Vaunted Windows 8 RTM updates 'actually featured from Win2000'
Ex-Microsofties dispute Sinofsky's blogpost claim
Free whitepaper – Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Has Microsoft’s Windows chief Steven Sinofsky gone too far in stating the brilliance of his team's work on Windows 8?
“Yes,” say some ex-Microsofties, who reckon Sinofsky is taking credit for something that’s not new on Windows 8, due on Thursday.
What’s got them riled is a 10 October Sinofsky blog where he boasted Windows 8 would be "totally up to date for all customers starting at General Availability".
Sinofsky claimed his Windows team had challenged itself “to create the tools and processes to be able to deliver these "post-RTM" (release-to-manufacturing) updates sooner than a service pack.”
These "post-RTM" updates are the changes made to Windows 8 between its release to manufacturing in August and this Thursday’s general release, what's referred to by Mcrosofties as "General Availability".
Windows 8 saw changes in performance, power management and battery efficiency, media playback, and compatibility added to the Windows 8 RC code, according to Sinofsky.
When a new version of Windows hits RTM, the coding doesn't stop, and the operating system is typically updated to add support for new device drivers, hardware and software from partners. It’s a cycle of work that happens with each and every new release of Windows.
Only, contrary to what Sinofsky has claimed, customers who have bought a new Windows OS in the past have not always had to wait for the first service pack to get RTM-era changes – the first SP has typically shipped around a year after a new version of Windows.
A former Microsoft Windows 2000 team member contacted The Reg to say RTM-period changes to Windows 2000 were made available with Windows 2000 at launch, in February 2000.
He told The Reg: “We went to a PC store in Bellevue and bought literally [sic] one of everything that ran on a PC for more testing on RTM final code. When Win2k was finally launched (then as now months after RTM) there was a nice code update... Thus, the process is not all that new.”
Six years later on Windows Vista, Microsoft released eight updates categorised as “important" in January 2007 with its “consumer” release of the operating system. A Windows Vista “business” launch was orchestrated by Microsoft in November.
Windows Vista was overseen by Sinofsky’s predecessor, Jim Allchin.
You could excuse Sinofsky by arguing that Windows 2000 and Windows Vista predate him, only Windows 7 was also updated to include RTM changes before release in October 2009.
Microsoft released a “stability and reliability” update for Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2, in October 2009 – same time as the Windows 7 GA.
You can view the pack’s contents here.
Based on what we’re being told, and what we’ve seen, it seems Sinofsky has overstated the achievement on the Windows 8 RTM update.
To be generous, it sounds like he has developed procedures to ensure more of the RTM changes made it into the Windows GA before release in a more organized way. That would be the “testing and certification to broadly distribute these updates,” Sinofsky mentions.
However, it seems wrong to assert – as he has – that RTM changes in a GA release of Windows is something different to work done on previous iterations – or that PC users in the past would have to wait until the first Windows service pack before receiving the RTM updates.
To do so implies that in that period, PC users weren’t running the latest code and that somehow left them unable to use any and all PCs, peripherals or apps or that they were vulnerable on security. By extension, users of Windows 8 are not, of course.
El Reg asked Microsoft to comment on this story, but was told simply: “We have nothing more to share beyond this blog post at this time." ®
Bootnote
Take The Reg's pre-launch Windows 8 tour. Read about the road to Windows 8 via Windows 1.0, Windows NT and Windows 95 and more and what to expect from Windows 8 on ARM.
Also, never mind the Apple tax, read about why Windows 8 Surface and ARM-tablets are priced to fail, and discover why your apps will work on Windows 8 but Microsoft wants you to rewrite them anyway.
Plus: Why the channel believes Microsoft will be off-target when it declares "job done" on Windows 8.
COMMENTS
Re: Is the Register sponsored by Apple/Google these days?
It is actually sponsored by the Synarchic Knights of Templar Rebirth ("TRES") bent on world domination through relentress baiting of entrenched "fans" of various "technologies".
Re: Is the Register sponsored by Apple/Google these days?
Well, to be a little more fair and objective than The Vulture was being in this article it has to be said that El Reg' modus vivendi is to take the piss out of all of the above. You have only got to take a look at the threads attached to articles where the focus is on Cupertino or Mountain View and read some of the postings from the more "tribalist" amongst our fellow members where they are positively foaming at the keyboard over something in the article concerned to see that Redmond is not being especially singled out for a "Regging". Indeed those articles where El Reg is actually being deliberately satirical are often even more amusing given that a fair proportion of the "committed" (and some of them no doubt should be) appear to be satire-dyslexic and end up in the most enormous bate over something that is not intended to be taken seriously at all.
Re: The Reg is overstating the claims
So what he is saying is that this time round there happen to be none of the sort of updates that MS generally withhold for a while. That's *still* not a new feature. It's just an accident of history.
Given the hype that MS are trying to blow up around Win8, I think El Reg are perfectly entitled to take a sharp pin to it when it goes too far.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
