Windows Vista and bathwater

So I heard recently today that someone called for the "ditching" of Windows Vista. It made me cringe. I imagined the hundreds of man-years invested in the product.

I think the problem with Windows Vista is that it doesn't matter. No killer new features, no gotta-have-it-gizmos. After all, you don't need Windows Vista to run a web browser. And everything is on the web browser nowadays. It doesn't make sense to change what already works if there's no compelling reason.

However, I also think that it's shortsighted to discard microsoft's chances in the area of operating systems just because they biffed this one. I'm not a microsoftie, but the last big advance OS-wise was around the time windows 95 came out (real multitasking with a nice GUI). Even MacOS- pretty as it is, doesn't really have anything groundbreaking (this is bound to result in some caustic comments). In place of groundbreaking stuff, I see lots of incremental enhancements. It's not as flashy, but it's good software engineering. Maybe vista was a mistake, but I wouldn't throw it out with the bathwater.

Groan... all the cool people have Macs.