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Vista Delay: Subtle Warnings Were There

Many people were surprised when Microsoft revealed yesterday that its much anticipated Windows Vista operating system would be delayed until January, missing the critical end-of-year shopping season. Surprised because Microsoft had given no indication that Vista might miss its deadline. That is, unless you listened very closely.

I went back to my notes from a recent meeting with Jim Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division, to see if there were any clues that Vista might slip. Our conversation took place on January 24, eight weeks to the day before yesterday's bombshell. Allchin was in New York to show off the latest prerelease version of Vista. The first words out of his mouth when we sat down: "This is the launch year for Vista."

Technically speaking, that's still true. Microsoft says businesses will still be able to get Vista in November--it's the consumer version that's delayed till January. Eight weeks ago, however, Allchin was optimistic that the consumer version would be in the retail channel for holiday shoppers. "Today all indications are that we will make it," he said.

Allchin's cause for optimism was that Vista's feature set had been locked down; what remained was mostly clean up work. "That gives us between now and RTM [release to manufacturing] to work on nothing but quality," he said.

But Windows deadlines are notoriously hard to nail, and no one knows that better than Allchin, a 16-year company veteran who's overseen several previous releases of Windows. Maybe that's why Allchin left himself an out. "We're on path to ship. We feel pretty confident in this year," he said, then added, "We would still hold the product if we see quality issues."

At the time, Allchin said he hadn't identified anything that would hold up the show, and it's not entirely clear what changed. In explaining the delay yesterday, Allchin referred to both quality and industry preparedness.

Indeed, Allchin gave a hint two months ago that quality could still become an issue, even if he wasn't overly concerned at the time. "We have a lot of bugs we have to fix between now and then," he said. But Allchin wasn't sounding alarms then because he thought enough time remained to work things out. "The good thing is, we have a lot of time, comparatively."

By that, he meant there could be a total focus on quality because features were finished. Apparently, however, Microsoft's time ran out.

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