Programming Windows: 7 (Premium)

At the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2005, Bill Gates had noted that Microsoft didn’t hold this event every year. “It’s an event that we give when we have new tools, new foundation software, and new developer opportunities for you,” he said at the time. This explained why there wasn’t another PDC until 2008, when Microsoft announced its cloud push with Window Azure and the Windows 7 developer story, such as it was. But it doesn’t explain why Microsoft held yet another PDC just a year later, in 2009, as there were literally no new tools, foundation software, or new developer opportunities on offer.

Indeed, very little really happened between PDC 2008 and PDC 2009 on the Windows front.

As you may recall, Steven Sinofsky walked onto a stage at the former event and, with a little help from Julie Larson-Green, provided the first public overview of the user experience changes in Windows 7, a release that his team had been working on for over two years by that point, despite it being a minor, evolutionary update to Windows Vista. And then he walked onto a stage almost exactly one year later, with that product finally completed, and bragged about the process he had put in place to make it happen. Sinofsky’s PDC 2009 appearance was so content-free that the only thing worth mentioning is that he gave out a free Acer netbook to paid show attendees.

But we learned a lot about Mr. Sinofsky and his particular brand of leadership in the intervening year. We learned that Sinofsky was not at all interested in feedback from users, though he made a show of asking for that feedback to make enthusiasts feel like they were still being heard. What he was interested in instead was telemetry data—the automated usage information that his team had evolved Windows to include—and bug reports. Both of these forms of interaction ostensibly involved real people using Windows 7 in prerelease form, but they did so indirectly and impersonally. Telemetry data would show Sinofsky and his team, statistically, what was working and what wasn’t working. And bug reports helped them locate the biggest issues with the product: if enough people complained about the same thing, it would need to be fixed.

But Windows 7 as a product emerged from the depths of Redmond fully formed in 2008 and it was delivered in almost that exact form a year later, largely unmodified to address any concerns from the outside world. Aside from two major milestone releases and a more voluminous set of leaked interim builds, all we got from Sinofsky was a lot of pedantic explanation and exposition in the form of meandering “Engineering Windows 7” blogs posts.

A typical debate from this era concerned whether Windows 7 was a major or minor Windows release. My view at the time was that Windows 7 was a minor, evolutionary update to Windows Vista that could have easily been delivered more quickly and perhaps more appropriately as a feature update or service pack. But Sinofsky’s view was that Windows 7 was a major update because any revision to a product as big and complex as Windows was major, and because its many minor changes amounted to an important leap forward. In this view, Windows 7 was to Vista as Windows XP was to Windows 2000: they shared architectural underpinnings but the latter products, respectively, offered important visual and functional differences.

At PDC 2008, Microsoft shipped a “pre-Beta” version of Windows 7 that we later learned was the M3 (“milestone 3”) build that it had previously released internally, and it did not include a lot of the user interface changes that Sinofsky, Green, and others had demonstrated at the show: the enhanced taskbar, Jump Lists, Aero Peek, and desktop slideshow, for example, were not available. (My friend and coauthor Rafael Rivera discovered that these features were in fact hidden in the M3 build and he released a “Blue Badge” tool to unlock them for enthusiasts.)

In mid-December 2008, Microsoft issued the Windows 7 Beta, in which the build number had been artificially bumped to 7000. This initial release was only for beta testers, but a public release was due in January.

“Windows 7 simply isn’t changing over time,” I wrote in my review. “And that says a lot about the state of Windows 7 development at this point in time. That is, Windows 7 is much further along now than was any other Windows version when it reached its first beta release. In fact, this build is much closer to a release candidate (RC) build than a beta from a quality standpoint. It is feature-complete, it is reasonably stable, and it is highly compatible with the software and hardware I use on a regular basis.”

For those who hadn’t experienced any leaked builds or Rivera’s Blue Badge tool, the Beta provided a first interactive experience with the few new Windows 7 features and user interfaces. Testers could also install Windows Live Essentials, which Microsoft said “completed the Windows 7 experience” by adding back applications—like Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, and others—that had been stripped out of the OS to make it smaller. (To be fair, this separation also allowed Microsoft to update these applications more frequently.)

For me, the Beta was quite a bit less interesting.

“Windows 7 is fairly unexceptional in the sense that, yes, it has some nice improvements over Windows Vista, but, no, none of them are particularly major changes,” I wrote. “In this sense, Windows 7 is much like your typical Microsoft Office release, a nicely tweaked version of the previous release.”

During his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January 2009, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer—who had taken over the keynoting duties for the departed Bill Gates—announced the public beta release of Windows 7.

“I’m thrilled to announce the availability of the Windows 7 beta, which is on track to deliver simplicity and reliability,” he said from the stage at the Palazzo Ballroom in the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas. “Windows 7 and Windows Live are part of an incredible pipeline of consumer technology that is making it easier than ever for people to communicate, share, and get more done.”

The build that Microsoft issued publicly was, of course, the same build that it had issued to testers a month earlier. But Ballmer’s CES keynote served as a public forum for Microsoft to explain its new vision for Windows, which was no longer just a single product but rather a set of experiences that spanned Windows on the desktop, Windows Live Essentials, and Windows Mobile on smartphones, plus emerging technologies like Play To (multi-device media sharing based on DLNA) and Bluetooth.

It was also a forum for Microsoft to once again defend Sinofsky’s secretive approach to product development.

“We’ve made a major cultural change in the development process for Windows 7,” Microsoft’s Mike Nash told me at CES. “We made sure the plan was cooked before we went public. History was, if we thought it was good, we talked about it, and in many cases, we didn’t do the things we thought about, and for good reasons, but we were premature in talking about them. Windows 7 is very different. We’ve never had a version of Windows 7 this mature at the beta phase, and we’d never told the industry so little about a version of Windows 7 [until so late in the process]. We are trying to be more thoughtful and do a better job.”

Nash confirmed to me that Microsoft intended to ship a Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) and then the final RTM (release to manufacturing) build in 2009, and that the firm had no plans for another Beta or other interim releases.

“Our number one focus moving forward is fixing bugs,” he said, implicitly confirming that customer feedback was not really a high priority for this team.

As ominously, Microsoft’s antitrust troubles were not over. On January 16, 2009, Microsoft revealed that it had received a Statement of Objections from the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission. The Commission’s preliminary view was that the inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows since 1996 had violated European competition law by unfairly foreclosing other web browsers from competing effectively.

“We are committed to conducting our business in full compliance with European law,” a Microsoft statement explained. “We are studying the Statement of Objections now. Under European competition law procedure, Microsoft will be afforded an opportunity to respond in writing to this Statement of Objections within about two months. The company is also afforded an opportunity to request a hearing, which would take place after the submission of this response. Under EU procedure, the European Commission will not make a final determination until after it receives and assesses Microsoft’s response and conducts the hearing, should Microsoft request one.“

Microsoft, in other words, was buying time.

On February 1, Sinofsky confirmed the obvious: the next Windows 7 release would be the Release Candidate build.

“The next milestone for the development of Windows 7 is the Release Candidate or ‘RC’, ” he wrote in a blog post. “We’ve released the feature-complete Beta and have made it available broadly around the world. The path to Release Candidate is all about getting the product to a known and shippable state both from an internal and external standpoint.”

Sinofsky noted that the RC version of Windows 7 would be “Windows 7 as Microsoft intends to ship it,” and that it would place the OS on a fast track towards RTM, when the code would literally be completed, and general availability (GA), when it would be made available to the public. But no timelines for the RC, RTM, or GA were provided. “The answer [to the schedule questions] is forthcoming,” Sinofsky added.

Also in early February, Microsoft revealed its plans for the various Windows 7 product editions. Here, too, we saw a familiar evolution from the past: Microsoft would continue with the multi-edition strategy it had first tried with Windows Vista. And this time around, there would be just as many product editions from which to choose—Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate/Enterprise—but now each in turn would be a strict superset. With Windows Vista, the consumer and business versions each had some unique features. And Windows 7 Starter and Home Basic would only be available in emerging markets.

“As we moved to Windows 7, we looked back on the key learnings we had with Windows Vista and the conversations we’ve had with partners and customers,” Microsoft senior vice president Bill Veghte told me at the time. “Everyone was looking for simplicity and clarity. They don’t want to compromise capabilities as they stepped up.”

Despite the somewhat simpler product lineup, some still felt that Microsoft was artificially bifurcating Windows to inflate its profits. After all, when confronted by multiple choices, consumers typically chose a higher-end and more expensive version. But the company said that wasn’t the case.

“Within a customer base of over one billion, there are a lot of important customer niches, or segments, and we want to make sure we have an appropriate product for everybody,” Microsoft general manager Mike Ybarra said. “We understand some of our customers have different needs, like enthusiasts who want every feature in Windows, for example. But for a majority of our customers the choice is really simple: Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional.” (Note that both of those versions were higher-end and more expensive.)

Throughout February and March, I received several interim Windows 7 builds that offered new backgrounds and wallpapers, icons, themes, sound schemes, and the like, but almost no new features. There was one curious exception, however. Windows 7 build 7048, issued in early March, allowed users to uninstall Internet Explorer 8, a feature that Microsoft had, to date, argued was essential for Windows to operate correctly. A week later we found out why: it was trying to forestall any pending antitrust charges in Europe. But it wasn’t just IE: Windows 7 would also let users remove other bundled products, too, including Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Search, Handwriting Recognition, Windows Gadget Platform, Fax and Scan, and the XPS Viewer and related services.

“Microsoft has done a lot of work, beginning with Windows Vista, to componentize Windows, removing inter-component code dependencies where possible,” I explained at the time. “This componentization effort has allowed the company to make more features removable in Windows 7, but we should be clear about what this means. When you remove a feature like IE 8, what you’re removing is the end-user application, not many of the underlying software APIs, which are of course used throughout the system for various reasons. This will ensure software compatibility—that is, third-party applications that rely on lower-level technologies like MSHTML compatibility and Winsock will continue to work after IE 8 is removed—and provide a smoother experience for users and support staff.”

In March, the software giant released Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP, Vista, and supported Server versions. Things had changed for IE since the Longhorn era, when Microsoft’s browser was seen as a way for the software giant to advance its Longhorn user experience and developer models to the web. But with IE 8, Microsoft was taking a more standards-centric view and was again pushing IE to compete more effectively against Firefox and newer competitors like Google Chrome. It was also the first IE version to ship with integrated developer tools.

In mid-March, I received a secretive Windows 7 RC pre-briefing and was told that there would, in fact, be some new features, contrary to previous promises. Some of the product editions—later revealed to be Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise—would include something called Virtual Windows XP to allow for the virtualization of Microsoft’s older Windows OS and its bundled Internet Explorer 6. You could run the full OS if you wanted or use its application virtualization capabilities to run XP apps inside of Windows 7; this feature had been lifted from Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

But the Windows 7 RC remained elusive. In early April, I was told that Microsoft had forked the Windows build tree to accommodate separate RC and RTM branches. The RC branch followed the existing 70xx build numbers, while the RTM branch had jumped to 71xx. These builds were kept in lockstep, so that build 7106, for example, corresponded to RC build 7076.

But finally, it happened: on April 23, 2009, I obtained Windows 7 build 7100, one week before Microsoft would announce it as the Release Candidate milestone. The RC build included one surprise in the newly renamed XP Mode (XPM), previously called Virtual PC Windows XP, which brought a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3) for free.

“XPM has huge ramifications for Windows going forward,” I wrote. “By removing the onus of legacy application compatibility from the OS, Microsoft can strip away deadwood technology from future versions of Windows at a speedier clip, because customers who need to run older applications can simply do so with XPM. For Windows 7 specifically, XPM is a huge convenience, especially for Microsoft’s corporate customers, who can of course control virtual XP behavior via standard Microsoft administration and management technologies like Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP). And it significantly recasts the Windows 7 compatibility picture. Before, Microsoft could claim that Windows 7 would be at least as compatible as Windows Vista. Now, they can claim almost complete Windows XP compatibility, or almost 100 percent compatibility with all currently running Windows applications.”

There were other improvements in the RC, of course, though most were minor enhancements. The new themes feature was renamed to Aero Themes. Aero Peek was integrated into ALT + TAB (Windows Flip). Device Stage was updated to support older peripherals. There were some improvements to Windows Touch. And performance had greatly improved, making the transition from Windows Vista even better. Oddly, three previously promised features—Guest Mode (codenamed PC Safeguard), Bluetooth audio class driver support, and drag and drop Library creation—were dropped.

On April 30, Microsoft finally announced the Windows 7 Release Candidate.

“Listening to our partners and customers has been fundamental to the development of Windows 7,” Microsoft senior vice president Bill Veghte said. “We heard them and worked hard to deliver the highest quality Release Candidate in the history of Windows. We have more partner support than we’ve ever had for an RC and are pleased to say that the Windows 7 RC has hit the quality and compatibility bar for enterprises to start putting it through its paces and testing in earnest.”

At TechEd 2009 in early May, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 was “on track” to ship by the end of the year.

“The company is anticipating that the next version of its client operating system, Windows 7, will be available to customers in time for the holiday shopping season,” a press release noted. “In addition, Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate (RC) is available today with the final product releasing to market in the same timeframe as Windows 7.” Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 would offer a few “better together” features, including DirectAccess and BranchCache.

On June 2, Microsoft revealed that it would complete the development of Windows 7 in late July and then make the system broadly available to customers later than expected, on October 22, 2009. This final milestone was called General Availability, or GA. It then announced the Windows 7 pricing scheme—with no major changes to speak of compared to Windows Vista beyond a good deal for those who purchased three Windows 7 Home Premium upgrades at once via the Windows 7 Family Pack—and the start of its Windows 7 Upgrade Option program, which allowed consumers and small businesses to later receive Windows 7 for free when they purchased a qualifying Windows Vista-based PC. And as it did with Vista, Microsoft said it would defer about 50 percent of the revenue from eligible sales under the program, which would help Windows 7 revenues look better when that system shipped later that year.

In early July, Microsoft rewarded Steven Sinofsky for calmly and slowly steering Windows 7 to market by promoting him to president.

“Steven Sinofsky has demonstrated the ability to lead large teams that deliver great products,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said. “The work he and the team have done in getting ready to ship Windows 7 really defines how to develop and ship world-class software. He is a perfect fit to lead the Windows group.”

Additionally, non-technical Windows CFO Tami Reller would take on “additional responsibility for marketing” while Bill Veghte would move “to a new leadership role in the company to be announced later this year.” These changes were all scheduled to happen around the time that Windows 7 reached the RTM milestone in late July. More ominously, Jon DeVaan, who had managed the engineering team responsible for creating the core components of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, would now report to Sinofsky. And unlike Sinofsky, he wasn’t getting a promotion: he would retain his role as senior vice president.

In mid-July, I received access to the RTM build of Windows 7, which included the final visuals, like a new boot-time animation and the final default desktop wallpaper. Beyond that, there wasn’t anything new to report or comment on, but we were still waiting for the final sign-off after the usual escrow period. That finally happened on July 22 when each of the major product group leaders signaled, in turn, that their part of Windows 7 was complete in the Ship Room.

“The Windows 7 team is proud to share with you that a short while ago we have started to release Windows 7 to PC OEM and manufacturing partners,” Mr. Sinofsky wrote in a post to the Engineering Windows 7 blog. “This means our next major milestone will be the availability of PCs loaded with Windows 7 and store shelves stocked with Windows 7 on October 22, 2009.”

Sinofsky’s team had “done a good job at being open, honest, and transparent in how [it] had approached engineering Windows 7,” as he wrote in that post. But it was less than open, honest, or transparent about how it engaged in user feedback, which hadn’t started until the product design was finalized and had never included changing or adding major features in response to that feedback. All Sinofsky and his team wanted from users were bug reports and automated telemetry feedback, which they got: over 10 million people opted-in to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). Despite this, Sinofsky touted the “feedback and collaboration” it experienced with beta testers and how it had “spent collectively thousands of hours discussing and acting on the feedback” they had provided.

That Saturday, low-level representatives from various PC makers—including Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba—came to Microsoft’s Redmond campus for a ceremonial delivery of the Windows 7 RTM code. Unlike the beautiful wooden boxes that they had received from Jim Allchin, the PC makers got the Windows 7 discs in plain white boxes, and Steven Sinofsky didn’t attend the hand-off.

In late July, Microsoft abruptly decided to put its antitrust troubles behind it for good. Instead of dragging out its EU case for several more years—which would have been easy, given the slow-moving and belabored legal process there—Microsoft simply capitulated. It agreed to provide a mechanism in Windows with the European Economic Area (EEA) that would allow PC makers and end-users to disable Internet Explorer and replace it with the browser of their choice. The firm had, of course, set the stage for this announcement when it made IE and other Windows middleware components removable. But it will still be a bit of a shock given how belligerent the firm had been with antitrust regulators to that date. Indeed, it had specifically referred to this kind of concession as “requiring Coke to bundle a bottle of Pepsi in every six-pack.”

“Microsoft will distribute a Ballot Screen software update to users within the EEA of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Client PC Operating Systems, by means of Windows Update,” the Microsoft proposal explained. “The Ballot Screen will give those users who have set Internet Explorer as their default web browser an opportunity to choose whether and which competing web browser(s) to install in addition to the one(s) they already have. The Ballot Screen will provide an “install” link [and] an “information” link … Microsoft shall ensure that in the Ballot Screen users will be informed in an unbiased way that they can turn Internet Explorer off.”

At Microsoft’s annual Financial Analysts Meeting on July 30, CEO Steve Ballmer was bullish on Windows 7, but he mostly spoke about Microsoft’s transition to cloud computing.

“We’re embracing the cloud,” he said simply. “Our cloud story today is actually pretty developed. It’s not fully implemented, but it is actually pretty developed, and we’ve got a lot of hard execution in front of us … “With the launch of Windows Azure … we have real reference accounts and some real success now with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online. [We announced] our Office Web Application companions. I think we’ve sketched both a business approach and technology approach that lets us benefit from the cloud.”

“If we go out five or ten years and we assume that the cloud becomes a very substantive part of the server and tools business, what you’ll still see is higher overall profitability numbers from Microsoft, higher overall revenue, higher overall profitability,” Microsoft president Bob Muglia added. “So we’ll continue to grow both key aspects of our business … As the cloud emerges with Windows Azure, SQL Azure, our overall cloud platform, we have an incredible portfolio that enables our customers to take their existing investments forward into the future.”

Over the next few months, Microsoft finalized some of the key bits that Windows 7 needed before GA. XP Mode was finalized, for example. As was Microsoft Security Essentials (codenamed Morro), a free anti-malware and antivirus package that the company would finally offer after years of foisting paid OneCare-branded solutions on consumers.

Microsoft also began advertising Windows 7. Following up its successful “I’m a PC” campaign, the new campaign was called “Laptop Hunters,” and the ads hit Apple where it hurt the most, price.

“Say what you will about Apple’s Macs—and, make no mistake, every single Laptop Hunters ad does mention the Mac—but they’re far more expensive than PCs,” I wrote at the time. “And in this economy, especially, that irrefutable fact rings true. Laptop Hunters is so successful that Apple actually started responding to them in its own ads. Game over, Apple. Thanks for playing.”

Much less wisely, Microsoft in October invited enthusiasts to host Windows 7 launch parties of their own, and it shipped interested parties a “Windows 7 Party Pack” to get things going.

This pack included a so-called Signature edition of Windows 7 Ultimate that was signed by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a Windows 7 wallpaper puzzle, Windows 7 logo-d streamers, balloons, napkins, tablecloth, poster, and place setting, Windows 7 playing cards, some 14-day Zune Pass cards, and various promotional offers from Nero, Norton, Kaspersky, and Corel.

It was well-intentioned. But yikes.

(To celebrate the launch, Mary Jo Foley and I organized a party at Antarctica in New York City on the night of October 22.)

As for the launch event itself, it was a fairly subdued affair with an HP event the night before at New York’s American Museum of Natural History and then the launch event itself was held at the Skylight Studios event space. There was little in the way of celebrity—Bill Gates was long gone—and we were treated to the horrors of Tami Reller trying to make Kylie, the cute little girl from the Laptop Hunters ads, be, well, cute.

“I’m a PC!” she said. “And here’s Steve Ballmer!”

“You were LATE!” she added as Ballmer stepped onto the stage, to laughter.

Unfortunately, the event culminated in an awkward product tour during which Microsoft’s Mike Angiulo walked CEO Steve Ballmer through a mostly boring set of Windows 7 PCs.

Sidenote: Those familiar with my story about the hotel toilet that would only work properly with a one-legged user will appreciate this photo, which was taken during my trip to New York for this launch.

And with that subdued launch event—and a quick flush—the Windows 7 era had begun.