Longhorn Preview 605
prostoalex writes "News.com has up a preview of Microsoft's current build of Longhorn operating system, from Jim Allchin, Microsoft group vice president. The timing is not coincidental with Apple's Tiger release, as Allchin pointed out some advantages that Microsoft had over Apple's OS: 'High on the list of features are security enhancements, improved desktop searching and organizing, and better methods for laptops to roam from one network to another.'" Update: 04/15 21:24 GMT by Z : Thomashawk wrote in to provide links to less formal looks at the Allchin preview, one at his site, and one at Evan William's site.
Amazing! (Score:4, Insightful)
High on the list of features are security enhancements
...
Ok, so, to bring Longhorn anywhere near the fundamental security that Mac OS X already intrinsically has [slashdot.org]?
To say nothing of the irony of this statement..."security enhancements"? Over what? Microsoft's previous already-dismal general track record in this area?
improved desktop searching and organizing
Which Apple is already shipping in Tiger [apple.com], and even Paul Thurrott acknowledges as "exceedingly cool" [winsupersite.com]?
Perhaps this line from the article says it all on this topic:
"In both look and form, the search mechanism is similar to the Spotlight feature in Apple Computer's Mac OS X Tiger, which goes on sale later this month."
and better methods for laptops to roam from one network to another.
...that I can already seamlessly do with Mac OS X's automatic detection of saved wireless network settings, rolling prioritized detection of available network interfaces, and quick switching of locations?
And it goes on like this, mostly as justifications for how Longhorn is really different from Tiger. (No. Really.) The most relevant excerpt is likely "[Longhorn] bears plenty of similarities to Tiger [...]"
Except that one is, you know, shipping this month.
To say nothing of the full-fledged UNIX and X11 environment I have with Mac OS X.
*Yawn*
Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
By the time Longhorn ships, according to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, PCs will have 4GHz to 6GHz processors, more than 2GB of memory, at least a terabyte of storage, and graphics accelerators three times more powerful than those offered by ATI and Nvidia today. He says that Longhorn is designed to take advantage of all this muscle, and nowhere is that more evident than in the rich, three-dimensional interface known as Aero.
Points to ponder:
1. People don't even want to move to SP2 [mithuro.com], do you think people will buy all this muscle for Longhorn?
2. What exactly is a 3D interface? Would we need to wear 3D goggles to use it?
3. Longhorn is built around three major advances--a new graphics and presentation engine known as Avalon, a new communications architecture known as Indigo, and a new file system known as WinFS that borrows from Microsoft's relational database technology. Avalon and Indigo are catchy names, but are we going to have loads of compatibility issues?
4. How much MORE is Longhorn going to cost? Is it going to be subscription based?
5. How many software patents are MS going to secure for this?
The Longhorn advantage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Made me laugh: "...document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small picture of the file itself." Now there's a security enhancement. The user will have no clue as to what it will do when they double-click the icon...(not that they ever worried about it anyway).
"As with Windows XP Service Pack 2, security remains at the forefront of Microsoft's development efforts." Right. And it's been proven, after 5 years, how rock solid XP security is...
So, anyone want to bet on how many "critical" system compromising security issues will be found before Longhorn SP1 comes out?
"Enhanced" security (Score:2, Insightful)
Who gives a fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've lost count of the number of articles, comparisons, and reviews of Longhorn I've come across in the last two years that tout some *advantage* over another OS (usually OS X).
What possible relevance does that have to me (or anyone else) right now considering no one will be able to buy copy for the next two years, if then? Meanwhile in the last two years OS X has served me very well, certainly better than a nonexistent OS could have.
At this point, continuing to sing Longhorn's praises to the consumer is about as logical as advertising the fact that Duke Nukem Forever will support the ability to fire 10 guns at once. If software companies never deliver the product, the feature set it has couldn't really be more irrelevant.
Advantages? (Score:3, Insightful)
-features are security enhancements
OS X, unix-based since 10.0: Got it already!
-improved desktop searching and organizing
Spotlight... got it!
better methods for laptops to roam from one network to another
Location Manager... Got it since OS 8!!
SOOOOO good!
Great Idea for a /. poll... (Score:3, Insightful)
Good for Longhorn (Score:5, Insightful)
Longhorn is a big update for Microsoft, they're planning big changes, many of them multimedia. I like the 3D enviroment and Avalon graphics (Though I still want animated program icons
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
6. When we have all this muscle, do we really want it all to be spent on more complicated drop-shadows in the OS?
appearance? (Score:3, Insightful)
i really love the default setup for Mac OS X, and while I understand XP can be made to look like just about anything, i truly hope they get some better design people in there by the time Longhorn is actually released.
sure it's petty... but to those who have to look at it all day, it's important.
Re:Deja vu? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm still trying to figure out what innovation we're seeing here. So far it just looks like a collection of eye candy taken from OSX and KDE. As for security? They should go require one root account and regular user accounts. They have enough time to let other software companies know the details so if their software won't function properly they can fix it.
I mean if they want to simply copy features left and right, then I don't really care so much. But they shouldn't act like these are important innovations.
There are other differences... (Score:4, Insightful)
now before you dismiss this as a simple scoff, I am (attempting) to make a valid point here. What is the number one reason people stay away from Mac? I submit that it is price. Not price of the OS Tiger, but price of "The Comptuer" you have to buy. Imagine the ability to have something as solid, feature rich, and protected as Tiger, that you can run on a relatively powerful system you made from parts you bought off of newegg for $600. Personally, I believe that's worth waiting for.
Basically what I'm saying, I guess, is if Longhorn can be ALMOST as good as Tiger it will be:
1. A vast vast VAST improvement over the windows we currently have
and 2. Will be more appealing due to the cost factor.
I don't use it now, but I'd run OSX in a heartbeat if I could do it on a PC.
Re:In other news.. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's basically the textbook account of what they did to Lotus 1-2-3, isn't it? And people call MS developer-friendly.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I'd be willing to wait until 2007... (Score:3, Insightful)
"the search mechanism is similar to the Spotlight feature in Apple Computer's Mac OS X Tiger, which goes on sale later this month"
"Microsoft would delay Longhorn over quality concerns, but is unlikely to let individual features hold up its release. That could mean some further trimming around the edges if things fall behind."
"...he did say the company expects Longhorn to drive PC sales. "This product has something for everybody."
In the end, guess what comes first, security or sales?
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:4, Insightful)
Lack of education about alternatives and Microsoft FUD.
That would be just two reasons. I haven't even started with the predatory monopolistic practices.
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:4, Insightful)
In the case of OSX part of the problem is that it is for only one platform and that platform is expensive compared to the cheap internet computers you can buy at Wal-Mart. As such Joe L-User only has real experience with the basics of Windows and they know that it "looks pretty" and "does what they need it to do", once you add in the fact that they hear that "Linux is hard to use" and you have word of mouth working against other OSes.
Long story short, Linux is always going to have problems getting major wide spread appeal as long entry level computers come loaded with Windows - if they were pre-loaded and pre-configured to run Linux in a desktop environment then odds are the word-of-mouth appeal of Linux would start to change and more people would start using it.
However, in the mean time people want "pretty" desktops that they can use to send baby pictures to Gramma with, and the hardware companies want Microsoft to come out with bloated OSes so that people have to upgrade their computer every two years.
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There are other differences... (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine? I've been using an OS like that for years on machines made from newegg parts --- it is called Linux (or GNU/Linux, whatever...). Certainly I'm hoping Tiger is finally a fully 64 bit version of OSX (as I'll be playing around with a G5 soon), but Linux has been working in 64 bits for years too.
Re:Intresting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Longhorn advantage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, we don't even need to open the file for Word to be loaded as an OLE^H^H^H ActiveX^H^H^W COM component and exploited. Excellent.
You know that's how they'll do it -- by using components. That's the traditional Microsoft way, and why else would you need a few gigs of RAM and a 4Ghz proc to make it look shiny? If Intel's going to keep pushing your crap, well, you've got to push people to buy theirs.
Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think my laptop With XP SP2 does that already (in fact, it did just about all of that with SP1), so I'm guessing they're talking of improving the process even more. Certainly you can't say that your Macintosh does this absolutely perfectly every single time in every concievable situation? Just like with searching- I'm sure Spotlight isn't perfect, and the article even says that MS is going to add features that go beyond Spotlight. And it's pretty much a given that by 2007 Apple will have improved on Spotlight, too.
It's OK if the features of two different OSes overlap features, and it's OK if they don't all come out at the same time. The end goal for both systems is essentially the same, so we should expect some redundancy. Searching and finding wireless hotspots are two very common functions, and they don't have a whole lot of leeway in their functionality or interfaces. Everybody wants searching to be faster, to cover more fields, to interpret user input better, etc.
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:3, Insightful)
The sad part is... (Score:5, Insightful)
People like my sister-in-law are the perfect audience for microsoft...she doesn't know anything different from windows at all, thinks that everything they do was their own original creation, and after cleaning her machine of netsky and some random spyware programs, shrugs again and asks if she lost anything. Doesn't care, isn't curious, does what she's told. The worst thing is that she's totally comfortable with this state of affairs because she figures that's the way things are, that's the way it'll be.
Aaarrrgghh!!
Re:Amazing! (Score:2, Insightful)
Office is actually one very functional product, when used properly - only I wish they bind C# to it instead of VBA.
MS is evil, all right, but some products of them do work quite fine (Server 2003 and Office for one, and XBox).
And God save us from animated icons.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amazing! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The sad part is... (Score:2, Insightful)
The only relevant thing in the interview (Score:3, Insightful)
And that sadly, is really what has defined Microsoft from the very days of Billy G being clever enough to license the OS to IBM across Microsoft's threats against Apple's Basic back in the 80s to the Netscape killing in the 90s. Microsoft has always and always will exist mostly as a company that defines itself by its competition. The last time Microsoft really was innovative was in the early to mid 90s with WinNT and Win95, and even those were made to compete with Mac OS7 and Unix respectively.
Microsoft, facing a lack of competitors, always almost stalls and starts comming up with insane batshit like Software Assurance.
Note the before OSX Tiger and after OSX Tiger screenshots of Longhorn and how much Microsoft has done to copy Tigers featureset. It's actually sad.
Thankfully, Microsoft also did this with WinXP (the Luna scheme) to counter OSX 10.0, and it did nothing to stop OSX adoption. I doubt, seeing that Longhorn won't be here until next year, that it will hinder the adoption of OSX Tiger in any way.
Re:The sad part is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:3, Insightful)
great.
"Viruses and malware? Comes with being the most popular OS - if everybody had Macs, the situation would be reversed."
Myth.
You may have the same amount of people trying, but that doesn't mean you have the same number of success.
The virus writer that writes a good spreading virus for OSX would get huge points in the community. so people are trying to get into it.
There are several site that have in depth articles on why your statement is false. I suggest you read them.
"Anyway, that's the joy of being in a free market; I get to pick the OS that I want to use, and others can use Linux or OS X if they feel that those products are better."
you choice of companies to support lies to manipulate the 'free market'. Just a thought.
and you should not have been modded a troll. That annoies me as well, even if I disagree with the poster.
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:4, Insightful)
That magazine was filled with so much FUD it was sick.
90% of the magazine was filled with ridiculous comparisons between PC & Mac. For instance, their retarded article comparing the Mac Mini to a Dell. The Mac is $499, and the Dell they used was $450. The first thing they did was discount the fact that the Dell came with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I think they took off about $93 for that. So really, they were were comparing a $500 computer to a $350 computer (less actually, the keyboard, mouse and monitor were going to cost more than $93 for the Mac Mini) and they of course went on to find that the Mac was a better computer.
I'm not saying that the Mac Mini isn't a good deal, or that it is not competitive. But, their method of comparison was so horribly skewed it was sick. But if I was a real 'Mac-ie' I wouldn't have looked at the logic, I would have just thought 'Macs are better, and now they are CHEAPER!'
Then of course I came to the 'games' section of the magazine. Oh my freakin' lord. What a load of crap they were spewing there. When they were saying that the Mac was the BEST gaming platform (It has Doom 3!!!) I knew they were completely off their rocker.
My wife (the Mac-ie in the family) didn't understand why I was yelling "this is a load of SHIT!" when I threw the magazine. She just wanted to look at the selection of iPod accessories they were highlighting...
Re:The sad part is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft have a clever strategy here - they "invite stupid people in". They make a point of marketing specifically to those people who fall usually no more than, say, half a standard deviation to the right of the mean on the IQ bell curve, people who would never otherwise amount to anything, and tell them "look, you can be somebody 'clever', you can be a 'computer wizard', and have people look up to you" (notice their latest "make a name for yourself with MS server" ad campaign? precisely this strategy in action ... it's these insecure people who delight at the notion that they finally have an opportunity to 'make a name for themselves' "thanks" to MS) ... so these people love MS because they then feel like MS has allowed them to be 'compooter experts', something they could only have dreamed of just years before. And these people form a larger base of Windows pseudo-experts running around than if Microsoft had tried to attract the brightest of the bright .. moreover MS knows they can't attract the smartest people because the smarter people are capable of evaluating OSs on a technical level. Look at Linux on the other hand, which "markets" itself only to the smartest people, but alienates most people further to the left of the bell curve (like C++) by promoting it's powerful but arcane complexity. So of course these people don't like Linux - from their perspective, it makes them "feel stupid". It's something they feel they can't understand, it reminds them they're not that smart. There's a lot of psychology behind choosing OSs .. the OSS guys should take advantage of it, and try to change their image. The general (buying) public can't tell the difference between real computer experts and the so-called "IT professionals" you mention ... so by having lots of these morons running around making ignorant statements about Microsoft inventing everything, they spread the lies to the public, who then buy into it.
Funnily enough, on a purely technical level, Apple, with its good design in OS X, could really cater for the full range of the IQ bell curve, but is mostly marketed to the left side (for the public) and marketed slightly to the extreme right (e.g. actual experts, many of whom like the UNIX aspect) ... they don't seem to aim much for the middle, which seems odd to me as this is the bulk of the market and where MS pitches their stuff. MS avoid the extreme left (or vice versa) because Windows is not very user-friendly, and the extreme right avoid Windows automatically because they know better. (I mean left/right of the IQ curve, not the political spectrum).
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you say that? It seems to me that you had to replace the entire UI to get something satisfactory.
Use what you like. If that's XP, great! Knock yourself out. But you haven't defended your contention that Microsoft makes easy-to-use products. By your argument, you have to go experiment with a bunch of third party hacks to get the OS to not suck.
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:2, Insightful)
With Linux or BSD you can run pretty much any server you want, use any desktop/WM you want, program in any language (with some exceptions), it costs nothing and the source is freely available, and one can modify anything. With XP you can customize the UI. That is not an advantage.
So, why do you like it more?
Re:I want animated program icons (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest you link to them.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but what is there that prevents a blackhat from writing a trojan for OS X? I'm not talking about something that spreads automatically via a remote exploit or even a local exploit, but an honest-to-God old-fashioned trojan. Promise the user free porn, or cool mouse cursors or a free stock ticker or something, and people will install it. What prevents it from giving them the free porn or weather forecast or whatever, *and* turning their machine into a spam relay?
Re:Amazing! (Score:3, Insightful)
Spotlight (clone of MS Index Server, 1998)
Dashboard (clone of MS ActiveDesktop, 1997)
Maybe they ment "Introducing NT4.0 Option Pack" instead
Of course, the Apple versions have a much prettier and very likely more user-friendly implementation.
The big "We'll always be one step ahead" from Apple is a central part of their "Preaching to the Converted" marketing, but that doesn't mean it's always true. But it's very important that Mac users believe it to be true, or they may be tempted by the latest $350 Dell.
Re:fan boys on parade (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you like me to continue to annoy the !@#!##%! out of you?