New interview with Steven Sinorfsky where he says nothing about Windows 8

Techradar recently spoke with Steven Sinorfsky, the President of Microsoft’s Windows division.

As expected, he basically punted and deflected all Windows 8 questions.

I say this in a semi-cynical tone.. the truth is, there’s really not too much to report about Windows 8

Some of the gems from this interview are below..

….we asked Sinofsky to tell us about the direction for Windows 8; given that Windows 7 has been a triumph of execution, is there a master plan telling everyone what to do that new feature ideas will have to fit into?

Although we’ve heard rumours of just such a 6-point plan, Sinofsky was convincingly vehement when he denied it. “One, that wouldn’t be how I would work; I have a whole book that explains that! [Sinofsky’s has described the secret of his One Strategy book on delivering large projects like Windows 7 as “the biggest problem is figuring out what to do and getting it done”].

“In a way nothing could be less [how I’d work] – that’s like 180 degrees [wrong]. The very last thing great product development needs is one person saying how it should be. If you think about the complexity of our industry, there isn’t one person who could do all of this.

“How could you understand touch technology, networking technology, graphical user interface, application development? There’s just so much. I mean, the hubris required to say ‘these are the six things we’re going to go do’?”

and…

Not only does Sinofsky not want to talk specifics yet, he’s very keen to emphasise that Windows has to balance innovation with solving existing problems.

“Enthusiasts or people who know lots often just come up with their list of things that they would fix [in the next version]. But you can’t really sell a product based on ‘we fixed all the things that a small set of people thought were broken’.

“On the other hand it’s really hard to sell a product where ‘everything is different but it’s all better; trust me!’ That’s a tricky sell, too.

“So you always have to have this portfolio of ‘here are the things we fixed, that we understood’ and ‘here are the things that are new’. If you think about it like a car, it’s cool to buy a car that has built-in navigation but you don’t want it to also have like jet engines and steering throttles instead of a steering wheel.”

Sinofsky is also convincingly poker-faced when we ask about recurring rumours that there could be a version of Windows 8 running on less powerful processors like the ARM chips in many smartphones.

Can he give us his view on lightweight mobile devices and MIDs in general compared to full-power Windows on traditional x86 PCs? “Nothing I would say right now. Sometimes what’s in between is just what’s in between – it’s neither fish nor fowl.”

Here is the link to the full NON-interview…