Mixed Reviews On Microsoft Meeting

Scoble, surprise, surprise, found it heartening.

Who Da Punk over at Mini-Microsoft's site found it less so.

What the anonymous blogger wanted to see was real progress in terms of actual, planned ship dates. You know, when something will actually be available as opposed to alpha, pre-beta, community technical preview, beta, RC1 and whatever new term is used for not-ready-for-primetime code.

Said Mini-Microsoft:

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"I said it once, I'll say it again: I want some dates for all of these innovations stuffing our pipeline. But wait, aren't date-based releases bad? Look, Vista was no longer about being a feature-based release after the Longhorn Reset. If it's not making the date, it's got a "Cut!" fate []. Plus, our customer pay us good money to license our software and we need to give them value for actually getting around to shipping something on occasion."

And did he get them?

Nope.

"We have Vista's ship-ish date as: before the end of next year. There was a slide showing all the software being shipped this next year, and both Vista and Office 12 were emblazoned with "Beta." Beta than nothing. There were lots of good words from Lisa and from Steve about adjusting and what to focus on (e.g., finding your own personal mid-year review that you can do without). Good words. Actions, of course, speak louder. However, those good words can be used to your advantage to cleave through useless process and meetings and to focus on the customer and on the code."

Last week there was a big stir as Microsoft announced Jim Allchin's planned retirement next year after Vista ships. Two days later, The Wall Street Journal chimed in, recounting Allchin's acknowledgement to Bill Gates a year ago that the company's Windows coding paradigm (hate that word but it fits here) was a non-starter with Longhorn.

Many inside and close to Microsoft remember ,Brad Silverberg's departure from the company years ago. "BradSi" lost a power struggle for a more independent Internet business to Allchin's Windows-focused camp.

Now more than ever, many see that as a mistake.