Windows ‘Threshold’ ⇥ verynicewebsite.net

John Moltz, quoting Mary Jo Foley:

Windows “Threshold,” the next major version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system due to hit around the spring of 2015, is coming into focus.

And not too surprisingly, one of the Microsoft Operating Systems Group’s main goals in designing and developing the coming operating system (OS) release — which may or may not ultimately be branded as “Windows 9″ — is to try to make it more palatable to hold-out Windows 7 users.

I know we’ve been over this again and again, but in addition to the conceptual flaw of trying to make one operating system for desktop and mobile, there’s a marketing problem as well. Apple was able to make iOS palatable to its existing customers (as well as others) by detaching it from OS X.

Back in January, Paul Thurrott wrote about ‘Threshold’ in a similar way:

In some ways, the most interesting thing about Threshold is how it recasts Windows 8 as the next Vista. It’s an acknowledgment that what came before didn’t work, and didn’t resonate with customers. And though Microsoft will always be able to claim that Windows 9 wouldn’t have been possible without the important foundational work they had done first with Windows 8—just as was the case with Windows 7 and Windows Vista—there’s no way to sugarcoat this. Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good.

And Mary Jo Foley in December, regarding ‘Threshold’ SKUs:

With Threshold, my sources say, there could be three primary SKUs: A “modern” consumer SKU; a traditional/PC SKU; and a traditional enterprise SKU.

To which I responded, and will copy-and-paste because nothing has changed:

Separate versions for touch screens and traditional PCs? Why, that sounds almost as if there are separate requirements for those two input methods. How sensible.