Microsoft on the Edge

I can’t imagine what the Microsoft campus is like these days but they have my sympathy. The announced delay of Windows Vista was certainly a bummer. Vista originally planned to ship 2003.  According to Australian based SmartHouse, “60% of Windows Vista Code To Be Rewritten.”  Making Windows a multimedia savvy machine has always problem for Microsoft.  Early multimedia attempts broke features like power management. Windows ME caused many more incompatibilities. It’s not an easy task to make plan years ahead of time when the multimedia landscape changes every 4–6 months.

Adding insult to injury Microsoft also reported Office 2007 will be later than announced but will be available to business customers in October 2006.

Meanwhile, new security patches are being called for to fix a recently exposed flaw in Internet Explorer 6. Folks online have been publishing how to use this exploit in a scripting object called, “createTextRange”.  Web sites have already been found trying to exploit the flaw and infect users.  As of today, no patch exists from Microsoft or third parties  Microsoft says “Our initial investigation has revealed that if you turn off Active Scripting, that will prevent the attack as this requires script.” 

Microsoft has long been accused of taking good ideas from other products and integrating them directly into the Windows. As they’ve done this, the growing complexity of Windows has created  2–4 year delays in new releases. Microsoft could have easily competed with many companies by creating their own separate product lines. Instead they killed off competitors and shot themselves in the foot along the way.