Print - Sinofsky Promoted to Windows Chief

A week before Microsoft is expected to finalize Windows 7, the company promoted Steven Sinofsky, the man most directly responsible for Windows 7 development, to president of the Windows division. Previously, Sinofsky shared a title—senior vice president of Windows—with Bill Veghte, whose fate is unclear. Microsoft says only that Veghte will move into "a new leadership role" later this year.

"Steven Sinofsky has demonstrated the ability to lead large teams that deliver great products," says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "The work he and the team have done in getting ready to ship Windows 7 really defines how to develop and ship world-class software. He is a perfect fit to lead the Windows group."

Microsoft's pleasure with Sinofsky's Windows 7 achievement is clear, but it's also an implicit approval of Sinofsky's more secretive, Apple-like, management style. Unlike with previous Windows versions, Sinofsky kept Windows 7 information away from the public until the last minute and released very few product milestones to testers, and then only very late in the product's development. The company believes that this strategy prevented it from over-promising and under-delivering, as many feel it did with Windows Vista, but it also means that testers have had far less influence than ever on the product's design.

That said, the quality and timeliness of Windows 7 is not debatable. The product has garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews, even in pre-release form, and many feel that Windows 7 could easily have shipped to the public months before its projected release date. Microsoft previously announced that it would deliver Windows 7 generally in late October after finalizing the product by the second half of July.

Previous to his work on Windows 7, Sinofsky led the Office team through several releases. He was directly responsible for the innovative "ribbon" user interface that re-energized Office with the Office 2007 release. As president of the Windows Division, Sinofsky is now responsible for several key Microsoft products, including Windows, Windows Live, and Internet Explorer.

Clearly, Sinofsky's approach is working, and he deserves the promotion. "Microsoft's pleasure with Sinofsky's Windows 7 achievement is clear, but it's also an implicit approval of Sinofsky's more secretive, Apple-like, management style." May as well copy the best.

Define best please. Typical Crapple comment from lotsa..BS that is. The best hmm 4% vs 90% ..both started at the same time both stole tech from PARC so don't give me any of that BS ..im not buying it. Apple is a decent consumer electronics company that goes on life about once a decade or so.....most of the time beggings MS for a life line..... this says it all... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrpS9m2VF1c

fczajka: Your grasp of history is about as tenuous as your grasp of the language you so horribly butchered in your incomprehensible post.

yesh, if only i was a fly-on-the-wall at the post-mordem vista sales meeting... "we should copy crApple - they sell like hotcakes and almost everyone is surfin' safari now..." i like the cut of yer jib snofsky - yer hired!

who's apple?, you mean that company that makes phones and a computer nobody but photoshop guys care? oh apple computer you mean. see after they gave up with computers they had to drop the name. it's only a matter of time before they go exclusively on the only thing they have a future: phones.

Congrats Sinofsky. A very well deserved promotion. Its too bad they ruined his crowning achievement by typical Windows overpricing. If Microsoft had just taken a small sacrifise at least from October to Jan 1, 2010, they'd would have made a much bigger splash. Now, I think some of the buzz has lost it's thunder.

I'm curious to see how Mr. Sinofsky handles future releases of windows and how he responds to Google's upcoming O/S.

Is it me - or are windows fanboys waking up to the fact that the world is moving on and leaving Microsoft behind? You can almost smell the fear... Hence the childish jibes at 'crApple' and "that company that makes phones and a computer nobody but photoshop guys care?" There must be an awful lot of people using Photoshop these days. "Define best please.Typical Crapple comment from lotsa..BS that is. The best hmm 4% vs 90% ..both started at the same time both stole tech from PARC so don't give me any of that BS ..im not buying it." Nobody would dispute BMW is up there with the 'best in class' range of cars. - Marketshare? - 5.31% - So whats your point fczajka? Best certainly does not mean 'most used'.

Ok so I butchered the language. You still got point. You guys just live off of in informal fallacy land. My grasp of history is very firm and very accurate, just go read your history and discover who really invented all of the H/W and S/W "Jobs" is so famous. As I said decent product, one hell of a used car salesman. So if Apple is BMW, I guess since MS is the largest they must be Toyota, I think that is analogous to your statement. Which of course is formal fallacy. What nothing about the video guys? Nothing about MS saving Apple? Nothing about the creation of the Mouse and GUI? Just slander and non-sense comparisons....of course just Crap(ple)

"I'm curious to see how Mr. Sinofsky handles future releases of windows and how he responds to Google's upcoming O/S" not really. that OS will be on BETA for 5 years and will simply be yet another linux version nobody but geeks in ponytails care about. Google OS is to windows what bing is to google. In other words, a futile atempt by a company that has no chance of success. what MS needs to do, is to create adblock technology in IE and team up with mozilla to spread teh use of adblockers thus killing google's only sucessful product: web spam/ads. Once google starts starving they will go back to being the search engine company they ought to be instead of focusing on making beta software nobody cares.

On the Google front itself. Its Linux ... with a Web Browser for the shell. Ahem, I said a web browser for a shell! They not even stealing an O/S and building a decent GUI like Apple. They are going to use a Web Browser as Shell! Like Apple guys I am going to draw an informal fallacy for the masses. Chrome O/S is like PC/GEOS.

@ fczajka Your words are English, but your sentences do not make sense. The video. Ah yes, the video. Let me explain why that video is nonsense. Most Creatives use Macs. These Creatives design all new products. Everything that is sold has been designed. How much revenue do you think that creates? (PC's are used primarily to work that one out.) For an example. (and this is actual) I am a Creative and my designs have generated in excess of $500M, all of which was designed on various Macs. You get the idea?

I apologize, my grammar has been subpar, I need to shove what I am writing into Word and have it englishphy my words. I can't argue with you about your job. The work I have done in the windows world have generated close to 500mil too, between my employer and its various partners. This is just in services; I am not including various H/W and Software that went along with these services. I have never stated that Mac's do not have use in certain small niche markets in the business world, but if I need to deploy and manage a 1000 seat call center I am not going to recommend Mac/BSD/Linux/OS2 to do the job and keep costs down. Simply put, Macs are a very small specialized segment of the market, less the BMW as stated earlier, more the Segway like you see with the mall cops. >:) Yes I too can be snarky.

OMG - you even rely on Microsoft to correct your grammar? I chose the BMW analogy because their market share is similar to Apple's and both their products are well designed and aspirational. - why did you choose Segway?

Microsoft is on a downward spiral, flying out of control. First, Apple completely destroying them in OS quality and in the mobile market, and now Google charging forward to take netbooks. Windows fanboys are in a complete frenzy--they just can't imagine a world without their beloved Microsoft and the buggy, slow, insecure toy OS they put out.

infiniteloop Let me guess WordPerfect its you right? I chose the Segway analogy, as it a very small player in the personal powered vehicle market. It is very shiny and pretty, and oh yeah very cool but mostly useless. Preston Wow, still delusional as always, umm what did I read the other day, more copies of Windows 7 are on pre-order than entire existing world of ye olde apple. It's not even out yet! Phones phones phones, Blackberry is the market leader their once again a more appropriate comparison, and is consistently kicking Apples arse. Maybe that will change with the 1990's addition to cut-n-paste on the IPhone last week. Oh yeah the day Windows 7 releases, bam Apple slips another notch in the OS rankings, somewhere below Windows 95 but still above BEOS and Amiga OS....whew!

fczaka No. You chose the Segway analogy because you thought you were being funny. It is however, not accurate, especially in terms of market share and usability. ( as I illustrated earlier). As you have with Apple and Segway, it would be quite easy for anyone to draw an analogy between Microsoft and Kmart. Uncool, Price obsessed, Mundane, with products of questionable quality yet attractive to the fiscally challenged, but hey, they get the job done. (kinda). See how easy that would be? You're also forgetting all those copies of OS X on iPhones and iPod touches. - When is WinMo 7 out BTW?

fczajka Check this out: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56C0NC20090713

There you go once again... Not to be funny, but accurate, as I described. You chose BMW to imply coolness, shekness, and desirability. I get the same with charmin.... Once again, it would not be Kmart it would have to be Wal-Mart, a very large, very successful, very influential, might I say dominating company in their chosen marketplace. They sell everything the masses want, have very market share, and everyone one knows Wal-Mart. Wow didn’t know that Apple get the full BSD kernel loaded onto a phone! I guess that someone forgot to tell them to port the Cut-n-Paste feature over to the phone version! Oh you mean the phone version of the OS X shell? Not sure on WINCe 7.0 much more of a RIM kinda of guy, once again a best in market kinda guy. Well I read this to mean 4 in 10 companies will be upgrading to Windows 7 next year, and the other 6 in 10 to follow in the next couple of years. Surveys taken during a recession always skew lower than when the economy is doing well. Is there a survey of businesses planning to upgrade to Snow Leopard next year? Well the question really is, is there even a need to survey businesses planning to upgrade to Snow Leopard next year?

From engadget re. Blackberry Storm: Going into this review, we really wanted to love this phone. On paper it sounds like the perfect antidote to our gripes about the iPhone, and in some ways it lives up to those promises -- but more often than not while using the Storm, we felt let down or frustrated. Ultimately, this could be a great platform with a little more time in the oven, but right now, it feels undercooked -- and that's not enough for us. Best huh?

Well, things can't be perfect out the gate correct? This is first gen for BES, heck, as I love to point out with the perfect IPhone, it took Apple three years to get rudementary cut-n-paste into OS X (as you pointed out)

iPhone was launched 2 years ago..... Your spell checker isn't working either - its 'rudimentary'. Oh, and iPhone.....

Ahh! Thanks for the iSpell iHelp! 2 years does it matter? Cut-n-Paste was available in the first version of MS Word (for the Mac btw) in 1990...