Longhorn PDC 4051 (6.0.4051.0) is expected to be given to PDC’s attendees on Monday, but FlexBeta has some screenshots already.
Longhorn 4051 Out in the Wild
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Form the IE screenshots it looks like the IE got some usefull extensions for managing the browser, very nice indeed.
But what I would be more interessted in is a preview of the platform SDK…
Greetings Nolridor
I must say i think it looks pretty good, aside from them just using to much space for everything. The color and look of things is good, but it just needs to be thinned. Stuff doesn’t need to be an inch wide when the button in it is a half inch wide. But it is rather clean looking.
I amd very happy the one site put up the wallpaper. I wanted that when i first saw it, and someone was thinking. I wish I could get the one from Wistler I think with the road. I think MS uses better wallpaper in the beta’s though the XP pics are pretty nice.
Does this look like I can disable flash or java or shockwave or whatever, whenever I want?
Are they actually listening to their customers or just copying the competition? Either way I am happy.
http://www.neowin.net/staff/creamhackered/longhornbuild4051/ieaddon…
Also although slightly different the UI is starting to remind me of MacOSX. Alright don’t start people it is just an observation.
It looks like complete crap, like all the previous versions of Longhorn.
I know that the final version will be cleaned up and the AERO UI –they say– is impressive, but the current beta, looks like the mess of SkyOS, or worse.
I am sure it is just people at MS playing with ideas at this point, but no matter what, I would never release such a beta to all my developers and testers. It just looks and feels bad. I mean, come on, do I need a full screen window to only have space to display 4-5 folders and fill the rest of the screen with huge useless (resized bitmap) icons and other crap?
Overall, that UI is not inviting and I don’t just mean the themes and the colors. I mean the *logic and usability* seen on some of the application shots doesn’t make sense.
I think it is like something from SkyOS but with the feel of Mac.
I think they are trying to simplify everything and have things similar to a Mac.
Although the dock will be on the side.
What a coincidence that this beta gets leaked at the same time when OS X Panther is released. I guess Apple was getting too much acclaim with Panther and iTunes and MS was afraid that people will get tired of waiting for their next release(2005/6?) and realize that the grass is indeed greener on the other side. So they leak this beta and hope their early-adopters dont’t switch. Well, I think the UI is just butt ugly. Especially the side-pane( http://www.neowin.net/staff/creamhackered/longhornbuild4051/desktop… ) with it’s freaky huge clock and image-viewer applets. No theme can make this look good.
No, this is just a non-founded conspiracy theory. It just happens that the MS PDC starts on Monday and the DVDs have being burned, so someone with access to the DVDs, leaked it.
Haha. MS afraid of Apple. That’s hilarious.
im really sorry and it won’t happen again!!!
just removed it.
That sidebar looks like they don’t even know what they want to do with it yet…
Why are the title bars so extremely large and the menu bars so small? I would say you use the menu bar a lot more…
And in the My Computer-view, there is also very much empty space – large white parts, a tree view on the left, extra “information” at the top…
The only handy thing is that it directly displays the amount of free space per drive, and that it supports picture previews. For the rest, the new Explorer doesn’t seem more productive than the MacOS 7 finder.
But it is great news, of course, that IE finally gets a download manager. And the ctrl-alt-del-dialog looks great too… but I suppose the controls it uses aren’t normal ones. Shouldn’t they standardize the control set a bit? So that for example the browser in Paint Shop Pro can also make use of the “tiled” view mode?
is it me, or does longhorn look alot like KDE or Gnome?
This things stopped impressing me some time ago.
I mean, you get a handful of screens and what, can you really have an opinion on Longhorn that goes further than I kinda like that look or It looks kinda WinXP anyway?
Oh, yeah, you can see one or two features… in a pre-beta (duh, we called them alpha)… of a software to be released in 2-3 years’ time. Is that even relevant?
So… What can I say? It looks kinda WinXP anyway.
I don’t know but the new theme is very similar to the aluminium theme of the finder (and other apps) in panther, isn’t it?……
The new theme is very similar to the aluminium interface found in the Finder (and other apps) in panther, isn’t it?…..Ahhhhh microsoft!!!!!
Again, I wonder if these UI designers actually use these computer interfaces they design. As Eugenia said: “do I need a full screen window to only have space to display 4-5 folders and fill the rest of the screen with huge useless (resized bitmap) icons and other crap?”
That’s a complaint I have always had with each release of windows as time has gone by, and with each generation of product it only seems to get worse.
As it is now, I either right-click and choose explore or double click and immediately hit folders so at least that side frame is filled with something useful, as I have NEVER used the “System Tasks” “Other Places” or any of the other bull they put there to “help” the user. Nor, would I ever want any of the other behaviors for the “Explorer bar” they insist on putting there.
But they at least still give us the option of turning that tripe off, and as I’ve said before I don’t know anyone using XP that leaves Luna or any of it’s other ‘enhancements’ at the default.
I just hope they don’t go overboard hardcoding these new behaviors in, and allow us to use it the old way if we want. While I THINK they are smart enough to do it, stranger things have happened.
If my grandmother can figure out how to use an Windows 2K box, they can STOP screwing with the desktop now.
If this is what Longhorn will be like, I’m definitely removing my NTFS partition.
By the way, is this confirmed? Is this actually a beta from longhorn? or is it some StyleXP theme or something?
I mean, look at this ( http://www.flexbeta.net/ali_ms52/LH/desktop2.jpg ) I guess microsoft don’t have the original source of the icon, so they just happened to stretch it.
Then what the heck is “Codename Longhorn” mean? do people actually put that on their product? even the boot screen says “codename Longhorn”?? It’s just like someone got really happy saying “CodeName” and stuck it everywhere on the product?
sorry, I still don’t buy it. It’s either some mock-up or the guys at redmond have gone completely crazy. It’s not enough that we have childish themes on XP, they go and create this? and it’s supposed to kill everything else? Well, it looks like a toy to me.
Eugenia,
I agree that the UI is awful, and I know that Redmond keeps beating the drum of how great Aero will be, but then why don’t they give us a preview? By the way, there is no way that I can concieve of to make the dock (or whatever it’s called) on the right look good.
On the positive side, atleast it looks like IE will be able block pop-ups out of the box (no more third party software). Now if only they would include tabs, explorer might be usable.
Just my .02
yeah
Just that, doesn’t it look a lot like XP?
Ok, they’ve changed the colors
, but anyway, as people say these are probably sketches and the final look will be very different
This is ugly. I guess (and hope) that they have no time to work on GUI right now and they are focused on the technical abilities.
I hope they will fix that ugly font antialiasing and make it similar to gnome’s or osx’s.
That’s the worst UI I have ever seen… Argh… I’m sure everyone will be using it and claim Longhorn as the best UI ever. (Just like XP.)
It makes me want to ditch Windows 2K Pro instantly!
</sarcasm>
Longhorn. The winamp 3 of operating systems.
Did you looked at shot from IE downloadmanager? I found it somewhat familiar…
Then start mozilla (assuming that you have that installed… )
Download something
compare… 🙂
Someone want to clue them in about vector graphics?
http://www.flexbeta.net/ali_ms52/LH/desktop2.jpg
The ‘contacts’ icon is badly pixillated.
I know this is a pre pre beta, but don’t Microsoft have anything like SVG to allow scaling of icons?
If this is what Longhorn will be like, I’m definitely removing my NTFS partition. (Code Name “Run for your Life”)
By the way, is this confirmed? Is this actually a beta from longhorn? or is it some StyleXP theme or something? (Code Name “MockUp”)
I mean, look at this ( http://www.flexbeta.net/ali_ms52/LH/desktop2.jpg ) I guess microsoft don’t have the original source of the icon, so they just happened to stretch it. (Code Name “Photoshop”)
Then what the heck is “Codename” Longhorn mean? do people actually put that on their product? even the boot screen says “codename” Longhorn?? It’s just like someone got really happy saying “CodeName” and stuck it everywhere on the product?
sorry, I still don’t buy it. It’s either some mock-up or the guys at redmond have gone completely crazy. It’s not enough that we have childish themes on XP, they go and create this? and it’s supposed to kill everything else? Well, it looks like a toy to me. (Code Name “I’m not upgrading”)
P.S: Sorry for the rant.
It seems that it comes with a new version of Internet Explorer. It’s much needed – IE 6 has been around for a while now and the competition hasn’t been sleeping.
I think instead of copying other browsers’ abilities they should concentrate on better rendering stuff in IE. And what’s the point of putting such a large clock whereas completely everyone has one on his/her wrist. Although Ctrl+Alt+Del screen looks more friendly. But it can slow down professional users a bit.
“Slate” eh? Interesting choice of theme/scheme…
Scheme seems somehow more appropriate though.
I have a feeling the so-called innovative AeroUI will be as crappy as this one. They also promised a fantastic new UI for XP and all they managed to produce was a Teletubbies-look.
It’s way too early to release those Beta versions, this looks at best an early-alpha. And who would like to have that huge clock anyway? It might be damn distracting to work with that.
The bar can be removed. And the bar uses some sort of plugin interface so the clock can be removed and you can add your own components.
To add the UI mess, whats up with that huge clock on the right side?
They come on DVDs? For sure?
Keep in mind when looking at the desktop screenshots: The monitors that will be selling at the time Longhorn is released will have higher resolutions and will also be in a rectangular form. Something to keep in mind as with a square monitor that toolbar on the right seems to be overly dominant.
Keep in mind when looking at the desktop screenshots: The monitors that will be widely and cheaply available at the time Longhorn is released will have higher resolutions and will also be in a rectangular form. Something to keep in mind as with a square monitor that toolbar on the right seems to be overly dominant.
Brushed metal on the default web browser and file manager. Gee, where have we seen this recently? 🙂
It doesn’t look very different from any other version of Windows. It has a new theme and some cheesey new views in explorer, but that’s about it. I really hope there is a lot of improvement done before the release. There better be a lot of improvement if it’s going to be 2-3 years before they release it!
As it stands now though it looks like just a repackaging of XP.
sorry to say it but get out of anti MS mind set. this is a good beta. surely i will have certain errors but thats why beta’s are for (try running mozilla 1.5 final! feels like alpha) & as for windows it is much much much better than al other “OPEN SOURCE” crap.
answer this with your open source OSes
1. can you play winamp3, iTunes, Music Match Jukebox?
2. can flash player run without crashing?
3. can you play Unreal Tournament Max Payne, GTA on your PC?
Answer NO!
the point i am trying to make here is that don’t go on bashing MS every thing has plus points as well as minus points just try to make neutral decisions
All not the longhorn specific api’s, the .NET is a big part of the longhorn api. Så learn that and you have a huge headstart.
Yes the C WinXX/API will be there, but it is being phased out.
Technically, you can signup to be a beta tester. It isn’t such a big deal. I got copies to beta test whistler before it came out by signing up with MS. It takes about 3 weeks or so to get your login name and whatever else and you are given a link to DL it.
Hmm…I glad to see for once, there are things that Microsoft is far behind in. Well, at least in the browser department. I mean extensions and a download manager? Come on people – Mozilla/Firebird has had them for quite some time now
Yet again Microsoft shows us what it means to ‘innovate’ with Longhorn!
Useless bloat and screen filling eye candy means I’ll be nuking my W2K Pro partition ASAP!
</sarcasm>
Looks good and clean. I like the new ie and windows explorer look. Although it would show better in a bigger screen or higher resolution…
no inovation as usual, just M$ following the competition again, like when apple released OS X, M$ rushed to play UI Catch-up… give me a mac any day..
~J
i just noted that the UI is all black now, and black happens to be “panther’s color”, i’m not saying there is necessarily any connection, but it’s interesting nevertheless.
It looks ugly and not very space-efficient. And how would a 3D-UI change that?
I love how it’s going to take until 2005/2006 for Windows users to get pop-up blocking natively built-in to IE.
And did anyone notice how the IE download manager looks strangely like the Mozilla one?
Good job there Microsoft. I love how Microsoft says the reason they are so popular is their ability to innovate. Innovate my butt. All they have done since they first started the company is copy off of other people.
I agree completely. The metallic look looks horrible (Internet Explorer in particular). Even the blue mess that was before is much better than this.
Whistler always looked nice, I think.
I hope Longhorn sorts things out…
for your testing pleasure, from the people who brought you Mandrake 9.2 torrents : http://ihaveapenguin.servemp3.com/draketorrents/Longhorn-4051-PDC.t…
Have fun !
I don’t know how to describe it, but does anyone else feel that Longhorns GUI just looks “strange”.
e.g.
http://www.flexbeta.net/ali_ms52/LH/desktop2.jpg
Lot’s of wasted space, poor color choice’s and a lack of consistency throughout. Now I know this only an alpha/beta release but I just don’t see where the GUI is trying to strive too.
Eugenia – you specialize in GUI development, what is your opinion?
Thnx
Well, I think the clock (seen in the screenshot WLH-PDC-Desktop.gif) looks interesting. Other than that I only have one observation.
Do many of those shots look a little bit “brushed metal” to you guys? Especially the ctrl-atl-delete screen?
I don’t see much difference from WindowXP.
I Like more the Gnome UI, despite the bugs, is aiming to simplycity and good look.
Looks like IE got pop up blocking finally, I wonder if tabs are next?
I agree with eugenia, the interface looks horrible and non consitent throughout — but, then again, it is a beta. And I still haven’t figured out the purpose to the massive sidebar that’s shown. Is this supposed to be like the failed win9x activex channel manager thing?
It looks good, I used both OS X and XP on different machines. I don’t have VPC yet. I think MS is trying to keep up with Apple now in the OS realm. Hopefully MS makes it as secure as Mac OS X. Maybe they will put something like FileVault on it. Feels good to see improvements in both OS’s, because I use both.
From the wallpaper in the screenshots I’ve seen; the lush, rolling, green grass fields of XP wallpaper have, well, um… died.
I’m sorry, but those screen shots look horrible. I think that OS will sell well (like most people have a choice) but I think it will also spark a whole new skinning movement! Window Blinds will sell because the new look of Windows blinds!
My olny complaint is the tremendous waste of screen space. With every new version of Windows more and more is wasted on silly things.
i was under the assumption that IE wouldn’t be using plugin management of any kind in the future.. didn’t they just lose a lawsuit pertaining to browser plugins? rather large sum of money involved too.
anyways, i really don’t like it that much, it looks just like a re-skinned XP. however there are a lot of window effects that these screenshots don’t show. check out this link:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_preview_2003.asp
“I guess Apple was getting too much acclaim with Panther and iTunes and MS was afraid that people will get tired of waiting for their next release(2005/6?)”
I don’t know. Personally I think Apple releasing updates to OS X like every month is a liability. Not an asset. The average person doesn’t want to have to upgrade their OS every month.
IE is looking good and I bet it will destroy mozilla. Probably take the mozilla team another 5 years to play catch up. The GUI looks awesome and is on it’s way toward giving OS-X a run for it’s money. In the end I can only expect this to turn out as great if not 10 times greater then XP did.
XP was a big step backwards from Windows 2000 in speed, stability, and usability. I hope the change from XP -> Longhorn is more like the NT4 -> W2k transition, rather than the W2K -> XP transition. Anyway, IE the the one catching up. It is criminal in 2003 to ship a default browser that doesn’t have modern features like pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing.
> “I don’t know. Personally I think Apple releasing updates to OS X like every month is a liability. Not an asset. The average person doesn’t want to have to upgrade their OS every month” <
It’s been over 1 year since Jaguar (13-months). Seems too fast when you have to wait 4-5 years to get something they may-or-may-not work? Working on XP has put the nail in the coffin as far as I’m concerned with Windows. Linux is just too much… I got work to do, and I can wait any longer.
The Mac OS X 10.3 works now… is virus free now… is stable, now… it is highly scable, user friendly, innovative, productive… yeah sure, it ain’t perfect… well. it it lives a lot closer to the house on the hill where computer Nirvana lives… The BeOS had the right idea, and now they’re converts
Jb
“I don’t know. Personally I think Apple releasing updates to OS X like every month is a liability. Not an asset. The average person doesn’t want to have to upgrade their OS every month.”
Personally, I think it’s a great thing. Those who want to upgrade can, and those who don’t certainly aren’t forced to do so. It seems to me to be a win-win situation.
[…]as for windows it is much much much better than al other “OPEN SOURCE” crap.
Stop trolling.
answer this with your open source OSes
1. can you play winamp3, iTunes, Music Match Jukebox?
No, but there are alternatives to Winamp (XMMS) and iTunes/MMJ (Rhythmbox, although it’s still in beta… No, you can’t buy music online with it, but that’s another issue).
2. can flash player run without crashing?
Yes, why?
3. can you play Unreal Tournament Max Payne, GTA on your PC?
Erm… Epic made native ports of UT and UT2003 to Linux. You can also play Max Payne with WineX. I don’t know for GTA, but Wine or WineX might handle it.
Answer NO!
If the question was Am I correctly informed?, yes, you’re right, the answer is no.
You know, from the complaining of the window sizes I’ve read so far, it seems like all of those complainers are total newbies when it comes to using windows. You can resize everything and change their looks! Don’t you even know how to do that? Maybe thats why you all dislike microsoft so much because you don’t know how to use their products! This UI is perhaps their default look, but until you see how you can customize it, stop bashing it.
“anyways, i really don’t like it that much, it looks just like a re-skinned XP. however there are a lot of window effects that these screenshots don’t show. check out this link:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_preview_2003.asp ”
That’s nothing new. Check out WindowFX by Stardock
Anyway, this UI seems rather awful, too much wasted space, in my opinion. But, Longhorn is far, far away, I’m not going to draw any final conclusions.
BTW, someone said the UI had a brushed metal look– my friend, brushed metal is as different from this UI as Bluecurve is different from Galaxy…
>Eugenia – you specialize in GUI development, what is your opinion?
I have already left my comment.
i hope my computer does not get infected with the MS-Bovine virus lol…
hey, its the weekend…
This is getting really old. Of course it can look like OSX, it can look like any OS out there, they all look about the same. And as time goes by all OS’s are going to see the same htings added. I get really sick of people saying MS ripped of Apple or similiar. Look at any industry, any forms of products, it’s the same deal. Sure someone might pick something up from a differant product. Since it’s out there. When you go back to work on your thing you might not even relize where you got the idea. This is the world. Also the same ideas hit the same time. So MS was playing with silver/metal. Big suprise! look around from the last year or so, everything has gone silver/metal. Electronics and so forth, it’s all over. So MS using that isn’t a big surprise, Apple also has been doing this. When you need to start wondering is when some comes out with stuff that doesn’t even remotely look like anything else out there.
Uhh, why spend so much time talking about the UI? The official skin will most likely be totally different from this. I believe them experimenting with alot of differnt styles to get some feedback is a good thing. Hopefully some of the negative parts of the UI won’t be in the final. Can anyone say Program list that you have to scroll istead of expanding if you have too many(Win98). Or all your choices not showing up unless you click the arrow thing(Win2k I think and maybe Office XP, not sure though).
I’m more interested in the technology part. Especially the .NET API bindings or whatever they are doing with it. Avalon sounds cool too though. I’m also extermely curious as to how this “WinFS” is supposed to work. From what I’ve heard it’s not a file system. It’s not manditory/can be turned off. Will old applications be able to take advantage of it? What’s so special of it… I’ll be happy when they actually release a version that will show off this new feature so that I can figure out if it’s half of what they say it is.
On the pirating the pre-beta thing… Pirating is illegal. You don’t have a CD key yet… You can just wait and pay $20 bucks and do it all legal like next month…
The secret behind a good GUI design is usable default settings.
Besides if you like tweaking your GUI, then I guess that KDE, Gnome and other free desktops will give you far more options. But of course the defaults will be better.
These screenshots just strengthens my theory that Microsoft cut the number of usability experts they have on their payroll in half for every new release of their OS.
“It’s been over 1 year since Jaguar (13-months). Seems too fast when you have to wait 4-5 years to get something they may-or-may-not work? ”
Really? Wow… Damn, I must be getting old. It seems like Jaguar just came out yesterday or something.
“Personally, I think it’s a great thing. Those who want to upgrade can, and those who don’t certainly aren’t forced to do so. It seems to me to be a win-win situation.”
That’s true, except when software vendors force one to upgrade the OS by making new applications not compatible with older versions of the OS. Apple isn’t as guilt as Microsoft is when it comes to that. But still.
After looking at it more, I really don’t like it. It looks like a cheap skin over windows 95 and I don’t think it will give OS X a run for it’s money. MS can’t make as good as software as Apple, bottomline…
ROFL. Sorry, couldn’t help it. When was the last time you used Win95?
> “Uhh, why spend so much time talking about the UI?”
you see, us open source developers have gotten this little mantra beaten into our spine by most windows users, “developers” and the regular pundits, what the mantra is ? “Usability and looks” so how about returning the favour…
> “it does’nt look like brushed metal”
Oh indeed it does, see that gunmetal looking colour? it’s vaguely reminescent of the coulour that a fresh out of the factory gun internals has, hence gunMETAL and the texture on the image is vaguely reminescent of polished metal.
so you could say it is indeed inspired by brushed metal, and it isnt even a stretch saying so.
> “These screenshots just strengthens my theory that Microsoft cut the number of usability experts they have on their payroll in half for every new release of their OS. ”
Oh indeed ;-D
and onto the ui of the filemanager, it’s ass.
why?
navigation buttons, they take up too much space of the toolbar, the toolbar could itself be around 24x24px and still be highly usable and look good.
and whatsup with the myriad of options in the small filemanager toolbar?
odd indeed.
I’m going to do a writeup as soon as my msdn dev cd hits my inbox.
>you see, us open source developers have gotten this little >mantra beaten into our spine by most windows users, >”developers” and the regular pundits, what the mantra is ? > “Usability and looks” so how about returning the favour…
My point wasn’t that they shouldn’t release something that works and looks good. If something isn’t usable it’s useless. The point was that, this isn’t the UI so why complain too much about it. From what I’ve seen it’s not that far from XP’s UI.
>My point wasn’t that they shouldn’t release something that >works and looks good. If something isn’t usable it’s useless. >The point was that, this isn’t the UI so why complain too >much about it. From what I’ve seen it’s not that far from >XP’s UI.
It still goes both ways.
to me it still only looks like a rebranded release of xp.
MS can’t make as good as software as Apple, bottomline…
I love that argument. If Apple is so good, where is their office suite? Their directory service (a la Novell’s eDirectory or MS’ ActiveDirectory)? Their web/mail server? Their small business suite? Why do they only have a 2.5% marketshare?
Don’t get me wrong. I believe Apple is making really good products. They are the masters of GUI and useability, that’s for sure. However, it’s not because MS Windows is so-so that everything they’re developing is crap.
Your good default UI is not the same as my good default UI. Majority of people may find that Microsoft’s default UI is better than yours. You’re not a majority by yourself. Even if everyone who comes to OSnews agrees with you on UI, your total is still less than 1% of the whole population of windows users. When you make a mass market product, you need to appeal to the mass market, and you’re not one of them if you dont like the default UI then.
This is amazing! Everybody addmit that this only temporary GUI. Whis is (GUI), in fact the least problem for OS at this point. What one can do with even the best GUI if system is slow or unstable? Worst even if it is insecure?. longhorn needs speed, stability and security. Judging from projected release date. MS will have time to work on GUI.
Longhorn will never take off if the issues of stability/security/speed are not resolved. The critics of GUI at this point when interface will be replaced with Aero (whatever it is) make not much sense.
Guys from Flexbeta were First to publish longhorn screenshots. But I have not seen any information about most important for OS what is underneath? The discussion about GUI that is going to be replaced is useless
Come on now, it’s all in the eyes of the beholder. Unless the UI is very very very bad or very very very good, the UI is the least important part of the OS. Are there any good stuffs in long horn to talk about.
I really don’t think it looks brushed at all. It’s more like a gray gradiant. And is that really something new for Windows? As far as I’ve been using computers, the Windows UI has always been gray. And the metallic look certainly isn’t new because XP had that metallic theme installed by default. Many people preferred that to the blue selected default anyway.
So if Windows does go with a more metallic theme, wouldn’t that just be common sense, considering the blue one didn’t take off? Or maybe they’d try to mix them in some crazy science experiment. Look out, here comes Brushed Blue! (I’m kidding….. but I’m not…)
Aside mentioning the current look is ugly, what more can you do? There’s no sense analyzing in detail a UI that won’t be the final product.
Calm down guys. These features will be available in KDE two years after the release of Longhorn, and Gnome possibly in four. Until then, you can claim that no one wants these features (like a 3d accelerated desktop), and then afterwards you can brag about how much superior your solution is.
“to me it still only looks like a rebranded release of xp.”
It’s supposed to look that way. They aren’t going to release the true UI until sometime around Beta 2 or 3 so that it won’t appear old to people by time of release, and so it throws off competitors that would otherwise copy UI elements and possibly incorporate them into their products long before Longhorn ships. UI is always the last thing MS integrates. Check early builds of older Windows versions (Windows 95 and XP for example) and you’ll see the same trend. They do this for the same reasons car companies disguise their new models when taking them out for testing.
This is a developer conference. Developers care more about new APIs and services the system offers moreso than the “skin” of the OS. They’ll have plenty of time to see the UI and fine tune their application for it later in Longhorn’s Beta stage. There’s a lot more going on in Longhorn than UI (snd contrary to what some believe, vector graphics support is integral to Avalon).
RE: Chady – Codename Text:
All MS software is given a codename while in development. This is so you have a way of referencing the product while you don’t have an official marketing name for it. The codename is displayed in the product as a placeholder for the final product name. Around Beta 3, Microsoft will change the codename to whatever official product name they’ve come up with in preparation for the final release. This has been common practice for years. Look at alpha or beta screenshots of Windows XP and you’ll find that it was Codename: Whistler.
Good… I kind of like it.
answer this with your open source OSes
1. can you play winamp3, iTunes, Music Match Jukebox?
Winamp3? Why, we have xmms. iTunes…well it depends which part of iTunes you need. If it’s iPod synchronization, there’s plenty of tools available under Linux. Otherwise, there are quite a few media players that are as capable as iTunes, such as the aforementioned xmms, zinf, etc.
2. can flash player run without crashing?
Of course it can! I can’t recall seeing it crash on my Linux box, either the native Linux player or the Windows player through Wine.
3. can you play Unreal Tournament Max Payne, GTA on your PC?
Unreal Tournament you can play a native Linux version. Max Payne and GTA play perfectly with Winex. So, yes.
Any more questions?
I don’t understand why people here waste their time picking apart the GUI when they WELL KNOW that this has nothing to do with the GUI that longhorn will ship with. Every piece of historical evidence with ever major OS manufacturer leads us to believe that this has nothing to do with the final GUI. Eg: Mac OS X, Windows XP, etc. If that weren’t enough, Microsoft said, “This is not Aero.”. Grow up.
I don’t have the problem with MS ripping off Apple, and Apple doing the same for other things, it’s just the way it works. What I have the problem with is what you do with those ideas. For example, MS invented fast user switching, Apple ripped them off but they created (IMO) better solution. They did the same with the Finder sidebar but I prefer MS one still. MS is trying to ’emulate’ OSX experience in many ways but still falls short of doing anything reasonably good (brushed look, icons, 3D animations and even icon highlighting in explorer). Lots of wasted space, huge titlebars and menubars look so out of place. Why don’t they accept that having central menubar is so elegant solution. It doesn’t have to be on top of the screen, I believe they can come up with something good, but they are afraid that people can say, look it’s same as Apple.
Just because Apple does not make the products mentioned does not mean they do not make great software. They are a smaller company than microsoft and do not have the same resources my friend. Also, Apple is a hardware company. They do not make much money selling software. Microsofts focus is selling software. They make lots of it, that is why they have bigger market share. By the way, small market share does not mean much when you can still be profitable in todays economy.
“XP was a big step backwards from Windows 2000 in speed, stability, and usability. I hope the change from XP -> Longhorn is more like the NT4 -> W2k transition, rather than the W2K -> XP transition.”
I couldn’t agree more with this comment. 2k was the first MS OS that I actually liked and I liked it a lot. It was/is rock solid and it takes a helluva lot to bring it down in my experience. XP added theming/skinning which if I’d wanted I’d have bought desktopX but no choice.
Really the only thing I’d like in 2k from XP would be SystemRestore, and even that was just a revision of the functionality that appeared in WinME first.
I am just wondering, what the hell does this alpha give us? No new GUI (except some half arsed effort that isn’t the final product), no WinFS, uhh… what else?
I appreciate (since I’m there myself a lot of the time) that most development work can appear from the outside to produce nothing until a flurry near the end of the development phase of the lifecycle but that being the case, what is there to showcase in this alpha, and if there is not a helluva lot (except a temporary replacement GUI) then WHY bring it out now.
As much as it sounds daft, it does smack of a spoiling exercise with the OSX 10.3 launch.
“XP was a big step backwards from Windows 2000 in speed, stability, and usability. I hope the change from XP -> Longhorn is more like the NT4 -> W2k transition, rather than the W2K -> XP transition.”
I will never understand this? What the hell are people doing with their XP boxes that is making them so unstable? XP is one of the most stable desktop OSes I’ve ever used. Only Windows 2003 has lasted longer. Every version of Linux I’ve tried had had problems. Now, I’ll give you that Linux is mostly recoverable without a reboot, and that Windows problems often require reboots, but I’ve never had or even seen trouble with XP stability that wasn’t directly related to hardware/driver issues. Don’t blame Microsoft for that. Blame your hardware manufacturer.
I want off of Windows, and I use many different OSes. But you can’t deny that XP is more stable than 2000, which, in my estimation, is signficantly slower, especially at boot and shutdown, signficantly less user-friendly, and worst, supports many fewer applications.
Buy XP – use only supported hardware, shut off Luna, take off unnecessary animations, adjust QoS, and tweak the hell out of it after visiting tweakxp.com and you’ll find your XP box much easier to use and keep running than your “trusty” old 2000 box.
I’ve seen quite a few comments marked as review for abuse. Did a microserf come through here and blast everything?
Naming:
Whistler is the mountain next to Blackomb in British Columbia. Longhorn is a bar between the two.
Whistler = WinXP
Longhorn = Windows 2006[?]
Blackcomb = Windows 2010[?]
This is where it gets interesting. The codename for the next OS after XP was Longhorn; check. It was supposed to be
version 5.5. Blackomb was supposed to be version 6. If MS is smart, version 7 will be a derivitive of a *Nix, probably Xenix, ala Mac OS x.
Abraxas: “It doesn’t look very different from any other version of Windows. It has a new theme and some cheesey new views in explorer, but that’s about it. I really hope there is a lot of improvement done before the release. There better be a lot of improvement if it’s going to be 2-3 years before they release it!
As it stands now though it looks like just a repackaging of XP.”
You’re right. I don’t know what if anything else can really be done with the desktop paradigm. I think it’s plateaued. OS X, and KDE, Gnome, et al have some really nice refinements, but there isn’t really anything revolutionary going on.
For everyone that complains microsoft is using other people’s ideas: “Good artists create; great artists steal” — Steve Jobs.
Adam Scheinberg:
“Buy XP – use only supported hardware, shut off Luna, take off unnecessary animations, adjust QoS, and tweak the hell out of it after visiting tweakxp.com and you’ll find your XP box much easier to use and keep running than your “trusty” old 2000 box.”
True enough; shut all that eye candy off, but XP just inheireted Win2000’s stability.
Before anyone flies off the handle again, remember that this is utlimately David, Eugenia, and Jon’s sandbox. If I disagree with anyone, I’ll do it politely and give my hosts the same respect.
Read my comment again. I never said that Apple doesn’t make great software. They probably even have the best OS around. I just said that it’s not fair to say that Microsoft can’t make good software like Apple while they are developing 10x more solutions (and that some of them are really great).
I was simply answering your questions. I am very well aware that you did not bash Apple, in fact you did teh opposite and praised them. I was simply pointing out that Apple and microsoft have different goals in mind which lead to different outcomes.
Wow – according to the pictures IE wil get:
– pop-up killer
– download manager
– plugin manager
Thats almost science fiction!! And this already by 2005
Really innovative stuff
more and more it is starting to look like Microsoft people just hang out here all day long to get new ideas:
http://www.kde-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=karamba
The sidebar looks like so many things being worked on for KDE for a while now.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file=5585-1.jpg
>Wow – according to the pictures IE wil get:
>- pop-up killer
>- download manager
>- plugin manager
Hey Microsoft!!!
.. the late 1990’s called.. they want their browser back.
Am I only one that finds it amusing that the Microsoft zealots are so upset the UI is being judged? The link is to several screenshots. You know? Pictures. Of the UI.
The whole intention of the thread is to discuss the screenshots, and therefore UI presented therein. Obviously the discussion is going to center around UI discussion.
We know it will change, for better or worse. Right now, it is nothing special. As others have noted, the massive clock and over-stretched icons look like crap.
The only interesting things I noticed in the screenshots were the Internet Explorer improvements. Since I use Opera, I have had those features for over a year, but it’s nice to see 2 – 3 years from now Microsoft will have a modern browser according to 2 – 3 year old standards. Well, minus tabbed browsing, but, maybe Windows 2010 will have a tabbed browsing option.
As I sidenote, I just purchased Windows XP last week, so anyone calling me a Linux or Mac zealot is a fool.