“With Windows Server 2003 behind us, it’s time to turn our attention to the more exciting world of desktop computing, where Microsoft is slowly plowing through pre-beta milestones of Longhorn, it’s follow-up to Windows XP. Due in late 2004 or early 2005, Windows Longhorn will offer sweeping changes over its predecessors and be the most significant release of Microsoft’s desktop operating system since Windows 95. For developers, consumers, and business users alike, Longhorn is going to be huge.” Read the article at WinSuperSite.
Longhorn Alpha Preview 3: Build 4015
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The new sidebar and digital rights management looks awesome. Looks like my predictions were always right – Linux on the desktop is a non-starter. I look forward to Windows XP Longhorn.
Um, please tell me you’re being sarcastic…
What does look cool is the new graphics interface. Finally, Quartz “Extreme” done properly, with actual drawing hardware accelerated instead of just compositing. Now let’s see which comes out first, E17 or LongHorn
Isn’t WindowsXP already more than adequate? If you need database style filesystem to search for your files then you are totally disorganized. Yeah the interface is nice, but at some point you have to control your technolust.
The beauty of the concept of a database file system is that you can do things like store emails and music anywhere, and be able to search them dynamically for anywhere.
For example, I do a search for “Barenaked Ladies” – I find all my confirmation emails for BNL tickets, I find mp3’s of their performances, and I find all kinds of nifty jpg’s.
Quite useful.
Library views are logical folders in the new Windows that display culled search results of predefined searches. For example, one library would be of all the pictures anywhere on your disk. I believe this is dumbing down computers and making them less powerful. I think it’s a graphical means of displaying an inherently textual language: that of searching and requirement-specifying. In the DOS filename model, such a textual language is searching by extension with wildcards.
There are so many powerful ways of specifying search criteria, including relational databases with the SQL language, filenames with regular expression searching, or XML with XSLT, to name a few.
Perhaps it is hoped that this will be easier to learn, since I think it’s obvious that it’s clumsier to use than the above methods.
I’d like to ask people in this forum, do you think these graphical premade library categories are easier or harder to learn than another, more textual, customizable search method?
That’s the exact same thing I heard about Win2K & WinXP…
😉
The question is if these UI changes are as sweeping as they appear what does that mean for the average user and the (re)learning curve? I guess for new users and experienced computer users the changes are fairly digestible. For home users who already own a computer OR the average office worker the changes can be much more problematic. The real question is based on the changes and the upgrade costs is the TCO really worth it?
Aren’t we experiencing this issue now with the migration (or lack thereof) to XP?
I am not advocating that companies stop innovating or progressing just thinking some additional consistency between versions might be a good thing.
I’m still happily chewing through Win2K and my clients Win2K, NT4 & Win98..
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds..”
How much easier can computers really get?
Didn’t Apple master this sometime ago? New features are held out with the promise of making computing even more intuitive but there will always be some learning curve. Will Longhorn really be that much easier to use or will it just be different. Is what we are seeing here just
some sort of feature “churning” to make people think there is a reason to upgrade?
It seems to me most of the new features are about
tying Server to Longhorn ( which I have no doubt MS will
abuse),Palladium, and DRM. It’a all about extending
Microsoft’s reach and locking in the customer.
I have to wonder what kind of products MS would have if
they put their energy into improving their products
rather than designing them to maintain their monopoly.
Save yourself money and stick with your current Windows
or switch to Linux.
I want to play with it but I don’t have a spare pc to risk it on and I am not sure I trust it on my main one. Oh well. I really like to play with things and this looks as fun as anything.
I do think it still looks too blue for me. Don’t get me wrong, blue is great, it is easy on the eyes and looks real nice, but when everything is blue it just loses something.
“Don’t get me wrong, blue is great, it is easy on the eyes and looks real nice, but when everything is blue it just loses something.”
You can buy Longhorn Plus! for $30.00 and make it look like a baseball game :
I think that the new longhorn features are good for the newbie who dosent realize that there is actually a directory structure, and when asked where he saved a document he he responds “in word”, but for people who actually know what they are doing in Windows, MacOS, or DOS, all these new features are not all that nessesary. Plus, since when has hiding the directory structure from a novice ever been a good idea? If a person does not know the internals of thier system, they are utterly hopeless when it comes to being able to diagnose and solve a problem.
Also I think that the WFP is also a little excessive. Since when was notepad a required component of Windows that might cause it to crash? Never since I know. It is just a text editor for god sakes. When I replaced notepad with WinVi in Windows XP, I got the standard corrupt file error. I find this stupid. I had to diable WFP just to replace a text editor.
If I ever have childern, they are going to start out on Windows For Workgroups 3.11 on DOS 6.20 just like I did. Granted, I will propably install Calmira, Office 4.3, and Win32s for more smooth UI than Program manager, have (some) compatibiltiy, and still remain functional. Better than I had. Program Manager, Write, and no Win32s.
Windows 3.1 does have many advantages that modern versions of windows do not. With Windows 3.1, you can tweak the settings to your liking very easily with nothing but notepad and some patence, and since WFP does not exist, you can replace any file with any you see fit. You can customize the apperance, and solve problems with little effort by some digging around. It also has none of this hand-holding that modern versions of windows do, so if you screw up, you might have to re-install windows, or spend an hour or two getting it to work again.
Example: Edit WIN.COM to carry a larger *.rle than 49kb, and windows will not be able to load, try and fix it without installing windows again. It can be done. (hint: c:windowssystemwin386.exe).
I still keep a Windows 3.1 partition around for fun, it is the most customizable OS you can ever get without making the jump to *nix. applications are a pain in the ass to remove from the installation manually, but with determination, it can be done. The registry editor does have drawbacks, but there are ways around it. Program Manager sucks, but it can be replaced. The best part about Windows 3.1 is that most virii for it are now long extinct, and new ones are no longer made for it due to lack of user base. Windows 3.1 is the best version of windows ever, besides Windows 2000 and NT 3.51.
Can you actually do anything useful with the sidebar? If not, it’ll probably be the first thing to go, and hopefully we can turn the other crap off too and get back to a Win2k interface
And where are all the “Hey, this looks like BeOS/Aqua/Quarts/KDE/QNX/etc’ posts we always get when someone posts longhorn screenshots ?
I’m actually quite excited that directory structures are getting killed. I just never liked them. Finding a place for each item and then remembering where I put it doesn’t work in my room, why should it work on my computer.
I want something more powerful. I want to tell the computer “show me my audio files. No wait, that’s too much. Show me only classical audio. Thank you.” or “show me this document about frogs I worked on yesterday”. Not search through endless lists of files in huge folders scattered over three different places.
We can already see the first steps with applications like RhythmBox which allows you to access your music independant from your directory structure. Or the bookmark handling in Epiphany which is a lot more powerful than traditional bookmark hirachies (which were never useful too me).
I’m not a “newbie” really but I don’t want to click though endless bookmark folders to get what I want, I just want to write (or click if you want to) “news gnome” (or “news gn” rather) and get all my bookmarked GNOME newssites. That’s just so much more efficient and it makes bookmarking a website a non-brainer.
There is still a lot we can do to make desktop operating systems more powerful and we shouldn’t just trashtalk every new invention as “dumbing down” the computer.
I don’t like the sidebar, takes too much space. It will indeed the first to go, or to at least set to “autohide”. And I don’t like that blue either. I am confident that MS will change the final looks of Longhorn, but the way it looks now is really crappy. Looks like an alpha… Oh, wait, it is an alpha.
Stacks? Oh you mean Piles…Apple’s patent….sweet
This File-System is nothing new. It has been on my desktops for YEARS (not like two or three, but like five).
Now, being an extreme anti-M$ zealot, I have to admit that I am not actually all that disgusted that Microsoft is using this type of file system. Considering the data needed to be stored is absolutely IDEAL for entry into a database(name, size, attribute1, attribute2), but I am extremely upset, though not surprised, that Microsoft claims this is a brand-new thing.
Well, it ain’t. Linux did it before Microsoft (though not widely spread use). BeOS did it before Linux. Novell or Cisco did it before BeOS. A guy back in the 1970s did it before them. And a really cool dude came up with the idea forty years prior. Not new, just complex to maintain.
–The loon
actually,
BeOS already had a db like filesystem.
as i understand it, filenames and attributes are stored in a table at the beginning of the partition, together with the custom attributes, and a pointer to where the data is stored on disk.
searching through filenames and custom attributes is blazingly fast, as your search is really just a select statement.
the custom attributes allow you to put ascii or binary tags to a files, like project_leader=”interfacer”.
whatever the argument, for me BeOS is still the best os ever. end of discussion.
-windows? too intrusive + i cannot modify it.
-osX? looks great, but the hardware is too expensive.
-linux distro xxx? too much of a mess, and be serious, do i really need vt100 connectivity?
i am a developer who programs libraries and embedded software. give me true multithreading and high performance/low cruft systems any day.
and yes, i am programming for the OpenBeOS.
int.
>This File-System is nothing new. It has been on my desktops for YEARS
Looncraz cut the BeOS zealotry crap, please. The database fs from MS is not the same as BeOS’. BeFS is database-like (flat database), NOT database-based as MS’s is. They don’t do the same thing, MS’s works completely different and it serves different purposes, other than having your email in filefs format.
>Now, being an extreme anti-M$ zealot,
It shows.
>Microsoft claims this is a brand-new thing.
They way THEY do it, IS different than BeOS’. It is more close to ideas to Reiser4’s ideas than to BeOS. Stop comparing different things. BeOS had a real db fs up to 1997, when they decided to take it out because they couldn’t make it work well, so they created BFS at that point, which again, IS NOT database-base.
>BeOS already had a db like filesystem.
Read above comment. It is a db-like system, not a db-based one. It does NOT serve the same purposes. MS wants to have statistics and what not out of this system, to see for example, how many times a file was launched, and by whom. BeOS’ fs was nothing like that. It was a flat db-like system that had attributes.
Apple and oranges.
Hey, doesn’t that login look alot like OS X 🙂
Another ripoff by Microsoft 🙂
j/k but they do seriously look very, very similar
================
Mac Enthusiast
>BeOS already had a db like filesystem.
If I’m not mistaken, he didn’t say its a db filesystem, since he inserted the word “like”
BeFS is a little less database-based now, actually. It was sitting on a real database, but the advantages of this were far overwhelmed by the complexity.
BFS has an endless number of attributes, each which can store any kind of data. I believe it was Oracle who made a true data base file system. And Be did too, as you stated.
The only thing you would need to do to BeOS / Zeta to log statistics would be to write them. No changes to the file system needed. Microsoft is starting with an existing database because it is much more easy to develop a new product that simply calls another (or even not-so-simply) program.
oBFS compiles to just 80kb or so without optimzation, last I checked. I will promise that the M$ solution is far bulkier, more complex, and with little to no advantage (maybe single-threaded performance) over o/BFS.
So, you say that Microsoft is doing it a new way? Exactly how is that? I do believe Microsoft is doing the right thing, it just isn’t as new a thing as they claim.
–The loon
Computer Tech, Soft Engineer, Business Owner, OS Developer, Author(Poetry), Artist(Abstract, Inversion, CAD), Assistant Plumber, Framer, Heavy Equipment Operator(years ago, now), Certified Obsessive Compulsive (though I intentionally add changes in my behaviour to break routines…Dr.’s orders)
And probably some other things…
WTH is with this? http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/4015_068.png
they seem to make default folders bigger with every release.
I really don’t see any kind of purpose for this sidebar thing. Slideshow? Analog clock? Bah. Much better done with independent or at least less space-hogging apps. The Quick Launch was much better when it was in the Taskbar. Search, okay, granted, but there’s too much real estate taken up by useless stuff.
At this rate you’ll need a 1280×1024 resolution to get any respectable desktop space.
The quote is actually:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
The quote is by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Searching for “einstien foolish consistency” on Google turns up, as the first link, an OSNews post in which I both mistakenly attribute the quote to Einstein state it inaccurately.
i guess you are iliterate and just like looking at pictures huh?
he is clearly showing that you can scale the size of icons to which he states…
“Eventually, we’ll be able to scale icons more elegantly.”
and if you actually look at the screenshot he has it scaled to almost as big as it can get.
“iliterate”…ops…i’m not illiterate, I just can’t spell
“What does look cool is the new graphics interface. Finally, Quartz “Extreme” done properly, with actual drawing hardware accelerated instead of just compositing.”
I bet Apple gets there before MS does. It is rumored that the next OS X will utilize more of the graphics cards, maybe delivering exactly what you speak of.
As far as the real interface, I don’t see anything new there. If MS were really inovating, they would realize that Explorer as a browser for files sucks and would start over with a real spacial system.
it’s all blue! how can i find the difference between the blue-screen-of-death and the running system?
MS building their files system ontop of SQL if I’m not mistaken. Gee, like most other things in mainstream computing, more crap to get in the way. I’ll stick to BeOS FS and Linux journelled file systems thanks. The idea great, the implementation is undoubtedly going to be crap but who knows, maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Hey, maybe Apple can outdo MS and make a really slow and bloated database like file system to match their really slow hardware? Nothing like competition.
To expand on your comment:
There was an inode table at the front of the disk, just like in every *NIX filesystem since System 7. In each inode there was a few things:
– Built-in attributes like timestamp, size, etc.
– Pointers to the actual disk blocks with the file data.
– A small data buffer (of 700-3000 bytes) containing any attributes that would fit.
– A pointer to a hidden directory that containied files representing the other attributes.
The system also maintained 3 indexes, for name, size, and creation time. Everytime one changed, the appropriate index would be updated.
Now, this is rather different from a real database. First of all, in a real database, all attributes would be indexed. In BeOS, searching a non-indexed attribute involved a linear search through the inode table, or in many cases the entire directory tree.
The FS difference are all early hype!!!
When the final version comes out, it will be database-like and not DATABASE FS. Just wait and see.
Why? Because you’ve said it?
MS apparently has such an FS in the works/design since 1993, from their research dpt. See an earlier story.
well heres some eye candy or upcoming and already existing developments for kde:
http://slicker.sourceforge.net/screen-mockups.php
this is just mockups.. its what slicker for kde will look like eventually (hopefully, replacement of kicker) sure does beat that taskbar thing of win long horn.
also check here:
http://slicker.sourceforge.net/compare.php
comparing to all other major desktops
and finally here whats so far been done with slicker:
http://slicker.sourceforge.net/screen-real.php
next meet super karamba: ( karamba was originally based on a windows software called samurize . super karamba has extended karamba and added in python scripting so now u can animate everything auto hide icon zooming etc..
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file=5810-1.jpg
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file=5862-2.png
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file=5851-2.png
this again can be used as a kicker replacement. as well as anything else u wanna do.
what about scaling icons. well kde 3.1 supported svg,
http://www.vnet.ndirect.co.uk/svgkde1.png
http://www.vnet.ndirect.co.uk/svgkde2.png
this is all stuff that is already available / will be available within the end of the year.
and its now 2003.. what will be available by 2005 is any ones guess. but one things for sure development certainly isnt static.
as long as people have creative ideas youll see more creative developments as more and more graphics users turn to linux the more eye candy that will be available.
I have been taking a closer look at the screenies. Does the login screen look really tacky to anyone else? I mean seriously, it looks totally trailer park. Maybe MS will do the right thing and make it themable out of the box. Right now it is ridiculous.
I’m always amazed at the shear stupidity and ignorance of people on the internet. Do you people know what the fcuk an alpha is? Well Longhorn is pre alpha. This means that what has been leaked is nothing more than technology expiriments, not even technology demonstrations. By the time Longhorn goes beta a lot will have changed and the direction Longhorn is taking will become more evident. The UI will look different than it does (Luna looked quite a bit different before XP was released) and the sidebar will either become more functional or it will be dropped from the OS. To judge Longhorn by these leaks is shear stupidity and to think the OS will not change by the time it’s released late 2004/ early 2005 is ignorance at its greatest.
Don’t forget the XFree, xwin.org, and Enlightenment guys. By the time Longhorn comes out, I have a feeling I will have been running a fully OpenGL accelerated KDE 4.0 desktop for several months already.
I’m always amazed at the shear stupidity and ignorance of people on the internet. Do you people know what the fcuk an alpha is? Well Longhorn is pre alpha.
And Microsoft is a post monopoly!
I am glad to hear that MS is ditching the current lame, ugly, outmoded graphics system in Windows. Even most PC diehards will acknowledge apple has windows beat big time right now with Quartz. Too bad it will take 2 more years, we hope.
As for those folders that find your files, that’s nice. I would like apple to add folders that have pre-defined “searches” built into them – that’s a nice thing to have.
But the utility of these folders is not much better than the current My Pictures or My Music folders – i.e, practically nill. Yes, you don’t have to know where to put pictures or mp3s with these new smart folders, but you can’t do anything with them. Compare this to iPhoto or iMusic. For those, you can do everything right from the organizing interface. The best thing for photos now on the PC is Picasa, or maybe the Adobe product (you know, the inevitable PC ripoffs of apple’s brilliant innovations). So how does the new directory-less, but still impotent Pictures folder add anything to these iPhoto-like products?
If you want innovation, go with Apple. If you want commodity hardware, go with Linux. What does windows add, except cost?
Honestly, you hear about Redhat and how they spent $10m on R&D for the phoebe series and it becomes immediately obvious where this money went upon using the product. I’ve never used longhorn but I can say that lots of these new features appear to be reinventing the wheel. Do we really need a sidebar? How about making the windows taskbar more customisable with applets, pull off menues, drawers and floating panels?
Could not agree more. kde 4 will be awesome. and even though nothing is being done yet at xwin.org its just a gathering before the explosive rework on xfree86 begins, i can smell the change and it smells mighty fine. then theres enlightenment e17 completely opengl rendered desktop, and that will be done soon enough then we hav gnome 2.2 probably will be on gnome 3.. and they always end up with awesome ideas. the collaboration as well as healthy coperation between both gnome and kde which is getting tighter the fact that they are both having more discussions with xwin/xfree86 etc to say what they need from it.
me Re: Grow the fcuk up people, true that it is an alpha and things could and will change rapidly for it.
by 2005, longhorn will probably have some new corny name like windows xtc, or some crap and promise the users absolute and utter ecstacy upon it loading up.. but probably will be botched like all of their products.
if they release too good a product then whos gonna want to upgrade to the next “better one” (whatever that will be called) ?, and if its lousy they will loose market share its hard being at the top and only way to keep yourself at top is by vendor lock in and crap like palladium. Also even harder when you have nothing new to offer. what i was trying to show in my post is basically what you will see in windows longhorn by final is what is already available. will this new file system really be that revolutionary ? as many have already pointed out the technology that they will claim is a brand new innovation ( much like they claimed win95 was the “first true 32 bit multitasking multi user environment”) has been around for a while and will the extra features not just end up bloating it and causing slow downs. after all the slowest vital component in computers currently are hard disks.
lets not forget http://www.reiserfs.org/
as eugenia herself said :-
“It is more close to ideas to Reiser4’s ideas than to BeOS”
The future looks bright, the future looks tux driven 😀
Thought this Register article from 2002 might make interesting reading.
“Windows on a database – sliced and diced by BeOS vets”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24648.html
>it’s all blue! how can i find the difference between the blue-screen-of-death and the running system?
The BSOD is intuitive.
When Whistler alphas were out, the whole world says that DRM would be stuffed down our throats. We all can’t use MP3 players, our MP3 collection becomes null and void, and the likes. Instead now….?
Why do people judge a feature nobody outside Microsoft have tried and wasn’t given a NDA to sign? (namely Palladium)
Why do you suggest iApps? So that a thousand other companies can open litigation with Microsoft and you can bash their monopolitic ways here (besides “cloning Apple’s innovation”)? And it doesn’t mean that iApps is the best approach there can be – give Microsoft a chance to prove themselves. Who knows, some day in the future, we would be arguing about whether Apple should copy Microsoft or not. I don’t know.
Besides, from what I have read, Longhorn isn’t Quartz. Quartz is largely based on Postscript/PDF, while Longhorn is based on the same whole thing. The difference being that it uses Direct3D for rendering of effects (moving windows, animation, etc.) which hardly is a new idea.
If Microsoft were to use something like Quartz, it would mean binary compatiblity broken worser to the effect of Windows 2003. And if we use the backlash against Windows 2003, I don’t think Microsoft fancies having their second biggest cash cow risk all that for some technical merit (rather a marketing one).
and..
If you want innovation, go with Apple. If you want commodity hardware, go with Linux. What does windows add, except cost?
Hardly anyone wants innovation plain and raw. They want something that can finish their work better/faster. Does Apple do that for majority of the market? And as for Linux, even *I* can’t feel as productive on it as I do on Windows. Sure, get all my apps to run on Linux, I would be happier – but that’s because I’m all too used to Linux.
This is a (almost) capitalistic world. Live with it.
I don’t know how trustworthy this is, but I saw an MS ad in the Economist the other day. It was railing against the Consumer Broadband Promotion Act (something like that…whatever it’s called), which is what was to be the basis for mandatory DRM! So perhaps they have changed their stance on the whole thing?
In the article :
“In other words, the visual display in Longhorn will be awesome, simply awesome.”
This is exactly what MacOsX is doing since 2000, like 4-5 years before Longhorn will be available. They use a same compositing process, and Osx keep the advantage of be based on PDF (not postcript). Yes Microsoft copy Apple, we are seeing it for a long time now, every tine apple has created a new technology, Microsift has done the same thing a few times later. Its not new, and even Apple has said that Microsoft will use a compositing engine in their new windows.
And rajan r has said
“The difference being that it uses Direct3D for rendering of effects (moving windows, animation, etc.) which hardly is a new idea. ”
This is what Quartz extrem already does, but with OpenGL, ..,…sorry its not a new idea.
But its is funny, when longhorn will be available, for sure Apple will have already some amazing new technologies, and Microsoft will be too late, ….like usual. And just with Panther, i think we will have good news, and awesome news technolgies, …
I am saying this with humour, but its the reality, i think.
And i think that one of the big problem of Longhorn will be Palladium, i relly want to know what is going on behind this, …..and i am very sceptical….
Palladium leaked long before Microsoft joined guys like Intel and IBM against that stupid anti-capitalistic act. What Microsoft (and many other companies) are against is that the DRM chip must be mandatory. Guess what? That would make one party the monopoly of that market (for example, all MP3 players must have DRM from XXX Inc). And guess what? Thanks to the DOJ, that company won’t be Microsoft. Microsoft is just against the notion of mandatory.
Not against DRM as a whole.
I kind of lie it. You can try it out today with applications like SmartBar XP, which I’m using instead of desktop icons. I have shortcuts on it, the clock, a calendar, a WinAmp control and a system monitor with CPU/RAM/NET usage and the percentage of data on my HDs. It’s very useful after a while, I wouldn’t want to miss it again.
Hmm.. the new graphics stuff looks pretty much exactly what I came up with last year when I thought about a way of replacing current rendering model on linux/X. Make it all 3D (OpenGL). Each window would be just a 3D object onto which the actual window contents would be rendered as a texture. Stacking windows on top of each other etc would be fast and things such as transparency would be hardware accelerated automatically, like everything else. Rotating, spinning or blowing up (in a huge fireball, of course) windows would be easy too.
Database like FS is something pretty cool as well. “My Music” directory could actually be just a view, just like in a real DB. Though, I have to admit, I find people who can’t organize their files incredibly stupid. It is NOT difficult, or then you ARE an idiot. But it wouldn’t hurt either to be able to do queries on the filesystem and to be able to create “view folders”.
But I’m getting _SO_ sick and tired of all this linux-desktop crap. For some reason I keep eventually returning to Window Maker. It is fast, looks good (to me), is very usable, doesn’t cover most of my screen. KDE and Gnome are cool and all, but just soooo sloooow, even on a 2,8G Xeon,1G of memory and NVidia Quadro4 with 128M.
I wish I could quit my job and code what I think would be a better desktop environment. I could go on and on what is wrong and still missing, but then my post would be off topic
OMG! OMG! OMG! In the second freaking post I mentioned this, and you STILL managed to spout Apple marketing BS! Longhorn is a huge leap beyond Quartz “Extreme.” In Quartz “Extreme” the only thing that is OpenGL accelerated is compositing (blending of multiple translucent windows). All of Quartz 2D is done via software. So all the actual drawing doesn’t use OpenGL at all. Longhorn will actually use OpenGL to draw the window contents, which will allow for much more visually complex windows. Some people have written an SVG renderer for OpenGL, and have reported a speedup of up to 100x in certain cases over software rendering. Longhorn will basically have the GDI+/Direct3D version of that.
I can’t imagine de system req. this OS is going to take, And Im not upgrading my pc just to use it. Im sure is goint to take a lot of resourses and the speed will be almost the same as 2k and XP.
…they took it from NeXT which did it in the early 90’s. Apple is not the innovation machine many think it is. They bought the idea, along what much of what is in OS X, from NeXT when they brought Steve Jobs back to Apple. This was not some in-house R&D, it was an outright technology purchase. Good idea, bad idea is irrelevant, Apple did NOT innovate display PDF.
Now let’s address the stupid comments concering how Apple will have been doing this for years before Longhorn is released. I’ll let Rayiner’s comments stand because I won’t bother reiterating what he wrote, it’s correct and it woudl be redundant on my part. Instead I’ll just add that while Apple might be doing this at some point with 10.3 or perhaps 10.4 (more likely), where will the idea have come from? You got it, Microsoft. This assumes Apple even goes as far as Longhorn’s GDI+ powered by Direct3D. Regardless, it would not be first to implement it, Apple would simply be the first to sell it, which is a much bigger distinction.
Again, Apple is not innovating, they are putting pretty colors on other people’s ideas and selling the magic kool-aid. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Apple or OS X but I’m not one of the mac faithful, especially since I’m having to use OS 9 at my new job (and Quark, yuck; I’m an InDesign user).
Stacks?!
By Jay Contonio (IP: —.cisco.com) – Posted on 2003-05-02 21:14:01
Stacks? Oh you mean Piles…Apple’s patent….sweet
If you had RTFA you would have discovered that stacks refers to a sorting order for contacts in the updated Windows address book. I know it a big stretch for you to read but I suggest you try it before you make stupid comments that make you look like an ass.
Precisely my point. But I doubt Apple doesn’t have this in their labs already.
This 3D Graphics Environment sounds remarkably like Quartz in Mac OS X.
For the average office worker, there’s no such thing as “too user friendly”. For them, the computer is just an appliance to help them do their job, and easier is better.
However these average office worker pick up habits easily, and changing the UI in such a way that their habits isn’t compatible isn’t worth it if the changes don’t reallu bring much ease of use or extra productivity.
I’m sick of all the ‘It’s not innovation’ ‘Apple thought of it first’ ‘Microsoft just steal ideas from Linux’ comments. The whole Open Source movement is all about the sharing of good ideas, but when Microsoft do it – it’s bad. Linux is a CLONE of UNIX – is that innovation? No. We don’t f*cking need innovation, we need an OS that works and gets the job done. At the moment I believe it is Microsoft’s OS that has the upper hand, not just because of the power of Microsoft as a company and the fact that most people are tied to Windows because of the software they use – but because it works. If only the Linux community would pull it’s head from up it’s arse it could replace Windows, but it constantly refuses to listen to those of us who do want an easier experience with computers. Computers are a tool to make things easier – get that into your heads. And those of you who think that all you need is command line – just get lost, try colour correcting a JPEG from the command line for a start, you can’t. Sure, Microsoft don’t please everyone 100% but then I’m sure that they please more people than Linux or any other OS does.
Well said
“The whole Open Source movement is all about the sharing of good ideas, but when Microsoft do it – it’s bad.”
Because Microsoft claims to be innovative and that Open Source works against innovation. They have something to proove.
“If only the Linux community would pull it’s head from up it’s arse it could replace Windows, but it constantly refuses to listen to those of us who do want an easier experience with computers.”
We do listen. It’s just a few trolls or egomaniacs who are against “an easier experience”. But most of the development right now is going into exactly this direction (GNOME for example).
“Computers are a tool to make things easier”
And to have fun though.
They are both work machine and entertainment device (and a lot more if you want to).
Well said too
As has been said by others, Longhorn’s UI acceleration is not a copy of Quartz Extreme. Besides QE only accelerating compositing, Microsoft has had the Windows UI running through Direct3D in their research labs
http://research.microsoft.com/ui/
for some time before Apple started work on QE. One of the more public examples of this research was the Task Gallery project from the 1990’s
http://research.microsoft.com/ui/TaskGallery/index.htm
Since then, MS has been working on the specs for a commercial implementation of the technology that is now set to appear in Longhorn. Many of the details were discussed at last year’s WinHEC:
Windows Graphics Architecture
A New Graphics Platform and New Requirements
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/WHP/1.0/WXP/EN-US/W…
(4.1 MB self-extracting zipped PowerPoint presentation; May 2, 2002)
Windows “Longhorn” Graphics Infrastructure and Text Rendering
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/WHP/1.0/WXP/EN-US/W…
(3.9 MB self-extracting zipped PowerPoint presentation; May 2, 2002)
Hardware Accelerating Desktop Graphics and Color Management
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/WHP/1.0/WXP/EN-US/W…
(496 KB self-extracting zipped PowerPoint presentation; May 2, 2002)
There are further details that will be discussed at this year’s WinHEC. This isn’t just something MS threw together, and it should be better on its first commercial implementation than QE.
The more that Windows becomes like UNIX (or linux for that matter), the more widely popular it will become. Look what is happening with OS X. Longhorn should be great.
Anonymous, try applying the same color correction to a few thousands of jpegs in multiple directories. You’ll quickly find out that shell scripting is just made for this task.
Please, don’t bash command line. It makes a lot of stuff easier then some “easy to use” GUIs that are designed by retarded monkeys for retarded monkeys. I learned this the hard way.
As a visually impaired person, I have always appreciated the accessibility features of XP (i.e. large fonts, large print comand line). I don’t know if extra large fonts will be included with Longhorn, but the sidebar and task menu design will be especially helpful. Tumbling windows and dazzling visual effects sound painful to me, though. I hope I can turn that off. Kudos to Mr. Ballmer and company.
“Anonymous, try applying the same color correction to a few thousands of jpegs in multiple directories. You’ll quickly find out that shell scripting is just made for this task.”
If you are trusting shell scripts and algorithms to color correct images you should be fired. There is no way you are going to be able to properly batch colro correct images and have usable output.
Sorry for this bit of offtopic.
I actually used batch color correction for making tiny previews (to let the person that orders photos to choose the poses they want to order) of photos at work (and no, I was not fired). The quality was crap – as was all the equipment I worked with. Let me just say that I had to scan photos from medium-sized film negatives by using a “batch scanner” built by owner of company from assorted pieces of metal, backlight and a computer attached digital camera
. Of course, final production photos were priunted and color-corrected in a more quality-oriented manner 
).
“Why do you suggest iApps?”
Because it’s much, much better (right now and for the forseeable future) to have a purpose built app that provides the way to organize, edit and use digital media. Do you really want to argue this point? Because so far nobody has even tried to dispute me on this one. It’s obvious.
“Besides, from what I have read, Longhorn isn’t Quartz. Quartz is largely based on Postscript/PDF, while Longhorn is based on the same whole thing. The difference being that it uses Direct3D for rendering of effects (moving windows, animation, etc.) which hardly is a new idea.”
Hey, I think it’s great windows is getting a new graphics system 2 years from now. Better late than never. And I am sure what’s in MS’s labs right now has some advantages over Apple’s shipping product. But what will apple be shipping as far as a graphics system in 2 years?
” Hardly anyone wants innovation plain and raw. They want something that can finish their work better/faster. Does Apple do that for majority of the market?”
No the majority does not choose the most innovative product. That is a fact. Still, apple is the most innovative product. You’d think people would admit this at least during the week of the intro of the iTunes Music Service, which is being called the best thing since sliced bread by, oh, everybody. But no, many apple haters and PC people just are constitutionally unable to acknowledge apple innovation. it’s just too hard.
“And as for Linux, even *I* can’t feel as productive on it as I do on Windows. Sure, get all my apps to run on Linux, I would be happier – but that’s because I’m all too used to Linux.”
Windows is still more useable, but Linux is getting real close for place like govt, school, the workplace.
“This is a (almost) capitalistic world. Live with it.”
Actually, in the computer world we don’t have ( or at least have not had) the essence of capitalism – competition. We have the computer equivalent of one-party system.
I don’t care if a database driven filesystem is not a new invention. It’s new to the Windows world, and it will improve it.
MS has experience with databases and I doubt they will include such a feature if it results in abnormal system requirements.
“Anonymous, try applying the same color correction to a few thousands of jpegs in multiple directories. You’ll quickly find out that shell scripting is just made for this task.”
If you are trusting shell scripts and algorithms to color correct images you should be fired. There is no way you are going to be able to properly batch colro correct images and have usable output.
——-
LOL!
Yeah, right. Say, if i take 2000 digital pictures
and i realize i could make them 20% brighter to make them
look better, it should be fired if i did it in a batch!
hell yeah! anyone that does not enjoy spending 6 hours
color-correcting 2000 pictures by hand in photoshop should
be killed on the spot! Right on!
…moron.
asd,
You can do whatever you want with your personal pictures. If you want to try to pass this off as a professional or even usable solution then try again. By the way, making an image brighter is NOT color correction and I’d suggest using curves, not brightness/contrast. And yes, professionals would go through each image by hand.
…moron
asd,
You can do whatever you want with your personal pictures. If you want to try to pass this off as a professional or even usable solution then try again. By the way, making an image brighter is NOT color correction and I’d suggest using curves, not brightness/contrast. And yes, professionals would go through each image by hand.
—-
you are one funny guy, did you know that? i’m talking
to you from the office, and i’m not talking about
personal pictures either. How old are you? do you have
a job even remotely connected to the subject we are
talking about?
… but hey! now that i think about it once again… yes!
you are right! people should be shot dead if they even
*thinked* of saving hours of work by using batch commands
to treat/filter thousands of images in a couple of minutes!
now, umm.. i don’t really give a damn about the example
being color correction or brightness/contrast. My point
is that batch commands are ESENTIAL when you deal with
an industrial amount of images. And the only professional
that dismisses batches is the one that got
his/her “prestigious” degree on the internet.
I have a Masters of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. I’m not arguing that batch commands are a bad idea, I’m saying that any professional who thinks that batching color corrections is a good idea should be fired, I never said killed. I reserve that distinction for you because you are apparently too stupid to allow to propagate.
If you need to resize images, add watermarks or convert from one image format to another, batching works great. I highly recommend it. If you want to make sure flesh tones are correct on wedding photos or the sky is the perfect shade of blue on a series of magazine shots, then batching the color correction process is a recipe for disaster and you should be fired for letting computer decide these issues for you.
I have a Masters of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. I’m not
— Hm, and the e-mail said it was very prestigious, right?
arguing that batch commands are a bad idea, I’m saying that any professional who thinks that batching color corrections is a good idea should be fired, I never said killed.
If you need to resize images, add watermarks or convert from one image format to another, batching works great. I highly recommend it.
—
So, basically, i’m too stupid to allow to propagate,
but you are agreeing with me. Interesting. and, once more,
funny. you should be a comediant!
…I NEVER said batching image corrections was a bad idea, I only said batching color processing of these images was a bad idea. You jumped on my ass and you were wrong from the start, admit it.
By the way, my MFA is from Boston U. Where did you go to school? You have a college degree?
…
You jumped on my ass
–well, yes. it did seem kinda fluffy
I’ve got a graphics design degree in my country’s major
university, it’s name is UBA. thanks for asking.
Haha, sad, you got owned.
Anyway, using batch shell scripts to color correct JPEGs? What are you, an idiot? I could only imagine the hellish output you’d end up with when you don’t hand tweak each photo. It’s call professionalism.
Haha, sad, you got owned.
— sorry, the ass being jumped on is yours.
Anyway, using batch shell scripts to color correct JPEGs? What are you, an idiot? I could only imagine the hellish output you’d end up with when you don’t hand tweak each photo. It’s call professionalism.
–sorry again, the result can be pretty darn good if the
source for the images is always the same and the color correction can be automated. How come you never thought
it was possible? you must be some kind of a gnubie.. or
an idiot..
Because it’s much, much better (right now and for the forseeable future) to have a purpose built app that provides the way to organize, edit and use digital media.
I rather disagree. I much prefer to manage files with a proper file manager than with a “purpose built app”. Editing and even playing it can be done in another application, but what’s so wrong with Microsoft changing Windows Explorer to manage these digital files?
Do you really want to argue this point?
I don’t mind
Because so far nobody has even tried to dispute me on this one. It’s obvious.
Nobody disputes that Apple’s iApps is the best in the field now. Nobody disputes that Apple iApps’ model works best right now in comparison with competitors in the market. Nobody disputes that Microsoft’s offering is far behind Apple, more or less. I’m disputing your claim that iApps is the best model to work on digital files for consumers.
No the majority does not choose the most innovative product. That is a fact.
Yeap, and you can see that in just about every market, especially those with “multi party systems”.
Still, apple is the most innovative product.
Innovative to me is new and just invented. Apple as a whole doesn’t fit that description. Sure, there is some innovation and invention here and there, but mostly repackage old ideas.
You’d think people would admit this at least during the week of the intro of the iTunes Music Service, which is being called the best thing since sliced bread by, oh, everybody.
Pricing and distribution is nice. The way it is integrated into a media app as oppose to using a browser is nice. Their marketing is to behold. Technically? I beg to differ – there is nothing innovative about the behind on their Music Store.
Windows is still more useable, but Linux is getting real close for place like govt, school, the workplace.
So much for “one party” systems.
Yet I doubt that Linux would dethrone Windows anytime in the forseable future, or even becoming a stiff competitive threat to Windows’ hegenomy.
Actually, in the computer world we don’t have ( or at least have not had) the essence of capitalism – competition.
Competition isn’t define on how many times the competition means but the very existance of competition. The fact that the competition isn’t all that good (Linux’s fragmanted, Mac is just too darn expensive for most, OS/2 is practically dead, BeOS was devoid of any form of marketing, etc).
But as long as I can open a company and write something that competes with Windows, I would consider there is competition in the market.
Besides, the most basic element of capitalism that Adam Smith advocated is that government stay out of the economy – which is why I say “almost” (tariffs, for example, goes against this philosophy). Antitrust is also a form of government intervention.
We have the computer equivalent of one-party system.
You have no idea what’s a one party system. That is like China, Cuba, Syria, Vietnam, Laos, the-country-that-was-Iraq, where opposition is banned in any form, shape and size (where else in computing, Microsoft makes Office for Mac, a competitor).
What you probably meant to say is where a single party countrols the government but where there is avenue for opposition to grow (Malaysia, Singapore, etc.)
me, of course, if you need to make one or five perfect pictures for a magazine, you should not use automatic correction. But if you have to make several hundreds of previews look more or less OK in reasonable time, batch processing is the right tool.
I understand that for art photography, batch color correction and other methods that are saving time and reducing quality are unacceptable. However, there also is mass production photography, technical and scientific photography and other branches, which have perfectly valid uses for batch color correction. Please don’t measure everything by the constraints of art photography – sometimes the goal is not the best-looking picture, but the most easily-made or precise one.
Or all your comments will be deleted. We have rules on this site, it is not your playground.
“–sorry again, the result can be pretty darn good if the
source for the images is always the same and the color correction can be automated. How come you never thought
it was possible? you must be some kind of a gnubie.. or
an idiot..”
Of course if the images are all the same then it’s feasible. But why would you have hundreds of copies of the same images?
Do you have nothing better to do than troll OSNews? Good lord.
Just a bit of paranoia.
Can the new acccelerated display system be used by MS to enforce the “no remote desktop software except ours” clause that was introduced in XP license? I don’t know a lot about video cards, but if the final desktop image forms inside the card, could it be a pain in the ass to get it out of there frequently enough? Would programs like VNC require any significant modification?
No more a pain than it currently is to get the 2D displaay image from the framebuffer, or getting the image from any Direct3D game, etc.
If MS ever made a restriction, it wouldn’t come from the display system, it’d come from the remote desktop protocol (i.e., keeping the protocol secret). Even if this occured, you’d still be able to use apps such as VNC because they don’t use the RDP protocol.
Restrictions such as what you inquired about can’t be placed upon APIs/subsystems that MS provides for use by applications developers. Besides, if they cut out all other remote desktop solutions, they’d likely face complaints/threats of legal action from ISVs in that market.
BTW, as far as I can tell, there is no “No remote desktop except ours” clause in the EULA. If there was, there wouldn’t be much of a market for software like PC Anywhere for businesses wishing to maintain license compliance.
C:WIN_XPsystem32eula.txt
———-8<———-
1. GRANT OF LICENSE. Microsoft grants you the following rights provided that you comply with all terms and conditions of this EULA:
* Installation and use. You may install, use, access, display and run one copy of the Product on a single computer, such as a workstation, terminal or other device (“Workstation Computer”). The Product may not be used by more than two (2) processors at any one time on any single Workstation Computer. You may permit a maximum of ten (10) computers or other electronic devices (each a “Device”) to connect to the Workstation Computer to utilize the services of the Product solely for File and Print services, Internet Information Services, and remote access (including connection sharing and telephony services). The ten connection maximum includes any indirect connections made through “multiplexing” or other software or hardware which pools or aggregates connections. Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product’s user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product.
———-8<———-
This clause prohibits use of VNC for any XP user, unless they buy an XP license for every machine they connect from. And the point of using VNC is being able to connect to your Windows box from any machine that can run a VNC binary or a browser and Java VM. This clause is definitely unreasonable and effectively prohibits remote desktop software. For example, I VNCed to my home box from about a hundred of different machines.
Standard disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, etc., etc.,
I interpret that to mean that you can use remote access software, etc., to access Windows as long as you don’t exceed the connection limit imposed by the Windows license. On Windows client OSes, there is a 10 connection limit (as stated above the italicized content). As long as you have a legal copy of Windows and you don’t exceed this limit, you can access the computer using VNC or any other software. You have these rights automatically with the product’s purchase. IOW, the client access license rights are included with Windows. The device license would be included with the connection rights. If you used the software to exceed the limits imposed by the EULA, you would need to obtain a seperate Client Access License, or in an extreme case, some special license directly from MS to bring you back into compliance.
This also could refer to a case mentioned further down where a particular piece of (third party, for example)software specifically prohibits remote access in its EULA, thus the reference to a seperate license for the Product meaning that the particular application you want to access remotely must provide (or not deny) rights for remotely accessing it on Windows in its EULA.
Amusing.
Are you aware that photoshop does scriptable batch conversion?
I do miss the shell when I use windows, but most apps that really need batch conversion, like Photoshop or Wavelab tend to have it built in.
Microsoft is shifting strategy from servers with the launch of Win2k3 which they claim will replace unix and Yet to be lauched WinXP longhorn with new file system WinFS. With these strategies set in the right direction. I think Microsoft will be dominant force for the next 10 year.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think Microsoft will be a declining force for the next 10 years.
I wish that Microsoft would get their act together. I mean, look at the Mac OS X. Look at the graphics there. WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT??? The graphics on Macs are insane. If I could get a Microsoft equivelant PC that would rival the Mac I would be all over it. BUT NO. Microsoft has to pump all thier money into development….when they could pump some into making the ones that they have out better. I heard all the same things for this new Longhorn that I heard for XP about getting all these new tweaks that are so “awesome”. Well Im out
|–Maverick–|