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Operating Software Offers Biz Lessons

Salon.com co-founder Scott Rosenberg calls Microsoft's Windows Vista "a sad software lesson." It took the software giant five-plus years to finish Vista--the U.S. hadn't invaded Iraq when the project started. However, the bigger question isn't that why it took so long to complete, but rather, what should this tell us about our dependence on bulky software?

The main problem is that essential underpinnings of a software app, like Office or Windows, are static, having to be "painstakingly written line-by-line" and cannot be replaced. The digital world moves so fast Microsoft had to press "reset" and start writing the OS over halfway through its completion.

Software writers embark on grand adventures to fix big problems, which, while inspiring, is perhaps less-preferred to Google's beta strategy or the open source Linux strategy: Putting it out there is more important. Later a company can make incremental improvements to rescue us from bugs and viruses and make our computers easier to use.

Read the whole story at The Washington Post »

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