Programming Windows: Countdown (Premium)

Microsoft spent much of 2001 focused on getting Windows XP out the door, and it had plans for a public launch that would rival, if not dwarf, that of Windows 95. And after revealing the new branding for Whistler at a February technical workshop, it scheduled its next public milestone, a broader reveal to non-technical journalists.

“Windows XP is the most important Windows release since Windows 95,” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told reporters at a mid-February 2001 event held at Seattle’s Experience Music Project (EMP). “It’s time to give users brand-new reasons to upgrade their PCs. We’re delivering new experiences.”

“Windows ushered in low-cost computing,” he added, noting that Microsoft had invested over $1 billion in developing Windows XP. “The goal is to simplify things that have been hard and surprise people by letting them do things they’ve never done before with a PC.”

Windows head Jim Allchin contributed to the hype by claiming that XP wasn’t a system upgrade, but was instead “a lifestyle upgrade” with “standing ovation” new features that would make a real difference to customers. “Windows XP is the system that I’ve always wanted to build,” he said. “It’s the system that my mom deserves, and trust me, she talks to me a lot about the things she really wants in Windows.”

Based on the positive reports from the EMP event, the journalists were impressed with XP’s music and photo management features, remote assistance tools, multi-user capabilities, and robust, NT-based underpinnings. But given the recent industry doldrums, some wondered what the demand was: would customers rush out to upgrade their existing PCs or buy a new computer?

Microsoft intended to find out. Gates had promised that his firm would ship Windows XP Beta 2 that quarter, by the end of March. And Microsoft did deliver a pre-release Windows XP build with the new Luna user interface to testers that same day. As important, it also started communicating to developers what they could expect from Windows XP.

The biggest topic, of course, was the new Windows XP visual style. In previous Windows versions, users could configure themes, which included on-screen elements like colors, fonts and font sizes, and wallpapers, plus system sounds. But the new Windows XP visual style changed the way that controls, window borders, and menus were displayed. And here, Microsoft had some bad news for developers: though the addition of the new Windows XP visual style suggested that the system could be easily skinned, the firm said that such a thing was “not appropriate at the operating system level.” As such, XP’s new theme file formats would not be made public and Microsoft would retain control of themes, “to allow a consistent user interface and ensure design continuity. A theme developer’s kit will not be available with Windows XP.”

The new Windows XP user interface was functionally similar to the web—for example, buttons could change color as the mouse pointer passed over them and Windows Explorer featured one-click hyperlinks in its navigation bar—but it was not based on HTML or web technologies. Instead, it was implemented using a new theme manager that would render on-screen elements differently based on which visual style was configured. It also utilized a new side-by-side component sharing technology that allowed the classic and Windows XP visual styles to coexist. Existing applications would display in the classic visual style, even if the PC was using the Windows XP visual style, unless they were updated for the new system. This required developers to include a manifest file with their applications that indicated compatibility with the new visual style.

Microsoft also updated support for the icons in Windows XP so that they could now support 24-bit color and a maximum size of 48 x 48 pixels. Here, again, developers would need to support both the new and the old so that icons would look as good as possible in both Windows XP and its predecessors.

Windows XP would also provide a new feature called fast user switching that combined the multiple user functionality from Windows 2000 with the multiple sessions of Windows 2000 Terminal Server, creating a new and friendly way to have multiple users signed in at the same time. “In fast user switching, multiple users do not have to not log off when using a single computer,” Microsoft explained. “Instead, their accounts are always logged on, and they can switch quickly between all open accounts.” Along with a related remote desktop feature, fast user switching required that developers support a Certified for Windows specification for data and setting management that was originally created for Windows 2000 Terminal Server.

Beyond those high-profile features, Windows XP would also support new power management states, an evolution of the 2D Graphics Device Interface (GDI) called GDI+ that added anti-aliasing, gradient shading, and other improvements, and support for new high-density (133-DPI and 200-DPI) displays, and it would ship in a separate 64-bit version for the Intel Itanium and “McKinley,” its coming successor.

And while .NET integration was mostly non-existent, one could integrate a Microsoft (Hotmail) email account with a local Windows XP user account using Windows Passport, allowing for pass-through authentication for a coming generation of compatible websites and services. This was the first step towards the Microsoft Account (MSA) integration that would appear in later Windows versions.

As February moved into March, Microsoft continued to seed testers with new Windows XP builds, pushing the product closer to its final form. Beta 2 finally arrived on March 26, meeting Microsoft’s delivery promise, and opening up XP and its new look, task-based approach, and bundled Internet Explorer 6 technologies and Windows Media Player 8 to a much wider audience.

Oddly, Microsoft chose to promote Windows XP’s .NET features in its Beta 2 press release, explaining that XP was “an important step in delivering on the Microsoft .NET vision because it is the first operating system optimized for Web Services … The Windows XP-based PC will be at the center of the .NET experience, empowering users to move beyond disconnected applications, services and devices to complete computing experiences that redefine the relationship between people, software and the Internet.” But it could only tout two web services features in Windows XP Beta 2, a new Web Publishing Wizard and Internet photo ordering from Ofoto and Kodack.

The Beta 2 release was timed to Microsoft’s annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, or WinHEC, which targeted hardware and device makers. As such, Bill Gates delivered a keynote address that promoted XP’s new hardware advances, including its support for IEEE-1394 (later renamed to Firewire), USB 2.0, and Wireless 802.11 (later renamed to Wi-Fi), and how XP-based PCs would integrate with a new generation of connected devices of all kinds.

“There’s a big installed base out there, in total, over 300 million users on some version of our Windows 9x-type system,” he said, “and we expect, over a several-year period, to see a massive migration to Windows XP. As many of you who are using Windows 2000 know, once you move up to this code base, it’s really impossible to ask somebody to go back.”

Gates also talked up his pet hardware project, the Tablet PC, a coming Windows XP-based platform that would take the PC to a new but long-anticipated form factor.

“The Tablet PC is evolutionary in the sense that it runs Windows XP and it runs all the applications,” Gates said. “It’s evolutionary in that when you buy it, of course, it will have either a wireless or a connected keyboard. But it’s revolutionary because of your ability to take it in your hands, sit there and read and annotate, take notes, things that were not possible before. So the scenarios, the breadth of use, and the way that the software will take advantage of the pen and that direct manipulation, that is very profound. With the pen, you can do things like editing marks and move things around in a way that even the mouse isn’t nearly as good at.”

Gates ended his talk with another demo of the Tablet PC using one of the rare hardware prototypes then in existence. Gates said that he was “rallying partners” to help drive this new market. But the Tablet PC wouldn’t ship until “next year,” a year after the initial release of Windows XP. And XP, of course, remained the core focus.

XP continued to evolve over the next few months. Controversial IE 6 features like the “Personal Bar” and “Contacts” were removed from the browser’s user interface after testers told Microsoft that they preferred “a simpler, more streamlined browser.” (Sound familiar?) Support for USB 2.0, just touted at WinHEC, and Bluetooth were pushed past the initial release of Windows XP, with Microsoft telling its customers that its goal was to deliver support for both at some point; “the method for releasing that support is not yet determined,” it added. Windows XP branding replaced Whistler branding throughout the UI. New wallpapers were added, as were an introductory video and a product tour.

In early May, Microsoft announced that it would launch Windows XP on Thursday, October 25, 2001 on new PCs and via a retail upgrade for existing computers.

“Windows XP will be the biggest Windows marketing event in Microsoft history, doubling the investment of the Windows 95 launch in the first four months of product availability alone,” the firm announced. “This incredible marketing push by Microsoft and industry partners is expected to unleash tremendous demand for the experiences that Windows XP enables.”

And to drum up some excitement, it erected a Windows XP countdown clock on the outskirts of its corporate campus on the east side of I-520: the clock displayed the number of days remaining until the XP launch. An October Windows XP launch, it would seem, was now inevitable despite the product being externally tested for less than a year.

In early June, I discovered via a source that Microsoft was making a major change to the Windows XP visual style by adding two new color schemes, initially called Heartland and Metallic.

Later renamed to Olive Green and Silver, respectively, these schemes would sit alongside the default blue and green theme, providing a limited range of color choices to XP users. Microsoft promised that it would later deliver more color schemes, perhaps via a Plus! Pack, the web, or future XP updates. But over time, the lack of choices triggered numerous complaints from testers, and we were eventually told to just adopt Stardock WindowBlinds if the few color schemes provided by Windows XP were too limited.

Historical side-note: Despite the promises, few additional color schemes ever arrived: Royale came in 2003 with the second version of Windows Media Center and then Zune, an orange and brown scheme resembling a later Microsoft media player. As it turned out, the bitmap-based XP visual style was hard to customize and adapt to high-DPI changes, and Microsoft quickly turned to a vector graphics-based UI that it would deliver in a future version of Windows.

In late June, Microsoft revealed to testers that it would deliver Windows XP Release Candidate (RC1) by the July 4th holiday, release the product to manufacturing in “the third quarter,” and then launch it in October as previously announced. PC makers, I was told, would get it in August. Worldwide, over 21,000 people were testing Windows XP, and the product was quickly approaching the quality of the released version of Windows 2000.

Controversially, Windows XP and Office XP would be the first major Microsoft products to include a feature called Product Activation, which was Microsoft’s first major software-based defense against software piracy. Thanks to this feature, customers would need to activate their legally purchased copy of Windows XP using a 25-digit alphanumeric product key. This could be done electronically, or, given the times, via a toll-free phone call that Microsoft promised would require a “maximum of two minutes wait time and two minutes for the activation.” Microsoft operators were standing by for your call. And you would need to enter a 50-digit numeric product key that they read back to you in order to activate XP. Yikes.

There were also more new features coming down the pike, including a Windows Messenger client for real-time chat, voice, and video calls. And a new Windows Catalog would act as the precursor for today’s app stores, providing users with a repository of high-quality Windows applications with application compatibility information.

With the move to the NT kernel across its entire Windows lineup, Microsoft also began reevaluating its product support lifecycles. Now, the software giant would support each version of Windows with at least 3 years of availability and 5 years of “guaranteed support.” Server versions would get 5-7 years of support. “Consumers expect a shorter life cycle,” we were told. “They expect 3-5 years.”

With June drawing to a close, Microsoft released Windows XP Release Candidate 1 (RC1) right on schedule. Microsoft described this release as “feature complete,” meaning that it would only fix bugs going forward.

The Windows XP RC1 reviewers’ event in New York that month was interesting, with many complaining vocally about Windows Product Activation (WPA). “Do you mean to tell me that Microsoft is actually concerned about ‘neighborhood piracy rings’?” one irritated reviewer asked during a contentious Q & A. “Basically, yes,” came the response.

“I had approached this event with one goal, incidentally, and that was to discover whether there was any chance that Microsoft would drop or at least ease up on WPA,” I wrote at the time. “Sadly, I can now report that there was no indication of this at all. Indeed, Microsoft is pig-headedly unable to discuss this topic, and I came away almost stunned by the responses that questions about this topic received. Even questions about potential ‘home licenses’ or ‘home networking licenses’–which had, in the past, seemed possible–were shot down completely. ‘We are looking at feedback on a home license to determine whether there is a need,’ said Allen Nieman, from Microsoft licensing. ‘But the need is not as prevalent as you might think’.”

The problem reviewers had with WPA was that it was tied to the specific hardware of the PC—literally 10 specific hardware items—and that if some number of them changed or had to be replaced, the PC might become deactivated. Some, like the motherboard, were more important than others, but network adapters, CD-ROM drives, GPUs, SCSI host adapters, and other items all played a role in this mysterious system.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Mr. Nieman was overwhelmed by the attention he received at the product showcase after the Q & A, with reviewers almost completely ignoring the other tables. It was like the scene in the movie Airplane where a long line of weapon-wielding passengers are each waiting, in turn, to beat up on a hysterical co-passenger. By the time the event was over, I saw him huddled, depressed, with a group of other Microsofties that included Joe Belfiore. When I asked them what they were doing, I was told that they were hoping to grab something to eat. So I took them over to Little Italy and found a restaurant that was called, appropriately enough, Luna. They were very happy about this since Luna was the codename of the new Windows XP visual style.

On July 2, Microsoft actually announced that there were just 115 days to go until it launched Windows XP. By that point, the tester base had grown to an incredible “half million people,” Microsoft said, and XP was on track to being the highest-quality Windows release yet.

“I am pumped up about Windows XP!” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer excitedly wrote in an email to all employees two weeks later; one leaked it to me. “I am pumped up about Windows XP for business users … I am pumped up about Windows XP for home users … I am pumped up about Windows XP for our industry … I am pumped about using it here at Microsoft … Finally, I am pumped up for the Launch on October 25th and all the hard work the development teams are doing leading up to RTM [release to manufacturing]. Do everything you can to help them by getting pumped up yourself, by running Windows XP at work and home, and by letting them know about your experience.”

And then it happened.

Microsoft, which had been planning to usher in the .NET era with two back-to-back Windows releases, Whistler and Blackcomb, had changed strategies: an internal review of the Blackcomb project by Bill Gates deemed the product to be too aggressive, and he told the Windows team to scale back its ambitions for that release. And so they scheduled yet another Windows release, codenamed Longhorn, that would come between Whistler (Windows XP) and Blackcomb.

“Blackcomb is designed to be a major release of Windows with a full .NET user experience and integration with various web services,” I wrote when I learned of the change in late July. “And while this is still the plan, the company now realizes that it can’t hit the original late 2002 release date for such an ambitious product. So Longhorn will fill that gap, with an expected release in late 2002 or early 2003. And Blackcomb will follow in 2003-4.”

Many were confused by the Longhorn codename. Whistler and Blackcomb, after all, are two mountains that stand next to each other in British Columbia, and they’ve long been popular skiing destinations for Microsoft’s employees. But what the heck was Longhorn? A Microsoft source told me the answer, allowing me to reveal the meaning to the world: Longhorn, it turned out, was a bar that sat between the two mountains. And so the name made sense since Longhorn was something that would happen between the Whistler and Blackcomb releases.

In an unusual move, Microsoft confirmed reports that it had delayed Blackcomb. “There will be a Windows release between Windows XP and Blackcomb,” a Microsoft spokesperson told me.

Some rumors suggested that Longhorn would be a second version of Windows XP designed to appease antitrust regulators. But Microsoft refuted that. “The plans have nothing to do with some scaled-down version of XP or concerning anything to do with settlement or antitrust issues,” Jim Allchin said.

Indeed, Microsoft’s antitrust problems in the U.S. were pretty much over by that time, with the U.S. Court of Appeals in late June overturning most of the lower court’s findings against the company. That said, Microsoft was facing regulatory pressure in the European Union (EU) as well, with the European Commission (EC) merging two separate cases ahead of legal action that would later impact Windows XP, and in a major way. (But that was for the future: the EU said on August 30 that it would not block the release of Windows XP.)

With the summer winding down, Microsoft continued to fight off discussions about Longhorn and Blackcomb as it honed Windows XP for release. In late July, the firm’s executives provided presentations about Microsoft’s major businesses and to financial analysts to make the case that the future looked bright. Jim Allchin, for example, basically provided a victory lap for Windows, celebrating the business’ three consecutive $2+ billion quarters and the pending release of Windows XP.

But a demo by Microsoft’s Steve Guggenheimer during Yusuf Mehdi’s MSN presentation triggered an unusually public uproar when the “service innovation prototype” he showed off was misinterpreted to be a preview of Blackcomb. It was instead a glimpse at a possible future MSN user interface that might integrate with the Windows shell. The reveal was well-intentioned, but it was also a bit of bad timing. And poor communication, on Microsoft’s part, given that Windows XP was on deck.

“We’ll take a little walk into the future, not for too long,” he said, showing off a Windows desktop with a blue sidebar on the left. The inference was that this was a future Start menu. “One of the things that I think the Windows guys have done a tremendous job with in the current release with XP is sort of creating hooks for services, enabling services to blend nicely with the PC.”

“So if I look at the Start menu today, there’s a bunch of places there where we [MSN] can hook in. Imagine the future as a user, being able to have access to services and local capabilities sort of seamlessly, so I don’t have to go and do something different, for example, if I want to look at my finances. My finances can be in line with my music or my videos or my pictures, the things we do today. And with customization I might be able to take a symbol, stick it right there in line, think about my contacts in terms of buddy list today, again, that’s sort a separate entity today, and when we can bring it in and make it cleaner, then I can go to my contacts. I might anchor this, I might tear it off and bring it out like we do with Messenger today, or some of the other messaging services.”

“So from the Windows perspective, I know this will be an open bar where anybody can plug in. I like the notion that the stuff that I care about, my services, I don’t differentiate anymore those things that are sort of service-oriented from those things that are located specifically on the machine; it’s just an overall experience.”

Microsoft would eventually deliver a variant of this “bar” as part of a future MSN client for Windows. And, of course, Windows Longhorn would likewise include a Sidebar feature as well, though it would not replace the Start menu. But those releases were, like so much else, to come later.

With the still community buzzing about Longhorn and Blackcomb futures, Microsoft issued Windows XP Release Candidate 2 (RC2) on July 28. In a call with reporters, Jim Allchin compared where he was with XP with his favorite fitness routine. “I like to run to keep in shape,” he said. “Right near the end, you get this burst of energy, and that’s where we are. We’ve got the finish line in sight. As I pulled in [to work] today, the [Windows XP countdown] clock said 90 days [to go]. We are on track.”

Finally, on August 24, 2001, Microsoft made the final build of Windows XP available to testers, with build 2600 released to manufacturing for both retail and Microsoft’s PC maker partners. Microsoft revealed that PC makers would be “pre-activating” Windows XP for their customers, and I informed Microsoft that the new name of Windows 2000 Magazine would be Windows & .NET Magazine; the hope was that we wouldn’t need to change the name every time Microsoft rebranded Windows. And there were lots of little side-releases around XP—a new set of Power Toys, a new Plus! Pack, the Windows XP Resource Kit, and add-on MP3 Creation Packs and DVD Decoder Packs among them.

And then disaster struck. Literally.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners in the United States, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington D.C.; the fourth was heading for Washington D.C. as well but slammed into the ground in western Pennsylvania when the passengers charged the cockpit. These attacks changed the United States, and the world. But for Microsoft, which had been planning to launch Windows XP in New York City, they also presented a rather unique problem. Was now really the right time to celebrate a tech product launch?

Ultimately, Microsoft worked with New York to scale back the original launch plans. And on October 25, 2001, Bill Gates headlined a subdued Windows XP launch event.

“A few weeks after the September 11th attack, I called the mayor [of New York] to ask him whether he still thought it was appropriate to hold the launch here,” Gates said at the event. “Without hesitation, the mayor said, ‘Absolutely.’ And I agree. There was only one place to launch Windows XP, right here in the heart of New York City … Today, we’re here with a few simple messages. First, we all fully support the global effort to fight terrorism. Second, New York is back and open for business. And finally, although our economy is going through tough times, the technology industry will keep making the investments and innovations that will re-energize our economy.”

After a brief introduction, Gates then bid goodbye to MS-DOS.

“Today it really is the end of the MS-DOS era,” he said. “It’s also, we would say, the end of the Windows 95 era. That was the most important Windows milestone up to this day. And even when we did that launch, we talked about how the Windows 95 era would come to an end … Well, let me herald the end of the DOS era here. I’ll just simply type ‘exit’ for the last time in MS-DOS.”

As he spoke, the familiar MS-DOS screen with its C:\ prompt appeared on the screen behind him as the crowd laughed and cheered. Gates walked up to a PC on the stage and typed the word “EXIT” into the command prompt as a voice resembling HAL from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey asked him to stop.

“Bill, I brought you the PC,” the voice pleaded. “I helped make Windows. And I’m running over 400 million PCs today. You aren’t going to do this, are you, Bill?”

“Sorry, DOS,” Gates said and hit Enter on the keyboard. “Well, that movie wasn’t called 2001 for nothing.”

Sitting in the audience at the launch event, I laughed and cheered with everyone else. But I also reflected on the sobering turn of events, and I wondered how much bigger the Windows XP launch could have been. Sure, there were XP ads all over Times Square and elsewhere in New York, and Microsoft had hired Sting to perform a free concert in Bryant Park, but the festivities were nothing like the original plans.

I also noticed a new phenomenon: my Windows XP-based laptop, which was equipped with 802.11 wireless networking capabilities, had for the first time detected multiple networks, giving me a choice of connections. But these connections were not at all secure: I could connect to them without any passwords, and when I connected to the Redmond network, could see multiple PCs, all unprotected and open to the world, with names like Emo-winxpimage, Stevenvcm700, V-toddwi, and others.

It wouldn’t be long before this and other serious security problems put a temporary damper on the industry’s excitement about Windows XP, forcing Microsoft down yet another unforeseen path and forever altering the history of Windows. But back in Redmond, the Windows XP countdown clock had finally reached 0. It was over and, for now, all was well: Windows XP was available, Microsoft had at last put an end to MS-DOS forever, and Longhorn and Blackcomb were on the way.

What could go wrong?