McLaws says Vista Needs More Time and Scoble says McLaws is right on Windows Vista ship date. Pirillo has been saying this for several months now, and has been labeled a “nitpicking whiner” for his attacks on Windows Vista’s UI and UX. Welcome to the club, boys – I’m happy to no longer be standing out here alone. I’m singing the “I Told You So” song today, which sounds a lot like the Blackeyed Peas hit: “My Humps.” Microsoft Windows is bleeding influencers like never before. And now, further commentary from the memetic echo chamber:

• Windows Vista just ain’t gonna be ready – Duh.
• Beta testers know best- Delay Vista – Double duh.
• Scoble Says Windows Needs More Time – and Scoble also admits that he wasn’t the first.
• Robert’s right – Windows Vista needs more time – Actually, Pirillo’s right – and Ed Bott fought with Pirillo many moons ago on this very subject.
• Delay Vista for quality’s sake – I don’t think a delay will save this one, Marc.

Windows Vista will not be a failure on the scale of Windows ME – but it’s certainly looking to be one of those “Growing Pains” releases that Microsoft must bounce back quickly from. And by quickly, I mean: Microsoft must issue a significant upgrade of the OS within a year’s time. Security is important, but future service packs best be laden with performance increases and feature refinements. I tried telling y’all long before the McLaws admission – VIsta just ain’t comin’ together.

George is getting very upset!

• Windows Vista: Lipstick on a Pig
• User Interface
• 65 More Windows Vista Mistakes
• The Truth About Windows Vista
• Windows Vista RC1: a Piece of Sith
• Is the Windows UI Important?
• Microsoft Windows Vista vs. Apple OS X
• The Vista Bashing Bandwagon
• The Windows Vista Challenge
• Leopard vs. Windows Vista

I wish I was making this up – I really do. I also wish that someone at Microsoft would wake up to the fact that the user experience in Windows Vista is 10x worse than it was in Windows XP (if only because they couldn’t get developers to adhere to XP guidelines, and now Vista apps look even more Frankenstined). I wish Microsoft would hire somebody to look at this stuff before it ships – and do something about the problems before the world has to deal with them.

I wish users didn’t have to put up with this level of sloppiness from a multi-billion dollar company. I wish I didn’t have to play the “bad guy” and point out that Classic Mode is still the only way to experience a clean, consistent Windows environment. I wish more people would look past Vista’s translucent veneer to see that it’s nothing more than lipstick on a pig. I wish people would see that I care more about this product than most Windows users do. I wish geeks cared more about UI… so that I wouldn’t feel like such a sore thumb here. Thanks to Brandon for posting this – and thanks to Ryan for pointing out that Windows 3.1 is still alive and well in Windows Vista (screenshot).

• Robert and Robert: Duh!
• User Interface
• 65 More Windows Vista Mistakes
• The Truth About Windows Vista
• Windows Vista RC1: a Piece of Sith
• Is the Windows UI Important?
• Microsoft Windows Vista vs. Apple OS X
• The Vista Bashing Bandwagon
• The Windows Vista Challenge
• Leopard vs. Windows Vista

I don’t want to be snarky about this – I really don’t. But since we’re at Beta 3 stage with Internet Explorer 7.0, it’s time to unleash the bitching. I’m not expecting any more features to be added to this version, but I am expecting a lot more spit and polish before IE7 is officially unleashed. If ever there was a time to be critical, it’s now.

1. I still get prompted when I want to create a shortcut to my desktop – by right-clicking the page and choosing “Create Shortcut.” Yes, I want to create a shortcut – don’t ask me again!!! Dean, please add a toggle for this annoyance.
2. You still get prompted when dragging and dropping an item from the browser to the desktop. “Do you want to move or copy files from this zone?” Yes, I do – or I wouldn’t have tried it in the first place, you fool. There’s no clear or easy way of eliminating this prompt, other than applying this registry hack.
3. The information bar has got to go. It was annoying in IE6, and it’s even more annoying in IE7. I tried opening information from a trusted desktop app, and IE7 infobar’ed me – then when I told the infobar that it was okay, IE reloaded and showed me another warning dialog – just in case I missed it the first time. This is absolute madness. Let’s not even go into how the information bar reloads the entire page when you want to download a file from a URL! You have to make this far less annoying before going gold, Dean.
4. I really, REALLY don’t want to go into all the UI inconsistencies, though the page properties icon is an old one, the History icon looks ass-nasty, and the Print Preview dialog is using Arial and a non-standard toolbar in Classic Mode. I could easily turn this into a “top 100″ list if I broke down all the ways that the IE7 UI is still rough around the edges.
5. Why on God’s green earth is the RSS icon in the toolbar?! It’s a modal icon – meaning it should only show up when there’s something there to see! Safari puts an RSS icon in the address bar, Opera puts an syndication icon in the address bar, and we all know that Firefox puts it in the address bar as well. Who thinks they’re being innovative by putting the indicator in a place where most people will ignore it?
6. Okay, I know I didn’t want to get into the UI problems in IE7b3, but the command bar’s Home icon menu items sport a different vertical height than others (like the Print menu). Why… why?! And why does the Quick Tabs button look different than the Home button, even though both of them have drop-down menu items?! The window flashes when I select options in the Favorites Center, WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE WAKE UP OVER THERE?
7. You still can’t control the specific point size of a default font. IE7 would have you walk through a convoluted process rather than let you, for example, say that you wanted 9pt Courier New for the default fixed width font. That would’ve been too simple, methinks.
8. The “Delete Browsing History” dialog is still a kludge compared to the Firefox one. What’s the fear in making it work just as well – if not better – than the competition’s? Initially, I was also confused by the labeling of this feature – believing it only pertained to my URL cache. They should be using another word instead of History. Might I suggest… “Delete Browsing Social Studies?”
9. Why does the entire window freeze and stall for a second (sometimes) before it closes completely? Seems to be a problem when I have more than one tab open. When I click the close button, the window should disappear instantly. It doesn’t.
10. When “ico” files are rendered in the browser, why are they just as aliased around the edges as they were in IE6? Firefox doesn’t have this problem, and Opera doesn’t have this problem… so I’m waiting for a damn good reason why Microsoft can’t fix it.

Despite these snags, IE7 is certainly a better Web browser than IE6. I’m not even close to switching from Maxthon 1.x (though I don’t like the way Maxthon 2.x is shaping up). The Firefox faithful won’t be returning to the Internet Explorer brand anytime soon, either. IE7 puts Microsoft back into the game; they’ve fixed hundreds of known bugs and added a small amount of “new” features. My question is: will IE8 blow us away – or just blow?

• Remove the IE Drag & Drop Prompt
• The Feed Icon Debate
• Clear Search in IE History
• Safari on Windows
• Robert and Robert: Duh!
• Freedbacking Internet Explorer
• Windows Vista: Lipstick on a Pig
• Time Management!?
• IE Makes it Impossible to Troubleshoot Feeds