Daily Debrief: Microsoft hopes 7 is lucky Video

Daily Debrief: Microsoft hopes 7 is lucky Video Transcript

[ Music ] ^M00:00:03

>> Welcome to the Daily Debrief. I'm CNET's Kara Tsuboi, here with CNET News' Senior Writer Ina Fried who is about to go to a Microsoft conference called the Professional Developer Conference where two big announcements if you will are expected to come out of it. Let's talk about day one's announcements.

>> Sure. So the first day, we're expecting to hear Ray Ozzie talk about long awaited Cloud OS. So the idea that developers will be able to write programs that live, kind of in the cloud if you will, over the Internet, hosted on probably Microsoft servers. Basically, this thing that Ray Ozzie has been working on for the last two years, kind of in secret, we've seen pieces of it with Live Mesh and with some of the different components, some of the Windows Live services are built-on some of the same components, but we're finally gonna see kind of an all in one vision as opposed to a couple of pieces.

>> But now, by saying vision, this means that it's still in its concept, nascent form. It's not necessarily gonna be consumer-ready right away.

>> Well, I mean this is for developers. So developers will have to write the programs that then consumers can use. I mean, Microsoft itself will probably offer some -- we'll see some hints of those, maybe some early partners. But what Microsoft is really doing is saying, hey, developers, come write services that live on our Cloud infrastructure.

>> On our part.

>> The other piece of news is Windows 7, which obviously is much more consumer focused. Also a little ways off we're expecting it sometime next year.

>> What can we expect with Windows 7 that will be different than Vista of course?

>> Well, the interesting thing is at its core I don't expect it to be tremendously different from Vista. One of the things Microsoft is doing is they're not changing a lot of the things under the hood in parts, so that businesses will be more likely to adopt Windows 7. You know, Windows Vista was a huge jump. A lot of things changed under the hood. You have this user account control. A lot of things that just made it a little difficult to move from one to the other -- compatibility issues, things had to be tested. Windows 7 not expecting dramatic changes under the hood. I'd actually expect a little bit more in terms of, sort of the vegetable to dessert ratio if you will. Windows Vista, lots of vegetables. Windows 7, I'd expect, you know dessert. Things that look good, things that feels good, things like multi-touch is one of the features that we already know about. So, you will be able to, you know touch things -- kind of like on the iPhone or Microsoft Surface.

>> Well, this is good news because Vista was not necessarily a commercial success. I'm sure it depends on who you talk to of course.

>> Yeah, I mean, commercial is interesting because they sold lots and lots of copies of Vista, but in terms of critical acclaim, in terms of really...

>> Fan support.

>> Yeah. Generating enthusiasm for the Windows platform, it hasn't been everything Microsoft might have hoped.

>> Now just a little comment or question with the nomenclature, why are we going back to the Windows name? You know, Vista, back to Windows 7, why?

>> So -- yeah, it was Windows Vista, but obviously, everyone know it is Vista. I think they wanted a different naming approach.

>> Get rid of Vista.

>> Yeah. You know, there was a joke in the Apple new commercials where they're bleeping out every time the word Vista comes out. It's not like that, but they wanted something different. I think they wanted to be more straight-forward, you know, kind of it makes it seem like this is just one in a series. The 7 name we have a whole blog post in Why 7. It's not exactly straight forward. It's not the seventh version of Windows nor is it Windows 7.0. It's actually Windows 6.1, so...

>> But it's a lucky number. So, they're banking on this.

>> Well, you know I did point that out. You know, and I think the idea that it's you know, just not a big deal, you know, not a big deal is a wrong way, but very orderly, an orderly transition, yes.

>> Sure. Are we expecting any surprises, any, you know special guest to come on stage or any last minute announcements?

>> Well, you know, it's not gonna be a Steve Jobs one more thing.

>> Okay.

>> That said the PDC is really the biggest conference where Microsoft talks about its future vision.

>> Great.

>> And things -- so we do get more than maybe your typical conference in terms of things that excite us. They may not be right ready for primetime. So, I'd expect it to be fairly interesting.

>> Terrific, well, we'll look forward to your live blogging and all the reports from the two-day conference. Thank you so much. Senior Writer Ina Fried, I'm Kara Tsuboi. We'll see you in the next Daily Debrief. ^M00:04:16 [ Music ]