Tablet PC OS V2 or not, Peter's accumulating his wish list of features for it. Cool ideas.
Oh, I guess I can't resist. Here's a parting thought about the whole question of whether Microsoft should release a V2 for the Tablet PC this fall or not. As Bill Mitchell (head of the Tablet PC group) points out in an interview last fall, the Tablet PC group is managed as a VC-backed startup within Microsoft. OK. So this begs the question: If the Tablet PC group were separate from Microsoft and sharing the stage with other Microsoft projects was not an issue, would the group release a V2 this fall? Hmm.
My guess: Probably not. If it were a startup, my guess is that it would augment the OS in conjunction with specific customer requests to land new sales. The OS would be extended, but not in any overtly public way. Features would get squeezed in and added to land the next sale. Potentially huge customers might refocus the team on a new version. However, little features would dribble into the broader releases over time. Yeah, I can hear the process-minded people cringe, but that's probably what a startup would do. Startups do whatever it takes to keep the cash flow tide up. And sometimes it isn't pretty. I'm sure Gates has lots of stories.
So who knows, maybe there won't be an official V2 this fall, but maybe instead the Tablet PC team will be true to startup-form and unceremonially post incremental additions to the OS along its road to Longhorn. :-)
Posted by Loren at August 23, 2003 10:03 AM