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.The whole install was simple enough, I started it while I was in Windows XP. It was simple enough, it asked for the basic things, and it was on it’s way. It rebooted around half-way through and booted into a Windows Pre-Installation Enviornment to finsh. The process was extremely simple and very efficent, a child could have completed it. I then booted into the OS to experience, what I had thought, would be a driver war zone. However, infact, the driver database turned out to be pretty good. My wireless (Broadcom 802.11g) wasn’t recognized but was available on my Windows Restore disk, same with my modem, and my Display Drivers (ATi Mobility Radeon 9600) were available on http://www.ati.com. Infact, Longhorn recognized more hardware then either Windows XP or Windows XP x64 in a ‘stock’ install.
Now, after the driver showdown was completed, and I rebooted, I found Windows Longhorn to be by far, much more stable and fast then I had expected. My biggest fear was that I was using the bare minimum of system ram (256mb) and that I would experience a world of BSOD. It was completely opposite. I’ve been running 5048 for about 2 days now, and I’ve found little slow down when really hammering the system.
By far the best feature I’ve seen in Longhorn so far is the new refined Search sans WinFS. Although it’s common knowledge that WinFS has now been removed from Longhorn there are still minor tweaks to Search that allow you to instantly Search a section, such as My Pictures or even the Start Menu, for the file or program you need, instantly weeding out other search results. While obviously one could attribute new refinements to desktop search to Apple’s efforts with Spotlight, Microsoft has implemented a flawless search technology.
There are also very minor changes to the Operating System as well, like the new Aero Style that really change the feel of the OS. Simple additions like ‘glowing’ choices for ‘maximizing’ or ‘closing’ a window. The simple glass effects in the Start menu, and the new icons are also quite pretty. Also, the new folder views and My Computer setup make everything a bit more accessable.
Intrestingly enough, the sidebar that was originally in Longhorn, has since been removed and the common memory leak in some of the early leaked builds of Longhorn, i.e. 4051 and 4015 is totally gone. Also, Longhorn is built upon Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, which in turn is based on Windows XP Service Pack 2, so you’ll notice some of the features like the firewall and the new Windows Security Center are common to Longhorn and Windows XP. Many things still remained unchanged, such as Internet Explorer 6 and Outlook Express which haven’t seen an upgrade in a long time.
Of course, I can’t like everything can I? Well, no, Longhorn does have it’s short comings, however Longhorn does have the advantage that, it truly shouldn’t be judged in a pre-beta stage. The text in some the icons is a bit jagged, and unfortunately DCE, the Desktop Composition Engine, couldn’t be started on my hardware, so I couldn’t experience all the visual effects expected in Longhorn final.
Also, there are very small things which could tend to annoy you. Occasionally an icon looks like it’s been stretched too big just minor glitches which are normal in a pre-beta enviornment. However, having used Longhorn for a few days now, I have to admit that Apple, needs to be worried. Longhorn doesn’t even have a name yet, but it’s by far the most promising thing to come out of Redmond in quite a while. With the release of build 5048 the bar has been raised, and so have my expectations of Beta 1 and beyond of this remarkable Operating System.
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So in other words, it just looks different and searches faster (when compared to XP)…
I’m glad I switched to Mac a year ago
Just one comment…
“I have to admit that Apple, needs to be worried. Longhorn doesn’t even have a name yet, but it’s by far the most promising thing to come out of Redmond in quite a while”
WTF?? See my first comment.
Mwahahahaha. The author seems to be a zealot one. Even if Paul Thurrott the big microsoft evangelist think that longhorn will be bad…
“In the cold light of morning, I’m reflecting a bit on Longhorn 5048. My thoughts are not positive, not positive at all. This is a painful build to have to deal with after a year of waiting, a step back in some ways.”
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=46175
Who is right ? Paul Thurrott for me….
I think I should start looking for a copy of NeXTStep for my PC.
I can’t see any useful information in the article about features that Longhorn has that should make Apple worried. If the writer is surprised that the OS hasn’t crashed on him for two days, well… Judging from the article, there doesn’t seem to be any new stuff, besides search and a good driver database. What should Apple be worried about?
Hi,
Hmmm, just from the screenshots, does anybody else think this looks kinda ugly?
Anyway, it’s pre-release, so it’s not really an issue. However, what *is* a problem is the fact that I can’t see any “killer” features that make me drool…improved search? Sorry, after trying Best (okay fine, so it crashed…but at least it looks cool, and seems to be heading in the right direction), the screenshots of the new-fangled Search fail to impress.
The sidebar is gone – isn’t this starting to look just like Windows 2003 with a morgified theme?
cya,
Victor
Do any of you even know what WinHEC builds are for? Seems like Mr. Paul “I know everything about Windows” Thurrott doesn’t. WinHEC builds aren’t even betas. They aren’t supposed to be pretty, they don’t have to be usable by the end-user. They’re for hardware vendors, anything else is secondary. You know, it’s called the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference for a reason.
I cannot believe how awful the fonts are in http://www.osnews.com/img/10470/image3.JPG ! I’m the only one noticing this?
I think Longhorn or what it’s name will be,is going to be released and without joe average user having noticed all what’s wrong and suspicious and life goes on.”Wow new MS release looks a bit different,must be good then”.
Anonymous, read the post above yours.
This conference is not about looking pretty.
What we really have to focus here is one question: Is Longhorn going to SOLVE any of the current problems or is it going to introduce more problems?
You see Mac OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) sloves one big problem that the users have: finding files regardless of the place they are located. I don’t care about Dashboard or any other eyecandy that Tiger comes with. If Longhorn can solve one big problem (and not introduce any) Microsoft will have a chance. The glass effect, hardware accelerated graphics and all the crap that just make the OS look pretty don’t matter (or at least shouldn’t matter).
Has the author ever sat in front of a Macintosh and just taken OSX for a spin? Come on, really. I’m a PC user, hardly a Macintosh fanatic but one needs not go further than the Mac desktop to see that, once again, MS waits for Apple to do the innovating, work that magic, create the dazzlingly beautiful and fluid environment so they can shamelessly aquire it for themselves. The same trend has continued since Windows was launched and the very notion Apple should somehow be worried is absolutely absurd. Which begs the question, if I like it so much, why do I drive a PC? Because, yes, the Mac is still more expensive and yes, like VHS versus Betamax, the stupid people won. Longhorn is going to be a weak advancement for Windows. But it will sell millions on the hype alone.
indeed, the fonts looks really bad
Was the author of this article asleep for the past few days or did he miss the big brouhaha about MS not wanting screen shots of this build posted to the web. That and the fact that the EULA (I’m assuming the author attended WinHEC and agreed to said EULA) states that no-one is to talk about the features in this build for a period of one year?
Say what you will about that policy and how it was handled, but you might want to consider that said policy exists.
if that person is from a different country. guess what the lame “EULA” doenst matter anymore.
No doubt it wasn’t slow considering it didn’t even had anti-aliasing turned on…
What are the features that should worry Apple (or anyone else)?
I know composite wasn’t working but I’m pretty underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s looks better than XP and there is not doubt that it will include a lot of nicer technologies (even without WinFS, etc). As a win2003 user I can say it’s certainly built off a solid OS. Still though, were looking at over five years of R&D aren’t we?
No Apple won’t be worried. Tiger, which I haven’t used, simply looks awesome. What’s amazing is that after five years of strong R&D it still doesn’t look like longhorn will catch up to the OS X of today (although some things on the platform side are very impressive, there are several things that windows has over Apple).
“What are the features that should worry Apple (or anyone else)?”
That MS Windows runs on the most popular platform, and that almost all software is made exclusivly for MS Windows.
“I have to admit that Apple, needs to be worried. Longhorn doesn’t even have a name yet, but it’s by far the most promising thing to come out of Redmond in quite a while”
This had me dumbfounded, I admit it. Apple needs to be worried? That brought a picture of Steve cowering behind his chair in Cupertino. Somehow I don’t see that happening overnight.
I will readily admit that Windows does have some strengths in corporate environments, but OTOH, I haven’t seen OS X Server, so I wouldn’t know that Apple hasn’t actually addressed them.
I’m also not impressed by the author stating Apple needs to be worried over an OS that has dropped key features, which Apple hasn’t done, and which won’t be published for another year [if they manage to make the deadline, for which there are NO guarantees]. As stated earlier, by the time Longhorn, or whatever the Redmond spinmeisters will call it by then [which is pretty useless by now since the mind frame is to call it Longhorn. This thing will be forever called Longhorn, no matter how much the preppy marketdroids are going to pout about it], Apple will be on the way to the next release. If they build new functionality to support the corporate environment, it could become a real threat to Redmond, not the other way around.
If Steve read this review I think he won’t have been able to suppress a little smile around the corners of his mouth. Afraid indeed.
Longhorn is still lacking a number of features you would expect from an advanced operating system. In addition to that Microsoft is being sued by several companies about features used in some of the Longhorn core components. The situation is getting ugly.
Even if Microsoft keeps hyping Longhorn and people waiting they are loosing precious time and many will join the bandwagon and switch to Linux in the meantime. Once someone gets a taste of Linux and the free software world he/she will stick with it and another potential Longhorn user is gone.
It is good to see something of the new Windows system.
It seems like forever since XP was released.
The only fear is that longhorn will require some kind of supercomputer to run (at least with the new graphics switched on.)
The few reviews of Longhorn that came out recently all have one thing in common: They say that Longhorn looks good but is lacking features, runs excruciatingly slow, eats up memory, and is likely to introduce more problems than it was aimed to solve.
In all honesty, who in the world would buy such a product? Even if I was a computer manufacturer who is just in the business of selling hardware I would think twice before selling computers with Longhorn on them and potantially exposing myself to a flood of customer complaints and frustration.
After reading about the new Longhorn preview I’m seriously asking myself, where’s the meat?
I mean, it sounds like a nice enough upgrade to XP, but it isn’t anywhere as exciting as the whole hype about it had let us to believe, is it? Quite frankly, it seems disappointing considering that this has been in development for several years now.
Now, in every discussion about Longhorn I see a lot of people angrily pointing out that this is only a pre-beta and that Longhorn shouldn’t be judged by this. Fair enough and I agree with them to a point. Pointing out ugly fonts is just silly for example.
However, what I still don’t get is what the really great new things in Longhorn are supposed to be. From the article I get the impression that a better search and a nicer graphics engine is about all there is to it.
So to all the people who are constantly complaining about others bashing Longhorn, what are the great things we can’t already see in this release that will make Longhorn great?
M$ is advancing into SO many territories that they themself cant handle. something is seriously wrong at redmond. XP SP2 was so late and it borked my applications. the xp – 64 is just a hacked version with fancy marketing names given to the technology. xp media center edition…makes me cry. microsoft made intel to swallow the AMD64 extension – and now intel is giving out linux cds to their patners to bundle it with their machines. microsoft entering into super computers – their product is delayed for another 6 months. the .net hype machine failed miserably. increasing threat from foss. lawsuites. governemnt demanding open source solutions. and the last but not the least = “windows xp without media player edition” – LOL
The more Longhorn gets delayed and disppoints everyone the more people are switching to Linux. About anyone I know who is not a die-hard Mac fan is looking into Linux lately. Linux seems to offer many of the features Longhorn was supposed to have such as a choice of window managers, themes, and customization options. I started playing around with it myself and have to admit that so far I really like what I see and now I can understand what the big hubbub is all about.
Does anyone know if it will be possible to turn of those ugly round window corners ?
I don’t want a OS that looks like a teenage girls bedroom.
It’s like iTunes on windows, it also has those crappy corners
“Do any of you even know what WinHEC builds are for? Seems like Mr. Paul “I know everything about Windows” Thurrott doesn’t. WinHEC builds aren’t even betas. They aren’t supposed to be pretty, they don’t have to be usable by the end-user. They’re for hardware vendors, anything else is secondary. You know, it’s called the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference for a reason.”
“This conference is not about looking pretty”
Those MS apologists have an excuse for everything.
Apple should be worried? I think you have that reversed. Obviously, MS is concerned about Apple’s, and Linux’s, increasing popularity.
However, having used Longhorn for a few days now, I have to admit that Apple, needs to be worried.
Bullshit. Apple should not be the one worrying. M$ should be worried.
I found it slow as a snail even without anti-aliasing. If the consumer version is in fact that slow that would be totally unacceptable. Also, I can’t help but I somehow got the feeling that Microsoft has much more to hide than what we know already. Thank God I am not invested in them anymore.
One thing i am wondering is , why was built 5048 was given out when built 5060 was running in Ms labs and was ready?
Hmm, i will miss sidebar, but las it took too much screen estate, may be they should make it optional.
And yes the this code is being built upon Win2k3, so its solid right on.
And this build was intended for developers, so use your heads and think, and read the development time line, when other things would get added.
Kids go home and study.
I would be interested in seeing how much managed code services are running. Could somebody with access to this longhorn build run perfmon and look at the various CLR performance counters such as global/”# Bytes in all heaps”?
The really important thing about longhorn is that it will have the successor to win32, winfx, which is supposedly mostly managed code. If they can pull this off they will have the technological base to have a really secure OS and to add features very quickly.
I agree with the other posters that apple has not much to worry about though.
people can’t seem to understand what a development build means, and is ready to jump on the hate MS bandwagon whenever the opportunity presents itself.. pitiful.
I was expecting a great SO with Longhorn, but i am very disappointed.
I will migrate to a linux distro next month.
“MS announce winFS, suddenly there is spotlight.
MS announce new vector/3D based GUI..well apple scramble with quartz express.”
It really seems someone here is so young or so uninformed not only to know what NextSTEP and Display-poscript were, but to have missed MacOSX evolution alltogether. As for WinFS, well, I really hope Msoft guys are say no when they mean yes, taking almost everybody by surprise. Otherwise, I’m afraid Spotlight ends up being much more powerful than search services aviable and planned for windows (due to the metadata thing in the filesystem, there’s a nice Arstechnica review on the subject).
“but apple only copy the skin though. Longhorn will deliver all the meat.”
If you say so…. I still have to realize where the meat is in longhorn. The more I see of it, the more I’m failing to understand why should I update my Xp boxes.
Still, I can’t indulge on the general optimism shared among you guys. Longhorn probably will suck just as Windows XP, but the fact remains, we’re living in under a monopoly, I have apps that I need and that run only on Windows XP (native, sigh) and I won’t swith to Linux nor MacOSX (which I have but can’t use for work) since these apps are ported. Probably I won’t upgrade to Longhorn, but I won’t switch either. And unluckly for the computer industry, there’s tons of guys like me. Frustrated, but without other possibilities.
Talking of frustration: what about the marvellous Microsoft new ad campaign? “It just works”. sheesh… I dunno you guys, but in italian the translation looks like “It works, what would you expect more?” …
Anonymous, you have your chicken and your egg confused I am afraid.
Instead of pittying others here, could you perhaps enlighten us about what isn’t shown in this devloper build that will make it into Longhorn and that will make Longhorn great?
Thanks.
It looks like same old Windows to me. On what did they spend the years of development ? Searching the file sistem ? I use tool with the strange name, “Namazu”, that allows me to maintain multiple indexes for document sets. It is part of RedHat distros for years.
cendrizzi wrote:
“No Apple won’t be worried. Tiger, which I haven’t used, simply looks awesome. What’s amazing is that after five years of strong R&D it still doesn’t look like longhorn will catch up to the OS X of today (although some things on the platform side are very impressive, there are several things that windows has over Apple).”
Longhorn won’t even be where “Tiger” is today. Also consider, by the time Longhorn is released, OS X will be at a 10.5.x release. As usual, Microsoft will be leading from behind. Like they always do.
I think Microsoft should adopt the new war cry, “Shut Do…!”. LOL, if there beta screenshots can’t get any more odd looking. Note the mixture of slanted shadows and the mixture of over blurred icons with under anti-aliased ones. The whole point of Beta is to move your code along and check things off the TODO list, occasional tossing out a test release to your testers. Microsoft has just started to puke up any and everything whenever Apple rattles their saber.
Glade I left Microsoft ages ago.
So how’s that Fecora Core 4 doing?
Anonymous wrote:
“MS announce winFS, suddenly there is spotlight.
MS announce new vector/3D based GUI..well apple scramble with quartz express.”
Really? I got news for you pal, WinFS ISN’T going to be released with Longhorn. There is a major diffrence here: “Microsoft announces” and Apple DELIVERS. Spotlight and Quartz are here. Now. You can buy them. Now. Microsoft? We’re still waiting.
I have two questions. Anyone familiar with Windows development, please chime in.
1) I was under the impression Longhorn was meant to be a new start so to speak, but I’m reading here that it’s based on a XP SP2/Win 2003 code-base?
2) Can someone give a brief run-down of the main new features of Longhorn? No real detail (I can google that), just key points.
Matt
After years of using Windoze I just had enough of it and changed to a Mac. This was the best decision in my whole life! All the features that M$ MAY (or not) bring next year are already integrated in our favourite OS… I can’t see what Apple needs to worry about. There is only one true OS!
Bill G: See my semi-functional XP replacement with new unimproved search functionality and quiver with FEAR mr. Jobs! Hear “MY” Tiger roar!!!!
Steve J: What the f***. Bill, you’ve lost it buddy! See you around…
Honestly, the “I hate M$” attitude is *really* tired. Everyone’s heard it, give it a rest.
The OS looks good but is in very *early* builds, so yeah, it’s going to look rough. Anyone remember the early builds of Win XP? The final product didn’t look hardly anything like the betas and you couldn’t even begin to compare the quality…you could only speculate.
Also, this is based upon the best that Microsoft has created, to date. Windows 2003 Server is an excellent OS and any improvements they’ve made beyond that is sure to be great.
THIS is IT? I’m not a mindless Windows basher…I use Linux for everything but I’m okay with people using Windows. Almost everyone I know does, and I don’t try to force Linux or Mac upon them.
But please, Longhorn would be to XP what 95 was to 3.1, right? Where are the changes, the improvements, everything we have a right to expect of something that has been in development for five years?
Without going into the whole “who’s copying from who” argument, seems like the Windows innovation has grinded to a halt. Longhorn looks like a minor XP improvement, nothing else.
I am not a windows or apple fan, infact I primarily use linux, because its what I work with on a day to day basis. From what I’ve evaluated on feature sets and seen so far from reviews. I don’t think apple has ANYTHING to worry about. I’ve tried tiger too, and wow. I really give it to apple, they made someone who hated macs want to buy one badly!
Now don’t think I’m one of those I hate microsoft zealots, really. It’s rather apparent, even from posts in this thread, and I think someone mentioned..WHAT do they solve with this. I want to see desktops moving toward the future, not the same damn thing with a different shade of color.
Also, that new menu bar…ugh, who’s idea was it to put scrolling in the menu bar..or even browsing like that. The menu bar isn’t explorer! It should be quick and easy. People have a hard time the way it is, and lets add more clutter?
One of the very few things I miss in XP is capable search function. I am wondering why MS does not use it’s own indexing service by default thus only users that are aware of @filename and !content queries can benefit from indexing service (if they have’nt disabled it).
the “I hate M$” attitude is *really* tired…
The discussion should be about software quality. This has nothing to do with hating M$. But if they can’t deliver quality with their products, why should I choose them?
Come on… Early builds? They sould have finished the crap already according to the first schudules. Do you know how long they are already woring on this crap? Well, I know: far to long
It started abitious with their trusted computing shit. Then people started to doudt it, and when microsoft found out it performed missarable (since in trusted mode, even DMA cannot de done), thet scrapped it, and moved on to the next thing they could scrap.
Wat will eventually be sold is an update of 2003 with a “nicer” looking skin, and heavy system requirements
Ow, btw, about the bad fonts in the picture: don’t blame M$, it’s just the JPEG artifacts fooling arround.
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 😉
yuk the fonts and icons, but atleast it does not look like play do any more.
We didn’t mention anything that means that Longhorn would be great, and honestly I dont know what the hell MS would be puttin in the final version of Longhorn, but its unfair for any product to be judged when its actual purpose was for developers. Maybe Longhorn would be better or not but that remains to be seen.
After years of using Windoze I just had enough of it and changed to a Mac. This was the best decision in my whole life!
Really? It’s a just freaking OS for gosh sakes. You make it sound like you’ve reached Nirvana or Valhalla or something.
Some of you Mac Zealots take your choice of OS too damn seriously.
OSNews is really in dire need of a moderation system. Yes, we all know how great OSX is. There have been enough articles about it.
But this article is not about OSX. I repeat: This article is *NOT* about OSX.
Is there anybody here that is interested in discussing the topic, or am I the only one?
If it weren’t for great posters like Rayiner Hashem I would never come back to this site again.
Bottomline of the whole article: why the heck would anyone buy Longhorn if they have XP, GNU/Linux or Mac OS X installed? They won’t. Longhorn doesn’t add any kind of value, is a piece of bloat to keep the “Windows+Office” cash cow. That someday will have to die..
I believe Microsoft to be in decline now, with the torch being passed to Amiga and Apple. I believe we’ve seen the last of Microsoft’s big-selling products, and that corporatism kills most of the creative chances Longhorn could have (or have had).
I see posts about Microsoft Longhorn quite a bit–especially at OSNews, but also elsewhere–and the articles always strike me as ‘desperate’, like its a ‘don’t forget me, I’m hurrying’ kind of campaign. They seem rushed, and scrambling to get out the door, and it just does not seem like those behind the new OS are genuine anymore, but are struggling to get it done and advertise it ahead of time so people don’t move to other OSes. If I had to guess, I’d say it was all motivated out of fear–fear that they were losing ground day by day. And I believe they are.
Astrologically, Microsoft’s days as a dominance is numbered, just like IBM’s was back in the day. Every so often another comes to replace the big company. I think we’ll see two next time, fighting it out in a co-opetitive way, like Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola. ‘The Big Two: Apple and Amiga’. Don’t believe me, just wait and watch. Already, Apple rises. Some will find it difficult to believe Amiga could ever do that, but that’s just what it’s going to do. It was always destiny. Prophetic, even. A fine intuition that hasn’t ever waivered in the vision, even if those that saw the vision did so a time or two.
If Microsoft were at least wiser than they were with the last Windows, they would keep the tagname ‘Longhorn’ as the name of the OS, and drop ‘Windows’. At least that would be new. 😉
Linux has gained a significant foothold, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I used to see the forerunner as RedHat, but now I see it as Novell’s SUSE distro (among the others). There are well over 300 different distributions of Linux; I was amazed at the number of them (or ‘it’).
–EyeAm
“General, our scanners have been recalibrated three times, and the signals are not wrong. We have movement under the ashes.”
“Some of you Mac Zealots take your choice of OS too damn seriously.”
Tell me again, what the hell is your reason for posting such a retarded message on a web site called OSNEWS?
As indicated by an earlier post.
[quote=”Neowin”]This week at WinHEC 2005, I was personally asked to remove screenshots of 5048 and when I asked why I was given the response it was something to do with the EULA. The Longhorn bits contain the following piece in their EULA:
“5. CONFIDENTIALITY. The Product, including its existence and features, and related information are proprietary and confidential information to Microsoft and its suppliers. Recipient agrees not to disclose or provide the Product, documentation, or any related information (including the Product features or the results of use or testing) to any third party, for a period of one year following receipt of the Product.”[/quote]
So you know…
“However, having used Longhorn for a few days now, I have to admit that Apple, needs to be worried.”
Recommended reading:
“Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation”
“However, having used Longhorn for a few days now, I have to admit that Apple, needs to be worried.”
Why does Apple have to worry about a WINHEC build that is not even representative of the shipping version of Longhorn according to many posters here?
Tiger is available NOW. 10.5 will be out at least 3 months before Longhorn and I am sure development on 10.6 will already be underway.
This “review” or “preview” or whatever looks like astroturf. The question to ask is always: “What common and annoying PROBLEMS will this product SOLVE?” If you can’t come up with a list that gets people excited, you’re wasting your time.
apart from avalon, new file system, and some things improved, does it really worth the pain this new OS ?? Revolutionary is not!!, looks like an update, i dont see any strong reason to upgrade my win98 pc yet.
But this article is not about OSX.
No? Since the author of the article specifically mentions Apple, what can you say, he asked for it.
This site is really going down the drain
Possibly for posting this rubbish article.
“Really? It’s a just freaking OS for gosh sakes. You make it sound like you’ve reached Nirvana or Valhalla or something.”
Remember back in the days of Windows 95 when people would still defragment a hard drive for fun? It’s sad, but it seems as if die-hard Windows users derive some kind of entertainment from using a system that creates problems for them, and ITs definitely derive a profit from it. I think it feels good to be able to fix the problem, but think of all the people who can’t or just don’t have the time to waste. I’ve been using OSX for probably less than a month, and I see nothing but advantages. Everything I initially thought was too weird or quirky or useless or incomplete, I’ve since learned how to use and discovered that OSX is just plain more efficient no matter what you want to do, except changing file assosiations and network printing, but the latter is entirely Canon’s fault. Windows seems to take one step forward and six steps back with every release. Things that were once useful and efficient have become obscured behind tacked-on warnings (viewing the root of drive C), useless wizards (XP network setup), buttons that don’t actually do anything (show volume in systray), and worst of all, animated characters (search). Use OSX some time. It’s a better multitasker (or just plain tasker) than Longhorn could ever hope to be.
is the decreasing quality of articles here at osnews. this “review” was written by a who? 16 year old teenager? come on eugenia, some moderating would do good. and why anything concerning longhorn is always published… i would understand if there were a breakthrough in it’s development but this? it’s a loooooong way for microsoft.
The only good thing going with the Apple is their OS. Brilliantly done in my opinion. But I would rather stay with XP than buy a Mac because they are kind of expensive, and they dont deliver the performance you would expect. I mean an Athlon FX is just as fast if not slower than the Dual 2.5 ghz top of the line version. I mean come on! For the money you spend, it is not worth it. I dont know what you guys are talking about these security loopholes and so on in XP because i never had a problem. I surf websites and so on and yes while the quality of the OS could be improved, it is stil lpretty damn good right now. While XP is quite cheesy in some ways you can cut the fat off if you know what you are doing. My XP setup is light and fast and tweaked. I have seen and used Macs from 17 inch Powerboks to the top of the line 2.5 ghz dual proc badass machines and while they sound good, they dont run as fast. My main thing is performance. If an Athlon FX with bad OS like XP can keep up with a dual 2.5 ghz with a brilliant OS like OS X I would stick with the Athlon. This is my reasoning. I can be just as productive in a Windows machine as in a Mac. But I love my performance and I love being able to game and love being able to dump in any hardware I like and all with saving a slight bit of cash as well.
I mean where is SLI? Where is dual core? There is only one freakign dvd drive in the case! The mouse has one button!! Sorry but for me hardware is more important right now. I am all about innovation in the realm of hardware. Only viable option for me is longhorn (looks like crap right now) or linux. I will take XP and Linux!
I saw this and had to trow in my 2 cents. Microsoft won’t reveal its real plans in previews and reviews, and as far as looks go, we have so many skins and themes these days that there is enough where to choose from, so I don’t think that the looks of Longhorn are relevant, neither are the few special effects. I believe that those special effects for the desktop could have been introduced years ago, using DirectX, and no, to make a few windows spin and twist or turn, you don’t need any fancy hardware. Also, lacking any new or exciting features means only one thing: that Longhorn won’t be so much of an inovation, as the DRM technologies in it will be. I believe that MS spent all the time doing R&D to further develop DRM and other so called security technologies, that are supposed to secure more revenue for all the movie, music and software companies, but especially to secure Microsofts position on the software market, meaning that they would have total control over your machine. That’s what Longhorn is all about. For it is also hard to swalow that a company with that many resources can’t develop a decent and sleek OS. It doesn’t have to be heavy, or bloated. But to stick to the topic here: 1-We won’t know anything for sure until it’s released and 2-Longhorn has trusted computing written all over it-> But it’s not for the user to trust his machine, but for Microsoft to trust and control the users machine…
As a 16 year old teenager, I find your comparison insulting.
Man these flame wars are just such a pleasure to read
Anyway, one thing I had to chime in about:
I read on other info sites that apple will be moving to a 24-36 month development cycle for future macos releases (the current is 18 month). IF longhorn comes out next year, there won’t be a new macos x release if this is true. IF longhorn comes out in 2 years, 10.5 will be coming out
10.5 will still blow longhorn out of the water.
Does Longhorn have a feature OS X 10.4 lacks?
Yes is it, the author made it about it by making a blanket statement at the end about Apple.
@Kala: LOL.
ok, when will someone make a REAL review of the inners of the system?/ i’m hardly interested in more reviews of user interfaces, icon design and color choices. You know, an OS review should be something more like what is going on with the kernel, changes from XP, drivers, display technology, registry, etc etc.
First, it’s without saying that an early build probably still has lots of debugging code init, intrumentation, etc. that slow it down. It’s a work in progress and there’s no surprise it performs poorly. Second, it was built for higher-end hardware and not to be thrifty with system resources. It is intended to scale itself back for commodity hardware, but there’s a performance-hit associated with deciding what to do at each point…
Reagrdless, MS is worried. Their marketing staff has pointed out that the public impression of the company is that it has stagnated. For the first time, competing products for their platform are not only getting press, but favorable press showing them to be dynamic and giving them “cachet”. Their anti-Linux campaign didn’t pan out anything like they wanted it to. Apple’s producing competitive product with a fraction of the development resources — while holding down both the hardware and software portions of their platform. Microsoft’s missed sales targets for the first time and their stock is floundering… They’re about to spend silly amounts of money convincing people that XP is “not as bad as you might think” and “it just works”. It’s really beginning to look like MS might have to COMPETE, not only, that, but to do so on merit is something that hasn’t been necessary since the very inception of the company.
By any measure, Microsoft needs to make Longhorn so fantastically compelling, that it will command an audience anew. That’s a tall order. Historically, few Apple users switch to Microsoft product of their own volition. It goes without saying that if you are a current Linux desktop user, then there’s probably little chance that Longhorn will be compelling, even if it got you a hot date. And PC users? The populous vulgaris will use whatever is installed on their machine, the IT industry will use whatever they feel comfortable with (and it may take 2-3 years for Longhorn to reach that point), and which will minimize the need for capital outlay for new hardware.
Were I a betting man, I’d bet on a Macworld-like spike in the Microsoft stock price leading up to an official Longhorn release, followed by a stock-price slide post-release that will bring it lower than when it started.
This won’t be the end of Microsoft or anything, but it will sting.
MS has cut out a ton of features that they were supposed to put in the OS including WinFS (Which means you are stuck with NTFS still!)
They are supposed to be adding better graphics but if I use my current PC that runs Windows XP just fine, I can’t take advantage of the new features. I need a 3D card with 64 MB of ram etc. That is crazy!
Yet Apple fine tuned their graphics which still work fine on my older Ibook and even better on my Mac Mini.
Yea if you tweak and fine tune XP (Not like you can’t do that to your Mac) it will run faster on higher end machines. But at the same time it is not as stable, you have to reboot it way more and it’s still prone to attack. And I still, still have to defrag my XP machine! (Which I know I will still have to do with Longhorn!)
“And I still, still have to defrag my XP machine! (Which I know I will still have to do with Longhorn!)”
No, you won’t have to….
Jim Allchin (MSFT exec)
“In the Fortune piece, Allchin brags to David Kirkpatrick about Longhorn automatically defragging your hard drive,”
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=249
Heres the actual article.
“As Allchin detailed Longhorn’s many features, publicly disclosing some for the first time, he noted that many will be “under the covers.” Which means, for example, Longhorn will automatically clean up, or “defragment,” your hard drive, if it is required. You won’t even know it’s happening. “There will be lots of little goodies for home and work,” he added. Many of which will be focused on security.”
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,1052600,00.html
Longhorn will have minor (if any) improvements over Windows XP. It will use up more system resources and for what (better looking desktop)? Most people use their computer mainly for web browsing, email & MS Office. So, what will Longhorn offer to improve this experience?
I will stick with Windows XP (& so will many others I think). XP does everything I need and works pretty good. I’ve tried Linux in the past & noticed it is getting better and better every year. I’m too used to & happy with XP to switch right now. In 2-5 years (once I find XP outdated) I will look at doing the switch over to Linux or Zeta (& use XP as a secondary OS). Longhorn will not be worth upgrading to.
Recall these past Windows OSes. Windows 98 to 98SE, Windows 2000 to XP. Very little changes and improvements. I believe the same will hold true for Windows XP to Longhorn. Time will tell for sure, but this seems to be the case from what I have seen. Windows XP does it all (good driver support, security holes patched up, works with newer technology devices, many applications available, etc).
@ OSX fanatics
Sure you may love OSX (& maybe it is better in certain regards to XP), but it doesn’t run on my x86 pc hardware so why should I care? I’m not going to switch to Mac to just run OSX. I understand your point that Microsoft should take a similar route as OSX & become more Unix based/styled OS. Reality check – this is not going to happen with Longhorn. Or maybe you want to do a comparison with Longhorn vs OSX. Lot of good it does me on my x86 hardware. I’m glad you are happy with OSX, but until it comes to x86 I just don’t care. I would rather hear of alternatives to Windows Longhorn for x86 (ie: Zeta, SkyOS, Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc). At least I can use these OSes on my system. Switching to Mac to use OSX is not an option for me (& most others).
“Some of you Mac Zealots take your choice of OS too damn seriously.”
Uhm.. no. Most Mac Zealots don’t take Windows very seriously.
“Microsoft won’t reveal its real plans in previews and reviews”
Of course. Who here thinks that if Microsoft had a killer feature, they would not shout it from the rooftops? They’re grasping at straws as it is.
Oh, and for those who still don’t get it, WinFS is not a file system. You’re going to be stuck with NTFS in any case. You just don’t get that fancy database driven search engine that Mac OS has.
“Now don’t think I’m one of those I hate microsoft zealots, really. It’s rather apparent, even from posts in this thread, and I think someone mentioned..WHAT do they solve with this. I want to see desktops moving toward the future, not the same damn thing with a different shade of color.
Also, that new menu bar…ugh, who’s idea was it to put scrolling in the menu bar..or even browsing like that. The menu bar isn’t explorer! It should be quick and easy. People have a hard time the way it is, and lets add more clutter?”
Awesome post – this however is total crap.
“This is not Apple, a snot stain of a software company that only has to rip off everybody else’s ideas and put a glossy UI over it to make it their own.
This is Microsoft, these people know how to innovate. I just can’t see why it has to take so long.”
The problem is APPLE HAS ALREADY INNOVATED AND MICROSOFT IS DROPPING FEATURES LIKE FLIES!
Let’s trace the features. Internet security *nix – windows barely (XPSP2, 2003SP1 are better but still problematic) – macs with OS-x (based on *nix).
Administrator control. Nix from the beginning, windows = hell.
File priveleges. Nix from the beginning, Windows from 2000. in some ways better (more extensive option wise) but since everyone has administrator priveleges by default it doesn’t matter.
Searching. 95, 98 search functionality BETTER than 2K and up. database search engines have been in *nix for a long time (locate). and new ones have been introduced recently to give a much needed facelift to it. (spotlight, and beagle). The meta tags sound cool, but I don’t trust Microsoft to have such easy access to all the files on my computer.
winFS is a filesystem.
And longhorn was originally going to be developed from scratch (they had enough god damned time!) but apparently it’s not anymore.
“Longhorn will have minor (if any) improvements over Windows XP. It will use up more system resources and for what (better looking desktop)?”
How do you know it? Do you work at Microsoft?
Microsoft give something to make Apple “worry” about? I’m sorry pal but the currently tiny marketshare of apple desktops is growing at an amazing rate. Everyone I know is buying a mac. Obviously this guy is just a microsoft advocate, and therefore blinded by his pre-judgment. Open your mind buddy. I did and switched to Apple a year ago, and havent spent an hour on system maintainence since.
For the record, I used to be an MS developer. Gave it up 18 months ago – some of it related to the tardiness of Longhorn, some of it related to a shift in my dayjob.
Due to the hype maching I felt surrounded PDC ’03, and what IMHO is a superior OS, I switched back to Apple (I developed for Apple // about 20 years ago) last year.
My info may be out of date, particularly since MS completely trashed their feature set for Longhorn in early 2004, but here’s what I remember:
(1) Longhorn is tabbed to be the first desktop Windows OS release to have managed code. It will use the NT kernal (XP and Win2k3 both do also), but when most peole talk about a “new start” this is the biggest item.
(2) Way back when – 2003 – MS did kind of declare Longhorn to be a “new start”. No MSIE upgrades until Longhorn. Much more security. Other things – I’ll mention these briefly next.
But that “new start” was before the market – OEMs, partners, hackers, customers, stock holders – all pretty much forced MS to completely over haul their strategy for Longhorn. A few things – WinFS most prominently – were scrapped. Others – Avalon most prominently – were split off and are now on their way to being made available for XP and Win2k3 too. Still others – security, and oddly enough, MSIE – were deemed too important to with until late 2006 or later.
(3) The old feature set included XAML, Avalon, Aero, MSIE7, WinFS, managed code (.NET CLR), much more APIs, much changed APIs, 64 bit code, and probably some more I can’t remember. The new feature set? Aero, MSIE7, managed code, and API changes. The rest are either now avaiable (at least in beta) or will be made avaiable after the late 2006 release.
Now….
(4) For these reasons, MS _should_ be criticized. Apple should not worry, unlike what the author believes. MS has really screwed up with marketing Longhorn. Begin with the PDC ’03… and take it right through to having Gates present a pre-beta that was clearly underwhelming in most every aspect. Look, details of this build WILL get out to non-hardware developers. Yet, even within the developer circuit, there is no compelling reasons to pay money to upgrade. At least not yet.
(5) All UI comments aside, let’s look at what Longhorn promises today. Half of what had been promised 2 years ago. (Or 2/3 if you want to evaluate it by their words back then of the “three pillars” it was going to feature.) It’s likely it will not only deliver less than what was promised, it will likely also require a complete hardware overhaul. Only the top-end PCs available today can really use it.
(6) I’m sure the GUI will change. It always is the last thing of concern. But – for those woefully misinformed here – I haven’t heard of one thing that Apple hasn’t either had since 10.0 or didn’t just release three days ago with 10.4. Not one thing.
(7) But, as a software developer there is MUCH to be said about that .NET CLR. You’ve basically embedded a web-enabled, language-independent runtime which is stable, closely tied into the OS (even though it can be platform-indendent) and very easy to program. Adding XAML to the equation is just icing on the cake. Trust me, Apple had done well with XCode and Objective-C. But for consuming web services or prototyping GUIs…. it’s STILL years behind MS.
All OS bashing/ejaculating aside, this article was crud. Even for OSNews.
Both apple and MS continue to push eye candy and additional resource consumption with dubious merits. Apple, at least, seems to be getting more real features out of their work, like core audio.
But Haiku is looking better and better to me. XP is the last MS OS for me.
“However, having used Longhorn for a few days now, I have to admit that Apple, needs to be worried.”
How right you are! Apple is going to have a *huge* supply chain problem when longhorn comes out and millions are fed up with Microsoft’s latest joke.
Seriously, _people_ (read Anthony) should not compare fantasy with reality. In all honesty we should be comparing Longhorn with Mac OS X 10.5. (Not 10.4.)
For the time being we can only really compare Windows XP SP 2 with OS X 10.4. On the server side we can compare Windows 2003 with OS X 10.4 Server.
And just in case you have doubts, 10.4 is a slam dunk over XP SP 2. There really is no comparison. You know, that’s a good point, forget Windows. Apple needs to work at comparing itself to Red Hat linux, or Solaris 10. Something that is worth comparing…
Why in the eff are substandard articles posted on osnews on a regular basis?
This is typical of Microsoft. They’ve figured this business out: Write for developers, the users follow them.
They give the handiest and easiest developer tools and then at the end throw on some stuff about UI research and make up a few more stories about “features” like being able to do searches.
I really hate the strategy. Developers can happily deal with some second rate tools, and they aren’t the ones paying for the system: The users are paying for developers easy jobs here. I’m not saying development is easy, just that it’s a bit easier on something like c# than c
. I imagine activeX must be a lot easier to code for than Java because so many companies have written ActiveX code for internal use.
… the awful Fisher Price colors are gone.
Odd watching Microsoft so obviously struggle on this release. I have no doubt they’ll get something out the door. But, by the time they do, Tiger will be quite mature and Linux will still be improving.
I really believe we need some well informed, in depth review of the latest Longhorn Beta. Not something that says: aero rocks, icons sucks or the like. If they took 5 years to get it going, well, there might be a lot of inner things worth looking for. Ok, I’m disappointed by this beta, but mostly because I “feel” (as I don’t know) there’s a lot of things missing. Things that SHOULD be in a developer release. Come on, for what we’re hearing, it seems longhorn is just plain Xp with a few things here and there. Is it possible? Now, a GOOD, IN DEPTH article with the current features present in the latest longhorn build would be nice. (sure there’s Paul Thaurrot website, but he’s talking about “planned” features, not what’s actually in) But of course this would violate the EULA (ah ah sure).
From a marketing perspective; Microsoft should cease using resources on Longhorn. Rather invest resources into Mac and Linux (open source) development. By the time a stable, usable version of Longhorn is released into the wild, OS X would probably be sitting at 10.5, and Linux would have nipped up about 25% more PC users.
MS should rather now focus on what they are good at; Office. MS Office for Mac is a brilliant package. They should about now, be releasing Office for Linux. And possibly MSN, RDC, Media player, ETC.
Look at the bigger picture!
It doesn’t matter that Apple had all of this first. It doesn’t matter that their solutions are more comprehensive. If people don’t see a huge benefit to switching to Apple, they won’t. Longhorn could very well be more than enough to stop people from moving to OS X.
Now this is scary…. from Paul Thurrott’s website…
2007
Longhorn SP1: H1 2007
I really hope it’s a joke from Paul and it’s not an actual Microsoft commitment… to plan a Service Pack for a product that’s not even out…
They need to get rid of that idiotic Start menu. So the author (who needs to work on proof reading his “article”) says basically it has some transparent effects, everything else has been ripped out, yet “its promising” WTF is promising about it?
I gave it about 45 minutes, and nuked it. I couldn’t see any improvements worth purchasing a whole new operating system for. Hell, BeOS or NeXTStep would have been more fun playing with… I’ll stay with my WindowsXP SP2 for the time being, thankyou very much (at least until Fedora Core 5…:-) )
Wow. Ignorance abounds. Go the Apple web site now and read about their HARDWARE and software. What a dumbass.
“This is not Apple, a snot stain of a software company that only has to rip off everybody else’s ideas and put a glossy UI over it to make it their own.
This is Microsoft, these people know how to innovate. I just can’t see why it has to take so long.”
What they do understand is that every useful feature has been stripped out of Longhorn by Microsoft’s own admission, that OEM’s are very worried about what this means for sales, and that even wtih an army of programmers Microsoft is two or three years late with their new OS. Even Windows fanboy Thurrott is dissapointed. They should give you a clue as to how out of it you are.
“people can’t seem to understand what a development build means, and is ready to jump on the hate MS bandwagon whenever the opportunity presents itself.. pitiful.”
It doesn’t matter that Apple had all of this first. It doesn’t matter that their solutions are more comprehensive. If people don’t see a huge benefit to switching to Apple, they won’t. Longhorn could very well be more than enough to stop people from moving to OS X.
Per that reasoning, LH could afford to be *worse* then XP and still people would ‘upgrade’.
“Microsoft won’t reveal its real plans in previews and reviews,”
Oh so Microsoft has a secret Longhorn they are not showing that we will all be wowed by? Your delusional. Microsoft has made Official Statements about the features being stripped out of Longhorn.
Did you expect more? Try running osx with MS office for mac. Also try VPN to a PC then RDC. No VP7 Required. Best of both worlds with style! If only mac and ms where brothers and sisters, what a happy family tree it would bee! Sorry Vanilla Ice, mac is twice as nice! Peace out!