Microsoft' professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles last week was perhaps the company's most important event of the year, as officials try to sell developers on the value of creating new applications for the company's next generation of products. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked with eWeek Senior Editor Peter Galli at the show about these upcoming products.
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Member since:2005-07-01
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:Hmmm....
- New audio stack with per-app volume control
The audio stack is being moved to user space. It didn't belong in kernel space anyway. But... moving it away may cause latency issues. We shall have to see if this is a 'Good Thing'. Servers don't need useless stuff like audio stacks in their kernel.. gamers and audio engineer may disagree.
- New networking stack with better IPv6 support
Yawn, welcome to the party. Because NIC's are becoming bottlenecks, more O/S's are having to address this anyway (e.g. Solaris Fire Engine). IPv6 support should have been better to start off with.
- New graphics platform that is more powerful than what's available in ANY other operating system right now
again... another yawn. My servers do not even require a graphics card. And what hardware is required to run this 'powerful' graphics platform... per chance a 'powerful' graphics card?
- New search capabilities....
About time... but again nothing that isn't already out there. Reiser4, spotlight and the BeOS fs was pretty neat.
- New platform for making mini-apps
0_o puuulease see Tiger. doesn't this also mean that I can get new forms of spam and vulnerability.
- Low level execution mode for apps
about time... best practise really... long overdue. But will it work as advertised or cause more problems. Just thinking here of the abortion that is zones in IE.
- Better handling of application crashes (with IO cancellation) and application recovery
Sounds great, any more details on IO cancellation?
- Transactional registry, which with the above will make System Restore even more powerful (does linux have a system restore equivalent?)
As far as I know, and unless its lurking around somewhere, Linux doesn't use a registry. We have no need for a system restore, because, in general, Linux doesn't make system wide changes during the installation of software. Call it a weird process, but it also means we don't need to reboot after most patches.
- Auxiliary display support for devices that come with them (laptops, PDAs, etc)
nice... but surely of limited use (if any?). Can you explain some more? does it only support Microsoft products?
- Improved performance in app loading, networking (tcp/ip offloading), ui (gpu offloading)
I should think so with a processor/gpu spec like that. But even if this were not the case, this would mean that they have altered the way in which an application is loaded, which has been done elsewhere to similar effect.
All in all, a great big 'so what', but as per usual, vista will, of course, be a big deal simply because it is microsoft. I still can't see the emperors clothes, be they new OR old.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Please please please, STOP with the bullshit about Vista being XP SP3 without the eye-candy. It simply is NOT TRUE.
Here are some of the changes in Vista:
- New audio stack with per-app volume control
- New networking stack with better IPv6 support, more low-level access and controls for devs, and better security. This is huge for firewalls and such.
- New communications platform API
- New graphics platform that is more powerful than what's available in ANY other operating system right now
- New search capabilities and API that are system-wide instead of from one little application.
- New platform for making mini-apps that have a smaller footprint and are easier to deploy (Windows sidebar + gadgets)
- Many new goodies for developers like improved task scheduler API that allows event-based task scheduling
- LUA which offers a new layer of security
- Low level execution mode for apps like IE and Windows Mail which put the apps in a jail
- Better handling of application crashes (with IO cancellation) and application recovery
- Transactional file transfers - ability to rollback a change if it was interrupted before it was finished (such as if power goes out)
- Transactional registry, which with the above will make System Restore even more powerful (does linux have a system restore equivalent?)
- Auxiliary display support for devices that come with them (laptops, PDAs, etc)
- Improved performance in app loading, networking (tcp/ip offloading), ui (gpu offloading)
Repeat: SOME. There are more changes under the hood that no one will ever even know about (IO cancellation for one).
No Service Pack would offer anything close to these types of features. Saying it is XP SP3 is pure ignorance and zealotry.