Fair enough: if you weren’t a programmer, there isn’t much to look at. Compared to Apple’s OS X, Vista doesn’t look unfinished so much as barely started. So what has Microsoft been doing for all this time? Important though it is for the company to promote innovation by trying to patent the smiley, it doesn’t take that long to fill in the forms.
The answer, of course, is that most of Vista’s newness sits beneath the interface. The surface details have to be fiddled with to make it look new, but what Microsoft’s really keen on is the new security, trusted system and digital rights management (DRM) under the hood.
This is good and bad news for users. Better identity management and less vulnerable systems are essential for the continued health of e-commerce, but it’s not clear that the rest of the industry is willing to hand over control of these ideas to Microsoft. Nor is it clear that Microsoft is willing to relinquish control of the ideas inside Vista. It’s certainly keen on the sort of DRM that lets it and the content provider decide exactly what you can do with media you buy — and introduces the potential to disable parts of your system if you do not comply.
Understandably, users tend to see this sort of thinking as a big 'Keep Away' sign. Vista is going to have to be something particularly tasty to make us swallow such unpleasant medicine, otherwise it will never get the critical mass necessary to make it a viable distribution mechanism for content providers — let alone become the default standard. Looking at the first beta, this magic dust is nowhere to be seen.
It’ll be a while before we see enough of the finished product to pronounce on its viability, but based on what we’ve seen on Beta 1 Microsoft will need every minute of every week until launch to ladle in sufficient goodness to make it a contender. Not wasting time on daft patent applications would be a start.
Talkback
What Microsoft wants is to lock-in access to your data and make that vendor exclusive.
You don't like? Well then don't get there to begin with or be prepared to go through all the blood, sweat and tears to unlock your data, unlock the format the data is written in and unlock all the keys that grand access to your own data.
Will that happen in one go? Ofcourse not. First the foot in between the door. Then the leg. An arm, Etc, etc. They'll be banging on the front door, the back door and all the windows at the same time as long as they have to or can put up with.
Don't be surprised if you'll take the least financial pain once you get at the first decision point. To then again take the least financial pain when something else gets along. And so forth. Some time later you don't even want to look too far back or ahead because the totalled amount of money, time and effort spend over such periods of time will make you very sick indeed. Certainly when compared to the overhead costs your own competitors had to coupe with over the same period of time. You know the ones, the ones that'll be cutting into your market and profit streams. Am I kidding? No, average simple logic dictates that if your overhead costs are higher then your competitor that basicly delivers what you deliver then they can go under your prices and thus start bleeding you dry one way or another. That may take time though. However, you are paying for the product, services and the PR in whatever way possible, directly and indirectly and with unforseen packaged deals and attached strings included. They are basicly just paying for the services and able to opt out at will entirely or product specific at almost any time to make the most of the next top dog faster then you can once they get experienced enough. Do the math. Next runner up, making the most out of existing systems and nothing more for years to come. Ouch.