How the glitch stole Christmas
ATI's response to our inquiry is at least equally as interesting, if not more so. From the graphics card manufacturer's perspective, "we don't see the delay in Vista has having much of an impact on ATI at all," a spokesperson wrote. "While we are extremely excited about the new opportunities Vista will bring in terms of making graphics important to people outside of the gaming community, it does not change our plans and we are by no means dependant on its availability."
But in the company's next paragraph, it changes its tune, especially with regard to the importance Vista will have in the gaming market. Surprisingly, ATI doesn't believe now there will be much of one. "It is in ATI's and everyone's best interest to see a very successful Vista launch when the new operating system is fully and completely ready," the spokesperson writes. "So in that vein, we support Microsoft's schedule retargeting as positive for us and the industry in general. When it comes to graphics, much of the benefit of Vista is to the enterprise/business market (due to increased stability and better security), and Microsoft has stated that enterprise/business users will get Vista in November. This is a very small schedule slip of just a month. ATI has and will continue to focus its efforts on working closely with our OEM customers to ensure they are building PCs that are ready to support Windows Vista when it launches."
So in addition to fabulous flying euphemisms and temporal fudge factors, from the world of politics, add the tactic of lowering expectations, which ATI now seems to be doing. Last September, ATI representatives told us in Microsoft's presence that Vista would change the world for them, that it would redefine consumer expectations for graphics performance. Now, all of a sudden, Vista is really just a business update for Windows. You can't say a delay of this magnitude doesn't change one's perspective on things.
While some other companies are willing to comment, the thunderous silence of others could perhaps say just as much, if not more. Today, an Intel spokesperson declined all comment on this specific issue, on behalf of all corporate divisions. Intel will have nothing to say. AMD has yet to respond to our inquiry.
In Jim Allchin's conference yesterday, he noted several times that the company needed just a few extra weeks of development time. He was peppered with questions about that interval: How could Microsoft predict that it only needed a few more weeks, as opposed to, say, another quarter or even six months (in real time)? His answer is almost poetic in its symbolism: "'Quality' is a very comprehensive term. We have a set of metrics that we're watching, and we are ratcheting up these metrics higher than we've ever ratcheted them up before." Noting that testers have had so many comments in response to the recent February CTP release of Vista, he added, "It perhaps is funny that the feedback from the CTP in February is so strong. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if people end up saying, once the get the next CTP, 'This thing's good enough, why didn't you ship this?' But for us, it won't be high enough quality.
"I think in every Windows release," Allchin continued, "we ratchet up what we're trying to do in terms of performance, making sure we have appropriate drivers, efficient testing, etc. If I had to pick out one aspect [to focus our attention on], I guess...we're trying to crank up the security level higher than ever. So there's specific features that we're going to usability testing with, we're getting feedback on, and we're continuing to hone. But in the scheme of things, you have to understand, this came down to a few weeks. But we're trying to do the responsible thing here, and step back and say, 'How can we best help the [customer] here and take a responsible leadership role, even though we're talking about, the delta's only a few weeks?'"
When Sony delayed its PlayStation 3 console from June to November, we wrote about how June was characterized as "spring," and how the June to November interval was the second worst three months the company could have chosen, the worst being from October to January. We received some mail advising us to, essentially, do the math. Yesterday, we were introduced to a newly ratcheted-up form of math altogether. These next "few weeks," we believe, could possibly seem like a whole year.
More in-depth analysis on the Windows Vista delay later today on TG Daily.
