Windows Vista. The end. The beginning. Now!
Now!
The internal site dedicated to Windows Vista has a countdown clock written in Javascript. This clock is famous . I’ve seen that clock ticking away since the day I joined Microsoft. I remember seeing the clock and thinking “God! Longhorn is so far away!”. I remember _place_holder;noticing _place_holder;the clock ticking away _place_holder;more recently and thinking “Wow - less than 100 days left”.
Today, that clock counted down to 01. The whole page, which is usually filled with project status, announcements, etc blanked out and became white. In place of all the noise, all the confusion, stood one simple word.
Now!
What a journey it has been to Windows Vista RTM. For me, Longhorn and the various twists and turns in its story reflected on the twists and turns in my own life.
4 years ago - the operating system which does everything
The earliest mention I can find of Longhorn in my emails is from 4 years ago. Life was very different for me back then. I was part of a rag tag bunch of programmers at college. We had big dreams, unfortunately, none of which we saw through to completion. However, it was that group and being part of that group which defined me as a programmer and as a person.
We were really good at coming up with big ideas and one of our ideas seemed to be very similar to this new operating system called ‘Longhorn’ which Microsoft had just announced. At this point, everything about Longhorn was hazy. There were talks about a database instead of a fileystem and 3d graphics, but that’s all there was known. I dug up an email from that time and found that I had quoted extensively from this old CNet article.
For me, the best part of the article was the last line
“Mike Gilpin, an analyst with Giga Information Group, agrees. “It’s a great dream,” he said. “But it could be hard to make real.”“.
And that really is Windows Vista for me. The personification of a dream,a dream of _place_holder;a company which re-invented and saved _place_holder;itself in the midst of creating its greatest product.
Windows Vista is also how much my life has changed. I would have never dared to dream that I would be part of Microsoft when Longhorn eventually ships.
October 2003 - the PDC, the lap and Robert Scoble
More than anything, when I think about PDC 2003, I remember Scoble. He single handedly built the buzz about Longhorn on the blogosphere. So much so that I stayed up in the middle of night reading Paul Thurrott as he live blogged the PDC. I spent the day downloading screenshots and the rock video over my dial-up connection.
I was so blown away by reading about XAML and Indigo that I called up a friend in the middle of the night and shouted into the phone “You gotta see this! This is incredible”. Of all the videos, this blew me away the most. I even stole the song (Oveseer- HornDog) for some demos I would do later on :-)
Beginning of 2004 - Imagine Cup and the video
The Microsoft Imagine Cup national finals at Bangalore. Held on the sprawling campus of PESIT, Bangalore, it was also the event which brought me into the Microsoft fold. My team had qualified for the national finals and had spent a lot of time preparing a slide deck on what we thought would an awesome application.
In reality, we were planning to impress the judges by talking about all the great ways we would integrate with future Microsoft products. 2.
I remember the event as if it were yesterday. I was determined to not screw this up. I knew this was my one shot at not being just yet another IT student. If I could do this right, I would be part of this magical world of Microsoft. All I had to do was to not screw up.
Just like I do before every talk, I walked up onto the stage before the crowd came in, closed my eyes and pictured myself delivering the talk. Getting the jokes right. Handing off to my team mates at the right time. Kicking ass. Winning.
I was pretty quickly shaken out of my reverie as a video started to play. Annoyed at being interrupted, I turned to watch the screen and my jaw dropped. At that moment in time, I was so inspired by the video, by Longhorn and Microsoft that 3 years later, this video still gives me the goosebumps and inspires me.
Compared to what was available then, the video seemed so futuristic, so cool. I got a copy of the video from a Microsoft friend and played it every chance I could on stage. It never failed to win applause from a stunned audience.
Did we ship everything there in that video? No - that was just a concept video. What is amazing is the number of things that we did ship - from the sidebar to the 3d graphics to the prettier thumbnails. I would have preferred WinFS in there somewhere too, but I guess that’s all water under the bridge now.
Inspired by the video, I went on stage and delivered what I thought was a great performance. People laughed at the jokes - we had the technical stuff in place. I was convinced we would win.
We lost.3
_place_holder; I was devastated. I barely acknowledged Jani, a Microsoft ADE, who walked up to me and said that he would like to talk to me more personally. I had no way of knowing that that conversation would not only land me eventually at Microsoft, but would also introduce me to one of the most charming people I’ve met.
On the bus trip back to Chennai, I stayed up the entire night. I remember the rest of my team and my college lecturer who had accompanied me asking me to sleep, to get over it. What they didn’t know was that I spent the entire night thinking about how I was wasting my life at college - and how that this was the world I wanted to be part of.
Looking back, that day was a true turning point for me - and Longhorn was again somehow involved
I remember crying badly that night.
May 2005 till now
After coming to Microsoft, I started looking at Windows completely differently. I appreciate now the complexity of Windows. I’ve seen Longhorn become Windows Vista. I’ve seen grey screens become pretty. I’ve seen pretty screens become ‘glass’. I’ve seen crashes every couple of minutes change into the most reliable operating system you would see.
What a journey it has been - from Longhorn to Windows Vista RTM. From what I was in 2002 to what I’m a _place_holder;part of now.I told someone recently ”You’ll tell your grandkids that you were there when Microsoft shipped Windows Vista”.
I definitely will. :-)
RTM baby!
Now!
Notes:
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People internally made screen capture videos of the clock counting down. Maybe it should have stopped at 0:07 like a Bond movie :-)
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This is something I’ve seen a lot of people do. And I’m not talking of just students.
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I eventually found out from one of the judges why we lost and I’m still angry about it till this date. We should have won :-)