Linked by Anthony Barboza on Mon 2nd May 2005 06:30 UTC
So, with WinHEC coming to a close, the biggest talk was of course the newest release of Microsoft (R) Windows (R) Codename Longhorn, now at build 5048. With nearly one year since the previous release (build 4074) build 5048 sports some new features and lacks some others. Recently, the talk was centered around the lack of WinFS, the new futuristic Windows File system. However, we'll get to all that a little later.
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Longhorn will be underwhelming, I'm sure of it. I've been in this game long enough (like most of us here) to have seen the release of pretty much everything MS has done, and it's always been underwhelming (even 95 was for me, I guess I'd seen it all before in System 7), but people will buy it!!! It will be very successful and a lot of us will wonder why... I know some reasons though...
Don't be fooled by the screen shots and reviews however, it will be much nicer than what we are currently seeing. I was hoping for a bit more like everyone else, but MS will deliver something, they kind of have too.
However, there are true alternatives now, and the world is slowing recongnising them. OS X and Linux are showing us that *nix is far from over (as predicted in some Unix magazines before NT came out (I still have those articles)).
I remember thinking when NT came out that they'd taken the wrong path, if they had taken a *nix and put their interface on top of it (as it turns out, just like OS X, Gnome, KDE and others have done) then there would have been almost no reason for Linux (except price), and less reason to consider OS X (if at all). They would have had a secure stable OS right from the start, and could concentrate instead on more important things, like apps for us...
But having said all that, Longhorn will do very well.
Personally, I want Longhorn to be better than OS X, one, because I use MS OS's all day long and at home (right now), and two, it will only make OS X and Linux even better, but I'm not holding my breath... ;-) Oh, and before anyone says anything, I do understand that there are some things XP does do better than OS X (even Tiger ;-) and Linux, just not that many things ;-)