I personally doubted that Windows 7 would make an actual appearance during the Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer joint interview up on stage at the D6 conference, but as it turns out, it has made an appearance. During an interview conducted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher about Ballmer and Gates’ past, present, and future, a short demo was given of Windows 7.The guys at D6 have put together a point-by-point transcript of the interview, and most likely, video will follow later. According to the transcript, Ballmer said we would get to see “just a snippet” of Windows 7. That snippet was presented by Microsoft’s Julie Larson-Green, who demonstrated Windows 7’s multitouch features. The transcript notes:
And there it is… Well, damn if it doesn’t look pretty slick. Clearly the Windows dev team’s been busy with more than just Vista service packs. Quick side note, Windows 7, like other Microsoft OS’s before it, seems to have borrowed a thing or two from Mac OS X. This time it’s Apple’s Dock [ed. note: it doesn’t have a dock.], which Microsoft appears to have borrowed. Multi-touch and a Dock. In Windows. Steve Jobs must be so proud.
To give you an idea as to how the multitouch features work in Windows 7, here’s a video of them – note that the new interface, with the dock, doesn’t appear yet to be part of this particular video – or it must be those three floating icons right before the piano application loads. Note that the demo is done on a Dell Latitude model which ships today.
Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7
According to Larson-Green, multitouch will be implemented system-wide, and according to Gates, it will herald in a new era of computing based on a hierarchy of input systems. “Today the machine is really set up for one person to sit at a keyboard,” the transcript reads, “Soon it will be set up for voice and gesture.” Windows 7 is about 18 months away.
Note that we’ll keep you updated on this one, and will let you know as soon as the videos of the actual interview, including the new Windows 7 interface, are posted online at the D6 website.
It is a scaled down surface system with the option of a dockbar OSx style?
Okay, now I’m curios, no, really I am.
MS has finally decided to make business sense with their products. They have so much technology in their research department, but they somehow manage to mis-market them.
Look at Google Desktop. MS was really shocked to see that happening. They already had the infrastructure built for years, but did not think about making a simple user interface. When they decided to do so, they were labeled “copycats”.
This will get interesting.
They were labelled “copycats” because they were copycats. Microsoft had never had a significant presence in the web search business, yet as soon as Google start to become dominant they scramble together to make a “me too” product. That’s what Microsoft do. As soon as they see somebody else doing something that is/they think will be successful, they copy it (or buy it if the company has not yet reached critical mass).
Windows -> Visi-On, Lisa, Mac, Xerox
DOS -> QDOS, CP/M
Windows NT -> OS/2*, UNIX to an extent
Word -> WordPerfect, etc.
Excel -> Lotus 123
Internet Explorer -> Netscape, Mosaic
etc, etc.
*Microsoft initially partnered with IBM on OS/2 development, so it is not a straight copy.
No actually MS had desktop search much before Google did. It’s been around at least since Windows 2000, maybe earlier. MS copied many things, but desktop search is not one of them. (As I said they lacked a usable GUI).
While we’re on the topic:
Windows -> MacOS. You’re right here. but MacOS is a copy of Xerox, too.
DOS -> QDOS (MS bought QDOS and renamed it MS-DOS, no copying here)
Windows NT -> OS/2 (NT was actually supposed to be OS2/NT, yet IBM failed to provide enough support on the project, and MS decided to go on their own. NT is (or used to be) able to run OS/2 programs natively).
Word -> WordPerfect, etc. Once again you’re right. However WordPerfect was in the same position of MS today: better product with less appealing GUI.
Excel -> Lotus 123. (This is a nice one. The first GUI spreadsheet (that I know) is Excel on Mac (ironically not windows). At that time (1985) Lotus was still text based.)
Internet Explorer -> Netscape, Mosaic (Nope. I was able to work with the Mosaic project manager during an internship. He told that the some of the mosaic team went on and founded Netscape, while some others joined MS to build Internet Explorer. Both are continuations, or in proper terms, forks of the original Mosaic code base).
I know MS has a very bad image, and they do many thing improperly. However much of the criticism is actually urban legends.
Edited 2008-05-28 10:36 UTC
So buying a company or product (QDOS) or hiring people who worked on one (Mosaic) isn’t literally “copying” but it’s still “coming late to the party” which I think was the thrust of the OPs post.
Now I don’t mind coming late to the party, as long as one improves what was there. But it doesn’t get one much street^H^H^H cubicle? cred
I agree. If you come late to the party, you had better have something damn nice. Microsoft never does.
The only “me too” product Microsoft has ever produced that I think was better than the original is C#. It is less wordy than Java, from whence it came.
Coming late to the party? That’s like not offering a multi-button mouse decades after every one else had one. Or perhaps it’s like incorporating a dock/taskbar many years after it became popular in other OSs/GUIs. Or maybe it’s like not offering GUI themeablilty while most other OSs/GUIs offer a plethora of themes.
DOS -> CP/M.
Internet Explorer -> Mosaic – MS bought/licensed the Mosaic source code from Spyglass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass%2C_Inc.).
And it’s actually more like:
Windows NT -> OS/2, Netware, Unix.
NT was actually supposed to be OS2/NT, yet IBM failed to provide enough support on the project, and MS decided to go on their own.
Source for this outrageous claim?
It’s well-documented on the Internet and elsewhere to the point that I thought it was common knowledge…until I saw your post.
You can start with the WikiPedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Development
When development started in November 1989, Windows NT was to be known as OS/2 3.0, the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM. … This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM and the collaboration ultimately fell apart. IBM continued OS/2 development alone while Microsoft continued work on the newly renamed Windows NT. …
(Sorry to further continue on this thread. I think both sides have always have something to say).
Odd that they couldn’t even finish Presentation Manager for OS/2 version 1.1 in early 1990, but they had already started on OS/2 version 3.0.
Is everything in a Wiki precisely true?
Maybe not everything, but this bit is. There are several book from this time period that cover the early development of NT. NT originally supported multiple “modes” or “skins” (forget the official term). The default was to be the OS/2 one, but mid-way through development, when Windwos 3.1 took off, MS split from IBM and development the Windows “face”.
When NT 3 shipped, it could run OS/2 programs, Windows 3.1 programs, Windows NT programs, and POSIX programs. It also ran on PPC, MIPS, Alpha, x86, and I think a few more.
It wasn’t until Windows 2000 that OS/2 support was dropped from NT.
that bit is correct, but the previous claim that “IBM lack of support” was the reason for the split is not true.
the wikipedia article shows the reason of the split from MS’ angle, but in reality, MS just saw that they would have much higher profit if they went on by themselves… and also is the cause of their office monopoly, after having sent all the competing companies to develop for OS/2, windows market was alone for themselves….
about all the other comments on MS copying, I would recommend to take a look at RoughlyDrafted.com… some interesting articles are:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/09/10/office-wars-3-how-microsof…
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/09/19/office-wars-4-microsofts-a…
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/18/sco-linux-and-microsoft-in…
and many more, look for yourselves
The basic agreement at the inception of the NT project was for Microsoft to make the Core OS and IBM to do the presentation layer and the surface API. So Microsoft did the kernel (which was called NT OS/2 in the early design manuals) and the filesystem and all that stuff. At the same time Windows 3.0 took off separately and IBM was pissed off about that.
The agreement fell apart at this time for separate reasons and Microsoft adopted Win32 as the main personality layer of NT rather than OS/2.
As another poster correctly realised, my point was that MS *always* come “late to the party”. Weather they licence/buy a product or simply copy it is irrelevent.
Some further notes:
I know that Microsoft has “always” had a search engine, however, their presence has never been all that significant and, until Google became dominant, they didn’t seem to care.
Windows did not just copy others at it’s inception, but also throughout its development. The Windows 95 explorer shell is so similar to the contemporary Mac OS (with a bit of NextSTEP thrown in) that it’s not even funny.
Yes, MS bought QDOS (like I said, they sometimes buy the competition rather than copy), but even QDOS was basically a CP/M clone.
I do not know the exact reasons behind the MS/IBM “split” over OS/2 and NT, but the fact remains that NT is somewhat “inspired” by OS/2. It also copies VMS, Netware and UNIX.
WordPerfect was not the only predecessor to Word, but probably the most popular.
Excel was certianly not the first GUI spreadsheet. Both Visi-On and the Apple Lisa included a spreadsheet in 1983. However, 123 was certainly the most popular spreadsheet before Excel.
The situation with Mosaic, IE and Netscape is complicated, but Microsoft still came *very* late to the party (“The Internet? We are not interested in it” — Bill Gates, 1993 (may be apocryphal)).
NEXTSTEP…
sorry…
Dude don’t confuse Microsoft’s UI for grep with Google Desktop.
Ah, OSNews – where every old meme is new again.
Exactly what did Windows inherit that was originated in the Lisa and Mac GUIs?
Windows eventually did use a trash can (questionable value) and tried to hide the directory mapping like the Mac (a huge usability mistake for both Windows and Mac), but I can’t think of one other GUI item originated by Apple that is used in any version of Windows. Apple actually has not innovated much of anything.
However, I can think of one very useful and significant item that originated in Windows and that was eventually picked-up in most GUIs — the taskbar/dock (1985): http://toastytech.com/guis/bigw101.gif
Edited 2008-05-29 04:31 UTC
“Consider this: Instead of using one of today’s more popular compact devices to get directions to where you’re going, why not use a device the size of a small car?”
When Apple introduced a dock, they alienated a lot of fans, but their biggest fanbois decided to love it.
Microsoft’s platform has a different sort of fanboi, who loves things the way they currently are, and hates change. Having a “dock” is simply laughable, because Microsoft fans will HATE it!
“The future is here, and it’s not an iPhone; it’s a big-ass table.”
Apple was not first to introduce a “dock.” Not by a longshot.
Is this sarcasm? It sounds more like a description of dogmatic Mac fanboys.
More sarcasm? You do realize that the taskbar/dock first appeared in Windows in 1985?
The whole multitouch thing is a conversation piece, or maybe useful on an e-table at a bar (one that you don’t have to clean after you leave), but I just don’t see much benefit on my desktop or laptop screen. I’m too lazy to be reaching up there all the time, and then cleaning the smudges off of it.
I think I’d rather have a multi-wheel mouse, or maybe a couple trackballs on the sides or bottom of the keyboard to move and zoom my pics.
Imagine, if you will, replacing the keyboard in the laptop with a multi-touch interface, providing a dynamic input device.
Done properly, this would give Microsoft one heck of an innovation lead ( though the idea may be originating here, now, with me 🙂 ).
It would be one heck of a hurdle for competitors as well… y’know the lack of an actual keyboard.
–The loon
A computer without a keyboard is essentially useless. Speech recognition is not there yet, and touch sensitive panels do not give tactile feedback for fast touch typists.
that’s not always the case. Some mobile devices vibrate slightly to being tactile feedback to touch sensitive buttons while I’ve seen other devices which have a gel like touch-screen so users have the sensation of button presses
Edited 2008-05-28 15:50 UTC
Mushy gel, vibrating screens? uh.. That doesn’t even come close to 1/4″ travel and a click of an actual button.
I’ve tried multiple types of keyboards, and I can’t stand ones that don’t offer real tactile feedback.
even the super thin keyboards with almost no travel drive me insane.
As if the preview on the main page wasn’t racy enough, I click on the “recent comments” entry for this post and find references to mushy gel, vibrating objects, and only 1/4″ of travel.
If the incompatibility involves size, I have plenty of email contacts I can forward who claim they can help. 😉
*wipes tear away*
ok, that was the first comment in a long time to actually crack me up. Thanks, I just got out of a mindless meeting
I needed that…
With the state of current ( read: bleeding-edge) technology, it is possible to create the sensation of a standard keyboard using a flexible gel-filled display.
In fact we can even dynamically alter the perceptive feel of travel, resistance, and texture. Not sure if it has been actually implemented in any given product as of yet, but the technology is there.
I envision a dynamic task-re-orienting multi-touch interface which will replace keyboards and mice in the future ( read 5-10 years, sooner if certain people read my posts 🙂 ). The display will modify itself with each application one is using, and with many various tasks within any given application.
Looking at where you type will become common, though, which has its own ramifications.
Pressurized gel in a matrix will enable programmability via a 3D matrix.
_input_grid_pixel
{color, pressure, gradient_to_neighbors, pressure_response};
color is obvious, pressure states how much pressure to
apply to given pixel grid gel( 0 to 1 ), gradient_to_neighbors is utilized to normalize pressure resolutions with display resolutions, and pressure_response determines the response characteristics for tactile simulation.
You will have one inflatable gel section per every X pixel FORMATION ( squares aren’t best here ), and each will respond based upon software parameters with specialized hardware doing the heavy-lifting.
It may also be possible, with current technology, to provide pulse-feedback, though reliability must be factored with extra consideration due to the rather immature nature of certain nano-technologies which would be required for this to work properly.
Lastly, the topmost layers would be a nano-coating capable of keeping the surface clean and clear, while also being able to provide feedback upon input. I.E. the coating would “sense, tense, and rinse.”
Hmm.. only if I had about $30 million…
–The loon
I can just imagine the job-related injuries that something like that would cause. I already have enough pain in my arms and shoulders from simply using a mouse and keyboard. If I’m reaching out to fiddle with my screen all the time…
Screw that!
Yes, but we’ll soon have digitizer-like panels below our keyboards (or use the touchpad on laptops)
I don’t know if I’m normal but I’m fairly anal about how spotless my monitor is. Maybe it’s a form of OCD. Maybe I’m just weird. But the thought of having finger smudges all over my screen is something I cannot even bear thinking about.
I do not see the point of touch screen interfaces that accomplish the same tasks where a mouse or a keyboard will be sufficient.
You gotta use more imagination.
Think white boards, schools, presentations, schedule displays, outage boards, etc.
With multi-touch, multiple students can be writing on the board at the same time (happens all the time in the classroom).
If you haven’t used a SmartBoard to train, to get training, or for presentations, then you won’t get this. In addition to those uses, I’ve used SmartBoards to trace/ highlight schematics/ drawings with teams. I saw a Smartboard in a training class in 2001. I loved them enough to convince my boss to get me one to conduct training. My wife, an elementary teacher, loved them immediately too as did her coworkers when I showed them mine. Now they are cropping up in university/ college classrooms as well as better-off primary/ secondary schools.
Instead of being a 3rd party app, it is now part of the platform allowing a broader range of applications to benefit.
More practically – I wouldn’t replace my home monitors any time soon.
They haven’t really revealed anything that would place this as anything except XP +2… more of the same. They brag on stage how they could not get paid by customers for a whole year… they have no concept of competition, no concept of customer service beyond their own agenda.
Good news for Linux/Mac fans as this was basically “reassurance” from Bill that the company is “safe” in Steve’s hands. In short, shortsighted attempts to gain marketshare like the recent eeePC situation will continue to happen. The door is wide open. Microsoft is continuing down the path of throwing money at the problem rather than fixing their company. Good news all around for those willing to take money in their attempts to buy their way out of trouble the next 3 years. The economy can use the extra Billions!!
So… what’s new here? They’ve showed how you could scale and move photos around, not unlike the iPhone. Well… okay. But even the damn iPhone can do it smoothly, but you do it on Windows on a notebook and suddenly the movements are all jerky and don’t really follow your fingers? The second part is how they rotate the globe. I just fail to see how that relates to Windows at all. I mean, any Windows dev could implement that in about a month. Certainly you’d expect more from a larger corporation.
Forgetting for a moment that whatever they’ve cobbled together for the show fails to impress they haven’t really shown the key components of the OS. I guess users could care less if Windows has the same old interface that’s married to a mouse/keyboard input and a few apps that allow you to mess up your display with fingers.
As much as i despise Microsoft (and consequently – not using a single one of its products, not even emulated) what they are showing could be taken directly from one of the example apps of Jeff Hans work as they where running on Linux and Windows *years* before the iPhone, so *pleeeeaasse* no more iPhone here and iPhone there comments.
And this is being written on an Mac, by an Mac user who tries to get all his friends to switch.
The reason everyone says “iPhone” is because, like the Mac, it was the first to bring it to the market at large. Apple didn’t invent the GUI (actually, neither did Xerox, they grabbed the idea from Douglas Engelbart I believe, who was into this stuff back in the early 60’s – there are a series of videos showing him demoing what they had back then, brilliant to watch))
It turns out Jeff Han didn’t invent this either (as he admits), multi-touch has been around since the 80’s (maybe earlier), but he has certainly done a lot of cool stuff with it.
Even MS has demo’d stuff back before the iPhone came out too. Actually, if Apple released this back 1 year ago, and they had been working on the iPhone for 2 years, then Apple must have been into multi-touch since at least 2006 if not before…
Again, not the first, but the first to make it mainstream…
Agreed. You’d think the Auto Industry would have grown if we stopped after the first company to release one demanded rights to all future cars were copying the idea?
of the new features is going to be dropped first ?
ohh, microsoft fanboys modding me down
okay, im kidding… ALL of the features are going to be implemented okay ? Just as microsoft does every time
thats why i miss the way u could remove everything you didn’t need before it reached the harddisk, you used to get checkboxes with the OS why did they remove them?
To make things “easier” for the “consumer”.
I don’t know what to say. After Vista, Aero, the problems of half-baked products, too much dependencies, slow bloatful computing eating too much computing resources, they just continue this evil path by introducing even more bload, resource hogging, useless, unproven user interface features. It will be even worse than Vista.
Yes, the NT kernel is very good, yes, I like NTFS, but everything else should get a serious overhaul. I believe Windows has a good foundation. But the userland applications have too many interdependencies, are too bloated, and many of us just want a fast, responsive computer and not necessarily a bling bling computer. Fast, reliable and responsive: they should learn THAT from OS X, and not just the dock.
As much as I love UNIX, I also want Microsoft’s product to be successful; not because I’m going to use it, but it would be nice for them to be a trend setter, an example of what is possible rather than the situation there is with Windows.
With that being said, if Windows 7 does come out, address all the short comings of Windows Vista, and Office 14 really pushes the envelop with integration – its going to be tempting for this *NIX head to maybe consider Windows.
Then again, considering it will be atleast another 3 years before we see it, alot of things can change between now and then.
Well, there’s nothing wrong with multitouch as long as they don’t overdo it and require it to configure the screen resolution. It has been clear for some time now that they would be doing something with multitouch.
I just hope they don’t screw even more with the interface. I for one dislike the likes of KDE 4 and MacOS X. However, if Windows is to be used mainly with touchscreens as opposed to touchpads and keyboard, sucky interfaces might be the only way people will be able to hit a button with their fat fingers. And Microsoft testers are not known by their good taste *cough* Bob *cough* Luna *cough* Clippy *cough* Aero *cough*, I need some codeine.
Windows Vista does some things very well technologically, most of them copied over from MacOS X. I hope they keep that and destroy the old windowing system residues and bomb the ASCII WinAPI at least.
Oh, and stop whining about the kernel. It is as good as it needs to be and has nothing to do with any misfeature of Windows. Kernels mean nothing today. The major ones are all similar in features and performance and there is very little room for improvement. GNU/NT and BSD/NT wouldn’t differ much from GNU/Solaris or BSD/Mach. The battlefield is now in the I/O interfaces, and both Windows and MacOS X have a new windowing system from the 2000s now as opposed to something that has been grown since the 70s. Unixers will need to keep their good old hydroponic magic.
As for the toolkits, .NET is yet to show any advantage over Cocoa, QT or GTK, but if Microsoft officially endorses it and states it will be the only platform supported at all in Windows 8 there are already enough developers ready to replace the old ones that made Windows into the crappy platform that it is with their C++ mishaps.
Here we go again …
You’re partly right. Win32 developers will be quite happy to jump ship to a better development choice, should that opportunity every arise. You are mistaken if you think that C++ developers will jumpship to .NET just because Microsoft makes it the preferred development platform. In many respects, .NET already *is* the development platform that Microsoft pushes. See how VC++ is pushed? As a systems development tool and not an application development one. See how much work goes into making C# GUI development competitive then compare that with how MFC is still left in the late 90s.
MS stopped pushing C++ as a client development language when .NET was introduced. The fact that the majority of client side applications are still written in C++ attests to the failure of this effort. To understand why it fails, you need to ask what developers gain by moving to C#/.NET. You gain a slightly safer language, a more modern class library, but then you lose performance. At this point you can point to the numerous microbenchmarks that show C# equaling or surpassing C++ in speed. Nevertheless, at the end of the day users do not want an application that runs slightly slower, consumes 2x – 3x more memory just to provide exactly the same functionality as what they previously had.
C++ is not _that_ bad. Sure, it could be more newbie friendly but the flexibility and the performance make it more than worthwhile. Blaming Windows failings on C++ is disingenius at best. The majority of the OS itself is written in C, and all of its competitors apart from Apple use either C or C++.
MS will never remove existing non-managed APIs in favor of managed ones. Doing so will force developers to rewrite their code, and what’s to stop them from going down the Qt route? They get to keep their existing C++ code and they get portability on top of it. Such a move would be detrimental to Microsoft.
Well, maybe. But I believe that once Windows 3.11/9x API functions are removed from Windows, C++ developer population will slump. Experience tells me that most Windows apps are developed against deprecated APIs and buggy behavior even nowadays. And they suck. And it sucks that Microsoft keeps a buggy system to please crappy developers.
somehow the embed video doesn’t load here… neither in another site with this same embed video too…
…somehow, I did an auto-login to a site I don’t want to login to when going to the video’s site… somehow, it didn’t work there too… not also with Safari (that the site gave me a non-supported message and directed me to the front page then, instead of the one I asked for… and not after pasting the url again…)… and didn’t work also in Internet Explorer… Not sure why, but everything, expect the video I want to see, loads nicely…
…it must be a new trend…
that I will kill anybody putting their dirty fingers on my screen
I’m not kidding.
I’m anal enough about my cellphones screen getting dirty. I wipe it off after every use. I can’t imagine a dirty computer screen…
Windows 7 does not have a dock. Confirmed by a Microsoft employee: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=406746#406746
Wow I really like the rubber band effect when you scroll pass the end of a list. Wait a min, where have I seen this? Oh yeah, the iPhone!
but the iphone is a small device. microsoft is the first to make sense out of it for laptop sized computers and Apple is probably kicking themselves for not thinking broadly enough.
MS announcing features years before shipping is totally irrelevant: Either the release is late or the feature will be cut or every other OS has a better implementation of said feature by then because MS just don’t get fundamental concepts like ‘less is more’, ‘KISS’ and ‘details matter’.
That however will not prevent OS News from linking / writting boring articles on the level of ‘Windows 7 trash comes now with IntelliSmell(TM)’..
2 Points
1) The “three floating icons” are just shortcuts to the demo apps on the desktop
2) I think the dock references are because of the look of the taskbar. Look at the 2nd screen shot (of the pciture sorting demo) in Engadget’s article at http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/27/live-from-d-gates-and-ballmer-de…
Note the position of the start orb (different from that of a double height taskbar in Vista), the extra transparency in the main taskbar as opposed to the start button and tray area, and the document icon look to the two icons next to the start menu.
when you’ve broken your right index finger at the end joint like i have, touch screens are painful to use everyday.
i worked at a petrol station years ago with touch screens and i had to force myself to use my left hand or middle finger as the pain from tapping a screen was unbearable when i had to do it 40hrs a week.
touch is for people in movies and trains right now. maybe by 2010 there will be a bigger push towards it as MS advertises it more.
Just after I got done posting on Slashdot about how Windows 95 marked the beginning of a tradition of poorly copying Mac OS, I find out Windows 7 basically has a dock and multitouch. Don’t Apple have a patent on Multitouch? Honestly, I think a multitouch patent is a load of crap, since prior art obviously exists in finger-painting, but all kinds of crazy patents hold up in court.
Edited 2008-05-29 01:03 UTC
It’s proof of concept stuff, people. Nothing to see here. If any of that makes it into Gold, it’ll be as useless as Flip 3D and Movie Maker.
Of course, now I’ll have some visual response to picking my nose and wiping it on someone’s touchscreen.