Is Windows 7 really a much more agile operating system, in terms of the specific uses it can be moulded to?
The interesting thing is, it’s basically the next version of Vista. Vista was a totally redesigned operating system from XP. We’ve improved upon Vista in that way. We’ve stripped out a lot of the code, we’ve made a lot of it much more efficient, it sits on a smaller footprint, it operates far more quickly, it’s far more agile and effective in terms of the calls it makes. I saw an article recently that described it as ‘Vista on steroids’, and in some ways you can absolutely relate to that.
One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We’ve significantly improved the graphical user interface, but it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.
So you’ve taken the style of the Mac platform and built it on the more solid foundations of Vista?
We’ve taken everything that’s good about Vista, along with the core infrastructure of the operating system, and we’ve made it faster and slimmed down the code to make it more effective.
We’ve also tried to listen to what customers want in terms of a much slicker user interface and the ability to engage with it far more intuitively. That’s the product that we’re delivering.
