Microsoft’s much anticipated and frequently postponed OS may ultimately lack compelling reasons for customers to upgrade.
Will Longhorn be short on features?
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Eugenia Loli
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Just like Cairo. All of longhorn promises have evaporated.
ill it even have a GFX card accelerated Window manager?
In that time Longhorn could change in any number of ways and it’s competitors may or may not make advances. No point yapping about it until there’s some facts to yap about.
It simply doesn’t matter… Longhorn will be a success with or without “compelling reasons to upgrade”. The average windows user will use it simply because it’s there and because it will be delivered with every new machine that is sold. Sad but true… 🙁
“Microsoft announces that they’re dropping support for Windows XP.”
For many customers, that’s all it takes…
…just think of OS-X. It started as a beta lacking gazillion (even basic) features and people bought it anyway. Many customers don’t care about facts, they want hype.
M$ should just make massive hype and voila.
Quoted from modman
“ill it even have a GFX card accelerated Window manager?”
Windows allready uses the a gfx card accelerated window manager called Explorer.
It seems like WindowsXP just came out. I know lots of folks still running 98/ME/2k. XP SP2 just came out and there’s lots of folks who don’t even have *that* installed yet.
I guess MS wants Longhorn installed on new computers being sold, but it seems like yesterday that folks were saying how they weren’t going to “upgrade” to XP due to the negative change in licensing policy (having to activate after an install or a major change in hardware).
It’s getting stranger and stranger explaining Free software to users: When you tell them that you don’t have to pay for it, don’t have to “activate” it, don’t have to pay for most of the software you’ll be running on it, don’t have to defrag it, don’t have malware that you have to defend against; they’re starting to think you must be kidding with them.
Yes, because that’s the easiest of the things they want to do; it’s especially easy in windows (their drivers work correctly, and if they don’t M$ puts its foot down). And it will amaze people more than useful features (like winFS purports to be, although I think people should just keep track of their stuff).
//It seems like WindowsXP just came out//
Not really … October, 2001? That’s quite some time, in IT years.
In the same amount of time, how many updates/upgrades has OS X had? Quite a few.
No more support for Win2000 and WinXP. Easy. And don’t tell me you are not seeing this coming.
It seems like WindowsXP just came out. I know lots of folks still running 98/ME/2k. XP SP2 just came out and there’s lots of folks who don’t even have *that* installed yet.
Yep, it does seem that way, even though XP came out in 2001.
I too know a whole lot of people still running 98SE and Win2K. I guess the only way some folks ever upgrade is when they buy new computers. What forced me to use XP (dual-booting with Debian Testing) on my notebook was 1) It came with it and 2) I couldn’t find any Win2K drivers for the notebook hardware. So after telling all my friends that Win2K would be my last Microsoft OS, here I am running XP, not because I wanted to, but out of necessity.
If you can no longer get drivers for newer hardware for your favorite OS, I guess that is a pretty good reason to upgrade, and one I’m sure Microsoft has taken into consideration.
I think the good idea would be to wait out and see how it pans out. If on same hardware there are massive increases in performance and in security I might make the switch. Of course I will wait till there is a version of nLite that works with Longhorn hehe. Also I would be compelled to get Longhorn if the graphics subsystem is as good as they say it is. Apparently the Windows XP DirectX driver models have a lot of limitations and they are being addressed in the WGF or DirectX Next or whatever it may be called for games with many threads, multicore support and other advanced features. That should be quite interesting to see how that pans out.
It only needs one feature: supersecurity! Safe for virusses, spyware and spam and intelligent enough to deal with new types of threats not yet developped. I don’t know if this is gonna happen, but that’s the only feature that I’m really interested in. The rest (like avalon and winfs) will come our way anyway.
In all honesty, I won’t believe that it’s going to be released to the masses until I see it in a Circuit City advertisement in my Sunday Newspaper.
I look to be on XP for a good while yet.
microsoft has more money then god. apple spent a decade or two in the red. both apple and microsoft depend on their operating systems for a substancial amount of their revenue (in apples case maybe a bit indirectly). apple is close to ten years ahead of microsoft in desktop technology.
how the hell does that make any sense? how can apple deliver the longhorn featurset, and microsoft keeps having to pair it down? why in the world are microsoft releases years apart, while apple can release a new os every year, with substancially more features then the glacial pace of windows? why is it that microsoft cant seem to innovate in the desktop space for the life of them, even though they have a fantastic amount of money, and some of the best minds in the industry on the payroll?
this isnt a troll, i would honestly like to hear any explination you guys may have for this. i really dont get it, the only possible explination i have is that microsoft must have a stupendously terrible management. and i mean terrible.
my last question is how the hell do they still have a monopoly on the desktop market? i mean, are people really that stupid? corporate networks i can understand, because cost comes before almost everything, but for personal desktops? if you buy wintel you are either saying “i play games, and have no productive purpose for buying a pc” or “i choose to go the route that costs about 1/4 less, but is comparably in the dark ages at virtually every level”.
ok, so maybe that last paragraph was a little flamey. but i really dont understand how mediocrity can win EVERY time. and honestly, i go off just as hard about qwerty vs dvorak(i tend to start such conversations off by telling the qwerty typist that they are either uninformed, or a moron), or even beta vs vhs.
“No more support for Win2000 and WinXP. Easy. And don’t tell me you are not seeing this coming.”
Well duh! Do you honestly expect Microsoft to support older versions of Windows forever? What about Apple? Do they even have official support for Mac OS 8 or 9? How about other software companies? So it must be ok for other companies to drop support for their software, but heaven forbid Microsoft does it! They must be evil or something to do what other companies do.
has apple dropped support for 40% of their userbase before?
I think people keep using their ms products because of habit. Even linus once said that he knows
people that hate windows, but don’t want to take time to learn anything new, windows just works for them, though they hate it.
Funny thing about driver support is that it can work the other way around. I was dual-booting to Win98 for the longest time because WinXP didn’t support all my capture devices. Similarly I was forced to keep running NT4 on a dual P2 board [LX chipset] I had because Win2K didn’t run SMP correctly on it.
Not sure how long XP support will be provided for personal users. I’d imagine though that commercial users that signed contracts with Microsoft probably had a clause for how long the OS had to be supported.
As of now even if Longhorn had a fancy 3d desktop and WinFS I wouldn’t be sold on upgrading. There would have to be something way more significant.
I don’t get why people have such a problem with Longhorn. The only thing that’s missing is WinFS. People are COMPLAINING that they’re backporting Avalon and Indigo? It still has an updated kernel, better security, integrated Avalon and Indigo, Aero, all the new photo and music organisation features, Spotlight-style search, new CLI, new install and boot “mini OS”, etc, etc… It’s STILL one of their biggest releases. From both a developer and user perspective it’s a more visible upgrade than from Windows 9x to Windows XP. And that’s if they only ship the stuff they’ve shown, I’m sure there’s some more stuff in there (and maybe some of the stuff I’ve listed will slip, who knows).
It simply doesn’t matter… Longhorn will be a success with or without “compelling reasons to upgrade”. The average windows user will use it simply because it’s there and because it will be delivered with every new machine that is sold. Sad but true… 🙁
It depends on what you mean by success. In the old days people actually bought OS upgrades, now they wait until they get it with new hardware, but hardware venders will not buy it at the list price you and me have to pay.
my last question is how the hell do they still have a monopoly on the desktop market? i mean, are people really that stupid?
Yes. Well, you did ask. Those that aren’t stupid, either can’t be bothered to learn about alternatives, need Windows only software, and there are those that find it best suits their needs.
apple is close to ten years ahead of microsoft in desktop technology.
Plz they only just fixed the calculator.
why in the world are microsoft releases years apart?
before XP people used to complain releases were too frequent.
if you buy wintel you are either saying “i play games, and have no productive purpose for buying a pc
Absolutely not those people buy consoles.
Windows has it faults there’s no doubt about that but until somebody comes up with a genuinely better solutions were stuck with it. The propaganda doesn’t wash on me it has to REALLY be able to do everything i’m accustomed to and do it better otherwise it’s actually counter-productive for me to switch
How exactly is MS 10yrs behind Apple?
According to you, OSX is to WinXP as WiNXP is to Win95.
Apple bought their OS from NeXT, and it took them a decade to release OSX 10.0 (which was pure crap). Microsoft is doing in 6 or 7 years what’s taken Apple 14yrs, plus what Microsoft is introducing is a bit more advanced.
Also, people (wouldn’t suprise me if you were included in there) used to complain CONSTANTLY that Microsoft released a new OS every 18months, and now that they are taking there time and Apple has adopted the short release times (and expensive upgrades for small enhancements), it’s all of a sudden ok?
OSX has it’s own quirks. Not to mention having to buy new applications, learn an entirely new OS, etc…
Suddenly qwerty typists are moronic? Care to explain to me how that is? Yes, Dvorak may improve typing speeds for SOME people, but if you’ve used qwerty you’re whole life, then that is what you know, and most likely, Dvorak style will NEVER be better for a single person.
Your whole post is a troll, even if you did not intend it to be.
MS is known to offer what people ASK for and not what they think people should use! u might laugh but at the end of 80’s when Apple was all into the best looking OS and the most stable one, MS was investing its money in Office applications such as word and excel. and u know what happened after! Every Apple had to be shipped with a MS Office suit or people would’ve given buying a computer as a whole a second thought! Then after people got used to computers and started to ask for more MS released their first decent Windows version (95). then security became an issue and there came SP2!! u see the trend? on the other hand Linux for example still lacks an install/remove equivalent of MS while they’ve had many cool features for a long time that average customers never asked for! same thing with apple! innovation needs a market or it’s worth nothing as far as the innovator is concerned!
in an age where computers have become like any other piece of furniture Apple still is something out of ordinary for many people and that’s exactly what’s kept apple behind in sales! Also while PC is the equivalent of Open Source in hardware realm Apple is the equivalent of Microsoft! How ironic…!
No more support for Win2000 and WinXP. Easy. And don’t tell me you are not seeing this coming.
Sure, this is probably the only reasn to upgrade. But look how hard it was for MS to give up support for NT4. I guess they could stop support for win2k in say 2007, and XP in 2010.
By that time, Gnome and KDE will be more than ready to pick up angry former Microsoft customers. In fact, to some extent they allready are.
In the 18 months before Longhorn is released, Gnome have released 3 major updates, KDE will have moved to version 4.x. Given the speed of development in the FOSS camp Microsoft will have real competitors for the desktop by the time they release Longhorn, and even worse when they decide to end of life previous versions of windows.
Well, Monopolies with all those patents to keep competition away don’t need to be competitive or innovative. MS has no real worries.
this isnt a troll, i would honestly like to hear any explination you guys may have for this. i really dont get it, the only possible explination i have is that microsoft must have a stupendously terrible management. and i mean terrible.
Because, as the article points out, MS’s massive user base is also its anchor.
MS bends over backwards to ensure all the major apps, games, and utilities are supported. Often, if the dev of a particular major app or even game (!!) can’t get the upgrade compatibility written, MS will do it for them AND release it on their website.
Apple is literally contemptuous of its users and developers. It adds features with no regard to how it will affect other apps or its user base. These features may be fantastic, but its a primary reason why Apple is irrelevant in market share. They did offer Classic compatiblity, but only by virtualization. In the (near) future, they will drop the Classic emulation mode altogether.
Apple designs for hardware they have strict control over just like all of the other old-guard – Sun, IBM, etc. MS designs for the broadest compatibility it can.
If MS were run by techies (like the *nix/ BSD world) or megalomaniacs (Apple) instead of marketing types, they would cut clean.
While it may sound like I’m swinging from MS, I’m not. I was severely hoping they would finally just throw out all the legacy crap and start fresh. As it is, in trying to make everyone happy,
a) they can’t add new major features like Apple can
b) security will always be compromised
c) stability will always be compromised
MS could have used their purchase of Connectix/ Virtual PC to copy Apple and run the old legacy apps in a virtual mode so they could ween people off the older versions. I think they’ve done a remarkable job thus far in the broad range of support and esp in legacy support, but sooner or later they will HAVE to start with a clean slate.
CPUGuy
Could enlighten on a few of your points, namely
———————————————————-
Apple bought their OS from NeXT, and it took them a decade to release OSX 10.0 (which was pure crap). Microsoft is doing in 6 or 7 years what’s taken Apple 14yrs, plus what Microsoft is introducing is a bit more advanced.
Not to mention having to buy new applications, learn an entirely new OS, etc…
————-
Next wasn’t bought until 1996, nots not ten let alone 14yrs, 14 yrs ago, we were still using system 7
Why is it so hard for such a large company as MS to develop software:
“The Mythical Man-Month” by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. is a good book on the subject.
in essence, there is a point in all projects where it’s not possible to gain time from adding more men. The project will actually be even more late.
The point of diminishing returns can be avoided easily if you have management that understands it. They just bleed off developers to work on a new project. This does mean, however, that you can’t just throw more people at a problem to solve it, which is a method rich companies like to use.
Well, Monopolies with all those patents to keep competition away don’t need to be competitive or innovative. MS has no real worries.
They have everything to worry about, as they have a lot of money they are much more likely target of IP robber barons than FOSS.
I’ll be one of the few that will be upgrading to Longhorn. I might as well, I’ll be buying one of them dual core chips when they come out.
because windows just works and i can get my work done. simple as that, I do java and php programming, aside from the occassional gaming
The best feature will be that Microsoft will still activate Longhorn.
Eventually all those XP CD’s that people “bought” will stop being reactivated.
Microsoft can force you to upgrade anytime they want.
My dear customers,
While we did have a hearty laugh here up in Redmond reading your comments, I feel compelled to inform you that sooner or later, you will all upgrade. But thanks for playing.
Yes, no one likes growing up, but we all must sooner or later. And you will purchase Longhorn.
Why? Well:
–You are going to buy a new computer in the next five years
–You do understand we will stop supporting Win2000 and ensure XP is at the bottom of the list for security patches. “Just get Longhorn and you won’t have these virus problems,” you will be told, and sooner or later, your boss will get sick of the problems and tell you to throw money at the problem. Luckily, that money gets thrown to us.
–The technology media is going to trump Longhorn as a must-have upgrade. It’ll be on the cover of every magazine for months. Millions of words of praise will be written about it, regardless for how good it is. Quality really doesn’t matter. Resistance will be futile. I will be granting out interviews to the press institutions that give us the most positive press coverage, so we’ll let them fight for the most positive reviews. And don’t forget our MVP program. Paid shills are wonderful.
–Watch how fast programs stop working for older versions of Windows.
Anyway, thanks for your comments and for the great laugh. We accept all major credit cards, and of course, cash.
Your pal,
Bill
I’ll definitely buy a copy of Longhorn.
In China, for about 2 bucks.
I think the new Fisher Price UI and Palladium DRM will be MORE than worth it.
You people are so negative.
You would still have the costs for:
testing the software,
for installation,
for user training,
for new hardware
The licence fee is usually not the largest cost associated with an upgrade. Even if you get the OS for free upgrading can be expensive.
It was a joke. Should of been pretty obvious.
// apple is close to ten years ahead of microsoft in desktop technology.//
Can you give specific examples of that claim? It sounds like pure fanboi bullsh*t to me.
actually to be fair i think that microsoft isn’t ten years behind apple more like 2-4 years because apple is adding things in their os that MS wanted to put in longhorn but had to pull it for some reason or another like features of Winfs. I say 2-4 years because it’ll take MS that long to release another os which in turn will finally have winfs for example.
But i believe that this is caused by the fact that the company is so big. (buggy code, security issues,etc.) When a company employs many programmers how the hell are you supposed to have effective code quality control? With smaller companies like apple, sun or even the linux community(well maybe not linux) It would be much easier to make sure that specific parts of the os work, without breaking something else as there are less people to manage and check.
Having said that, I’m a realist and dispite my wishes people will undoughtably upgrade to Longhorn due to hardware sales and subcequentially developper adoption. I have to give them credit when credit is due, MS has made great strides with XP but right now from what i have read (and i heaven’t read everything) Most of the changed end up just being asthetic in nature. Sure they could say “we’ve got better security. We’ve got better user interface. We’ve got better drivers” But in the end is it enough for people to upgrade to longhorn without a new computer comming with it? I dought it. I seriously think that we are at a stage in os development where we are only “upgrading” due to the market forcing us to do so without really seeing an huge difference. And if these changes are so incremental why wasn’t it implemented in the previous version?(this is in reference to better security and interface)
When you think about it what was the last time you thought that there was a significant change in the os that required you to think “i should upgrade because I really need these new features”? Personnally for me that was windows 98SE. I think the majority of the industry has the same ideal as I because i see buisnesses that still use old oses like 98se or NT still because they just don’t need the extra crap the new versions are comming out with.
PS. I got Windows Xp Pro with my computer when i baught it
microsoft has more money then god. apple spent a decade or two in the red. both apple and microsoft depend on their operating systems for a substancial amount of their revenue (in apples case maybe a bit indirectly). apple is close to ten years ahead of microsoft in desktop technology.
IMO this is what most people mistake. Apple is a hardware company. Most of their money comes from (incredibly overpriced) hardware, but people won’t buy hardware if there’s not a killer application supporting it (Mac OS X).
And that about Apple beeing 10 years ahead is a little overstretched. Jobs himself said that it tok them 3 years to make OS X usefull. OS 10.0 was nothing compared to what it is today.
how the hell does that make any sense? how can apple deliver the longhorn featurset, and microsoft keeps having to pair it down?
What feature set are you talking about? I’m not really following Mac news every day but what is so impressive about Tiger? Don’t just look at Longhorn as XP with a new GUI, the OS is written from scratch, based on entirely new technologies. Where’s OS X’s Indigo, Avalon, WinFX? Those are not just cute names. So Tiger will have Spotlight, few updated apps and a basic Office suite. This year alone Microsoft will release 20/30 something apps. Whidbey alone is causing massive drooling.
People like to think (and convince others) how all Microsoft software sucks compared to alternatives. MS software is everywhere, on the desktop, servers, workstations, embeded and probably soon also on clusters. Seriously, think about this. If it would suck so horribly wouldn’t people move away from it? (and I don’t mean the 1% Linux, 3% Mac users)
As I said, this is debatable but I will leave you with a final thought. This one is from Ben Goodger (lead Firefox engineer) about Visual Studio (6.0);
“…I bought my copy back in 1998. I think it came out in early 1998. Let’s think about that a little. What other software came out in or close to 1998?
When Visual C++ 6.0 came out, people were using Windows 95, SR2 and NT4. Netscape 4.0 was still the browser du jour – having been released only the previous year. By mid ’98, Netscape 4.5 was out – offering few improvements to browsing (but a lot to email). Real Player was still small and free of clutter.
That’s old.
[…]
Come on folk, respect Microsoft for the good software they’ve created, use it as a benchmark in the cases that it really is. That’s what we’ve tried to do with Firefox – if more projects did the same I think the Linux Desktop would be in a much happier place…”
OK, probably not the type of response you hoped, but I think it shows the quality of MS software quite well. Do you have _any_ software on your PC that is 7 years old? Or rather, compare this 7 years old software to something (not made by MS) that is equaly good and made today?
in essence, there is a point in all projects where it’s not possible to gain time from adding more men. The project will actually be even more late.
It gets even worse if you add more *women*. See, the men then tend to leave their own cubicles and start hanging around the women’s cubicles cracking jokes and trying to impress them. May as well chuck a fully-charged keg of beer in there while you’re at it.
😉
—–
BTW, regarding folks staying with MS at all costs; many americans — despite your best efforts to reason with them — actually *like* Bill Gates and Microsoft. They think (well, without actually exerting any neurons) he’s this great smart entrepreneur/software-developer who did everything right and now he’s rich. They act like he’s a role model. I’m not kidding. Two people in my own family think that way even though I’ve (on multiple occasions) rationally explained this particular quadrant’s actual true reality to them. Feh.
Where’s OS X’s Indigo, Avalon, WinFX?
Indigo – poor man’s Rendevous
Avalon – Quartz
WinFX – Cocoa
Don’t just look at Longhorn as XP with a new GUI, the OS is written from scratch, based on entirely new technologies.
No it isn’t, from the looks of it, its gonna be winxp with new layers over it. It’ll be good if they did rewrite it from scrath and break compatibaility, or offer compatibaility through a virtualization technique like OSX, but MS is to conservative to do that.
I’ll correct myself before anyone does, apperently longhorn will come with a new kernel. But then again, this is likely just a more secure kernel that xp whould have shipped with anyway. is it functionally any different from xp? (ie better memory or process management?)
I read it was gonna be based on the NT kernel which is what XP is based on.
Concerning WinFX:
From ms: WinFX is a superset of the .NET Framework, designed to expose the new functionality in Longhorn to the developer through managed classes…
So now we had, Win32API, which was a PITA. Then they introduced MfC on top of Win32API, which was better but still lacking in many areas. Along came the Forms / .Net Forms, and now even another layer ontop of that.
On the other hand Apple offers Cocoa, which stays the same, just gets some additional Classes…
Now i think its not that hard to conclude who got their API right and who is still searching for a solution.
Lets’ just face it guys in the end all M$ is doing is trying to follow the OS innovations that Apple and others have made. And then market it to the masses making them seem like they are the smart ones. What do they reckon? Mimicry is the best form of flattery. Gosh you could almost do them for plargarism…
According to you, OSX is to WinXP as WiNXP is to Win95.
Apple bought their OS from NeXT, and it took them a decade to release OSX 10.0 (which was pure crap). Microsoft is doing in 6 or 7 years what’s taken Apple 14yrs, plus what Microsoft is introducing is a bit more advanced.
Also, people (wouldn’t suprise me if you were included in there) used to complain CONSTANTLY that Microsoft released a new OS every 18months, and now that they are taking there time and Apple has adopted the short release times (and expensive upgrades for small enhancements), it’s all of a sudden ok?
first of all, you do have a point. it took three years longer for a *much* smaller company to do the same thing that ms is doing. the fact is though, tiger has spotlight, ms still wont have winfs when longhorn drops. do you see my point?
as for the whole release cycle thing, people complained about stuff like 98 se and me, which were nowhere near the upgrades that apple folks have seen every year.
OSX has it’s own quirks. Not to mention having to buy new applications, learn an entirely new OS, etc…
this is true. i wasnt trying to evangelise apple or anything, more ask why we can see superior output from a smaller company.
Suddenly qwerty typists are moronic? Care to explain to me how that is? Yes, Dvorak may improve typing speeds for SOME people, but if you’ve used qwerty you’re whole life, then that is what you know, and most likely, Dvorak style will NEVER be better for a single person.
qwerty was designed to keep typwriter keys from jamming. dvorak was designed for touch typists. a good qwerty typist will break 80wpm, while a good dvorak typist is close to 200wpm.
the problem is you need to relearn how to type. dvorak is supported by all major operating systems, all that keeps qwerty in use is the sheer inertia of qwerty typists. personally, if someone told me there was a way to do something twice as efficiently, i would jump on it, but that simply isnt the case for most qwerty typists. it was another illustration of the point i was attempting to make.
Your whole post is a troll, even if you did not intend it to be.
well, im sorry you saw it that way
Where’s OS X’s Indigo, Avalon, WinFX?
umm… Quartz (Extreme and 2d Extreme) pretty much take care of the first 2. As for WinFX, that is MS fixing a broken API. OS X has a very nice API. Cocoa with all its core technologies… Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Image. Cocoa itself has Java, C++ (due to Obj-C++), C/Obj-C, Python, and any other OSS programming language that has a binding for it. sure… you do not have a common language runtime, but so what. The CLI just makes it easier for MS.
So Tiger will have Spotlight functionality that longhorn will not have.
few updated apps apps that do not come with longhorn
and a basic Office suite that does not come with OS X, but so what, besides, Office for OS X is better due to the market share it has.
doh… I thouhgt indigo was some display tech… so yeah.. MS is reinventing the standards again I guess (see jodney rack’s comment above)
IMO this is what most people mistake. Apple is a hardware company. Most of their money comes from (incredibly overpriced) hardware, but people won’t buy hardware if there’s not a killer application supporting it (Mac OS X).
And that about Apple beeing 10 years ahead is a little overstretched. Jobs himself said that it tok them 3 years to make OS X usefull. OS 10.0 was nothing compared to what it is today.
ok then, seven years. the point still stands. the vast majority of the desktop market owns a computer for email/im/web/word, all of which exist on mac.
What feature set are you talking about? I’m not really following Mac news every day but what is so impressive about Tiger? Don’t just look at Longhorn as XP with a new GUI, the OS is written from scratch, based on entirely new technologies. Where’s OS X’s Indigo, Avalon, WinFX? Those are not just cute names. So Tiger will have Spotlight, few updated apps and a basic Office suite. This year alone Microsoft will release 20/30 something apps. Whidbey alone is causing massive drooling.
winfs is (roughly) equivilent to spotlight, avalon is (roughly) equivilent to quartz extreme, objective c (the official language) is a managed language, etc. the featurset doesnt exactly match up (tiger has some thing longhorn doesnt and vice vera) but its damn close, and there really isnt any conceivable reason it should be.
People like to think (and convince others) how all Microsoft software sucks compared to alternatives. MS software is everywhere, on the desktop, servers, workstations, embeded and probably soon also on clusters. Seriously, think about this. If it would suck so horribly wouldn’t people move away from it? (and I don’t mean the 1% Linux, 3% Mac users)
aparently you didnt read my post. that is EXACTLY the question i am asking.
Come on folk, respect Microsoft for the good software they’ve created, use it as a benchmark in the cases that it really is. That’s what we’ve tried to do with Firefox – if more projects did the same I think the Linux Desktop would be in a much happier place…”
microsoft has had some of the best development tools i had ever used, right up until intellij idea. microsofts hardware support is top knotch, others have come up with similar ways to deal with the insane amounts of x86 based hardware, but ms has done it best, and did it first.
i dont consider microsoft evil. i do however, think they have grown too big, and are too diverse at this point to offer quality solutions to the home user at this point. the desktop has been relegated to supporting their hold on the business market. desktop users should be able to see this from any mac demo machine sitting at their local computer store.
OK, probably not the type of response you hoped, but I think it shows the quality of MS software quite well. Do you have _any_ software on your PC that is 7 years old? Or rather, compare this 7 years old software to something (not made by MS) that is equaly good and made today?
well, ive currently got be installed on a test pc to play around with, but i dont think that counts 😉
im really not saying microsoft makes bad software. i am saying that windows is nowhere near advanced as it should be given their resources, and using apple as a comparison.
MS bends over backwards to ensure all the major apps, games, and utilities are supported. Often, if the dev of a particular major app or even game (!!) can’t get the upgrade compatibility written, MS will do it for them AND release it on their website.
that is how they got everyone over initially, that combined with the lisa retailing for ten grand because of steve jobs habit of messing with things he shouldnt. who is asking for DRM? who asked for hailstorm? how many web developers have been asking microsoft to fully support css? how many web developers asked them to break javascript? why is it in the last decade or so, they come up with a new major technology that supplants the old one in a matter of years?(not saying that last one is bad, but it is from a developers perspective). microsoft loved its developers back in the day, i dont know how much that really applies anymore though
Apple is literally contemptuous of its users and developers. It adds features with no regard to how it will affect other apps or its user base. These features may be fantastic, but its a primary reason why Apple is irrelevant in market share. They did offer Classic compatiblity, but only by virtualization. In the (near) future, they will drop the Classic emulation mode altogether.
apple is at the other end of the spectrum from ms for that stuff. microsoft will carry over bugs and security holes over from one version to the next in the name of compatibility. apple tends to break everything every fifteen years or so. neither is a good thing. again, i dont think this is really a good enough reason to stick with an os.
Apple designs for hardware they have strict control over just like all of the other old-guard – Sun, IBM, etc. MS designs for the broadest compatibility it can.
actually, that would be because apple is a hardware company. osx is a way to sell apple pcs. microsoft is just trying to sell windows, office and whatnot. again, im talking about the huge disparity in technology between the two, and the total disregard of that by the vast majority of users. if you want to talk about how apple has made really stupid descisions in the past i would be glad to go off on that for awhile too, but it would be even more ot then this rant. i am just uzing apple as a benchmark to measure windows technology.
If MS were run by techies (like the *nix/ BSD world) or megalomaniacs (Apple) instead of marketing types, they would cut clean.
While it may sound like I’m swinging from MS, I’m not. I was severely hoping they would finally just throw out all the legacy crap and start fresh. As it is, in trying to make everyone happy,
a) they can’t add new major features like Apple can
b) security will always be compromised
c) stability will always be compromised
MS could have used their purchase of Connectix/ Virtual PC to copy Apple and run the old legacy apps in a virtual mode so they could ween people off the older versions. I think they’ve done a remarkable job thus far in the broad range of support and esp in legacy support, but sooner or later they will HAVE to start with a clean slate.
actually, this is exactly the kind of response i was looking for. 🙂 its really ok to not hate microsoft, but be critical of where windows is at today.
what i would love to see out of microsoft is some focus. something like avalon is pointless for a server offering, pretty useless for an office workstation, but fantastic for the desktop. honestly, i think thats the only reason it wasnt here years ago. with its size and resources, microsoft should be leading the trends in technology, not following them.
Can you give specific examples of that claim? It sounds like pure fanboi bullsh*t to me.
osx has a managed language as its official api, 3d composited windows using the gpu, vectored icons, postscript text rendoring, a modern standards compliant browser, can easily plug into virtually any kind of network, has spotlight and hfs+ for a db filesystem and complete api, is built on unix giving the strengths of the cli and a good security paradigm, and is properly configured for the net out of the box. honestly, after reading some stuff here, i went to apple.com and checked out the vids for spotlight and automator, then procedeed to price a powerbook. i was thinking of waiting to see how longhorn actually stacks up when its done, but honestly, theres no need. the things that interest me about longhorn are already there on mac.
which got me thinking about WHY mac has all the features that i find interesting in longhorn already, which inspired that post.
winfx is alot of things, some of which are covered by cocoa, but the best comparison would be spotlight.
both winfs and spotlight are db filesystems, giving the ability to query the filesystem rather then navigate through hierarchical file trees, which have been shown to be one of the hardest things that people have to still deal with on computers. if you want to see it in action, go check out the vid at apple.com.
problem is, Spotlight is out in June
Longhorn 2006?
And its going to be even then touch and go whether Winfs will appear in it.
So how can they be compared?
By the time Winfs is out, if you follow the logic going on in here, Apple could well be onto releasing an amino acid type biological database system 😉
If I understand correctly your initial post can be summed up as:
“How can a small company as Apple
be much more performant as a
large one such as Microsoft in
doing basically the same thing”
One explanation is at least:
Apple uses a different business model: they don’t try to reinvent hot water or sliced bread, they use open source software. Also Apple contributes his enhancements back to the ‘open source world’.
Today Apple OS is among the most open environments (yes, I know some parts are closed, the GUI/Quicktime) being able to interoperate with many different platforms.
Microsoft still lives in ‘the proprietary era’. So they have to do them all by themselve:
kernel / OS / API
server apps (web-apps-server/databaseserver/proxy/directory services/…)
desktop GUI
productivity apps
and a lot more …
Did I read that article correctly?
It said something about Microsoft including some type of built-in desktop search capabilities. I guess they are taking their MSN Desktop search and integrating it with the operating system (which is a good idea because not everybody knows that MSNDS actually exists online and can be downloaded).
But I guess Microsoft figured that since they couldn’t get WinFS fully out the door in the first version of Longhorn that they would need to have something to at least compete Apple’s Spotlight.
But here’s what I am confused about…
All of a sudden Microsoft has seemed to stop focusing entirely on WinFS for all of their data management and have started focusing stronger on desktop searching.
spotlight is not just a desktop search facility. WinFS is not a Disk based file system. Spotlight is a database that is constantly updated, it has its own API, and you can have queries saved as smart folders. WinFS is the same thing, but WinFS allows the user to give full path control of files to WinFS, something that spotlight does not do. basically, rather than you managing the location that you dump a file on a volume, WinFS manages that for you (most likely is some hidden directory at the root of each volume.) NTFS still manages files physical location on the hard disk.
I’m thinking that everytime people hear longhorn then just think about WinFS/Avalon/Indigo, but the OS itself will have more to it then just those 3 things, though they are new and key points where developers of software can take advantage of.
Longhorn will have more then just these things though, we’re already told it’s got a brand new kernal, not an updated NT one from XP/2003. They did this to help make multimedia and other things work faster, which right now they really don’t do, as you have noticed, there is a bit of a delay (depends on your system really, but I notice it) when you click on that video file and when your media player opens and starts showing it.
It’s also got a new user account insted of everyone using administrator and messing things up, something outta the unix book if you think about it, You could say it’s a copy of linux but then isn’t linux more or less a copy of unix when you first look at it, without getting technical about it.
The fact WinFS isn’t in now, and coming a few months later in 2007 doesn’t mean you won’t be able to do all the cool search stuff you can with say spotlight and I don’t know what else, we’ll see at PDC this year when they said beta 1 will be shown, or something.
The point is that it’s more then just a new UI and fast desktop searching, It’s taken them since what? 2001? After XP was done to basically re-write major parts of the OS, it’s not just a basic upgrade, the OS itself is said to be componintized sp? So OEM’s etc can add-in or take-out parts they don’t want/need at install, they’re hot-patching finally, so even installing device drivers won’t need a reboot, only changes to kernel code will, but when you change the kernel for ANY OS you’re going to have to reboot.
Better Netowrking is also there, for wired and wireless networks, New ways to setup a LAN using p2p type techology and whatever else they can think of.
Someone said why they don’t break with compatibility and offer it via vertualization like Apple did with OSX, If you think about it, they sorta are already with Windows XP 64bit, each time you run a 32bit program in 64bit XP it runs in the WOW64 (Windows On Windows64) It’s basically 32bit emulation, and it’s as fast if not faster then native 32bit apps on 32bit WindowsXP. So if longhorn uses a more advanced form of this, that’d be great, while giving developers the time to move their apps over to the new API
I don’t know about most of you, but so far longhorn looks and sounds more secure and stable, also people have said it should work faster then XP, though we won’t know for sure at this point, but if there is a performence boost on the same hardware over XP and it’s got better security/stability with all the new features and whatever else we haven’t seen, then why not upgrade? I think I will when i get around to making a new system for myself next year.
whats that 50 negatives towards MS and 10 postives…
get your damn storys straight…
The bigests assenine thing i heard was “oh spotlight is gonna be out and ms wont have anything like it”
FASTSEARCH is what there marketing it as in longhorn… and it will do the same thing as spotlight, then add on breadcrumbing and stacks… if u are gonna nitpick things that have no merit then just dont paste idiotic things that you can not back up…
As for security the additions are there many not yet mentioned but the Lowered account abilitys and basically “root” level installation requirements for installing software and stuff will definitly reduce problems.
http://www.winsupersite.com has a little more on the subjects but remember the system is actively under development and alot of it hasnteven been mentioned and i hate to say this if u think MS is copying OSX’s great ol’ interface sure… the transparency and soft look is there… but hess what thats not AERO! aqua has not been seen or any notice of it nor will there be until after PDC or towards the end of 2005… what your seeing is the marked down version that is cut down for compatability. Stop judging what we havent seen nor can be verified because quite a large portion of longhorn is under pretty good lock and key.
osx has a managed language as its official api, 3d composited windows using the gpu, vectored icons, postscript text rendoring,
Windowx XP/2000 both have managed language as their APIs, but also offer Win32/MFC,…. Currently Win32 is the “official” XP API but MS is pushing .NET to take that place. And what’s wrong with having a choise? I preffer Win32 but would use .NET if it was a large project.
Regarding the 3D/PDF thing I suggest you read the below links which exaplin in detail how this works. In short: no PDF, no OpenGL.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139690&cid=11692747
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139690&cid=11693667
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139690&cid=11694611
Also, don’t forget that OS X’s GUI is slower compared wo XP’s – try scrolling down really fast for example
a modern standards compliant browser, can easily plug into virtually any kind of network,
Depends on what you define a standard I guess. But you’re right Safari (currently) is a better browser.
is built on unix giving the strengths of the cli and a good security paradigm, and is properly configured for the net out of the box.
True, although I question wether BSD security is neccessary on a desktop PC. But you’re right nonetheless.
honestly, after reading some stuff here, i went to apple.com and checked out the vids for spotlight and automator, then procedeed to price a powerbook. i was thinking of waiting to see how longhorn actually stacks up when its done, but honestly, theres no need. the things that interest me about longhorn are already there on mac.
Your choice I guess. I must say I was tempted to buy a Mac one time. I was so hooked into those pretty OS X screenshots I forgort about how much money I’d be spending. But then I asked myself: What would I gain if I buy a Mac? I consider myself a tech user, knowing how to secure myself from spyware and viruses so beeing free from those was not my concern. After a while of thinking I came up with nothing. There are more applications for Windows then any other system, almost any need I have there’s an app to fill it. I also wasn’t tempted by Mac’s applications, because most are ported to Windows. I am not trolling here, sure there are users that swear by a Mac, but I am (at least currently) a happy Windows user so there is no need for spending much more money on something I don’t need.
which got me thinking about WHY mac has all the features that i find interesting in longhorn already, which inspired that post.
Let me sum up the above into a short statement
If I would have lots of money and low computer knowledge I would buy a Mac. If I’d have lots of free time and nerves I would use UNIX (of some kind). Currently I don’t have lots of free time and definently not a lof of money so I stick to Windows.
But then again, if I would win the lottery I would be playing with all three
As a note they said applications should launch/run about 15% faster on the same hardware from xp to longhorn… (i have hard insome cases the gain can be upward of 25% faster but its 15 conservatively so far) …. for me that along kills linux… Jesus the day my gentoo and mandrake box can launch an application as fast as my windows pc does (all same specs) i mean lord firefox takes my gentoo what 7 -10 seconds in windows it takes under 3 and IE is well for me atleast pretty much instant.
Windowx XP/2000 both have managed language as their APIs, but also offer Win32/MFC,…. Currently Win32 is the “official” XP API but MS is pushing .NET to take that place. And what’s wrong with having a choise? I preffer Win32 but would use .NET if it was a large project.
yeah, lets stick to one holy war at a time 😉
.net is going to be the longhorn api, which is definately a Good Thing for most people.
Regarding the 3D/PDF thing I suggest you read the below links which exaplin in detail how this works. In short: no PDF, no OpenGL.
i said postscript not pdf, and for fonts not rendoring windows. ive heard that too, and its a little confused.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139690&cid=11692747
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139690&cid=11693667
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139690&cid=11694611
this quote from the first one sums up my point nicely.
“Quartz is amazing. Nothing else in the world comes anywhere close to it, despite what some very confused people seem to think. But you’re really selling it short when you describe it as “PDF and OpenGL.” Because it isn’t.”
why is it that similar things arnt said about gdi?
Depends on what you define a standard I guess. But you’re right Safari (currently) is a better browser.
honestly, im not the biggest fan of safari. however, im even less of a fan of what ie did to javascript.
True, although I question wether BSD security is neccessary on a desktop PC. But you’re right nonetheless.
well, one thing that is nice is it doesnt let users mess with system files without a password. also makes it much harder for virii to bork systems.
Your choice I guess. I must say I was tempted to buy a Mac one time. I was so hooked into those pretty OS X screenshots I forgort about how much money I’d be spending. But then I asked myself: What would I gain if I buy a Mac? I consider myself a tech user, knowing how to secure myself from spyware and viruses so beeing free from those was not my concern. After a while of thinking I came up with nothing. There are more applications for Windows then any other system, almost any need I have there’s an app to fill it. I also wasn’t tempted by Mac’s applications, because most are ported to Windows. I am not trolling here, sure there are users that swear by a Mac, but I am (at least currently) a happy Windows user so there is no need for spending much mor money on something I don’t need.
well, there you go, i currently use linux (at home anyways, at work need to support ie). anything that isnt mac native is probably supported by the fink project. i could get into the reasons i find the mac attractive, but im not trying to evangelise.
If I would have lots of money and low computer knowledge I would buy a Mac. If I’d have lots of free time and nerves I would use UNIX (of some kind). Currently I don’t have lots of free time and definently not a lof of money so I stick to Windows.
well, ive grown to love linux, but the uis really dont hold a flame to osx. intellij idea is the ide i use, and they support osx. i priced a 15″ powerbook with a gig of ram for about 3000$cdn. now thats pricy, but when you look at the equivilent x86 models at that size and weight, its really not that bad. itll take some saving, but its doable.
But then again, if I would win the lottery I would be playing with all three
ditto
Funny, some people seem to think that if Microsoft would have killer features ‘under pretty good lock and key’ and that there is ‘more then what we know now’, they would not use it to feed the hype machine. Oh.. ok. If you say so.
“… firefox takes my gentoo what 7 -10 seconds in windows it takes under 3 and IE is well for me atleast pretty much instant.”
Isn’t IE loaded at boot time?
> “… firefox takes my gentoo what 7 -10 seconds in windows it takes under > 3 and IE is well for me atleast pretty much instant.”
> Isn’t IE loaded at boot time?
A large part of it is and OTOH loadtimes doesn’t hold much water as the only way of comparing Windows/Mac OS X/Linux much more interesting are:
-ability to interface with different platforms/hardware/networks
-available software (proprietary / open source)
-security (more or less troubles with virusses, spy/ad/…ware)
-stability
-support (community / google / commercial)
-functionality out-of-the-box (including security settings and development tools)
– and so on …
I agree completely. Personally I leave everything running anyway.
In any case, IE shouldn’t be included when using application launch times to measure OS performance.
Well duh! Do you honestly expect Microsoft to support older versions of Windows forever? What about Apple? Do they even have official support for Mac OS 8 or 9? How about other software companies? So it must be ok for other companies to drop support for their software, but heaven forbid Microsoft does it! They must be evil or something to do what other companies do.
For example, Sun supports (at least) 3 versions of Solaris at any given time. That’s their policy. At the moment, Solaris 8, 9 and 10 are all supported, but would you believe that even Solaris 7 is supported to a certain level, by Sun! It’s a support timeframe of a decade and a half.
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/images/solarisoelifecycle.gif
Of course, there are different levels of support, but even in the case of the weakest support form, the customer can still feel confident in using Solaris, as long as their software applications support the OS. And Solaris has been extremely backwards compatible.
For another example, take Novell with their support for NetWare. I found online documentation for NetWare 3.12:
http://www.novell.com/documentation/nw312/docui/index.html
However, Novell used to be much better, in the recent past. In 1999/2000 they still had docs and downloads of patches and utilities for NetWare 2.x, and that is truly an old horse.
http://support.novell.com/filefinder/140/
Notice that this is NetWare 3.11 – and yet, the date of most recent update/tool is December 1998.
Now, if I could only find the docs and downloads for NetWare 2.x….
[i]qwerty was designed to keep typwriter keys from jamming. dvorak was designed for touch typists. a good qwerty typist will break 80wpm, while a good dvorak typist is close to 200wpm.
the problem is you need to relearn how to type. dvorak is supported by all major operating systems, all that keeps qwerty in use is the sheer inertia of qwerty typists.
personally, if someone told me there was a way to do something twice as efficiently, i would jump on it, but that simply isnt the case for most qwerty typists. it was another illustration of the point i was attempting to make.
</>
Be careful though. You wouldn’t want to “jump on it” as some people just on “amazing ab-flexing” machines and snake oil.
Dvorak “superiority” is an urban legend. In fact, Dvorak himself (just as the idiot journalist of same name) was a con man, working for us navy that tried to sell his own “patented” junk.
The Qwerty being invented to keep typewriter keys from “jamming” part is correct, but you got the mechanism backwards. It’s not by …slowing down the typist that this feat was performed (how could anyone ever believe this crap??!), but by placing adjacent keys that appear next to each other on the keyboard so that their respecting “hammers” with the letters would be apart, as not to jam when pressed in succession. Typing speed had nothing to do with it.
Concluding:
(1) the research demonstrating the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard is sparse and methodologically suspect;
(2) a sizable body of work suggests that in fact the Dvorak offers little practical advantage over the QWERTY;
(3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands;
(4) the QWERTY keyboard did not become a standard overnight but beat out several competing keyboards over a period of years.
Among other places:
http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/knowledge_goods/economistqwert…
(On the other hand, OS X *IS* better, on this we agree 😉
yeah, i know about that article, heres probably the best one debunking it
http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/dissent.html
honestly, if you actually spend some time and start to learn it, its kinda aparent that its faster. the amount of movement required to type many words is nowhere near as much as qwerty. (im at about 20wpm on dvorak, 60 on qwerty so i cant say for sure yet)
honestly, even if it were just equivilent in speeds, i would still perfer dvorak. it really does take less effort.
As a note they said applications should launch/run about 15% faster on the same hardware from xp to longhorn… (i have hard insome cases the gain can be upward of 25% faster but its 15 conservatively so far) …. for me that along kills linux…
Don’t worry Linux gets faster too. Just look how much the speed of KDE have improved over the past years. There will be more efficient compilers, better graphics systems etc.
Absolutely, tho I am an XP user mtself, I think the Open Source OS community in general haave done an outstanding job in churning out high quality code. You really think that if games ran on Linux as fast as they do on Windows ppl would still be using it?