Vista Indicates A Shift in Microsoft's Priorities

Oh good, came across an article on Slashdot which reflected my ponderings of late...

After hundreds of hours of testing Vista, Scot Finnie is supremely tired of it. And of Microsoft. Although 80% of the changes in Windows Vista are positive, there is nothing about Vista that is truly innovative or compelling; there's no transformational, gotta-have-it feature in Vista. But the real problem isn't with Vista. It's with Microsoft itself. His opinion is that Microsoft has stopped focusing on end users. They 'now seemingly make many decisions based on these two things: 1. Avoiding negative publicity (especially about security and software quality) 2. Making sure the largest enterprise customers are happy.'

From the Computerworld article itself:

At least 80% of the changes in Windows Vista are positive. Microsoft took the extra time to smooth over some of the speed bumps noticeable in the prerelease builds of the OS... The single best advantage of Vista is that ergonomically, it's easier and just plain more satisfying... to use.

On the other hand, nothing about Vista is truly innovative or compelling. With the exception of security... there's no transformational, gotta-have-it feature in Vista.

He also links to another interesting article concerning how Microsoft snuck in a variety of copy-controls. Read it in Vista and Beyond: Piecing Together Microsoft's DRM Puzzle by Matt McKenzie. Computerworld's IT BlogWatch has also collected a series of Vista DRM-related commentary on the Internet, Vista DRM Diatribe. See, it's stuff like this that makes me perfectly content to sit back with XP.