094. First Public Windows 7 Demo

In an era of huge software projects with a zillion new features in every release, there’s little more exciting than the first public demos. Such demos are also incredibly stressful to pull off. In addition to all the work to just get the code to demo-ready condition, there’s a lead-up to public disclosure, briefing reporters, and aligning partners. The first demo of Windows 7 was all those things and more, because we’d (or just I) had been so quiet for so long. This is the story of unveiling at least one small part of Windows 7 along with my own personal screw up along the way.

Back to 093: Netbook Mania

The second of three development milestones for Windows 7 was originally scheduled to end on March 26, 2008 which was eight months after the project start, Vision Day. We ended up finishing on May 9, which was a slip of 44 days. For any massive software project, this was fantastic. For Windows, it was doubly so.

It was even better than that. The new organization was starting to take hold. The product was emerging. The team was executing. We were building what we committed to build, and it was working. The “daily builds” were happening and by and large the team was running Windows 7 every day.

After two years in this role leading Windows, I finally felt like it would be OK to emerge and talk about what comes next. It is difficult to put into words the constant gnawing, sick-to-my-stomach feeling up until now wondering if we would deliver. We had definitely promised but for nearly 20 years I had seen leaders across the company say “the team is feeling good” or “we’re making good progress” or “the milestone is complete” only to see the project unravel or simply recognize it was never actually raveled.

For months I had been under immense pressure from OEM partners, our OEM account managers, enterprise account managers, investor relations, Intel, retailers, not to mention SteveB, and many more to just articulate a ship date or some plan. Hardly a week went by without receiving a forwarded email detailing the costs of not disclosing what we were up to.

Yet I was perhaps irrationally concerned that I would put something out there only to have to recant or adjust what was said. Many told me I was being overly cautious. Many said that it is better to open up communication and worry about having to correct it later. I just couldn’t shake the concerns. I felt Microsoft had one chance to make up for the issues with Vista.

Many perceived the Windows team was trying to become more like Apple and close off all discussion of a product until the moment it was announced. This was not the case at all. Windows is a different product, as described previously, and to bring it to market requires a huge ecosystem of support and that invests time and money. There’s no way to surprise the market with Windows because an entire industry needs to know about it, prepare, and execute to bring new PCs, peripherals, and applications to market.

For months, Roanne Sones (RSones) and Bernardo Caldas (BCaldas) on the Ecosystem team had been in deep technical discussions with partners about what would come next but had not yet committed to a timeframe. Any hints of a specific schedule (or business terms such as SKUs or pricing) would immediately make it back to the business side of the house and then to SteveB’s inbox. Even topics such as if there would be a 32-bit release (versus moving the ecosystem to 64-bit only) would have had broad implications for PC makers (and Intel). We had to walk a fine line between being excellent partners and creating an external news cycle that impacted partners as much as us. We knew that release dates were the most likely to be leaked, and the most damaging. Finishing a product with a giant, hovering countdown clock had dogged many past Windows releases. Yet, the partners needed time to prepare, and we were closer to finishing than starting. Windows 7 would soon be fully disclosed with the OEMs.

When asked in any forum, we said our goal was to release Windows 7 “within three years of Vista.” We were intentionally vague as to whether that meant release to manufacturing, available for enterprise download, first PCs in the United States, or some other market. Effectively, this gave us a buffer of about three months. And yes, that was sneaky, but it was the one concession I made to disclosure. I really hated that all people cared about was a date when a product was so much more than that. I understood, but still.

Then, in April 2008, BillG gave a speech, and inadvertently in one small part some believed he implied that Windows would finish in the following year. The press, who were there to hear about international finance at the Inter-American Development Bank meeting, ran with it and suggested Windows 7 would be ready much sooner than the previously planned three years from Vista. In fact, a year from April 2008 was sooner than our published schedule. That was not going to happen. Explaining that inaccuracy without stating the ship date was impossible.

It wasn’t just that Bill said the next Windows would arrive “sometime in the next year or so.” He also expressed his enthusiasm in what was certainly meant to be a throwaway line but came across to a tech industry desperate for any news when he said “I’m superenthused [sic] about what it [Windows 7] will do in lots of ways.”

We were close enough to completing the milestone that it was time to plan on officially talking to the press, who would be happy to talk off the record while also helping us to reduce the amount they would need to absorb all at once when it was time for stories to be written. In parallel the Ecosystem team began working with OEMs and ODMs on the detailed schedule and on software drops.

Our first stop, as it had been with every product I worked on since Office 95, was Walt Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal. Our meetings had become somewhat of a routine, perhaps for both of us, though by no means easy or predictable—I usually prepared an overly large amount of data to demonstrate how people were using our products out in the wild and hoped to both inform him while pushing for some positive recognition. Sometimes, yes, I went a bit overboard on the data. Walt was staunchly independent and would never say if I was persuasive, but he was always thoughtful in his questions and comments.

By this time, Katherine Boehret was joining Walt when he visited. She started with The Wall Street Journal out of college. By 2011 she had her own column called This Digital Solution, and also worked with Walt and Kara Swisher on the All Things D Conference (ATD). Katherine and Walt together were a formidable audience. They were both deep into products with their own unique perspective and would put up with absolutely no spin or marketing. They were advocates for their readers and strident in their desire to see PCs live up to their ease-of-use potential and played no favorites.

This meeting, about a month after BillG’s speech, had a dual purpose. We wanted to at least try to diffuse some of what they had no doubt perceived (rightfully) as a mess with Vista without throwing Vista under the bus, while also setting the stage for Windows 7. If all went well, we might even secure time at All Things D that year for a quick Windows 7 demo at the end of an already scheduled BillG and SteveB joint interview.

It was stressful. It was Walt. And Windows 7 was not fully formed for reviewers yet. Joining for the meeting or parts of it would be Julie Larson-Green (JulieLar) for Windows, Dean Hachamovitch (DHach) representing Internet Explorer, and Chris Jones (ChrisJo) discussing Live Services.

Meeting in a conference room in building 99 with a half dozen demo laptops on the table, I started with our usual printouts of data, showing them an overview of Windows Vista in market. Walt’s earlier review of Vista called it “maddeningly slow even on new, well-configured computers.” Katherine’s writings had been a bit less harsh, but not by much. I had to at least try to change their minds, but neither Walt nor Katherine was impressed. I took the time to talk about the landscape of PCs being sold and what was going on with laptops and Netbooks. In reviewing the original Asus Eee PC, Mossberg concluded it was a “valiant effort, but it still has too many compromises to pry most travelers away from their larger laptops.” That led to a hot topic for all reviewers, but especially Walt who had praised the MacBook Air: When Windows would see a MacBook Air competitor? Walt, JulieLar, and I had discussed the MacBook Air at the Apple launch event months earlier.

My lack of an answer on behalf of PC makers was not satisfactory for them, or me. As described previously, the PC makers were much more focused on inexpensive devices like Netbooks and not eager to take on Apple or the premium PC market.

Browsers were much discussed in the late 2000s, though not the one from Microsoft. We didn’t know it at the time but in hindsight it would be fair to assume they had been or were soon to be briefed on the forthcoming Google Chrome browser that shipped in late 2008. Still, Walt and Katherine wanted to know about Internet Explorer and privacy, a hot industry topic among a few, but especially them. We were woefully behind Firefox on core browsing capability, but we had a fantastic story to share about privacy features that DHach and team had developed, including blocking “tracking cookies.” We showed them how mainstream sites, like The New York Times, were doing a poor job communicating to users how much information was being shared and with whom, but with only vague permission or even disclosure. We did not go as far as offering ad-blocking which many tech enthusiasts would have appreciated, but we did plan on releasing and showed a “Do Not Track” feature.

During development, a series of meetings with lobbyists from the advertising industry discussing the Internet Explorer privacy features had led to veiled threats about anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft against ad-supported Google. Such hints or even threats were common from anyone connected to the Washington or government communities. This was unrelated to the Consent Decree, though there were still a couple of years left on that agreement and the oversight meetings that I routinely attended. As a result, Internet Explorer 8’s privacy features that were well received in this briefing would ultimately be scaled back due to an enormously frustrating push from the senior ranks of Microsoft’s legal department to capitulate to the lobbying groups to avoid drawing attention of regulators and to spare our own nascent advertising business from having to comply with privacy requirements. Do Not Track was essentially shelved even before we started. Today, the capability is a core part of Apple’s platform and the Microsoft Edge browser.

Our primary goal for the meeting was to showcase Windows 7. For the first time, we offered up a full disclosure of our overall goals and schedule. We trusted Walt and Katherine as we had built a great working relationship with them over the years, but, more importantly, because of their unmatched professional integrity.

After the requisite, but polite, reminder of the holes we had dug with Vista, we moved on to show some of the working features of Windows 7. After discussing Vista, Internet Explorer, and Live Services we moved to Windows 7 and the demonstration. JulieLar led a deep dive into our theme of “putting the end-user back in control.”

We discussed improvements to the dreaded UAC experience. User Account Control was introduced with Vista as a mechanism to lock down a typical consumer PC and prevent software from being installed by accident. Unfortunately, the swift reaction to such a “nanny feature” was universal loathing. It became a symbol for the dislike of Vista. As it would turn out, this feature was only the first of what would become the typical smartphone experience in years to come but being first at getting between tech enthusiasts and their downloaded software also incurred their wrath. It was also the subject of one of the more biting “Get a Mac” television commercials from Apple. Shortly after Vista launch, the internet was filled with instructions to disable UAC, which we definitely did not appreciate. Julie demonstrated the improved, though still secure, experience, which was much smoother and well-designed and added options for enterprise admins and tech enthusiasts to control the feature.

Julie’s demo succeeded in bringing together many concepts in the basic experience of launching programs and switching between running programs, and the array of distracting notifications and alerts. We were calling the collection of improvements to the Windows taskbar the new Superbar. With confidence, we compared the Superbar to the OS X dock, knowing we had solved problems that the dock had not.

We showed them the collaboration with PC OEMs on what would be new with Windows 7 PCs. The Ecosystem team had a long list of improvements to device drivers, supported hardware, and features to make the out of box experience for new PCs better for consumers.

And we had a surprise for them.

A big bet in Windows 7 was to implement a touch interface across the product, with features in the desktop experience and APIs for developers, as well as device and hardware management. We had been working closely with OEMs to define standards and configurations that would bring touch to Windows 7 PCs. OEMs were excited due to an entirely new engagement from MikeAng and team to enable quality touch in new PCs. They believed this would help differentiate from the Mac. We had an even bigger vision. We wanted this for all PCs eventually.

Months or more from broad pre-release and totally hush-hush, JulieLar demonstrated how we had moved applications from the original Surface table computer to PCs connected to desktop monitor touch panels. The Surface table PC, the original Surface, was a product developed in the Hardware division. It was not unlike an ’80s arcade table, featuring a modified version of Windows combined with custom hardware enabling a new form of multi-touch interaction. The table had found niche uses in Las Vegas, as information kiosks, and had been demonstrated by BillG at the previous year’s ATD Conference. As it related to Windows 7, there were touch APIs and the foundation of hardware support. Our main demonstration was mapping software that zoomed in and out using multitouch (like on the new iPhone) along with a virtual touch keyboard, which combined would offer up many opportunities for developers. On Windows, touch went beyond just using fingers but also included the digitizer needed for pen computing. It was the only feature BillG consistently pushed for in the release.

While touch was a part of Windows 7 from the start, there were two reasons we chose to emphasize it as an early Windows 7 feature in this meeting. Showing touch early was counter-intuitive because it was totally new and could have easily remained secret, for an actual surprise.

First, we wanted to garner broad OEM support for touch which was a long-lead feature for them. No OEMs were selling touch screens which meant sourcing and developing a product was a significant investment and effort. Momentum from the conference demonstration would represent a key public commitment by Microsoft.

Second, there had long been ongoing rumors that Apple would add touch to Macintosh and with the success of iPhone this seemed more likely. Whether such rumors turned out to be true or not, the opportunity to both garner ecosystem support and get ahead of Apple while also showing off a BillG pet feature while he appeared at the conference seemed positive all around. To BillG and other pen advocates, it seemed “obvious” Macintosh would gain touch and handwriting support. Microsoft’s Tablet PC was in market for years already and had not seen a competitive entry, so the logic went.

Neither Walt nor Katherine ever gave a thumbs-up reaction at a first showing, always reserving judgment until they used and wrote about a product themselves. Walt agreed to consider a demo of the touch features of Windows 7 at the ATD Conference a month later. They wanted to show more but we chose to keep the demo focused on what the ecosystem partners would value.

We had a lot of work to do, but we were nervous-excited.

With the ATD Conference pending, we were faced with a ticking clock, which meant we needed to disclose more details about Windows 7. The touch demo was too fragile and too elaborate to take on the road. We did not want to disclose details of the product without evidence, or, more importantly, a call to action for either developers or OEMs.

Adrianna Burrows (ABurrows after joining Microsoft) was the senior vice president assigned to the Windows account at the Waggener Edstrom communications agency. Adrianna drove the agency strategy for Office and was assigned to Windows when I moved. She was an astute communication and marketing pro, had a keen ability to create the right story at the right time, and was an elite distance runner and French speaker by upbringing. While she was at the agency, she was a key part of our senior leadership team. She was also the most competitive person I had ever known and would never accept second place.

People in communications rarely say not to talk when given an opportunity, at least that was the case in the 2000s. Reporters are going to write even without first-party commentary, and eventually whatever they write becomes more plausible than anything a company might later report. I had been quiet for too long. We were on the cusp of having a narrative created for us—one that would read something like: Windows 7 is going to be a “minor” service pack rushed out the door to fix the woes of Vista, built on a smaller kernel, MinWin, as the key technology. While that might introduce some compatibility concerns, it would enable finishing the release in early 2009.

Adrianna proposed a long form interview with a highly regarded Microsoft beat reporter, Ina Fried of the influential CNET. Ina was a thoughtful journalist with a wide-ranging understanding of the dynamics of the industry. She was widely read and by the right people. Adrianna was able to arrange to have a full transcript of an interview published along with Ina’s story to reduce the risk of being edited. I thought that was a solid idea at that moment.

Adrianna created the perfect opportunity for us even though I didn’t know what to say. More accurately, saying nothing was my comfort zone. While I never speak unprepared, I just did not work out answers that sounded credible for the questions I was obviously going to get asked.

I got on the phone with Ina, Adrianna right there with me in my office with the call on speaker. For an hour I did my best Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope. I acted as though I had been forced to make the call. I gave a lot of non-answers. I’m sure Ina was confused since we had initiated the interview. Adrianna was tensing up the whole time—I could see her eyes widen with each non-answer. The more I spoke, the deeper the hole I dug. My answers got shorter and my deflection increased—all I could think of was that I didn’t want to talk yet because I was so unsure of what we would get done and when. I could not figure out why I was talking and what the call to action was for readers.

I was trapped. I felt like we talked for the sake of talking and lost sight of the lead up to the first demo as the purpose.

Ina’s story ran the day after the call, right before Memorial Day, as we were heading out to the ATD in Carlsbad for our first public demonstrations of Windows 7. It was 3,000 words of me saying nothing.

The headline said it all: “In an exclusive interview, Steven Sinofsky offers up a few details on the new operating system and the rationale for why he is not saying more publicly.”

Adrianna wanted to punch me. I had blown an opportunity. I felt bad, but the damage was far worse for the team, who were confused because the interview ended up pushing the needle back to opaque from translucent. I made a mistake and handled it wrong.

I learned the hard way that I should have either not done the call or done it well.

Fortunately, All Things D gave us a chance to undo the damage. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were to appear on stage together for one last time. The goal for Microsoft was to show an orderly turnover as Bill announced the end of the two-year transition from Chief Software Architect to non-executive Board Chair and would no longer work day-to-day at Microsoft. After questioning, they would turn the stage over to a “surprise” demo of Windows 7 from JulieLar.

Julie and a veritable force of a dozen people had been at work hardening the Windows 7 demonstration for ATD. All had been setting up the demo since the night before.

On stage, BillG and SteveB discussed the transition answered and questions about what would happen in a post-BillG Microsoft. Steve describes the early financial controls and conservative hiring approach Bill put in place that became the hallmark of Microsoft. There is a touching and relaxed retelling of the way Bill recruited Steve to join the company, including Steve’s recollection of “a computer on every desk and in every home.”

Later, in a pointed question, Walt asked Steve, “Is Vista a failure? Was it a mistake?”

“Vista is not a failure and it’s not a mistake,” SteveB said. “Are there things that we will continue to modify and improve going forward, sure. With 20/20 hindsight, would we do some things differently?” He told Walt and Kara undoubtedly, yes, but then added that Vista had sold a lot of copies. (The video below starts at this clip.)

Walt asked if Vista had damaged the Windows brand. Bill jumped in with, “Well, there’s no product we’ve ever shipped, including Windows 95, that was 100 percent of what I wanted in the product…. We have a culture that’s very much about, ‘We need to do better.’ Vista gave us a lot of room for improvement.” The audience, and especially Walt, laughed.

Then Windows 7 was up.

JulieLar walked on stage and did a slick, six-plus-minute demo. It was the product that we had always envisioned, executed from an off-the-shelf laptop as well as from a desktop with a currently in-market touch monitor running Windows 7 software. It was live and that was terrifying for all of us. Notably, the code was barely working—clicking or tapping in the wrong place could have been a disaster. Still, it was a smooth demo.

Walt and Kara were constantly reaching over Julie’s shoulders and touching the screen to see what would happen. We had agreed to the scope of the demo and that we would not venture off and show or talk about other features.

Julie drew using a touch version of the venerable MS Paint and whisked through photo management, including “features anyone with an iPhone would be familiar with, such as two-finger zoom and slideshows.”

At one point, Walt noticed that the taskbar (the Superbar we showed off at our HQ meeting previously) looked a bit different and asked about it. Julie replied, “You know we’re not supposed to talk about that today.”

The mapping application from Surface Table was also shown but on Windows 7, including the live data for the Carlsbad, California, hotel we were in. The demo wrapped up with the playing of a multitouch piano application, which by coincidence was like one making the rounds on jailbroken iPhones. There was still no app store yet, but the technically savvy crowd figured out how to use the released developer tools to build apps and sneak them on to an iPhone.

Our demo was a success. Phew. Windows 7 was out there, at least in words, pictures, and videos.

The next step was getting pre-release code into the hands of developers.

On to 095. Welcome to Windows 7, Everyone

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