A Tight-Lipped Interview with Steven Sinofsky

After reading Ina Fried’s interview with Steven Sinofsky I have one recommendation. Don’t bother.

Sinofsky, head of Windows engineering over at Microsoft, gave the most corporate, double-talking interview I have ever heard. In a discussion that must have taken ten minutes, Sinofsky took questions about the secretive nature of Windows 7 development, the timing of the release, and new features to expect out of the box.

By “took questions,” by the way, I mean he allowed them to be said in front of him. Sinofsky answered virtually none of the questions of any importance to those watching the development of the new OS. Much of the interview was spent identifying why his division has been so tight-lipped throughout early development. His reply to that went mostly along the lines of “we’re talking to people…hardware developers…software developers…our other friends…just not you.” It seems Microsoft’s formula for sucess with Windows 7 is to produce no expectations whatsoever, so when it finally appears its mere existence will constitute a salable feature.

Even on points of general philosophy about the release, Sinofsky dodged with comments about “making the best product they can” and so forth. On their direction with growth to new user groups he said,

“…I think what I would say is that we’re talking about different types of customers, and different types of customers have different needs for information and are able to absorb it in a way that I think is mutually responsible.”

If you can get anything out of that vague mess it might be “different strokes for different folks.” Either their new philosophy is still in the works or they don’t have one at all.

He did confirm that the target release date is still the end of January 2010. In most of the commentary I have seen, this release date is a terrible choice for the consumer market because it (just as with Vista) bypassed the entire holiday buying season. A release around September 2009 would be much more reasonable for said buying season, but clearly they do not believe it will be ready. If this is the case, why pick January? Wouldn’t June or September 2010 be much more reasonable times to push Windows 7 into the marketplace?

One of the bright spots of the inteview is that upon release, Windows 7 shouldn’t be fraught with the same issues that Vista had. Electronista points out that, based on what Microsoft has indicated, the drivers and features of Windows 7 will be readily available to developers so that it will be more reliable and noticably better than Vista out of the box. Many of the best features of Vista, like DirectX 10, have yet to be seriously implemented by software developers.

For further reading on the Sinofsky interview check out Ina Fried’s own take on it as well as the aforementioned Electronista article.

There is definitely a possibility that we will hear at least a little more about Windows 7 soon though. The D6 conference (tonight as I’m writing this) will feature Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates on stage and the All Things Digital blog confirms that Windows 7 will not only be discussed, but some of the user interface will be demonstrated as well. Definitely check back with Shipping Seven later on today and tomorrow for coverage of any announcements regarding Microsoft’s next racehorse.

• Jimmy Rogers is a freelance technology blogger and the author of his own blog, Mason Tech Beat.