NeoWin put together lots of interesting links to videos, screenshots and articles of all the happenings in the PDC this week. In some of the screenshots and video you will see the new hardware accelerated Aero UI. Also, a demonstration of WinFS featured a method to “stack” documents by author in a window, with the heights of the stacks corresponding to the number of documents. Apple also works in something similar reportedly (Apple calls them “piles”).
PDC 2003 Mini Round Up and Screenshots
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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everyone has been posting videos of Longhorn in a WMV format that the latest Media Player for OS X doesnt support, nor does VideoLAN Client (that i know of) Are there any of these videos in other formats, or a player that can handle the ones already posted?
I still think too much attention is been paid to the surface (graphics, looks, eye candy). Secondly, with regards to the development tools, does it seem like everything is getting unnecessarily complex and bloated or is it just me? I’d hate spend hours learning new technology just to port an app from say, XP, to Longhorn. Anyway, Microsoft has never attracted the casual programmers, and software firms will just spend more funds training their professional programmers.
I’m glad they moved the expected release date for Longhorn to 2006. That will give them time to refocus and reorganize their priorities. I still don’t see anything convincing enough to use Longhorn. But my judgements are premature, it’s just too early for such judgements.
Why does everyone care so much about who invented what and who was first with some idea?
All I care about is what product I can use that offers me the best functionality out there. Just look at cars, all the new SUVs from BWM, VW, Porsche, Volvo, Mercedes etc look more or less the same. I don’t care who came up with the idea in the first place, i just want the car that has the best features.
Same with OSs, games, applications or whatever!
Seems like every ‘feature’ longhorn is going to have is rippeed out of mac osx or linux.
Funny, I don’t recall Linux or Mac having a lot of the features listed on that WinFS article. I may use a few hours of Linux every week (not so nowadays, exams), but boy i sure don’t know a lot about Linux. Even after installing RFS4 on a partition, I still didn’t know what every other file system had to offer…. man…
Those screenshots are awesome! I just hope that people in Linux community will come up with something to match Longhorn looks…
Careful,do you think Linus was the inventor of all things? How quickly you forget the BSD’s, the REAL *NIX’s. I’m equally sick of you Linux “pukes” walking around like you invented the TCP/IP stack that all OS’s enjoy. All of it, every bit of it was done at UC-Berkely, back when Linus was still wetting himself.
Give me a break, live and let live. I’m no Windows, or Mac fan for that matter, but BSD, in one form or another, was around for almost two decades before Linus ever knew what a line of code was. Linux in it’s many flavors, is a fantastic platform and I wish them all the best, but it bothers me when Linux users act like they invented the universe.
Linux, admit it or not is a UNIX work alike – i.e. it’s made to look and work (emulate) UNIX. BSD is UNIX!
It’s funny that people say M$ doesn’t innovate etc etc. Look at your desktop environment now. Doesn’t it look a heck of a lot like Windows? Who’s copying who then? Is it really just to make the transition smoother for newcomers? (are you one of those?)
So now everybody is talking how the Longhorn is ugly and how AeroUI sux, and then a few months after it’s released we go to sourceforge and see all those “GNUero” and “KAeroUI” projects around…so what’s the deal?
MS-bashing, for the sake of it, is really annoying. You might prefer Linux because it’s safer, because it’s free or for philosophical reasons, as I do, but at least if you’re an IT professional I’d recommend you leave the maniqueism behind and try to see the good and bad things about the other platforms too (and there’s a lot of both on Linux, Windows, etc)
Lets goes through the features one by one
A storage medium for all end-user data.
Well duh….a file system that can store files.
A data model built on relational database technology and NTFS.
The “WinFS” platform supports an extensible programming model that can access data in the underlying store using relational, object-oriented, and XML-based APIs.
The file system has an index, and you can access that by programming. See BeOS, and I believe SGI, who had it first.
A more secure place to store data.
Every item in “WinFS” is protected by its own security descriptor…. “WinFS” security uses discretionary access control to enable access to “WinFS” items by users and by resource manager applications such as file and print services.
Security by Users and Groups(‘Applications’), I’ve seen that before.
“WinFS” contains a set of common schemas called Windows types—for example, Contacts, Sound Tracks, Messages, and Pictures.
That’ll be attributes then, see SGI and BeOS and forth coming versions of ReiserFS IIRC.
A set of services that make data actionable.
Just applications that make use of a ‘live’ File
System. See… any OS with a live file system.
M$ have just provided them along with the OS.
users categorize their data, and then filtering their view of the information by criteria that they assign.
So that’ll be searching then. I’ll use BeOS as an example as the search results are in folders, the search is ‘live’, and the tracker allowed you to list any attribute as a column in list view.
Any one see any innovation yet?
Universities innovate more than any stupid tech shop. All of em are the same.
Any one see any innovation yet?
Do you skim through every new technology is presented to quick and shallow, or just when it’s convenient?
If I follow your style, a computer is nothing new either, just an electric abacus, right?
Just to be fair, the NT security model is hugely different from the *NIX model… if you’re going to fly off the handle writing off NT features, at least get it right. Both have their place, but NT security can’t be written off as “security by users and groups”.
Microsoft seem so in love with this transparency-thing. “Look! The window is transparent!!”
Is that something that the users actually asked or need? Except for a few special cases, I can’t see much use of that for someone busy at the office, it feels distracting to have the wallpaper or another document mixing up with my top window. But maybe I’m just not seeing outside the box. Does anyone know how this could be useful on the “daily tasks”?
I don’t want aye candy, I want quality.
To much hardware just to run the OS, they are going backwards.
Even though WinFS is not a new concept, it is an innovation to most people and Microsoft is taking some risk by implementing this new file management system. After Longhorn comes out, you can’t sit back and say that the new file system is not a new idea anymore, because it can still be a new idea and an innovation depending on how you implement all of the concepts, in other words there is a lot of room for several different implementations of the idea of a file managment system. Microsoft probably isn’t going to use BeOS source code for WinFS, but you never know.
Dolby said, “Why does everyone care so much about who invented what and who was first with some idea?”
Response The reason we care Dolby is because many consumers often subscribe to the narrow arguement pushed by the companies that it’s okay for them to give up their freedom and pay money for certain software because it’s important that companies get money for innovation.
What advocates of free softare often argue against this is that you aren’t seeing any innovation from the wealthiest companies. In fact, I personally argue that companies like Apple and Microsoft are changing their products less and less, and prices have remained the same. They are basically able to do so for several reasons. One thing is that their isn’t a true base in the prices they set. Microsoft can charge virtually any price for their software, without having to justifying those prices without any sort of rationalization. The economics of the software industry isn’t the same as other markets. Sure software companies must account for payroll and such, but other certain critical variables you’ll find in other fields are non-existent. This allows for a situation where companies can jack prices based on features, like $1 per features as in the case of Apple’s Jaguar, as well as creating other psychological factors of the consumer, where they think they are “getting” something for their money. Microsoft for one has taken tremendous advantage of this situation, which is why you have it’s founder and owner as the wealthiest man on Earth. Did you think he got where he is by being a nice guy?
It simply doesn’t matter to me which group did so-and-so first. This sort of infighting is simply retarding technological progress. Technology is no longer about making our lives easier, exploring, learning, and creating. It’s about conforming, fighting, and lieing. The reason that you’ll see a lot of free software users saying that Microsoft isn’t innovative is because we no longer believe in the falsehood that reward fuels innovation.
I think it’s perfectly legitimate for Microsoft to implement features in their OS that have already been in other OS’s. This is a science afterall. Computer science has unavoidable laws and paradigms just like all other sciences. To try to recreate or deny those laws and paradigms is simply futile. Therefore we must build upon the ideas of one another. We must share and help our neighbors, not for the sake of money, but for the sake of science and goodwill, just like the Japaneses scientists who ask United States marines to take car of their labs and hand their research over to American scientists during WWII so their efforts wouldn’t be lost.
The problem is that Microsoft wants to build off the ideas of others but make it hard for others to build off their ideas, all in the name of profit and innovation. When they do allow others to cooperate than they make it difficult and restrict freedoms unequivocably. Bill Gate’s philosophy has been from the Gecko that it’s okay to take advantage of others, not share, and build walls to divide people because programmers deserve monetary compensation for their work. They do deserve compensation for their time, thoughts, and efforts, like any other field, but they cannot own ideas. No one can. Until more people realize this I think our society is stuck in this era of retarded scientific progress.
Actually, Linux is doing to Microsoft the exact thing it [MS] is doing to Apple.
Microsoft takes a feature from Apple, which is duly duplicated into Linux. I am not saying this is wrong, but too often the poor Windows idiosyncracies of UI design get duplicated into Linux, all for the sake of the easy transition to the platform.
From a UI standpoint (this is important because end users like ourselves see the UI most of the time) Microsoft isn’t the most terribly user friendly or the most consistent. And if these poor ideas are continuously siphoned into the GNU/Linux applications that in turn become the distribution mainstaying applications, the whole idea of an easier to use operating system rivalling MS’ is just… gone.
I think you are correct, JT. While there is some innovation in open source, its main virtue is its implementation of embrace and extend. Take the KDE desktop for example. It borrows concepts from Windows, Mac, and traditional Unix window managers. Put it all together and you get a powerful, extensible, and flexible environment that, IMNSHO, is better than the other three.
You mean a computer isn’t an electronic abacus :-).
No, I just cut through the marketic BS, and point out that once again there is nothing new under the MS sun, its been done before, it isn’t an innovation.
P.S.
Anonymous (IP: —.cg.shawcable.net), just because the ‘ignorant’ masses how probably have no idea what as OS is, nevermind which one they’re or what the laternatives are using have not seen these features does not make them innovative.
Dave
P.S.
Anonymous (IP: —.cg.shawcable.net), just because the ‘ignorant masses’ (who probably have no idea what as OS is, nevermind which one they’re using or what the alternatives are) have not seen these features does not make them innovative.
Dave
“They do deserve compensation for their time, thoughts, and efforts, like any other field, but they cannot own ideas. No one can. Until more people realize this I think our society is stuck in this era of retarded scientific progress.”
People like you most likely believe this because you have no ideas of your own. My ideas are mine and belong to no one else unless I choose to sell or give them away. If I must I can keep them in my head. You and your ilk are the ones who will impede science.
“People like you most likely believe this because you have no ideas of your own. My ideas are mine and belong to no one else unless I choose to sell or give them away. If I must I can keep them in my head. You and your ilk are the ones who will impede science.”
Well, an idea that isn’t shared might as well not have existed. (Now that really helps science, ne?
) You can keep an idea secret, is that owning it? You can sell an idea by giving it to someone in return for money. What happens with the idea after that is no longer controlled by you.
Oh, and then there’s patent law, mafia, etc. making these things more complicated (for good and/or bad).
Comparing patent law and organized crime shows where your head is at.
What actually is the point of innovation? Yes, it is great to have new ideas, what is even better is that it is packaged with other ideas to suit you best. Why is everyone so caught up with the idea of “innovation”, and fail to see that hardly anyone really truly cares?
If Longhorn has the most innovative of ideas, brand new inventions, etc., yet is crap in doing what I want to do, is completely useless for me.
As for “Free Software” vs. bad evil Microsoft, I would like to keep my freedom of choosing which kind of software though matter what license they come with. for example, I use Windows and Opera, along with Thunderbird and SWORD (a Bible software, GPLed), and this combination is fine by me. Why should I dump Windows and Opera when the Free Software altenatives doesn’t do what I want?