News

Windows 7 Is "Rescuing" Apps, Microsoft Says

• By Kurt Mackie
• March 11, 2009

Windows 7 will feature superior application compatibility over Windows Vista, according to a Microsoft announcement issued on Monday. A Microsoft team has so far found 30 applications that will work on Windows 7, even though those applications failed to work on the older Vista operating system.

Those positive results constitute "rescuing" applications, according to a post on Microsoft's Engineering Windows 7 blog. The Microsoft team didn't explain why those rescued applications now work on the newer OS.

Microsoft officials have been assuring broad application compatibility in the upgrade path going from Vista to Windows 7.

"We started out with a goal of making sure if an application worked on Windows Vista it should work on Windows 7," the team wrote in the blog. "We have taken that further by bringing applications that never worked on Vista to work on Windows 7 and even future updates to Vista."

The team can't test every application, so it uses market data and street opinion to determine which apps to test. For Windows 7, the team is testing more than 1,200 applications from around the world. Previously, it ran through about 900 apps for its Vista testing.

The rescued apps include titles like "J.K.R. BYZNYS," "PostPet v3" and "Monografias Spanglish." The team also rescued more familiar fare, such as the German and Japanese versions of QuickTime 7.1.6.

To help ensure compatibility, Microsoft typically works directly with application vendors. Last month, the company rolled out its Windows 7 Ecosystem Readiness Program, which provides APIs for Microsoft's hardware and software partners.

Windows 7 is currently in beta release, but it uses the same APIs as will be seen in the final OS product, according to Mike Nash, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows product management.

The final Windows 7 product release date has not been publicized by Microsoft, but some reports have suggested that the OS could roll out as early as the third quarter of this year.