Microsoft wants to stick to the three-year OS development track, with the latest roadmap showing Windows 8 due for release around 2012. Did the Mayans know something we don't?
After a patchy decade of desktop OS releases – one not helped by the five year stretch between XP and Vista, or the release of interim operating systems such as 98SE and Me prior to shifting to the NT codebase – Microsoft wants to get back on track with a three year release cycle for Windows.
According to a slide revealed during a Windows Server presentation at last week’s Professional Developer’s Conference in LA, the next-gen desktop OS is due to hit around 2012.
This will be three years since the debut of Windows 7, which in turn took place almost three years following the November 2006 launch of Windows Vista.
The roadmap sets up 2012 as the timeframe for a ‘major release’ of the Windows Server platform to replace the current Windows Server 2008 R2 edition. But it also identifies the desktop OS as ‘Code Name Windows 8’ for delivery in the same period.
There’s a little wiggle-room in this of course, thanks to the wiggly tilde which precedes the roadmap’s 2012 reference.