch dates.

On October 31, Microsoft revealed the final packaging for various Windows Vista (and Office 2007) retail products. Microsoft told me the packaging was mean to evoke the same qualities as the Vista product name, as well as its look and feel. The high-quality cases would mark the last time that the software giant spent real money on Windows retail packaging.

On Sunday, November 5, 2006, my sources contacted me again: Vista, they said, was almost complete. The RTM version was now expected on Monday, November 8 but could occur any day that week. I was told that the final build should be version 6000.16386.061101-2205.

On November 8, Jim Allchin announced that Microsoft had completed the development of Windows Vista via a call with media and analysts.

“This is the quick on/off experience that users have wanted for years,” he said. “It’s the most reliable OS we’ve ever shipped, and it’s been tested more than any OS ever. We’ve delivered 16 tech previews since Beta 1 alone, have seen millions of downloads, and have over 60,000 machines running Vista inside of Microsoft already. There is no question that, when compared to Windows XP with SP1, Windows Vista is substantially more reliable.”

Mr. Allchin explained that he would be retiring at the end of January when Microsoft shipped Vista to customers.

“My hope is that this OS will be remembered for the huge progress we made,” he said, “in quality and security in particular … This was a good day, and I’m super happy. I want to thank all the testers and reviewers for their valuable feedback. We’ve listened, scanned the blogs and newsgroups, met with people. I can’t stress enough how proud I am of this product and the team that created it.”

Wishful thinking notwithstanding, Microsoft was already moving on. And before the product even shipped to customers, it promised that it would not make the same mistakes again.

“A five-year gap will not happen again,” CEO Steve Ballmer told the Wall Street Journal, explaining that the company was working on new development processes so “we can add things with greater and greater agility.”

When Windows Vista launched, it did so in a world that is very different from today. Its chief competitors were Mac OS X and Linux, two systems that couldn’t be more different from each other. And Microsoft and most of the world still saw smartphones as companion devices that were subservient to PCs. In that world, Windows Vista made some sense. It further advanced the user experience past the bifurcated Linux interfaces of the day, and it brought the PC closer to the integrated Mac experience, closing the door on potential switchers.

But even without the benefit of hindsight, there were warning signs that Vista didn’t do enough to address the needs of an ever-changing world. The proliferation of high-speed Internet connections made the web more attractive to users, and this shift continued to make Windows less important. And where Apple was rising in the devices world, Google was emerging as the dominant player on the web.

Microsoft would counter this thinking by explaining that “rich clients” like those offered on Windows would always offer better experiences than less capable web apps and websites. And it had released families of Windows Live and Office Live products and services to bridge the gaps between its dominant desktop products and the online world.

There were also troubling signs that Steven Sinofsky, the autocratic former leader of Office, had been given wide latitude by Mr. Ballmer to oversee future Windows development as he saw fit.

“Mr. Sinofsky so far has largely focused on preparing supplemental software for Vista expected next year,” the Wall Street Journal wrote of these developments, referring to Windows Vista SP1. “But he has already put his stamp on the division, last summer quietly cleaning house of an old guard that managed the troubled Vista project. Meanwhile, a cadre of respected Microsoft computer scientists and programmers formed a group under Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie to start building software that could be a critical piece of what Windows might become, say people familiar with the work. That group, says a person familiar with the matter, sees the future of Windows as much more as an Internet service than software that runs on a PC.”

“Some people familiar with the situation see the possibility of tensions between Mr. Sinofsky’s group and efforts like the one under Mr. Ozzie,” the report continued. “In a similar tug of war in the late 1990s, one internal faction [led by Brad Silverberg] lobbied to use Microsoft’s Internet browser software to radically retool Windows for the Internet. But that faction lost out to a more PC-centric view of the Windows mission [led by Jim Allchin], an outcome that some Microsoft insiders say is one reason the company fell behind in the Internet services Google and others now lead.”

It would be a few years before we fully understood the devastation that Mr. Sinofsky would bring to Windows, problems so big they would one day make the Windows Vista’s issues seem almost quaint by comparison. But between the Vista launch and that sad day 6 years later, Windows would finally face the cause of its inevitable downfall. And it would come from a single device that was marketed as “an iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator.”