WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.799 Okay, so I want to start today with a bit of 00:00:04.799 --> 00:00:07.799 a word association game. If I say Windows Vista 00:00:07.799 --> 00:00:09.679 to you, what's the first thing that comes to 00:00:09.679 --> 00:00:12.240 mind? Oh, that's easy. A groan. I mean, physically, 00:00:12.580 --> 00:00:14.960 a groan. It's like a collective memory of frustration. 00:00:15.400 --> 00:00:18.379 Exactly. It's an eye roll. It's that story everyone 00:00:18.379 --> 00:00:20.839 has about their laptop battery suddenly lasting 00:00:20.839 --> 00:00:24.039 like 45 minutes or their brand new printer just 00:00:24.039 --> 00:00:27.179 becoming a plastic brick overnight. It is absolutely. 00:00:28.269 --> 00:00:31.039 the tech world's biggest punchline. In the Hall 00:00:31.039 --> 00:00:32.859 of Fame for corporate failures, it's got its 00:00:32.859 --> 00:00:34.859 own little pedestal right there next to New Coke. 00:00:35.020 --> 00:00:38.039 It's just remembered as this complete disaster 00:00:38.039 --> 00:00:41.380 that sat between the beloved Windows XP and the 00:00:41.380 --> 00:00:43.719 OS that saved everyone, Windows 7. Right. That 00:00:43.719 --> 00:00:46.399 is the accepted story. Vista was the flop. But 00:00:46.399 --> 00:00:48.700 here's the thing. We have this pile of source 00:00:48.700 --> 00:00:50.259 material in front of us. We're talking internal 00:00:50.259 --> 00:00:53.219 Microsoft development logs, deep technical analyses 00:00:53.219 --> 00:00:56.159 of the kernel architecture, even legal documents 00:00:56.159 --> 00:00:58.299 from some of the class action lawsuits. And when 00:00:58.299 --> 00:01:00.880 you actually get into the weeds. the story looks 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:03.159 well it looks completely different it's not a 00:01:03.159 --> 00:01:06.159 story about a lazy product or just you know a 00:01:06.159 --> 00:01:09.879 bad interface it's more like a controlled demolition 00:01:09.879 --> 00:01:13.280 of the entire windows ecosystem that just went 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:17.180 spectacularly right and spectacularly wrong all 00:01:17.180 --> 00:01:18.920 at the same time. That is a much, much better 00:01:18.920 --> 00:01:22.280 way to put it. Yeah. The simple story that Vista 00:01:22.280 --> 00:01:26.480 was just bad or buggy completely ignores what 00:01:26.480 --> 00:01:28.099 they were actually trying to do. You have to 00:01:28.099 --> 00:01:30.120 remember the mindset at Microsoft in like... 00:01:30.519 --> 00:01:32.819 the early 2000s. The ambition. The ambition, 00:01:32.959 --> 00:01:34.480 the arrogance, all of it. They weren't just trying 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:36.859 to put a new coat of paint on XP. They were trying 00:01:36.859 --> 00:01:39.400 to fundamentally rebuild the relationship between 00:01:39.400 --> 00:01:41.840 software and hardware from the ground up. And 00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:43.879 that really is our mission for this deep dive. 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:45.319 We're going to dig in and try to figure out if 00:01:45.319 --> 00:01:47.579 Vista was genuinely the disaster everyone remembers 00:01:47.579 --> 00:01:49.480 or if it was something else. Was it the misunderstood 00:01:49.480 --> 00:01:52.439 murder of the PC world? The sacrificial lamb, 00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:54.540 yeah. Was it the operating system that had to 00:01:54.540 --> 00:01:56.299 take all the bullets, all the broken drivers, 00:01:56.659 --> 00:01:59.680 the insane hardware requirements, the constant 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:02.599 security nagging, so that everything that came 00:02:02.599 --> 00:02:04.980 after it could actually work? I will go on record 00:02:04.980 --> 00:02:07.920 right now and say it. Without the pain and the 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:10.840 suffering of Windows Vista, Windows 7 would not 00:02:10.840 --> 00:02:13.060 have been possible. And honestly, the Windows 00:02:13.060 --> 00:02:16.110 PC... as a reasonably secure platform, might 00:02:16.110 --> 00:02:18.810 not even exist today. That's a huge claim, a 00:02:18.810 --> 00:02:21.129 really bold claim. So, okay, let's test that 00:02:21.129 --> 00:02:22.330 theory. We have to go back to the beginning. 00:02:22.610 --> 00:02:25.009 And I was looking at the timeline, and the beginning 00:02:25.009 --> 00:02:28.069 isn't 2007 when it launched. It's not even 2005. 00:02:28.490 --> 00:02:30.449 Not even close, no. The story really kicks off 00:02:30.449 --> 00:02:33.349 in May of 2001. Which is just wild to me. I mean, 00:02:33.370 --> 00:02:35.569 Windows XP, the OS it was supposed to replace, 00:02:35.849 --> 00:02:40.110 didn't even come out until October 2001. So Microsoft 00:02:40.110 --> 00:02:42.430 engineers are five months deep into building 00:02:42.430 --> 00:02:44.719 the next thing. before we've even seen the last 00:02:44.719 --> 00:02:46.580 thing. That's exactly right. And the project 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:49.479 had a codename, Longhorn. The name itself tells 00:02:49.479 --> 00:02:51.199 you what the original plan was supposed to be. 00:02:51.259 --> 00:02:54.120 Right, because XP was Whistler. XP was Whistler. 00:02:54.680 --> 00:02:58.120 And the next huge revolutionary OS they had planned 00:02:58.120 --> 00:03:01.620 for way down the road was codenamed Blackcomb. 00:03:01.939 --> 00:03:04.639 So Whistler and Blackcomb, the two big ski mountains, 00:03:04.759 --> 00:03:07.680 and Longhorn is... It's the name of the saloon 00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:09.080 at the base of the mountain right between the 00:03:09.080 --> 00:03:10.599 two. So it was just supposed to be a quick pit 00:03:10.599 --> 00:03:13.050 stop, a minor release, like... Grab a beer and 00:03:13.050 --> 00:03:14.870 get back on the lift. That was the idea, yeah, 00:03:14.949 --> 00:03:16.930 for about five minutes. But you have to remember 00:03:16.930 --> 00:03:20.810 the context. This is 2001. Microsoft is an absolute 00:03:20.810 --> 00:03:24.349 juggernaut. They have a monopoly. They have basically 00:03:24.349 --> 00:03:28.729 infinite money. And Bill Gates specifically is 00:03:28.729 --> 00:03:32.530 obsessed with this idea of managed code. Okay, 00:03:32.569 --> 00:03:33.990 we need to pause here because this is a really 00:03:33.990 --> 00:03:36.330 critical technical point. The documents mention 00:03:36.330 --> 00:03:38.729 managed code over and over again as the original 00:03:38.729 --> 00:03:41.590 sin of the Longhorn project. So what does that 00:03:41.590 --> 00:03:43.889 actually mean? So traditionally an operating 00:03:43.889 --> 00:03:46.490 system like Windows is written in languages like 00:03:46.490 --> 00:03:49.969 C and C++ fast. That's what we call native code. 00:03:50.370 --> 00:03:52.530 It's talking directly to the metal to the hardware. 00:03:52.729 --> 00:03:55.750 Super fast, super efficient. Super fast, but 00:03:55.750 --> 00:03:58.569 also super dangerous. If you're a developer and 00:03:58.569 --> 00:04:01.800 you make one tiny mistake, managing the computer's 00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:04.819 memory in C++, you can crash the entire system. 00:04:04.919 --> 00:04:06.379 That's the blue screen of death. That's what 00:04:06.379 --> 00:04:08.500 that is. That is the blue screen of death, precisely. 00:04:09.060 --> 00:04:12.719 Now, managed code, on the other hand. And you 00:04:12.719 --> 00:04:15.419 can think of things like .NET or Java. It's different. 00:04:15.500 --> 00:04:18.300 It runs inside a sort of protective bubble, a 00:04:18.300 --> 00:04:21.019 virtual environment. It handles all the memory 00:04:21.019 --> 00:04:23.600 stuff for you. It has garbage collection that 00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:25.360 comes around. It cleans up memory that's not 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:28.420 being used. It is way, way safer and easier for 00:04:28.420 --> 00:04:30.379 the average developer to write code in. Okay, 00:04:30.420 --> 00:04:33.420 so Microsoft's big idea was, hey, why don't we 00:04:33.420 --> 00:04:36.139 build the next Windows using this much safer, 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:39.000 much more modern code? Not just part of it. They 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:41.379 wanted to write the entire user interface and 00:04:41.379 --> 00:04:43.399 a bunch of the core systems in managed code. 00:04:43.579 --> 00:04:46.120 The graphics system was a project called Avalon 00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:48.560 and the file system was this revolutionary thing 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:51.560 called WinFS. The dream was to turn Windows into 00:04:51.560 --> 00:04:54.600 this like hyper modern object oriented platform. 00:04:54.819 --> 00:04:57.620 So if it's safer and it's easier, why was it 00:04:57.620 --> 00:05:00.300 such a complete disaster? Because of one simple 00:05:00.300 --> 00:05:04.920 thing. The hardware in 2003 was just not ready 00:05:04.920 --> 00:05:07.500 for it. Managed code has overhead. It needs more 00:05:07.500 --> 00:05:09.540 processing power. It needs more RAM to run that 00:05:09.540 --> 00:05:12.120 protective bubble. And trying to run the entire 00:05:12.120 --> 00:05:15.000 visual shell of an operating system in managed 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.300 code on, say, a Pentium 4 with 256 megabytes 00:05:19.300 --> 00:05:22.439 of RAM, it was... absolute performance suicide. 00:05:22.740 --> 00:05:25.339 So they were designing this futuristic jet engine 00:05:25.339 --> 00:05:27.560 and trying to cram it inside a lawnmower? It's 00:05:27.560 --> 00:05:28.899 worse than that. It was like they were designing 00:05:28.899 --> 00:05:31.420 a jet engine that couldn't even start. By 2004, 00:05:31.620 --> 00:05:33.279 the Longhorn project is three years old. You 00:05:33.279 --> 00:05:35.100 have thousands of developers checking in code 00:05:35.100 --> 00:05:37.720 every single day. But the system itself, the 00:05:37.720 --> 00:05:41.040 actual OS, was so bloated and so unstable and 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:43.360 so unbelievably slow that you couldn't even get 00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:45.199 a daily build to run reliably enough to test 00:05:45.199 --> 00:05:47.920 anything. Wow. Jim Alchin, who was the co -president 00:05:47.920 --> 00:05:50.360 of Windows at the time, he has this famous... 00:05:50.410 --> 00:05:52.370 internal memo where he says the development process 00:05:52.370 --> 00:05:54.470 is crashing into the ground. And then this is 00:05:54.470 --> 00:05:57.990 what leads to the famous reset. This part of 00:05:57.990 --> 00:05:59.870 the story feels like it's straight out of a movie. 00:06:00.069 --> 00:06:03.149 I was reading about the Omega 13 builds. Yeah, 00:06:03.170 --> 00:06:05.550 and that little detail tells you everything you 00:06:05.550 --> 00:06:08.689 need to know about how desperate they were. By 00:06:08.689 --> 00:06:11.310 mid -2004, the leadership team finally admits 00:06:11.310 --> 00:06:14.490 that Longhorn is a lost cause. It's unsalvageable. 00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:17.000 You can't just fix the bugs because the fundamental 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:19.740 architecture, this huge bet on managed code before 00:06:19.740 --> 00:06:22.379 the hardware could handle it, was the bug. So 00:06:22.379 --> 00:06:24.779 they decided to nuke the whole thing. So three 00:06:24.779 --> 00:06:27.879 full years of work. I mean, thousands and thousands 00:06:27.879 --> 00:06:31.000 of hours of engineering just gone, deleted. Pretty 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:33.459 much shelved, yeah. They made this brutal decision 00:06:33.459 --> 00:06:36.920 to take the existing stable code base from Windows 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:40.220 Server 2003, which was boring, but it was solid, 00:06:40.279 --> 00:06:41.860 and it was written in old school native code, 00:06:41.939 --> 00:06:45.040 and start over. They would basically graft the 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:48.160 ideas from Longhorn onto this old, reliable skeleton. 00:06:48.439 --> 00:06:50.699 And that's where the name Omega 13 comes from. 00:06:50.740 --> 00:06:52.519 Exactly. It's a reference to the time travel 00:06:52.519 --> 00:06:55.560 device in the movie Galaxy Quest. It's a device 00:06:55.560 --> 00:06:58.199 that lets you go back in time 13 seconds to undo 00:06:58.199 --> 00:07:00.759 a catastrophic mistake. That's not a joke. That 00:07:00.759 --> 00:07:02.879 is a cry for help. It was a prayer. They were 00:07:02.879 --> 00:07:04.879 hitting the reset button on three years of failure. 00:07:05.259 --> 00:07:07.660 But you can't just do that. You can't just throw 00:07:07.660 --> 00:07:10.339 away three years of work in 2004 and still expect 00:07:10.339 --> 00:07:13.000 to ship something in 2006 without making some 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:15.420 massive cuts. Oh, they had to cut the heart and 00:07:15.420 --> 00:07:19.100 soul out of the original dream. WinFS, that amazing 00:07:19.100 --> 00:07:21.699 revolutionary file system that was going to change 00:07:21.699 --> 00:07:24.540 how we search for data forever. Gone. Kicked 00:07:24.540 --> 00:07:26.459 down the road. The whole idea of writing the 00:07:26.459 --> 00:07:30.089 OS and managed code. scrapped completely. They 00:07:30.089 --> 00:07:32.589 had to frantically rewrite the Avalon graphics 00:07:32.589 --> 00:07:35.430 system, which later became Windows Presentation 00:07:35.430 --> 00:07:38.509 Foundation, or WPF, just to get it to run on 00:07:38.509 --> 00:07:40.709 top of the old architecture. It was an absolute 00:07:40.709 --> 00:07:43.699 scramble. So when they finally come out and announce 00:07:43.699 --> 00:07:47.000 the official name Windows Vista in 2005, it's 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:49.300 already a compromise. It's what's left over after 00:07:49.300 --> 00:07:52.560 a brutal internal war. It is. But, and this is 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:54.399 so important, even though they abandoned the 00:07:54.399 --> 00:07:56.699 managed code dream, they did not abandon all 00:07:56.699 --> 00:07:58.639 the other massive architectural changes they 00:07:58.639 --> 00:08:00.279 had planned. And this is really where the whole 00:08:00.279 --> 00:08:02.819 martyr argument begins, because they stuck with 00:08:02.819 --> 00:08:05.259 their plan to fundamentally change the way Windows 00:08:05.259 --> 00:08:07.800 draws pixels on your screen. And this is Aero, 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:11.279 the famous glass look, the transparent window 00:08:11.279 --> 00:08:14.079 borders. The thing that at the time I just figured 00:08:14.079 --> 00:08:16.120 was Microsoft looking over at what Apple was 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:18.779 doing and saying, ooh, shiny, we want that. And 00:08:18.779 --> 00:08:20.720 it was definitely about marketing. I mean, Aero 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:24.620 was an acronym for authentic, energetic, reflective, 00:08:24.759 --> 00:08:27.939 and open. Oh, that is pure marketing fluff. It's 00:08:27.939 --> 00:08:30.560 a tall fluff. But under the hood, technologically, 00:08:30.740 --> 00:08:33.769 it was a genuine paradigm shift. See, in Windows 00:08:33.769 --> 00:08:37.330 XP and every version before it, the CPU, the 00:08:37.330 --> 00:08:39.850 main brain of the computer, was responsible for 00:08:39.850 --> 00:08:41.870 drawing all the windows and buttons. The central 00:08:41.870 --> 00:08:44.809 processor, right? Yes. And the thing is, CPUs 00:08:44.809 --> 00:08:46.850 are actually terrible at graphics. That's why 00:08:46.850 --> 00:08:48.710 if you were dragging a window around in XP and 00:08:48.710 --> 00:08:51.629 the system got busy, you'd get that smearing 00:08:51.629 --> 00:08:53.909 effect. Oh, the trailing. Yeah, like a deck of 00:08:53.909 --> 00:08:55.870 ghost windows following your cursor. I remember 00:08:55.870 --> 00:08:58.570 that so clearly. That's the CPU struggling to 00:08:58.570 --> 00:09:01.340 repaint the screen fast enough. Vista introduced 00:09:01.340 --> 00:09:03.440 something called the Desktop Window Manager. 00:09:03.909 --> 00:09:06.470 The DWM. And it completely changed that pipeline. 00:09:06.730 --> 00:09:08.870 From now on, applications didn't draw directly 00:09:08.870 --> 00:09:10.970 to the screen anymore. They drew to a little 00:09:10.970 --> 00:09:14.070 buffer in memory. And then the DWM would take 00:09:14.070 --> 00:09:16.190 all those buffers and hand them off to the GPU 00:09:16.190 --> 00:09:18.509 your graphics card to stitch them all together 00:09:18.509 --> 00:09:20.830 into the final image you see. So wait, for the 00:09:20.830 --> 00:09:23.509 very first time, the Windows desktop was being 00:09:23.509 --> 00:09:26.190 rendered like it was a 3D video game. That is 00:09:26.190 --> 00:09:28.629 the perfect way to describe it. Every single 00:09:28.629 --> 00:09:31.330 window was basically a texture map on a 3D plane. 00:09:31.490 --> 00:09:33.169 And that's what allowed for all the cool stuff. 00:09:33.610 --> 00:09:35.970 The real -time blur, the transparency, the smooth 00:09:35.970 --> 00:09:38.350 animations, that flip 3D card shuffling thing, 00:09:38.450 --> 00:09:41.470 it totally eliminated screen tearing and smearing. 00:09:41.629 --> 00:09:44.889 This creates a huge new problem, a massive barrier 00:09:44.889 --> 00:09:47.070 to entry, because all of a sudden you couldn't 00:09:47.070 --> 00:09:49.509 just have any computer. You needed a computer 00:09:49.509 --> 00:09:52.309 with a proper, dedicated graphics processor. 00:09:52.590 --> 00:09:55.789 You needed, what was it, 128 megabytes of video 00:09:55.789 --> 00:09:59.730 RAM. At a minimum, yes. Which, back in 2006, 00:10:00.009 --> 00:10:03.490 was basically a gaming PC stack. Not what you'd 00:10:03.490 --> 00:10:06.230 find in your average Dell office desktop. And 00:10:06.230 --> 00:10:08.090 this leads us directly to one of the biggest 00:10:08.090 --> 00:10:10.970 scandals of the entire Vista launch, the Vista 00:10:10.970 --> 00:10:13.009 -capable lawsuit. Okay, I really want to dig 00:10:13.009 --> 00:10:14.990 into this because this felt like a genuine betrayal 00:10:14.990 --> 00:10:17.110 to a lot of customers. You'd go into a store, 00:10:17.250 --> 00:10:19.429 you'd see a brand new laptop with this shiny 00:10:19.429 --> 00:10:21.590 Vista -capable sticker on it. You'd buy it thinking 00:10:21.590 --> 00:10:23.450 you're getting that cool glass interface from 00:10:23.450 --> 00:10:25.710 the commercials. And then you get home and it 00:10:25.710 --> 00:10:27.929 looks like Windows 2000. You got the Vista basic 00:10:27.929 --> 00:10:30.929 theme. Yeah. Which was this flat, gray, ugly 00:10:30.929 --> 00:10:33.710 interface. And the reason why is this fascinating 00:10:33.710 --> 00:10:36.950 bit of corporate hardball. Intel, the chip maker, 00:10:37.149 --> 00:10:39.429 had a big problem. Their most common integrated 00:10:39.429 --> 00:10:42.970 graphics chipsets, the 915 series, were not powerful 00:10:42.970 --> 00:10:44.570 enough to run Aero. They just didn't have the 00:10:44.570 --> 00:10:47.070 horsepower or the right driver support. But those 00:10:47.070 --> 00:10:49.190 are the chips that Intel was selling by the millions 00:10:49.190 --> 00:10:52.330 to PC makers like Dell and HP for all their budget 00:10:52.330 --> 00:10:55.409 and mid -range machines. Exactly. And we know 00:10:55.409 --> 00:10:57.070 from internal emails that came out during the 00:10:57.070 --> 00:10:59.730 lawsuit that Intel heavily pressured Microsoft 00:10:59.730 --> 00:11:02.789 to lower the bar for that Vista -capable sticker 00:11:02.789 --> 00:11:05.269 so they could keep selling all those weak, cheap 00:11:05.269 --> 00:11:07.629 chipsets to their partners. If Microsoft had 00:11:07.629 --> 00:11:09.490 stood their ground and said, nope, to be Vista 00:11:09.490 --> 00:11:11.889 -capable, you must be able to run Arrow. Intel 00:11:11.889 --> 00:11:14.210 sales would have completely cratered. So Microsoft 00:11:14.210 --> 00:11:17.129 blinked. They caved. They let PC makers slap 00:11:17.129 --> 00:11:19.309 the sticker on hardware that couldn't actually 00:11:19.309 --> 00:11:21.730 run the single most defining visual feature of 00:11:21.730 --> 00:11:23.610 the entire operating system. And customers were 00:11:23.610 --> 00:11:25.950 furious. They felt totally scammed. You buy a 00:11:25.950 --> 00:11:28.269 brand new PC and it feels obsolete the second 00:11:28.269 --> 00:11:32.710 you turn it on. But looking back... The DWM, 00:11:32.789 --> 00:11:35.110 the GPU -composited desktop, it was the right 00:11:35.110 --> 00:11:37.769 technical decision. Every modern OS does it this 00:11:37.769 --> 00:11:41.370 way now. iOS, Android, macOS, Windows 11, they 00:11:41.370 --> 00:11:44.149 all do it. Vista just took the arrows for introducing 00:11:44.149 --> 00:11:46.309 it before the low -end hardware was really ready 00:11:46.309 --> 00:11:48.269 for primetime. That feels like a recurring theme 00:11:48.269 --> 00:11:52.690 here. Right idea, wrong time. Okay, let's shift 00:11:52.690 --> 00:11:54.389 to the other part of the Vista experience that 00:11:54.389 --> 00:11:56.289 drove everyone absolutely insane, the security. 00:11:56.950 --> 00:12:00.559 Specifically, user account control. UAC. The 00:12:00.559 --> 00:12:02.460 three little letters that launched a thousand 00:12:02.460 --> 00:12:05.580 angry forum posts. You have to explain the logic 00:12:05.580 --> 00:12:07.740 here, because from a user's perspective, it just 00:12:07.740 --> 00:12:09.799 felt like your computer was actively fighting 00:12:09.799 --> 00:12:12.080 you. You try to install a program, the whole 00:12:12.080 --> 00:12:14.179 screen goes dark. You try to change the system 00:12:14.179 --> 00:12:16.679 clock, the screen goes dark. Cancel or allow. 00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:20.940 Cancel or allow. Why on earth was it so aggressive? 00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:24.059 To get why UAC existed, you have to transport 00:12:24.059 --> 00:12:26.779 yourself back to the absolute security nightmare 00:12:26.779 --> 00:12:31.259 that was the Windows XP era. In XP, by default, 00:12:31.379 --> 00:12:33.799 pretty much every single user account was a full 00:12:33.799 --> 00:12:35.720 administrator. Right, which meant I could do 00:12:35.720 --> 00:12:37.980 anything I wanted on my machine. It meant you 00:12:37.980 --> 00:12:40.259 had full control, yes. But it also meant that 00:12:40.259 --> 00:12:42.740 any virus or piece of malware that tricked you 00:12:42.740 --> 00:12:45.559 into running it also had full control. A virus 00:12:45.559 --> 00:12:47.879 could rewrite critical system files, install 00:12:47.879 --> 00:12:50.379 a rootkit deep in the OS, could do anything it 00:12:50.379 --> 00:12:53.419 wanted without ever asking for permission. Microsoft 00:12:53.419 --> 00:12:55.759 was getting absolutely hammered by malware. The 00:12:55.759 --> 00:12:57.600 trustworthy computing initiative was basically 00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:00.840 Bill Gates saying, this has to stop now. So UAC 00:13:00.840 --> 00:13:03.480 was the answer. The idea was to make everyone 00:13:03.480 --> 00:13:05.960 run as a lower privilege standard user most of 00:13:05.960 --> 00:13:08.659 the time and only elevate to administrator when 00:13:08.659 --> 00:13:11.440 you absolutely had to. That was the core idea. 00:13:11.919 --> 00:13:14.460 But there's a technical detail here that almost 00:13:14.460 --> 00:13:17.220 everyone missed at the time. When the screen 00:13:17.220 --> 00:13:19.730 went dark. That was called the secure desktop. 00:13:20.149 --> 00:13:22.309 That wasn't just for, you know, dramatic effect. 00:13:22.529 --> 00:13:24.049 I always just thought it was the computer thinking 00:13:24.049 --> 00:13:25.909 really, really hard about what I just asked it 00:13:25.909 --> 00:13:28.889 to do. No, no. What was actually happening was 00:13:28.889 --> 00:13:31.830 that Windows was switching to a completely different 00:13:31.830 --> 00:13:35.169 isolated desktop session that no other software 00:13:35.169 --> 00:13:37.210 on your computer could see or interact with. 00:13:37.889 --> 00:13:40.789 While you're on that secure desktop, no malware, 00:13:40.990 --> 00:13:43.710 no script, no keylogger can programmatically 00:13:43.710 --> 00:13:46.679 click the allow button for you. The only input 00:13:46.679 --> 00:13:48.500 it will accept is from the physical human being 00:13:48.500 --> 00:13:50.559 sitting at a physical mouse and keyboard. Whoa. 00:13:50.740 --> 00:13:52.980 Okay, so it was a physical verification. It was 00:13:52.980 --> 00:13:55.460 making sure a person was actually there in the 00:13:55.460 --> 00:13:59.059 room giving the command. Exactly. It was, from 00:13:59.059 --> 00:14:00.960 a security engineering standpoint, a brilliant 00:14:00.960 --> 00:14:05.639 mechanism. The problem was that it ran headfirst 00:14:05.639 --> 00:14:08.960 into a software ecosystem that had gotten really, 00:14:09.059 --> 00:14:11.519 really lazy. What do you mean by lazy? Well, 00:14:11.620 --> 00:14:14.720 for 10 years, software developers. and I'm talking 00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:17.039 about big companies like Adobe, Intuit, you name 00:14:17.039 --> 00:14:19.279 it, had been writing their Windows applications, 00:14:19.639 --> 00:14:21.600 assuming they would always have full administrator 00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:24.659 rights. So they'd do sloppy things, like trying 00:14:24.659 --> 00:14:27.840 to save user configuration files into the program 00:14:27.840 --> 00:14:30.600 files folder, which is a protected system directory, 00:14:30.779 --> 00:14:32.820 instead of into the user's My Documents folder 00:14:32.820 --> 00:14:35.120 where it belongs. And in XP, that worked just 00:14:35.120 --> 00:14:37.779 fine. Nobody noticed. It was fine in XP. But 00:14:37.779 --> 00:14:39.929 in Vista... Trying to write to a system folder 00:14:39.929 --> 00:14:42.629 is a major security violation. So when you ran 00:14:42.629 --> 00:14:45.470 your old version of TurboTax on Vista and it 00:14:45.470 --> 00:14:47.490 tried to save a file where it shouldn't, Vista 00:14:47.490 --> 00:14:49.190 would freak out. And it would throw up a UAC 00:14:49.190 --> 00:14:51.049 prompt. Hey, this program is trying to do something 00:14:51.049 --> 00:14:54.370 sketchy. But as a user, I have no idea why. I 00:14:54.370 --> 00:14:56.250 just think this is being annoying again. You're 00:14:56.250 --> 00:14:58.769 just getting spanked. But you don't know that 00:14:58.769 --> 00:15:02.409 Vista is actually trying to scold the application's 00:15:02.409 --> 00:15:05.850 developer. And that is the absolute core of the 00:15:05.850 --> 00:15:09.129 martyr argument. Because Vista was so annoying 00:15:09.129 --> 00:15:12.129 about this and because users complained so loudly 00:15:12.129 --> 00:15:14.570 to the software companies, it forced the entire 00:15:14.570 --> 00:15:17.210 industry to clean up its act. Ah, so developers 00:15:17.210 --> 00:15:19.269 had to go back and update their code to follow 00:15:19.269 --> 00:15:21.669 the new rules. They had to. They started saving 00:15:21.669 --> 00:15:23.809 files in the right places. They started respecting 00:15:23.809 --> 00:15:27.490 the user privilege model. By the time Windows 00:15:27.490 --> 00:15:29.610 7 came along a few years later. The software 00:15:29.610 --> 00:15:31.809 was already fixed. The whole ecosystem had been 00:15:31.809 --> 00:15:34.750 house trained. You saw way fewer UAC prompts 00:15:34.750 --> 00:15:37.289 in Windows 7, partly because Microsoft did tune 00:15:37.289 --> 00:15:39.809 it to be a bit less chatty, but mostly because 00:15:39.809 --> 00:15:41.830 the software you were running had finally learned 00:15:41.830 --> 00:15:44.529 to behave itself. Vista took all the heat to 00:15:44.529 --> 00:15:47.570 force the industry to grow up. That is. Wow. 00:15:47.629 --> 00:15:49.370 It's actually kind of tragic in a way. It's like 00:15:49.370 --> 00:15:52.230 Vista was the strict parent that none of the 00:15:52.230 --> 00:15:54.990 kids liked, which then allowed Windows 7 to swoop 00:15:54.990 --> 00:15:57.169 in and be the cool aunt. And it wasn't just about 00:15:57.169 --> 00:15:58.450 software. Let's talk about hardware drivers. 00:15:58.690 --> 00:16:01.110 This is another one of those under the hood areas 00:16:01.110 --> 00:16:04.629 where Vista just broke a ton of stuff for a very 00:16:04.629 --> 00:16:06.990 good reason. I have a very clear memory of this. 00:16:07.070 --> 00:16:09.409 I did a clean install of Vista on my desktop 00:16:09.409 --> 00:16:12.429 and my really nice expensive sound card just. 00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:15.500 It stopped working correctly. And I don't mean 00:16:15.500 --> 00:16:17.980 it had bugs. I mean like core features were just 00:16:17.980 --> 00:16:21.139 gone. That would be because of the complete from 00:16:21.139 --> 00:16:24.000 the ground up rewrite of the Windows audio stack. 00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:27.700 See, in Windows XP, audio drivers ran in what's 00:16:27.700 --> 00:16:29.620 called kernel mode. Okay, break that down for 00:16:29.620 --> 00:16:31.860 us. Kernel mode versus user mode. The kernel 00:16:31.860 --> 00:16:34.740 is like the absolute core of the operating system. 00:16:34.779 --> 00:16:37.360 It's the VIP lounge. It has unrestricted access 00:16:37.360 --> 00:16:40.139 to all the hardware. If a piece of code running 00:16:40.139 --> 00:16:42.179 in the kernel, what we call ring zero crashes, 00:16:42.379 --> 00:16:44.679 the entire computer crashes with it, that's a 00:16:44.679 --> 00:16:46.860 blue screen of death. So in XP, if my audio driver 00:16:46.860 --> 00:16:49.960 had a bug and it crashed? Your entire PC would 00:16:49.960 --> 00:16:53.379 reboot. And Microsoft had all this crash telemetry 00:16:53.379 --> 00:16:56.500 data from XP, and they saw that a huge percentage 00:16:56.500 --> 00:16:59.600 of all system crashes were being caused by poorly 00:16:59.600 --> 00:17:02.720 written third -party drivers, specifically audio 00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:06.119 and video drivers. So for Vista, they made a 00:17:06.119 --> 00:17:09.400 radical change. They moved the core audio processing 00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:12.200 into user mode. Which is where the normal apps 00:17:12.200 --> 00:17:14.359 live. Yeah. Cheap seats. Exactly. It's where 00:17:14.359 --> 00:17:16.880 your web browser and your notepad run. Now, if 00:17:16.880 --> 00:17:19.119 an audio driver crashes in user mode, okay, maybe 00:17:19.119 --> 00:17:21.000 your sound stops working. Maybe you have to restart 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:24.000 Spotify. But the computer itself, the operating 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:26.720 system, keeps on running. No blue screen. That 00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:29.779 sounds objectively 100 % better. So why was it 00:17:29.779 --> 00:17:32.079 a problem for anyone? Because it broke all the 00:17:32.079 --> 00:17:34.509 fancy hardware acceleration. Companies like Creative 00:17:34.509 --> 00:17:36.450 Labs, who made the Sound Blaster cards, their 00:17:36.450 --> 00:17:38.490 whole business model relied on having that deep 00:17:38.490 --> 00:17:41.009 kernel access to do cool stuff like EAX environmental 00:17:41.009 --> 00:17:43.470 audio effects for games directly on their own 00:17:43.470 --> 00:17:46.109 chips. Vista severed that direct connection. 00:17:46.509 --> 00:17:49.690 All of a sudden, your $150 sound card performed 00:17:49.690 --> 00:17:51.890 no better than the cheap audio chip built into 00:17:51.890 --> 00:17:54.549 the motherboard. Gamers were absolutely furious. 00:17:54.849 --> 00:17:56.630 They felt like they paid for a premium feature 00:17:56.630 --> 00:17:59.109 and Vista just took it away. They were downgraded. 00:17:59.470 --> 00:18:02.230 from a features perspective. But from a system 00:18:02.230 --> 00:18:05.410 stability perspective, it was a massive, massive 00:18:05.410 --> 00:18:08.130 upgrade. The number of system crashes caused 00:18:08.130 --> 00:18:11.150 by bad audio drivers plummeted to almost zero. 00:18:11.670 --> 00:18:15.809 Again, Vista makes the tough, correct, long -term 00:18:15.809 --> 00:18:17.910 architectural decision. And in the short term, 00:18:18.049 --> 00:18:20.910 the enthusiasts and the power users just crucify 00:18:20.910 --> 00:18:22.890 them for it. It really does seem like every single 00:18:22.890 --> 00:18:25.920 major decision was this trade -off. Long -term 00:18:25.920 --> 00:18:28.599 gain for very immediate, very loud short -term 00:18:28.599 --> 00:18:30.640 pain. Was it the same story with the networking 00:18:30.640 --> 00:18:33.720 stack? Absolutely. They rewrote the entire TCP 00:18:33.720 --> 00:18:36.660 IP stack from scratch. It had much better security, 00:18:36.799 --> 00:18:39.200 full native support for IPv6, theoretically better 00:18:39.200 --> 00:18:42.759 performance, but in the initial release, it had 00:18:42.759 --> 00:18:44.640 some really embarrassing bugs. Oh, don't tell 00:18:44.640 --> 00:18:48.059 me. The infamous file copy dialog box. The calculating 00:18:48.059 --> 00:18:50.829 time remaining bug. The one and only. Where you 00:18:50.829 --> 00:18:52.690 try to copy a file over your home network and 00:18:52.690 --> 00:18:53.950 it would sit there for two minutes and then tell 00:18:53.950 --> 00:18:58.950 you estimated time remaining 3 ,700 years. Yes, 00:18:59.009 --> 00:19:01.150 I remember that. It was a total joke. It was 00:19:01.150 --> 00:19:03.730 a bug in the new network throttling algorithm. 00:19:04.220 --> 00:19:06.640 And look, to be fair, they fixed it in Service 00:19:06.640 --> 00:19:08.740 Pack 1, but by then it was a meme. The perception 00:19:08.740 --> 00:19:11.480 damage was already done. And while we're on performance, 00:19:11.819 --> 00:19:14.339 we have to talk about SuperFetch. Right. This 00:19:14.339 --> 00:19:15.819 was the memory management thing where people 00:19:15.819 --> 00:19:17.680 would open their task manager, see that they 00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:20.079 had zero free RAM, and immediately have a panic 00:19:20.079 --> 00:19:22.319 attack. This was a complete philosophical change 00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:25.240 from how Windows used to work. In the XP world, 00:19:25.539 --> 00:19:27.799 having lots of free RAM was seen as a good thing. 00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:31.240 It meant your computer had room to breathe. Vista's 00:19:31.240 --> 00:19:34.240 philosophy was... completely different. It was. 00:19:34.700 --> 00:19:38.000 Unused RAM is wasted RAM. Which, when you think 00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:40.059 about it, makes perfect sense. I paid for four 00:19:40.059 --> 00:19:42.180 gigabytes of memory. I want the OS to be using 00:19:42.180 --> 00:19:45.099 it for something. Exactly. SuperFesh was this 00:19:45.099 --> 00:19:47.539 clever system that used a bit of machine learning 00:19:47.539 --> 00:19:50.579 to watch your usage patterns. If it noticed that 00:19:50.579 --> 00:19:52.799 you open your email client every single weekday 00:19:52.799 --> 00:19:55.539 morning at 9 a .m., it would start preloading 00:19:55.539 --> 00:19:57.559 the necessary parts of that program into any 00:19:57.559 --> 00:20:01.000 unused RAM at, say, 8, 5, 8 a .m. So when you 00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:03.240 click the icon, it opens instantly. Instantly. 00:20:03.559 --> 00:20:05.259 And if another application suddenly needed that 00:20:05.259 --> 00:20:07.400 memory, Vista would immediately release it. It 00:20:07.400 --> 00:20:09.759 was just a smart cache. But users didn't get 00:20:09.759 --> 00:20:11.799 it. They'd look at their RAM usage sitting at 00:20:11.799 --> 00:20:14.119 90 % when the computer was just idling on the 00:20:14.119 --> 00:20:16.200 desktop and they'd scream, bloat! This thing 00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:19.440 is bloated! It's that classic gap between perception 00:20:19.440 --> 00:20:22.400 and technical reality. The story of Vista, right 00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:24.380 there. Okay, let's fast forward to the launch. 00:20:24.539 --> 00:20:28.359 It's January 2007. The marketing blitz is everywhere. 00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:32.140 The slogan is the wow starts now. But for most 00:20:32.140 --> 00:20:34.880 people, the reality was less wow and more of 00:20:34.880 --> 00:20:37.619 a dull thud. A very loud, very expensive thud. 00:20:37.700 --> 00:20:39.579 We already talked about the hardware requirement 00:20:39.579 --> 00:20:42.079 confusion, but the driver nightmare was arguably 00:20:42.079 --> 00:20:44.519 even worse because Microsoft had changed the 00:20:44.519 --> 00:20:47.579 fundamental driver model for everything. Graphics, 00:20:47.579 --> 00:20:50.339 sound, networking, printers, scanners, all of 00:20:50.339 --> 00:20:53.160 those old reliable XP drivers just stopped working. 00:20:53.380 --> 00:20:56.809 So on day one, you upgrade to Vista. And your 00:20:56.809 --> 00:20:58.970 perfectly good scanner is now just a paperweight. 00:20:59.109 --> 00:21:01.849 And this created a horrible chicken and the egg 00:21:01.849 --> 00:21:03.930 problem. The hardware companies, you know, HP, 00:21:04.170 --> 00:21:07.529 Canon, Epson, they didn't want to spend the money 00:21:07.529 --> 00:21:09.650 to write brand new Vista drivers for their older 00:21:09.650 --> 00:21:11.670 products until a lot of people were using Vista. 00:21:12.029 --> 00:21:14.509 But users didn't want to switch to Vista until 00:21:14.509 --> 00:21:16.130 they knew all their hardware would have drivers. 00:21:16.210 --> 00:21:18.329 Just a total standoff. And on launch day, it 00:21:18.329 --> 00:21:20.210 meant that thousands and thousands of common 00:21:20.210 --> 00:21:23.119 peripherals were just dead in the water. And 00:21:23.119 --> 00:21:25.660 who does the average user blame? Do they blame 00:21:25.660 --> 00:21:27.680 Canon for not wanting to support a four -year 00:21:27.680 --> 00:21:30.380 -old scanner anymore? Of course not. They blame 00:21:30.380 --> 00:21:33.099 Microsoft for breaking their computer. And on 00:21:33.099 --> 00:21:35.240 top of all that, you have this DRM controversy, 00:21:35.599 --> 00:21:38.359 the protected video path. This feels like such 00:21:38.359 --> 00:21:41.220 a mid -2000s problem, all tied up with the format 00:21:41.220 --> 00:21:44.000 war between HD -DVD and Blu -ray. Oh, it was 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:46.180 a massive deal in the tech community at the time. 00:21:46.539 --> 00:21:49.819 To appease the Hollywood studios, Microsoft built 00:21:49.819 --> 00:21:52.720 this incredibly complex hardware -level encryption 00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:56.220 system into the video pipeline. The deal was 00:21:56.220 --> 00:21:58.799 basically, if you want Windows to be able to 00:21:58.799 --> 00:22:01.000 play these new high -definition encrypted movie 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:03.759 discs, you have to help us lock down the entire 00:22:03.759 --> 00:22:06.420 signal path so people can't easily pirate them. 00:22:06.920 --> 00:22:09.039 I remember reading some of the technical critiques 00:22:09.039 --> 00:22:11.579 of this. Critics were calling it a suicide note 00:22:11.579 --> 00:22:13.519 for the platform. They were saying the OS would 00:22:13.519 --> 00:22:16.059 actually intentionally make your video quality 00:22:16.059 --> 00:22:19.819 worse if it detected an unsecured monitor cable. 00:22:20.140 --> 00:22:22.319 That was from a famous analysis by a security 00:22:22.319 --> 00:22:25.079 researcher named Peter Gutmann. And his argument 00:22:25.079 --> 00:22:27.160 was that Microsoft was basically adding cost, 00:22:27.279 --> 00:22:29.940 complexity, and points of failure to everyone's 00:22:29.940 --> 00:22:31.900 hardware just to serve the interests of the movie 00:22:31.900 --> 00:22:34.519 industry. Now, in practice, most normal users 00:22:34.519 --> 00:22:36.900 probably never even noticed it. But philosophically, 00:22:36.960 --> 00:22:39.740 for the power users, the enthusiasts, it was 00:22:39.740 --> 00:22:42.220 another nail in the coffin. It fed this growing 00:22:42.220 --> 00:22:44.559 narrative that Vista was actively hostile to 00:22:44.559 --> 00:22:47.599 its own users. Hostile security, hostile DRM, 00:22:47.619 --> 00:22:49.759 hostile hardware requirements. The whole brand 00:22:49.759 --> 00:22:52.809 was just becoming toxic. And meanwhile... Apple 00:22:52.809 --> 00:22:55.009 is just relentlessly hammering them with those, 00:22:55.250 --> 00:22:58.190 I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads. Oh, the cancel or allow 00:22:58.190 --> 00:23:00.710 ad where the PC is just asking for permission 00:23:00.710 --> 00:23:03.150 to do anything? Yeah. Those were devastating 00:23:03.150 --> 00:23:05.390 because they were so relatable. They were true. 00:23:05.529 --> 00:23:09.369 By 2008, Microsoft was bleeding reputation. They 00:23:09.369 --> 00:23:11.769 had to do something drastic to prove that the 00:23:11.769 --> 00:23:14.289 software itself wasn't the problem anymore. The 00:23:14.289 --> 00:23:16.369 brand's reputation was the problem. And this 00:23:16.369 --> 00:23:18.650 is where the Mojave experiment comes in. This 00:23:18.650 --> 00:23:20.869 was, you have to admit, a stroke of marketing 00:23:20.869 --> 00:23:24.279 genius. Yeah. This is in 2008 after Service Pack 00:23:24.279 --> 00:23:26.299 1 has been released and has fixed a lot of the 00:23:26.299 --> 00:23:28.799 worst performance bugs. Microsoft goes out and 00:23:28.799 --> 00:23:31.000 finds a bunch of people who self -identify as 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:33.180 hating Windows Vista. People who say they'd rate 00:23:33.180 --> 00:23:35.880 it a 1 or a 2 out of 10. The true haters. The 00:23:35.880 --> 00:23:37.579 haters. And they sit them down in a focus group 00:23:37.579 --> 00:23:39.900 and they say, we want to show you a sneak peek 00:23:39.900 --> 00:23:42.180 of our next new odd rating system. It's codenamed 00:23:42.180 --> 00:23:45.299 Mojave. And they just let them use it for 10 00:23:45.299 --> 00:23:47.549 minutes. And what was the feedback? It was glowing. 00:23:47.750 --> 00:23:50.269 Wow, this is so much faster. The search is incredible. 00:23:50.430 --> 00:23:53.089 This is beautiful. On average, they rated Mojave 00:23:53.089 --> 00:23:56.089 a 9 out of 10. And then, of course, came the 00:23:56.089 --> 00:23:58.210 big reveal. You've actually been using Windows 00:23:58.210 --> 00:24:00.589 Vista this whole time. Exactly. It was a perfect 00:24:00.589 --> 00:24:03.089 demonstration that by that point, the code was 00:24:03.089 --> 00:24:05.329 actually pretty good. But the brand name Vista 00:24:05.329 --> 00:24:08.200 was just hopelessly tarnished. It proved the 00:24:08.200 --> 00:24:11.240 damage was done. The market had moved on. Businesses 00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:13.619 were actively refusing to upgrade. This is when 00:24:13.619 --> 00:24:15.500 we started seeing that whole downgrade rights 00:24:15.500 --> 00:24:17.119 thing, right? Which has to be one of the most 00:24:17.119 --> 00:24:19.099 humiliating things for a software company to 00:24:19.099 --> 00:24:22.039 endure. Microsoft's own enterprise licensing 00:24:22.039 --> 00:24:24.619 agreements had a clause that allowed a business 00:24:24.619 --> 00:24:29.019 who bought a new PC with a Vista license to legally 00:24:29.019 --> 00:24:32.680 ignore Vista and install Windows XP on it instead. 00:24:33.079 --> 00:24:36.259 So Dell and Lenovo were shipping brand new high 00:24:36.259 --> 00:24:40.400 end PCs in 2008 with Windows XP pre -installed 00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:42.200 stickers on them because that's what their big 00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:44.359 corporate clients were demanding. It's like buying 00:24:44.359 --> 00:24:47.460 a brand new 2008 car and telling the dealership, 00:24:47.460 --> 00:24:49.400 yeah, but I want you to put the engine from the 00:24:49.400 --> 00:24:51.779 2001 model in there because I'm just more comfortable 00:24:51.779 --> 00:24:54.039 with that one. It's unbelievable. And that's 00:24:54.039 --> 00:24:56.210 what forced Microsoft's hand. They knew they 00:24:56.210 --> 00:24:57.910 couldn't save the Vista brand. They had to accelerate 00:24:57.910 --> 00:24:59.930 the next release. They needed a clean slate. 00:25:00.109 --> 00:25:02.430 They needed Windows 7. Okay, so this brings us 00:25:02.430 --> 00:25:05.170 to the real climax of your Vista the martyr theory. 00:25:05.609 --> 00:25:09.730 Windows 7 launches in October 2009, and it is 00:25:09.730 --> 00:25:12.210 universally praised. It is hailed as the savior, 00:25:12.410 --> 00:25:15.470 the golden child. It fixed everything. But here's 00:25:15.470 --> 00:25:17.630 the secret that every low -level engineer at 00:25:17.630 --> 00:25:21.200 Microsoft knows. Windows 7 is just... Windows 00:25:21.200 --> 00:25:24.339 Vista Service Pack 3 with a new taskbar and better 00:25:24.339 --> 00:25:25.920 wallpaper. Wait, hold on. I don't know if I buy 00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:28.079 that. I use both. And 7 felt completely different. 00:25:28.160 --> 00:25:30.259 It felt so much faster, so much lighter. It felt 00:25:30.259 --> 00:25:32.599 faster because they made some very clever tweaks 00:25:32.599 --> 00:25:35.220 to the UI. They shortened the animation times 00:25:35.220 --> 00:25:37.920 so Windows appeared to open faster. It felt lighter 00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:39.960 because they fine -tuned SuperFetch and they 00:25:39.960 --> 00:25:42.779 dialed back the aggressiveness of UAC. But the 00:25:42.779 --> 00:25:44.960 core architecture, the kernel, the driver model, 00:25:45.180 --> 00:25:47.819 the audio stack, the networking stack, the DWM 00:25:47.819 --> 00:25:50.759 graphics engine, it was all pure Vista. So Windows 00:25:50.759 --> 00:25:53.339 7 was really just standing on Vista's shoulders? 00:25:53.599 --> 00:25:56.339 I'd say it was standing on Vista's grave. Just 00:25:56.339 --> 00:25:59.640 think about the context. By late 2009, that initial 00:25:59.640 --> 00:26:02.819 hardware shock was over. The average new PC you 00:26:02.819 --> 00:26:07.259 bought in 2009 didn't have 512 megs of RAM. It 00:26:07.259 --> 00:26:10.059 had 4 gigabytes of RAM and a dual -core CPU. 00:26:10.579 --> 00:26:13.220 So that heavy AeroGlass interface wasn't so heavy 00:26:13.220 --> 00:26:16.019 anymore. Exactly. Moore's Law had finally caught 00:26:16.019 --> 00:26:19.140 up with Microsoft's ambition. And even more importantly, 00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:22.519 by 2009, all the hardware manufacturers had already 00:26:22.519 --> 00:26:25.339 spent three painful years writing stable Vista 00:26:25.339 --> 00:26:27.259 drivers for their products. So when you installed 00:26:27.259 --> 00:26:30.559 Windows 7, all the drivers you needed, they just 00:26:30.559 --> 00:26:32.690 worked. And all the software companies had already 00:26:32.690 --> 00:26:34.529 learned their lesson and stopped trying to write 00:26:34.529 --> 00:26:37.529 to protected system folders. Yes. Windows 7 got 00:26:37.529 --> 00:26:39.829 to make this grand entrance into a world that 00:26:39.829 --> 00:26:41.950 Vista had spent three bloody years preparing 00:26:41.950 --> 00:26:44.650 for it. Vista went ahead with a machete, cleared 00:26:44.650 --> 00:26:46.490 all the jungle, fought all the battles with the 00:26:46.490 --> 00:26:48.630 vendors and developers, and then Windows 7 just 00:26:48.630 --> 00:26:50.309 strolled in, planted a flag, and took all the 00:26:50.309 --> 00:26:52.359 credit. And it got all the credit. Every last 00:26:52.359 --> 00:26:55.059 bit. In fact, Microsoft even eventually released 00:26:55.059 --> 00:26:57.619 something called the Platform Update for Vista, 00:26:57.700 --> 00:26:59.980 which backported a bunch of Windows 7's core 00:26:59.980 --> 00:27:01.980 components like DirectX 11 and some of the UI 00:27:01.980 --> 00:27:05.160 elements back to Vista. If you took a fully patched 00:27:05.160 --> 00:27:08.119 Vista machine in 2010 and put it next to a Windows 00:27:08.119 --> 00:27:10.619 7 machine, it was honestly hard to tell the difference 00:27:10.619 --> 00:27:12.859 in performance. So looking back on the whole 00:27:12.859 --> 00:27:16.019 legacy, it was a commercial failure, a PR disaster 00:27:16.019 --> 00:27:19.250 for sure, but... Technically. Technically, it 00:27:19.250 --> 00:27:20.809 might have been the most important Windows release 00:27:20.809 --> 00:27:24.109 since Windows 95. It was the painful, awkward, 00:27:24.230 --> 00:27:27.930 and necessary transition from the old, insecure, 00:27:28.150 --> 00:27:32.089 anything -goes era of the 90s PC to the modern, 00:27:32.269 --> 00:27:35.569 secured, GPU -accelerated era we live in now. 00:27:35.730 --> 00:27:37.769 It was the vegetables. It was the vegetables 00:27:37.769 --> 00:27:39.609 we all had to be forced to eat before we were 00:27:39.609 --> 00:27:41.029 allowed to have the dessert that was Windows 00:27:41.029 --> 00:27:43.369 7. That's it. Nobody ever gets excited about 00:27:43.369 --> 00:27:45.269 eating their broccoli. But without it, the whole 00:27:45.269 --> 00:27:46.890 system eventually gets sick and falls apart. 00:27:46.960 --> 00:27:49.019 So I want to leave our listeners with one final 00:27:49.019 --> 00:27:51.339 thought experiment, a little what -if scenario. 00:27:51.640 --> 00:27:55.259 We all complained endlessly about UAC. We hated 00:27:55.259 --> 00:27:57.859 the security pop -ups. We hated the broken compatibility. 00:27:58.279 --> 00:28:00.259 Oh, yeah. But just imagine for a second that 00:28:00.259 --> 00:28:02.420 Microsoft had caved to that pressure. Imagine 00:28:02.420 --> 00:28:04.940 in 2005 they had said, you know what? This is 00:28:04.940 --> 00:28:07.019 too hard. Our customers hate this. Let's just 00:28:07.019 --> 00:28:09.319 stick with the XP security model. Let's just 00:28:09.319 --> 00:28:11.579 keep everyone running as an administrator by 00:28:11.579 --> 00:28:13.819 default. Let's keep the kernel wide open for 00:28:13.819 --> 00:28:16.450 any driver to mess with. And then imagine trying 00:28:16.450 --> 00:28:19.930 to drag that architecture into the 2010s. Right. 00:28:20.109 --> 00:28:23.750 Into the era of sophisticated ransomware. The 00:28:23.750 --> 00:28:26.910 era of massive state -sponsored cyber attacks. 00:28:27.210 --> 00:28:29.869 The era of the drive -by -download where just 00:28:29.869 --> 00:28:32.670 visiting the wrong website could compromise your 00:28:32.670 --> 00:28:35.309 entire system. It is a genuinely terrifying thought. 00:28:35.630 --> 00:28:38.210 If we had entered the modern, hyper -connected 00:28:38.210 --> 00:28:40.109 Internet with the fundamental security model 00:28:40.109 --> 00:28:42.470 of Windows XP, I honestly believe the Windows 00:28:42.470 --> 00:28:44.069 platform could have collapsed under the weight 00:28:44.069 --> 00:28:46.490 of malware. The problem would have been so unmanageable 00:28:46.490 --> 00:28:48.349 that businesses and consumers would have fled 00:28:48.349 --> 00:28:50.329 to more locked -down, walled garden systems. 00:28:50.789 --> 00:28:53.390 So in a strange way, all of Vista's annoying, 00:28:53.670 --> 00:28:56.390 nagging, in -your -face security prompts were 00:28:56.390 --> 00:29:00.170 like a vaccine. They inoculated the entire Windows 00:29:00.170 --> 00:29:03.420 world. It hardened the target. It wasn't fun, 00:29:03.480 --> 00:29:05.319 it wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't cheap. 00:29:05.460 --> 00:29:07.579 But when you look at the threat landscape we 00:29:07.579 --> 00:29:10.099 face today, I think you have to look back and 00:29:10.099 --> 00:29:12.799 say, thank you, Vista. You were an absolute mess, 00:29:12.960 --> 00:29:14.839 but you were the mess we had to have. A necessary 00:29:14.839 --> 00:29:17.339 mess. I think that is the perfect epitaph for 00:29:17.339 --> 00:29:20.000 it. So next time you see that old Vista logo, 00:29:20.440 --> 00:29:23.579 maybe don't groan. Maybe just give a little nod 00:29:23.579 --> 00:29:26.619 of respect to the martyr of the PC. Thanks for 00:29:26.619 --> 00:29:28.900 tuning in to this deep dive. See you next time.