PDC 2008 Preview – Microsoft will give us a first glimpse at Windows 7 this week and will introduce developers to core components of the new operating system. So far, Microsoft used every opportunity to underwhelm customers when talking about its new software. Is this part of a carefully crafted strategy to surprise us with a great new Windows or is 7 just what many expect – Vista, take 2? Will Windows 7 be good enough to bring Microsoft’s client OS back on track? We know quite a bit and it is clear that Windows 7 may have a least one secret ace up its sleeve: GPU acceleration.

Let’s be honest about it: Microsoft can stress as often as it wants that Vista is a big success and that it sells many more copies than XP sold initially (well, there are a lot more PCs in the market as well), but the numbers just don’t support these claims. While Windows (Vista) would a financial dream come true for virtually any other company out there, there is little doubt that Microsoft is struggling with growing sales and there is no doubt that Windows is losing market share, especially to Apple’s Mac OS X.   

From a user perspective, Vista may have been a solid new OS for most users, but it is a far stretch from what it was promised to be. It is probably the first Windows that does not seem to be ahead of its time, but behind. At the same time, Apple is bursting with confidence about its operating system and Linux has never has been stronger, taking possession of new platforms - such as MIDs - that Windows can’t touch. Windows is in trouble and needs a fantastic Vista successor to regain credibility with consumers and business users.

So, will Windows 7 be that successor? Of course, we haven’t seen Windows 7 yet, but let’s have a look at what we know, before we draw some initial conclusions.


Windows 7: What we know

There have been six main pieces of information that provided reliable information about the upcoming Windows 7 so far.

1. Windows 7 Milestone releases: TG Daily was first to report Windows 7 M1 in January of this year – a release that looked a whole lot like Windows Vista, but we cautioned that the Vista UI may only be a wrapper for a new Windows 7 surface. Mary Jo Foley recently posted a story and screens on Windows 7 M3, the release that precedes the alpha that will be handed out to developers today, and Windows 7 still looks pretty much like Vista.

2. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer multi-touch demonstration: The two executives announced multi-touch capability as a major new feature for Windows 7 at the D6 conference earlier this year.

3. Interview of Steven Sinofsky by Cnet’s Ina Fried: Steven Sinofsky revealed that Windows 7 will be closely related to Windows Vista. Quotes:  “Windows Vista was about improving those things. We are going to build on the success and the strength of the Windows Server 2008 kernel, and that has all of this work that you've been talking about. The key there is that the kernel in Windows Server 08 is an evolution of the kernel in Windows Vista, and then Windows 7 will be a further evolution of that kernel as well. (…) There will be a lot of features in Windows 7. It's a major release. (…) Some of the things that we're going to do are going to make the release more applicable to a broader set of people, but it also might mean, oh, well, if you're not re-architecting the whole thing, then maybe it's not a major release. But we're actually going to bring forward the compatibility, and we're going to make sure that there's a lot of value for everybody who's a customer of Windows 7.”  

4. Gartner Symposium interview with Steve Ballmer: In an on-stage interview, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer notes that “Windows 7 will be Vista, but a lot better”, focusing on a much cleaner interface.
 
5. Windows 7 announcement: Microsoft decided to depart from the Windows Vista name and go for simplicity and chose Windows 7 as the name for the new OS.

6. PDC 2008 track notes: 22 of the 155 tracks at PDC are dedicated to Windows 7, spanning a wide variety of topics. Only cloud computing has more tracks (26) at this year’s PDC. The track topics are (yes, it’s a long list, but it is worth reading through it):

• Developing for Microsoft Surface (includes Windows 7 multi-touch developer roadmap and access to the Microsoft Surface SDK)
• Windows 7: Welcome to the Windows 7 Desktop (includes “exciting enhancements to the taskbar, Start Menu, and other desktop elements”)
• Windows 7: Programming Sync Providers That Work Great with Windows (discusses application synchronization using the Microsoft Sync Framework)
• Windows 7: Best Practices for Developing for Windows Standard User (talks about application development requirements in Windows 7 for UAC-compatibility, which are exactly the same as in Windows Vista. According to Microsoft, Vista-compatible applications will interact with UAC in Windows 7 without any modification. No new APIs are required or provided. However, the company claims that the UAC improvements for Windows 7 will impact the user's experience but not the application interface.)
• Windows 7: Writing World-Ready Applications (focus on globalization features for Windows 7, including sorting and string comparison, locale support, and coverage for new languages)
• Windows 7: Integrate with the Windows 7 Desktop (includes new APIs that enable integration with the “latest Windows desktop features”. A taste from Microsoft: “Discover how enhancements to the taskbar, Start Menu, thumbnails and their desktop elements provide new ways for you to delight your users. This talk is a must for application developers who want to provide the best user experience for their applications on Windows 7.”)
• Windows 7: Using Instrumentation and Diagnostics to Develop High Quality Software (covers guidelines and best practices as well as a PowerShell-based troubleshooting platform)
• Windows 7: Unlocking the GPU with Direct3D (Direct3D-based GPU acceleration of Win32 applications).
• Windows 7: New APIs to Find, Visualize, and Organize (no details have been made available)
• Windows 7: New APIs for Building Context-Aware Applications (no details have been made available)
• Windows 7: Design Principles for Windows 7 (UI design guidelines for applications)
• Windows 7: Developing Multi-touch Applications In Windows 7 (introduction of new multi-touch gesture APIs)
• Windows 7: New Text and Graphics APIs (no details available)
• Windows 7: New Shell User Experience APIs (no details available)
• Windows Embedded "Quebec" (Windows 7 for embedded devices, includes embedded roadmap)
• Windows 7: Web Services in Native Code (introduction of a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code)
• Windows 7: Extending Battery Life with Energy Efficient Applications (best practices for designing energy efficient applications)
• Windows 7: Deploying Your Application with Windows Installer (MSI)
• Windows 7: Writing Your Application to Shine on Modern Graphics Hardware (talks about DirectX to enable Win32 apps to “harness” the horsepower graphics hardware. The track will also discuss how applications can “display graphics content on different generations of graphics hardware, across multiple displays and on a remote desktop”.)
• Windows 7: Building Great Audio Communications Applications (no details available)
• Windows 7: Benefiting from Documents and Printing Convergence (focuses on document workflow).
• Windows 7: Designing Efficient Background Processes (best practices for background process design and dives deep on the capabilities of the Service Control Manager (SCM) and Task Scheduler.” Microsoft says the track will also provide information how “to use new Windows 7 infrastructure to develop efficient background tasks.”)

If you haven’t read through the entire list or just flew over it, let’s summarize what we know in a few words:

Windows 7 will build on Vista, it will look like Vista, but it will be better than Vista. Microsoft drops the Vista name and will prepare developers for the new OS: Major new features include multi-touch, new desktop features, Microsoft promotes context-aware apps, performance enhancements and energy efficient software as well as efficient background processes.

The big surprise here, of course, is GPU acceleration – a feature that will be integrated in Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard as well. There are two dedicated tracks (Windows 7: Unlocking the GPU with Direct3D; Windows 7: Writing Your Application to Shine on Modern Graphics Hardware) and we don’t know many details yet, but these two tracks may be among the most interesting at PDC this year. I mentioned before that I truly believe that GPGPU/cGPU acceleration holds the keys to one of the most significant opportunities in software development for decades. If Microsoft is offering this type of support in Windows 7 then Windows users may be in for a big treat.

     
Read on the next page: What needs to be fixed