Longhorn Beta is Disappointing

bonch writes "Well, Longhorn beta 5048 was released a day before the start of WinHEC 2005, suggestive of the fact that it is not terribly impressive. Paul Thurrott (a Windows writer whose previously reported review of Mac OS X Tiger was updated after user feedback) confirmed this today in day two of his blog from WinHEC. Microsoft needed something big to kill the hype of competitors, but screenshots show minor visual updates from the last beta, and to quote Thurrot: 'This has the makings of a train wreck.'"

Train wreck indeed

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's even uglier than XP, which is no small feat.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[NatteringNabob (829042)]

I haven't been able to look at the screenshots as the site appears to be slashdoted, but I find it impossible to believe that any UI could be uglier than XP. My major complaint with XP isn't really the look though, it is the incredible amount of screen space it wastes in favor of eye candy. The first thing I do with an XP machine is set it back to Win95 mode and pick the classic skin for media player (which is truly an abomination with the default skin). Of course, these days I hardly run Windows at all since Fedora Core 3 does everything that I need a computer to do, and does it better and for less money than any version of Windows. I doubt Longhorn will be a train wreck as there are millions of people that will upgrade no matter how good or bad it is, and Microsoft will spend billions persuading them it is the best thing to do. It is amazing that people never catch on to the old wine in a new bottle trick. Of course, in the case of Windows, we aren't just talking about any old wine, we talking about vintage 30 year old Gallo Hearty Burgundy.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[Jeremiah Cornelius (137)]

God..Why can't - after 2000, XP and 3 years in development - the HORRID ancient bitmap artwork for "Control Panel" icon, etc. go away!

This is exactly the lack of focus on essential detail that will make LH a sad, second-level retread of W2K for users. Yeah, it's got an improved driver and development model. Yeah, web services are integrated throughout. It drives like a tank.

UI is artless and amature. Better work is seen on DeviantArt.com

Re:Train wreck indeed

[Phillup (317168)]

God..Why can't - after 2000, XP and 3 years in development - the HORRID ancient bitmap artwork for "Control Panel" icon, etc. go away!

Because Apple doesn't have a control panel icon for them to use?

(yeah, yeah... I know. System Preferences. It was a JOKE!)

Re:Train wreck indeed

[loconet (415875)]

Because the Control Panel is tightly integrated into the OS and thus the icon cannot and MUST NOT be changed. You cannot change the icon colours without changing the way the calc.exe does addition, if you change calc.exe, Windows Explorer will change to a maroon colour which then will result in kernel32.dll not being found which is needed by notepad.exe and thus it will not start-up and if notepad doesn't start, Internet Explorer will need to work "Offline" and we know what happens when Internet Explorer is "Offline", you cannot login to MSN Messenger!

Re:Train wreck indeed

[avalys (221114)]

"For example, XP had the desert dunes wallpaper as default in the beta but switched to the grassy hills wallpaper for the release."

Uh huh. Quite the paradigm shift, there.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[PabloJones (456560)]

"they just need to add new features"

Not just new features... they have to add features that people actually want. Apple does this.

For example, Expose was the big hit of Panther, and now Spotlight and Dashboard are going to be the big hits of Tiger. Sure, the performance and GUI enhancements are nice (except for perhaps the Finder), but they are a sideshow.

Microsoft needs to add something that will make people actually want to upgrade. They can say they will improve security, but that isn't something the average user will notice right away. In fact, it should be something the user doesn't notice at all since the OS should protect them in the first place. Microsoft needs to have something that has a tangible effect on the end user.

If people can't tell between XP (or 2000, or ME for that matter), they are in for trouble. Then they won't bother purchasing it. But if they see that there is a good reason to upgrade, they will.

Jaguar and Panther could both play DVDs, surf the web and play games... but Apple came out with features in Panther that made people able to do those things easier and/or better than before.

My point is that most new features are mostly marketing fluff, and if M$ wants really pull this off, they have to offer something truly innovative and useful.

Shut Do!

[American AC in Paris (230456)]

"Shut Do..."? [winsupersite.com] What the heck is that? Have they decided to bring Microsoft Bob back as a plucky caveman named "Shut" or something?

(On a serious note, it'd probably be a good idea to fix that--otherwise, grandma's gonna have a hard time figuring out what the "Shu..." button does on her large-text setup...)

Re:Shut Do!

[fizban (58094)]

That's the Homer mode you see there. "Shut.. Doh!"

Re:Shut Do!

[Storlek (860226)]

grandma's gonna have a hard time figuring out what the "Shu..." button does on her large-text setup
It starts a game of shuffleboard, of course.

What I'd like to know is, have they done anything to make the actual shutdown dialog more useful? The button icons completely fail to depict what they're supposed to be. I had to use a Spanish computer one time and couldn't figure out how to turn it off. I'd never used Windows XP before, and those buttons are [somethingawful.com] absolutely [somethingawful.com] meaningless [somethingawful.com] without the text underneath them.

Re:The buttons make perfect sense

[Fred Foobar (756957)]

"Go" doesn't in any way mean "restart" to me. How on earth did you get that association (besides looking at the text below the button)?

Re:The buttons make perfect sense

[sevinkey (448480)]

Next time I see a green light I'm gonna shut off the engine in my car and turn it back on again :)

Pre beta review

[Joe U (443617)]

Wow, a pre-beta release that isn't feature complete has 'the makings a train wreck'.

Give me a break, it's not even considered beta 1.

It's like complaining about interior design of an unbuilt house.

'OMG, I didn't want open walls and exposed wires! I wanted green wallpaper.'

To be fair

[by Anonymous Coward]

MS has been working on Longhorn even longer than they worked on Windows 95. So its appropriate to comment on the state of the beta after billions of dollars of work over a long period of time.

After 4 years, if this is all they can show, then I'm buying stock in Apple, because if MS attempts to "lock down" digital "rights", then people will be sprinting towards the Mac platform just as fast as they can to get away from this abortion of an OS.

Re:To be fair

[killjoe (766577)]

You never know. IF they can't play the music they already paid for or watch the movies they already paid for or play some cute foreign commercial their friend sent them, then it could happen.

Re:Pre beta review

[by Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a pre-beta release that isn't feature complete has 'the makings a train wreck'.

If Microsoft want to compare OS 10.4 with Longhorn as if Longhorn is a finished product, can you really blame everyone else for treating it the same way?

Re:Pre beta review

[diegocgteleline.es (653730)]

Paul has been following the Longhorn evolution for a couple of years. When he says "the makings a train wreck" he means that there has been basically ZERO evolution since the 2004 winhec.

Not a surprise, it's know that 90% or more of the windows division spent its time working on SP2 until SP2 got released.

Re:Pre beta review

[Joe U (443617)]

I would be very suprised if the shell was a high priority in beta 1, especially when they are changing the graphics subsystem and parts of the file system.

You can't go and toss up a new shell using new technology that hasn't been designed yet. Wait till RC1 to review.

Re:Pre beta review

[daviddennis (10926)]

It does seem interesting that they've been shedding features, seemingly backing off from most of the things that were supposed to make Longhorn special. In the mean time, Apple's powering along and giving Mac users exactly what was promised in versions of MacOS X. I think that's a bad sign by any standard.

Another bad sign is that they claimed that it would be finished in mid-2006 and now it's "holiday" 2006. So in theory they might release December 24th now.

As I remember them, betas of MacOS X were feature-complete but very slow, and then speeds improved as the release got closer. I wouldn't expect enough changes in the interface to make it less than disappointing to these reviewers.

Those indications make me feel the Longhorn project is in deep trouble.

*

I worked in a job when I had to support mainstream (non-computer people) with Windows systems.

Most of them seemed to like the Windows XP interface better because it was more cheerful. In fact, a few of them even liked Hotbar and didn't appreciate my suggestion to improve their slug-like performance by removing it. It was, after all, pretty.

So don't expect that everyone acts like a geek and removes it. I'm a pretty hardcore geek myself and even I prefer XP's interface to Windows 2000's gray Depression City.

Of course I prefer MacOS X to either, but you get the idea.

D

Re:Pre beta review

[BandwidthHog (257320)]

Those indications make me feel the Longhorn project is in deep trouble.

I'm starting to think that they're at the same point Apple was at in the 90s: every attempt to build a modern successor to OS 9 from scratch crashed and burned horribly. They finally climbed up out of their grave by purchasing NeXT and turning NeXTstep into Mac OS X.

How will MS tear themselves out of this cycle?

try "successor to OS 5"

[Heisenbug (122836)]

I'm starting to think that they're at the same point Apple was at in the 90s: every attempt to build a modern successor to OS 9 from scratch crashed and burned horribly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent [wikipedia.org]

It seems that Apple was working on "an object-oriented OS on top of a new microkernel" in C++ since *1988*, following System *5.0*. They finally gave up on it in 1996, when they bought NeXT, which had many of the same concepts and was released as part of OS X in 2001 ...

It's a lot like reading the history of the space program, isn't it? First you've got airplanes that can go into space being ready any day now, and Mars by 1980, and now we're just happy if we can get satellites into orbit ...

Re:Pre beta review

[BandwidthHog (257320)]

I've never used a virus scanner/firewall with Windows XP/Windows 2000.

And that's why I just sent those pictures you took after school last Tuesday to your parents. I thought sending them from your Gmail account was a nice touch, didn't you, Bob? Only time will tell if your sister ever forgives you for stealing her panties.

Why am I not surprised?

[CrackedButter (646746)]

The first screen shot is in monochrome, the original Macintosh had more shades of grey than this! :)

sarcasm

[DarkHelmet (120004)]

What is he talking about?

No more Super Mario Land default theme! I'd say that's a step forward.

Screenshots?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE (584508)]

He's complaining that the screenshots aren't very different? I thought the point of Longhorn was primarily the changes within the OS internals.
I could pop a Ferrari engine into a Pinto, and this guy would complain about the air freshener hanging from the mirror.

--
get a free laptop [coingo.net]

Re:Screenshots?

[American AC in Paris (230456)]

I could pop a Ferrari engine into a Pinto, and this guy would complain about the air freshener hanging from the mirror.

...see, I'd be complaining about how the Pinto suddenly started flipping itself with its own torque...

Re:Screenshots?

[mrchaotica (681592)]

No, it wouldn't flip itself -- as soon as the rear bumper touched the ground it would blow up!

Re:Screenshots?

[pavon (30274)]

He's complaining that the screenshots aren't very different?

Where did you get that? I read all the links and a couple other of his blog entries and didn't see anything that mentioned why he disliked it at all - just that he was disapointed, and he will have "more about that later". Which makes it a fairly pointless story to discuss, but ... :)

If I were to complain about this release it would not be because it was not different, but because many of the changes are bad. Scrollbars in a menu? That isn't an issue with lack of polish leading up to the beta release - that is a stupid idea that should have never made it past the design stage. There are a few other bugs shown - look at the column headers in a non-column view of the new file explorer, but those can be written of as pre-beta problems. The visual theme also needs alot more polish which is understandable for a prebeta, but I like the direction they are taking it.

But really there isn't much to say until someone that has tried it actally writes about it unlike this story.

ME?

[shamowfski (808477)]

Train Wreck nothing. If we are going to refer to unreleased software as a trainwreck, then what the hell are we going to call Windows ME?

The build for WinHec is a build for driver makers

[km790816 (78280)]

It was made very clear that the build for WinHec was soley provided as a platform to test driver compatability. MS still has a couple of months until it releases Beta 1.

Please hold your flame till then.

Train wreck?

[winkydink (650484)]

As long as they don't totally fvck up what they already have, I can't see a train wreck.

Windows ME. Now that was a train wreck.

Screenshots

[FriedTurkey (761642)]

I actually like the new look. It is 20 times better than the default XP theme. I have to switch every XP work machine to "Classic" because I hate the "Fisher-Price" coloring scheme of XP. Computers should look professional and not like "My First Computer".

Black boxes...

[MisterLawyer (770687)]

"This has the makings of a train wreck."

Shouldn't that say plane wreck now that Microsoft is using black boxes [slashdot.org]?

Fester...

[Stanistani (808333)]

>to quote Thurrot: 'This has the makings of a train wreck.'

*Dons engineer cap and lights cigar*

Just call me Gomez Addams!

*cough* BULLSHIT *cough*

[DroopyStonx (683090)]

NOTHING from Microsoft is disappointing.

I call shenanigans.

Wow

[Pike (52876)]

The commenters on Paul's site are even more juvenile than we are.

Shadows in the shadow world

[magarity (164372)]

The Recycle Bin icon casts a shadow to the left. All the other shadows, including RB's own text, casts shadows to the right. Is it because the RB is itself in a shadow world halfway between here and oblivion??? Such subtle metaphysical goings-on in Longhorn!

Re:Shadows in the shadow world

[As Seen On TV (857673)]

I'm glad somebody else pointed this out. This made the rounds internally under the headline "What's wrong with this picture?"

Look, I'm not gonna criticize Microsoft for showing early, very rough code and having it look ...well, early and very rough. If you go back and look at the Mac OS X public beta, or even the 2004 WWDC demo of Tiger, you'll find that our early builds differ significantly from the final releases of our products.

But the thing is...every single one of us, to a man, would be ashamed to show something like that in public. Seriously, we'd hang our heads in embarrassment.

Microsoft's position, of course, is, "Don't look at the icons or the controls. They're not important. We're demoing underlying technology." Which is fine. But that's not how we do things. If you're going to take the time to put a UI on a demo product at all, take the time to do it right. Don't just slap something on there and say, "Oh, this'll all come out before we ship." That's not fair to your product or your customers.

It's just another sign of the difference between our philosophy and Microsoft's philosophy. I don't think either one is objectively right or wrong, but I won't hesitate to tell you which one I think is better.

Re:Shadows in the shadow world

[As Seen On TV (857673)]

I just checked each of these on my machine.

Activate Dashboard, the iChat/Volume/Battery/Clock menus in the menu bar still work and pop up over the Dashboard layer.

Not correct. A click outside a widget dismisses Dashboard.

Open a .pdf in Preview, activate Dashboard, and the cursor will change to a hand as it floats over the (dimmed and unclickable) document.

Not correct. Outside widgets, the cursor is an arrow regardless of context.

Dashboard Translation widget, click the 'swap' button several times and the focus ring will flicker madly

I wasn't able to reproduce this. I don't know what you meant by "several." I clicked it 20 times. No error.

Finder, start renaming a file and the insertion caret will flicker twice on each keystroke until the name wraps to the second line

That was an occasional bug in 8A425. Are you using a pirated copy?

System Preferences/Mail, now showing the third major window style on the system (Aqua, Metal, and now Plastic)

No, that's Aqua.

Spotlight, randomly fails to index non-boot-drive partitions

Obviously not reproducible. Spotlight will not index a volume if there's insufficient free space available. We look for about 1/10th of one percent, if I remember correctly.

Your response may be "oh well, they're all minor"

No, my response is "Please stop using pirated copies of Tiger that you download off the Internet and then complaining about them."

Disappointing is subjective

[Twillerror (536681)]

The slogan is very subject and so incomplete.

John Smith calls Longhorn disappointing would have been better.

Essentially slashdot turned a story that should have been called "New longhorn build/screenshots" into major flaimbait.

I seriously think that Slashdot should allow their subscribers to "vote" on the new stories that most people don't see...or a subset..if to many people think it is bad it gets red flagged for Taco to stare at or something.

It Just Works!(tm)

[SamMichaels (213605)]

Looks exactly like XP using an OS X theme...but remember kids, It Just Works!(tm) [slashdot.org]

Although I'm glad they've decided to use technology created in the late 60s [slashdot.org] (which SCO owns and Al Gore invented) as well as a lovely new password scheme [slashdot.org] guaranteed to create jobs in the IT support workforce from all the clueless office lemmings. Not to mention how IE7 won't be exclusive to Longhorn [slashdot.org] nor will WinFS [slashdot.org] be included.

So like I said...we're paying $299 for XP with an OS X theme.

Re:Redmond

[JUSTONEMORELATTE (584508)]

"Redmond speed-up the copies."

We get signal!

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

--
get a free laptop [coingo.net]

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[rpozz (249652)]

Longhorn will run fine on a 1GHz computer with 256 MB of RAM

Following on from what you said, considering that the system requirements for XP Pro [microsoft.com] state a 300MHz CPU and 128MB of RAM, the real requirements for this thing could be huge. I'm sure many of you would strongly disagree with the idea that XP can run acceptably with 128MB of RAM.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[Loki_1929 (550940)]

"I'm sure many of you would strongly disagree with the idea that XP can run acceptably with 128MB of RAM."

Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM. The problem comes when you try to install or run applications which require any memory whatsoever.

But Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[rpozz (249652)]

Check you aren't running the 'nv' NVidia driver or standard SVGA driver if you have an NVidia card. That will make the graphics 'slow', as you describe. A 533MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM should be more than enough. Services that are just sitting there will 'sleep' if they aren't being used, so they shouldn't have too much effect.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[As Seen On TV (857673)]

Calling something disastrous "a train wreck" is a long-established idiom that isn't going to just go away because a train wrecks. And frankly, I think calling it "an unfortunate choice of words" is just a big, steaming load of language-police bull crap.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[vacuum_tuber (707626)]

This has the makings of a train wreck.

An unfortunate choice of words, considering what happened in Japan...

You're right. Let's begin using more sensitive terms for such things and then we won't have to check the news every day for disasters before we open our thoughtless mouths.

"Train wreck" could be "rail transport guidance mishap (RTGM)"

"Plane crash" could be "aeronautic ground avoidance exception (AGAE)"

"Tsunami" could be "exceptional aquatic waveform event (EAWE)"

"Earthquake" could be "sudden geological tension release event (SGTRE)"

"Flood" could be "unexpected hydrological intrusion (UHI)"

"Fire" could be "unwanted thermological surge cause by excessively rapid oxdidation of ambient combustibles (UTSCBEROOAC or UTSCEROAC)"

"Atomic attack" coule be "aggressive chain reaction event unfortunately proximate to valuable life or property (ACREUPTVLOP or ACREUPVLP)"

"Heart attack" could be "biogenic oxidant supply chain problem resulting in catastrophic system pump failure (BOSCPRICSPF)"

"Vomit" could be "retrograde migration of partially processed biological fuel mixture (RMOPPBFM or RMPPBFM)"

By using the abbreviations we could all pretend that nothing ugly happens or exists. "Hey, be careful with that! You could have a BOSCPRICSPF!" "What the fuck did you call me, pissbrain?"

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[ackthpt (218170)]

Why MS ever come up with the concept that an OS was suuposed to be anything but a platform on which to run apps. I do not give a rat's ass about the OS. The OS doe not do any real "work." When it get in the way of apps, it is no longer of any value.

It probably helps to think of Windows in two different terms. 1) the Operating System 2) The environment. The OS probably changes very little from major release to major release. The environment, however, with all those background tasks, DLLs, pretty widgets and sounds are what seems to gobble up the majority of resources.

MS keeps bloating the OS, making apps ever less convenient and usable. MS seems hell-bent on "developing" itself out of business.

On the contrary, I think they've got some people who don't give a rat's patoot about hardware or kernel particulars, but just want a warm fuzzy computing experience and that is what they target. That and making sure there's always some incremental improvement which keeps you coming back every couple years and upgrading Windows or Office.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[Digital Pizza (855175)]

Back in the day I decided to challenge Microsoft's 4MB RAM minimum for Win95, so I took out the 16MB stick of RAM from my system at the time (AMD 486DX4/120, normally 20MB RAM - funky board with four 30-pin slots and two 72-pin slots), leaving 4MB.

The only way I could get it to even boot was to disable the Soundblaster 16 driver. The drive didn't take a break at all from swapping until I shut down.

Technically, it ran. I'm not looking forward to Longhorn.

Re:They can't ever do the "right" thing.

[FLAGGR (800770)]

Have you seen that start menu? More usable? It's got a motherfucking scrollbar inside of a fucking menu.

Whats next, a row of ugly windows tabs, with some hidden, or even better multiple rows of tabs?