Paul Thurrott has updated his “Road to Longhorn” article with new, never seen before screenshots of Longhorn. Some interesting new approaches to usability and UI can be seen there.
Longhorn Roadmap Update: New Unseen-Before Screenshots
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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-“Longhorn will include technology, presumably a new form of the Encrypting File System (EFS), that helps prevent data exposure from lost or stolen laptops. You’ll be able to forward event logs to a central location.”
That’s FileVault in panther.
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Just a minor correction Hakime, EFS has been out since windows 2000, and it is in fact a much more feature rich and robust solution than FileVault. I know, I use and have configured both. When it comes to managing encrypted directories both local and remote with multiple users each with a unique differential of access credentials — EFS provides the features/intrastructure to do this. FileVault, however, only encrypts a users home directory with its password. Which is a rather baren feature set with strict access options incomparison.
If you want to be accurate you might want to say that Longhorn will be catching up with Panther in making a much easier to use “end-user” personal encryption option. However as it stands now, both FileVault and EFS are not be activated by default, and EFS provides much more scalability than is currently implemented in FileVault.
The only thing new in longhorns EFS may be a simpler interface so people will be able to use EFS on a wider scale — however FileVault was not first, nor is it anywhere near as feature complete.
Just a shame you have to mortgage your house to buy decent Mac hardware …
What in the hell are you talking about? If you have to mortgage your house to pay for a 2500 computer then there is something is seriously wrong with your finances. It’s not Apple’s fault you never learned how to actually _save_ money.
Cool. I’ve never even heard of EFS. Thanks for the info. I gotta try that out.
It’s not Apple’s fault you never learned how to actually _save_ money.
One who saves his money does not necessarily wish to waste it needlessly.
Apple hardware is competitive in the low end (Mac Mini) but the high end is still expensive. Whether the extra money is worth it is up to the individual consumer. For me, it isn’t, because a Mac is less useful to me than a PC.
Anonymous: “I can see mspaint hasn’t been upgraded (yet)
”
They really need to include Paint.net [http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/], and a stripped down Word or upgraded Wordpad.
Hakime: “Encrypting File System (EFS)
That’s FileVault in panther.”
EFS has been in Win2000 from the beginning. This wasn’t a feature in HFS+.
Kelly: “What is it, exactly, that Windows Longhorn is doing that requires these ridiculously high system requirements?”
Microsoft has always been a fan of “Why buy one when you can have two at twice the price?”
As to it’s looks, it’s not final. You can bet they are listeneing to people’s reactions about it’s appearance, though.
Although OS X is perfectly capable of performing anything WinXP can, and sometimes better, MS is seen as the company
bringing a business desktop to the masses. Everyone will crow about it’s innovative features that had previously been seen
in the Mac and Linux desktop worlds. This is the way it works.
“It’s bad for the country. It’s bad for the industry.”
It means there will be a glut of perfectly functional, fast computers available second hand. Europe in particular is getting tired of taking it from MS, and are defecting in droves. This will be good for MS, in that they might, just might decide they need to lean up and actually offer innovation in software vs. innovation in litigation.
As to the issue of OSX 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 in that users are charged full price, this is equivalent to MS offering 98, 98SE, and Millennium within three years and charging full price for all. The MS release timeline was seen as a bad thing, and was accompanied by much whining.
Imtiaz Rahi: “Its good to see Longhorn will run appliations as a less priviledged user account. And will ask for Administrator password when needed. Good catch up.”
I know you know this, but this is called ‘user accounts’ and ‘administrator accounts’, and was a feature of NT-based systems since ’96. There are varying levels of access within that if skillfull use of policies is employed. 0n the MS campus, everyone is setup with Admin access. It was a nightmare when I worked there.
umm… no, the high end Apple computer prices are pretty in sync with the high end PC computer prices (Just because D3 does not play well is not a counter example to that fact)
Actually, 98SE was offered for $20 if you had vanilla 98, or, you could download most of the functionality for free.
WinME was offered for $50 along the same lines.
umm… no, the high end Apple computer prices are pretty in sync with the high end PC computer prices
So very very wrong.
I’ll do this in canadian dollars, cause thats the site I have open, it doesnt really matter.
Contestant 1:
1.8GHz PowerPC G5
600MHz frontside bus
512K L2 cache
256MB DDR400 SDRAM
80GB Serial ATA
8x SuperDrive
Three PCI Slots
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
56K internal modem
PRICE: From the apple store: $1,899.00
Contestant 2:
# Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 530 with Hyper-Threading Technology, 3.0GHz
# 512MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM memory (2x256MB for ultimate performance)
# 200GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive
# Double Layer 8X DVD±R/RW drive with CD writer capabilities
# DVD-ROM drive 16x max. speed
# RADEON X300 SE PCI-E graphics card with 128MB DDR video memory and TV out
# Integrated 10/100Base-T network interface
# Intel® High Definition Audio with up to 7.1 surround sound capabilities
# Personal video recorder (PVR) with high performance hardware encoder featuring instant replay and up to 155 hours of video programming and archiving. Compatible with cable, digital cable, satellite TV and antenna. FM tuner (antenna included)
# High speed 56K modem
PRICE: $1,397.00 (from staples.ca)
So. The PC has:
Approximately equivalent processor (ok its tough to compare, but I don’t think either will have a definite overall advantage)
Twice as much RAM
2.5 times as much hard drive space
Faster video card
And costs $500 less. You may argue that the G5 is worth more because of OS X, but 90% (conservative estimate) of people won’t see it that way.
the 1.8 is not apples high end!!!! OMFG!!! that machine is defiantly the WORST value in apple’s line no doubt. but when you talk about DUAL 2.0 and 2.5 GHz 64 bit machines, THE HIGH END, Apple is very price compliant with the rest of the industry.
I should have said midrange. Yes, perhaps Apple’s high end (Dual G5s) are competitive with dual processor PCs (I dont have time to check it out right now), but that market is dwarfed when compared to what the average consumer is looking for. The average consumer is not looking for the dual G5s or dual Xeons. They’re going for computers exactly like that PC I posted specs for. And in that market, apple offers nothing that competes on price.
Actually, just looking at the high end Apple now.
Dual G5 2.5Ghz. For $3799. Even with that machine, the ONLY thing that is better than the $1400 PC is the processor (and bus speed if you want to be picky). You think for that price you’d get at least a GB of RAM, and a couple RAID configured hard drives. But no.. 512MB DDR and a measly 160GB hard drive. Just upping the processor speed is a horrible way to improve system performance. You need more RAM, faster drives etc.
Decidedly unimpressive.
Where did you get the idea that piles and stacks are the same thing?
Piles, unlike today’s folders, gave you a lot of hints as to their contents. You could judge the number of documents in the pile by its height. You could judge its composition very rapidly by pulling through it.
Another Fast Search feature, called Stacks (Figure), will help aggregate content by such things as authors, keywords, type, and so on. You can then group Stacks by various properties, such as name, size, modified date, type, or authors, in order to provide multiple relevant views on the same data.
Stacks are more like virtual/search folders you can find in various mail clients (evolution, kmail, don’t know about others)
oops forgot sources:
piles:
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/04/20030413220229.shtml
some mac fanatic posted that one on page one of the comments but apparently didn’t bother to read it or the article we’re talking about, which is the source for the stacks quote
Yeah, you’re right. I checked that out again. I worked for them at the time, so I didn’t pay for any of it myself. I was checking out prices for the full versions in the stores. luckily I was still working with them when they released Win200 and XP, so I have them as well.
Kudos to those who “get” Apple’s new Mac release nomenclature, OS X 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, etc… Apple is clearly making the conscious decision to maintain the X in the name of its OS to convey its unix roots, although the X is “supposed” to be pronounced “ten”. IMHO, Mac OS X is a strong brand name… I also like their use of qualitfying names like Jaguar, Panther and Tiger from a branding standpoint. and somewhat playing down the .x designation…