[AnkhMorporkian]

They haven't announced a month, and there may be good reasons for that. They may have a target goal in mind, but still want wiggle-room if unexpected issues come up, and 'summer' sounds a heck of a lot better than 'At some point in the months of x and y'

[xtrumanx]

Well there are other options: Q2/Q3 2015, mid 2015, etc.

[AnkhMorporkian]

I don't think any other (non-verbose) options encapsulate what summer means with the same specificity. Q2/Q3 includes a far longer span of time, mid-2015 covers a 4 month period that covers a significant portion of spring and doesn't cover the entirety of summer, and I fear that all other simple options would suffer the same fate.

Considering the vast majority of computer users and potential Microsoft customers reside in the northern hemisphere, I don't think there's any problem with using summer as a timeframe.

[hobarrera]

> I don't think any other (non-verbose) options encapsulate what summer means with the same specificity.

You mean lack of specificity?

From what I gather, it's at some point during the middle of my winter.

Of course, nobody actually remembers when the seasons start and end (though we just check wikipedia), while most people definitely know the order of the months. And even after checking, "this summer", is really a 3.5 month period, which is still as vague (if not more) as "mid 2015".

[daemin]

So in that case what does Winter 2016 imply? Is it January 2016, or December 2016?

[hobarrera]

I'm guessing that depends on contextual clues. If someone says "this winter" during August 2015, you can expect it to be the one about to start.

Of course, in some scenarios it's just impossible to disambiguate.