Michael B. Duff

Left to their own devices, developers will inevitably focus on things that don’t matter to end users. Filling your office desktop with moving widgets and transparent windows may look cool, but it doesn’t necessarily improve the experience for the average user.

The past 20 years of software development have been all about adding more functionality to the desktop – more features, prettier interfaces and dubious “enhancements” that eat up memory and hard drive space while adding little to the user experience.

Consider the applications that you use every day. Has writing a letter really changed that much since they released Microsoft Word 95?

What percentage of Windows users are using Active Desktop widgets today? What percentage of users even know what they are?

Windows Vista is a perfect example of this principle in action – a bloated, restrictive operating system – bogged down by graphical eye candy and features that most people don’t need.

As a rough guide, compare the system requirements of Windows XP, Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7.

An install of Windows XP required 1.5 gigs of hard drive space. Windows Vista Business required 40 gigs. Windows 7 requires 16 gigs. Optional features will increase that amount, but that’s the important point. In Windows 7 these features are optional so the core install is actually smaller and faster.

Windows Vista was universally despised but Windows 7 looks like an apology. This reveals an odd pattern of self-correction for Microsoft, as if the end result reveals the ultimate winner of battles in the boardroom. Remember Windows Me? Microsoft released a good operating system, Windows 95, upgraded it politely to Windows 98 and proceeded to ruin everything with Windows Me.

Then the suits and engineers got their collective act together and released Windows XP – a solid, reliable operating system that has kept PC users (more or less) happy since 2001.

XP was so reliable, in fact, most home and corporate users skipped Vista entirely.

The marketplace was offered a big, bloated piece of pretty software and chose to stay with something practical instead. It’s not a trend yet, but software makers are listening and the results are just about to hit the street.

Apple has just released Snow Leopard – a sleek, streamlined version of Mac OS X.

Wired Magazine summarized the improvements in a Feb. 24 preview:

“Apple’s suite of stock applications seem to have also gone on a strict diet and exercise regime, with nearly all the included apps radically reduced in size. For example, iChat in Leopard weighs in at 114MB while the Snow Leopard version drops to 22 MB, Dashboard goes from 184 KB to 111 KB and Mail goes from 289 MB to 36 MB. Overall, Snow Leopard’s applications appear to save around a gig of drive space compared to Leopard.”

Apple has even reduced the size of the operating system kernel, making the whole system run better on less code. And if you think the August release date is a coincidence, consider the street date for Windows 7 is Oct. 22.

For the first time in computing history, Apple and Microsoft are releasing operating systems that are actually faster, smaller and simpler than previous versions. Windows 7 will still be a big jump from Windows XP, but early tests indicate that if your PC can run XP, it can probably run Windows 7.

Most of us don’t upgrade operating systems until we buy new computers, but Windows 7 will give users a powerful incentive to buy a 64-bit machine.

What’s the advantage to 64-bit processor? Most of the software you’re using now is written for 32-bit machines. They’ll run a little faster but you won’t notice a big improvement right away. The big benefits will come later, as more and more software is written to take advantage of 64-bit architecture.

In layman’s terms, a 64-bit processor can accept information in bigger bites allowing it to do twice as much in one cycle. These machines also allow dramatic increases in RAM capacity. The 64-bit version of Windows 7 can support up to 192 gigabytes of RAM.

This amount will sound absurd to users running one or two gigs of memory today, but it opens up a whole new world for file servers and high-end gaming platforms.

Taken together, these releases from Apple and Microsoft reflect a change in the way developers are approaching the marketplace – a long-overdue step away from feature bloat and sloppy code. Snow Leopard and Windows 7 don’t just run better, they offer feature improvements that matter to ordinary people. Even if you just use a PC at work, the time you waste on design annoyances and extra clicks can really add up.

These releases reflect a “back to basics” approach that rises above the requirements of boardrooms and marketing departments to put the user first.

Software development still has a long way to go but at least our operating systems are headed in the right direction.

UPDATE 9-4: J.P. Acreman on Facebook (where most of my feedback is coming from these days) pointed out that it was unfair to use that 40 gig figure for Windows Vista Business (which I called “Vista Professional” in my first draft) because that 40 gigs was only required during the install the recommended hard drive size and most versions settled down to only required about 15 gigs thereafter.

Turns out the real advantage to Windows 7 is not in space saved on the hard drive but in space saved in memory once programs are running.