Microsoft has offered an early peek at Longhorn’s file navigation and search capabilities — and fired a shot across the bow of the emerging desktop search tool vendors.
Sneak peek: Longhorn search capability previewed
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Oh, it certainly needs repeating : there are a lot of PC fans out there who are not convinced yet 😉
Jeeeeeez, 20 years of Microsoft vaporware. Enough is enough, who cares what MS is saying they are going to release in two years, it means exactly NOTHING.
…of this news should be:
Sneak peek: Microsoft unveils what it plans to do in 3 years it tells will be done in 1.5 years.
Somebody needs to pass this guy a memo. This just reaks of desperation. Seriously, wtf is going on here. I can understand if Longhorn was due this year, but nearly 2 years if its on time? They’ve been dropping features every month since Bill’s first spew of Longhorn vaportech. I still like Paul Thurrott’s (windows super fan) comments……”This has the makings of a train wreck”
So, Microsoft is facing stiff competition again in the OS arena, and one of the major features they’re competing with is the ability to do sophisticated searches on local content, and now that people are implementing such things on Windows to make up for Microsoft’s own lack of any kind of competent search tool… they’re going to discourage them by “firing a shot across their bows”?
I hope they’re holding something back there.
i’m not too sure about all these companies trying tp provide us with search tools for our own computers.
seems to me the potential for damage in case one of these tools was subverted is a litle high. maybe even delberate leakage.
i prefer ensure that my system are ordered in a manageable hierarchy so the need for such tools is minimised. and what’s wrong with the traditional small tools for searches?
so, i don’t trust 3rd part tools that promise “deep inspection” of my systems.
then again, i don’t even reply to gmail accounts because the “never delete” means that someone is ken to keep this data.
Microsoft must have the slowest developers ever! Its gonna take them 1.5 years to implement thumbnails and searching. That’s just sad.
The question to ask: Is it shipping?
If not, they should shut up, until it is.
My opinion.
Hmmm… after reading the ars technica Tiger review yesterday, I was reminded of BeFS’s great metadata implementation, and started wishing for it again on my little iBook that could. I kinda hoped Tiger would be the panacea for all my metadata wishes, but it seems it’s fallen short. It sounds like Longhorn may actually implement keywords and metadata in a half decent way. Of course, by then OSX 10.5 will probably have been released with a brand new Giampaolo-powered MacFS ;o)
I find it amazing that a small company like apple is able to create something like spotlight, and in a reasonable timeframe. and yet MS with much more resources is still years away from such a feature. Granted it looks as though MS’ search is a little more robust. But apple’s is here today, at 4:30 this afternoon to be exact, and does work quite well.
don’t wait, just buy a mac
SuSE 9.3 ships with Beagle alpha, which is already quite good. Novell may probably be able to get the full version to their next Novell Linux Desktop (and upcoming SuSE releases of course).
First, Microsoft is putting out vapore ware announcements, while other OSes are putting out more advanced systems. This is hardly new. Anyone who has covered operating systems knows these tactics. The repeated failure of Longhorn to materialize has become a byword.
I would assume that the OS News staff is also familiar with these tactics. If so, why are they covering these announcements as news? Do they not realize that Microsoft is using them to spread more lies? Where are their journalistic standards?
For the most part, desktop search like that wizard that cleans up unused icons on your desktop: you shouldn’t need it. If you keep things organized into a nice folder hierarchy, you will know exactly where to look when you need them. I search for something on my hard drive about once every 4-6 months. Upgraded desktop searching means nothing to me.
No 3D in Mac… that’s great
3D has absolutely nothing to do in a standard desktop environment. It may make it possible to make the desktop look more cool, but it doesn’t even qualify as a feature. It’s just another memory- and resourcestealing gimmick.
When it comes to 3D where it matters (CAD to name one example) then this is already supported – surprise (haha)
WinFS and Spotlight are more than desktop searches.. they are new ways to find and organize content. stored queries that collect all of something in one place and all of something else in another place. these are logical locations and you can have the same file in both folders but with out the loss of hard drive space.
is that a troll or what!!! oh my god.. all the tech that you see in longhorn has been evolving on tiger for 4 years.
XAML? OS X have display PDF.
Avalon? OS X has Quartz
3-d capable? Umm.. heh.. what do you think Quartz Extreme is? you think all those cool transitions are 2d? Sorry if Apple is judicious in its use of 3d in the interface. god now we should have some feature that lest use see the stack of windows from the side.
“WinFS and Spotlight are more than desktop searches.. they are new ways to find and organize content. stored queries that collect all of something in one place and all of something else in another place. these are logical locations and you can have the same file in both folders but with out the loss of hard drive space.”
So, only what is expected? These features are being used and enhanced elsewhere. This is not innovative.
“If you keep things organized into a nice folder hierarchy, you will know exactly where to look when you need them.”
The promise of desktop search is not the ability to find any one thing very quickly, it’s the ability to find several things that are arbitrarily related very quickly. Quick, find all wallpaper-sized images on your drives that include both bluebirds and rhinos, but not one or the other. A nice folder hierarchy will always have limitations.
“3-d capable? Umm.. heh.. what do you think Quartz Extreme is? you think all those cool transitions are 2d? Sorry if Apple is judicious in its use of 3d in the interface. god now we should have some feature that lest use see the stack of windows from the side. ”
Yes I for one love how useful it is seeing all your windows from a sideview![/sarcasm]
The metadata does sound interesting, but think about this… if you can keep track of your data easier, it makes it all that much easier for microsoft to database your data.
and they do!
as far as searching and organizing go… with no character limit people should be making descriptive folder and file names. That’s what I do and whenever I forget where something is I just go to a terminal and ‘locate *bowie*.mp3’ and instantaneously it spews a large list out at me.
How many years I’ve watched anti-MS zealots quack endlessly about how much Windows “sucks” and much more superior <insert your favorite OS here> is and how the whole world should switch…immediately.
Yes, ditch your investment in Windows and adopt an OS with single-digit market-share & adoption and hope for the best.
Nevermind if your using something that works (works well, by the way).
Mac OS is a nice OS but is not likely to blow Windows (current or future versions) out of the water anytime soon. Desktop linux distros are improving but *very* slowly…and still don’t shine for users (either corporate or home) just yet…and is evolving so slowly that they may be destined to spend their lifetimes catching up to commercial, closed-source distros…which has basically been the case since day one, so far.
I’ve been checking in on many linux distros for years now (since 98′)…such as; RedHat, SuSE, Gentoo, and others. One could say that as a desktop…things have improved considerably…but VERY slowly…and are still too buggy and tedious to manage.
After a year of using Gentoo on the desktop (and server) I’ve given up. This was the best distro I could find but was still left wanting. I’m back to Windows and quite happy (again).
I look forward to Longhorn and subsequent updates that were left out…I think Microsoft got it right the first time and continue to get it right…and competition is only going to force them to show the world how well they can shine. Products will improve and prices will go down…hooray for the market!
Yes, ditch your investment in Windows and adopt an OS with single-digit market-share & adoption and hope for the best.
The entire point of many of the comments here is that Longhorn will be released two years into the future. At this point no-one, not even Microsoft, knows what it’s feature set is. The dominant OS now, and for some time to come (3-5 years) is Windows XP. Windows XP is what Microsoft has to offer for the medium to long term.
I object to the comparison of Tiger to Longhorn, as if Longhorn were real. Longhorn is a series of press releases by the Microsoft PR department. Those of the press who treat it as real, do the public a great disservice.
For myself, the decision to stop using Windows had nothing to do with hope. It was based on the realities of two and a half years ago. That was when I determined that using Linux was less work than Windows. I had tried Linux for several years prior to that, but had always gone back. Two and a half years ago was when I decided Linux worked better than Windows.
I really hope that Microsoft salvages something from the disaster that has been Longhorn. As things currently stand, it will slowly catch on via installations in new machines, rather than any push to upgrade. I also doubt it’s really coming out in 2006.
So, only what is expected? These features are being used and enhanced elsewhere. This is not innovative.
sorry, but alpha level software in the cvs tree of gnome and kde does not count and being implemented and used.
also, BFS was good, but it was not as good as spotlight nor winFS…
oh, and who the hell said anything about innovation? some one asked what the point of desktop search is and I explained that it is more than desktop search and explained what it does that makes it better.
I think you will find that code released into the cvs tree actually does count.
It is a simply matter of downloading and compiling the stuff and away you go…
Thing is, that it is actually released as code… you can get it today, it is here, it works, it is legit…..
where is the microsoft code ? where can I get it TODAY ?
No offense but you are dense there homie
XAML? OS X have display PDF.
XAML is a UI development markup language, you are thinking of Metro.
Avalon? OS X has Quartz
Avalon is a development API. You are thinking of Aero here.
Granted many of these technologies are in Tiger in some form or another but at least attempt to know WTF you are talking about before posting. *shrugs*