OSNews posts The Whys, Whats and Whens of Vista. Head of all things Windows at Microsoft, Jim Allchin provides a heads up on the operating system formerly known as Longhorn: “Most of the stuff that we would expect that tech enthusiasts and consumers will be interested in will happen at Beta 2. Beta 1 is not what I would call deeply interesting unless you are a real bithead”.
I probably haven’t griped for 24 hours or so how wrong this is. Microsoft “ships” a product, in the sense that the reviewers (and likely anyone who cares) can evaluate it, and it’s not even out the door before Microsoft is saying that none of this is final, that the “good bits” are in Beta 2, the UI comes later, you just wait, we’ll get it right next time. They’re just throwing it against the wall, seeing who says “ooh” and “ah” and then they’ll ship another one. What’s the point of wasting your time looking at something they promise isn’t final?