IE7 "on schedule to launch with Vista" (so, like, never?)

There's a flurry of news stories going round at the moment all proclaiming that: "Microsoft appears to be on schedule to launch IE7 in tandem with the upcoming Vista operating system".

Of course, this is hilarious, as are all M$ product launch date estimates.

Microsoft have given so many "official" launch dates for Vista over the last few years that you wouldn't be amiss in thinking this news means IE7 is coming out in a couple of decades.

Currently, Vista is "officially" going to be launched January 30, 2007. Yet only a few months ago, Vista was "officially" launching in November 2006. (Prior to that it had been October, after it slipped from August 31, which it slipped to from June, after it missed "early 2006".. and I could very easily go on for an extremely long time with this sentence, but I think you get my drift.)

Microsoft are still planning the November launch, which they're currently saying will be the date they'll ship Vista to businesses. (Translation/prediction: end of November, pushing December!) However, due to some problems with the build planned for that release, they've now had to work on another build -- which means a fresh round of testing, and, likely, another push-back of the date.

So -- IE7 is to be launched with Vista!

Just do not, under any circumstances, hold your breath.

ABC News: Expecting the Impossible from Microsoft

In his ABC News article yesterday, Internet Explorer 7 for XP Release Candidate 1, Matthew Sarrel writes:

"IE7 has now caught up to roughly where its competitors are now, but where will they be when the final IE7 code release occurs? I would have liked to see innovations in IE7 that leapfrogged it ahead of its competition."

Seriously!

Matthew, honey, Microsoft doesn't innovate -- it copies, steals, lies, & then, when all other avenues are exhausted, it buys the company.

With years of exactly that sort of history behind it, surely we all know this about Micro$oft by now!