Whoop, there it is

So WIndows 7 is officially in the wild. No OS survives contact with the user base, so I’ll be curious to see how this works out. The biggest problem will be the lack of a direct upgrade path from XP – which means you’re basically wiping your machine, installing 7 clean, and then hoping that your restored/reinstalled apps and data work out fine. I think that, like always, most people will get 7 by just saying “to hell with it” and buying a new machine, and Apple – with their refresh of the least expensive items in their hardware lineup – is counting on at least some folks going their way.

This points up a big issue – for all their Mac envy (which is plain to see if you look at the opening of the Microsoft Store in Scottsdale), Microsoft’s number-one competition for Windows 7 is…WIndows XP. There has to be a compelling value proposition to make it worth moving up. Apple’s not immune to this, either – the biggest competitor to the iPod is the iPod you already have, not the Zune or Sensa or Archos or whatever piece of shit washed up from Shenzen this week.

Thing is, though, Apple’s never been afraid to shoot the golden goose – the iPod mini was their most successful product since the Apple II, and at the height of its success, they killed it dead – in favor of the nano, which quickly became more successful than the mini. The successor to the iPhone was the 3G, which added some more stuff to the mix – but the successor to THAT was the iPhone 3GS, which adds a truly compelling value proposition over the original iPhone (video camera, 3G, GPS, voice control, ridiculous improvements in speed and storage, etc) just in time for that first 2-year contract to expire – and for an initial outlay that’s probably half what was paid for that first iPhone anyway.

I haven’t done that much with Windows 7 – I’ve used the RC1 version in a virtualization environment, so I can’t say for sure how well it works running right on the metal or configuring the networking. It certainly looks prettier than XP, and it was definitely less of a PITA to get up and running than Vista under similar circumstances, but I wonder how much of the improvement in 7 comes from the fact that three years on, the median computer is faster and has more RAM and hard drive than when Vista shipped. But the really compelling thing is that despite being long in the tooth (pushing what, 8 or 9 years now?) Windows XP is actually not terrible – it’s certainly inferior to Leopard (you could not fathom how much it kills me not to be able to SSH into a Windows box and run top or kill) but in all this time, most of the hard corners have been rubbed down and it’s got a lot of the bugs worked out. The measure of Windows 7 is whether it will be worth the hassle for those who don’t just throw up their hands and buy new hardware.

As it is, I wouldn’t say no if somebody threw a WIn7 netbook into my hands, just to get to know the thing. Like I say with the iPhone – if you can give me something better, I’ll take it with no complaints. But in the words of St. Ric Flair, if you wanna BE the man, you gotta BEAT the man…

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