Looking Beyond Vista To Fiji and Vienna 600
Vinit wrote in with an article that describes Microsoft's strategy for future versions of Windows. It begins: "As we all know that Microsoft Vista was originally scheduled to be released in 2003, after two years of Windows XP, but it got delayed by over five years due to various reasons. Definitely, Vista is very very improved OS over the previous versions, but the delayed in the launch has cost Microsoft, billions of dollars. Now the question at the moment is, what exactly after Vista? Microsoft can't afford to wait another five years for an operating system. People are becoming more aware of the choices they have, and Linux is no longer a hobbyist OS, and that day isn't far away when it becomes simple enough to be a viable alternative to Windows. The competition is fierce. That is why, to stay at the top, Microsoft has planned a 'Vista R2', codenamed 'Fiji' which will be released some time in 2008. And after Fiji, there will be Windows 'Vienna'. Windows Fiji, will not be a totally different OS from Vista; but it will be an add-on. Whereas Vienna will be totally different from Vista."
See Apple for details (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you get your basic design right you can gradually improve and alter things. This is where Microsoft failed, their security model was flawed, so with Vista they've fixed it (or so they say).
Re:Fiji (Score:1, Interesting)
Five years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fiji (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
While in Windows Vienna the current interface will be completely stripped, no more explorer shells, and taskbars. No start menu. Probably no toolbars, or menus and Speech Recognition will become a major input device. One thing is for certain, Vienna won't be just an operating system, but a new generation in computing.
So Fiji is going to rip off all the cool features of Leopard and incorporate into Vista while Vienna aims to be the next generation of computing. Why does this sound so familiar... oh wait....
And didn't we just recently have an article on stupid movie uses of computers that blasted the "talking computer" from Star Trek as being a completely useless interface? So why is this a good thing?
But it's also Microsoft. "2003" was codespeak for 2007, so "2008" means 2015 or something... and all the cool new features will be dropped for reasons of infeasibility anyway.
"Definitely, Vista is very very improved OS.." (Score:5, Interesting)
No Support for IPX, Appletalk, WebDav, or NetDDE
Even less capable backup built in than XP, which itself had inferior backup to previous versions
High cost
Bloat #1 - takes over 10GB of hard disk
Bloat #2 - 2GB of RAM needed
Crippled wordpad can't read
Obtuse menuing requiring going in half a dozen or more levels in for basic controls
Stupid ReadyBoost trying to do what would be better done by simple swap/page to usb device, except RB is MUCH slower
Hardware vendors not in hurry to support Vista
in short, you'll gain nothing and lose functionality by going to Vista. save your money, just say NO.
Has it really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Until the day Vista ships, MS is getting huge amounts of cash from Windows XP licenses on almost every new PC sold. Most people don't run out and buy a new OS for existing PCs, they usually stick with whatever came with it. How exactly will Vista increase MS's revenue to the tune of billions? Had they released something sooner, what new cash flow would that have provided and would it have justified the expense for development?
I'm sortof dancing around my real point here: I think the *real* reason so much time has gone buy since XP is that Microsoft really hasn't had much incentive to release a new OS.
Geared for speach recognition (Score:2, Interesting)
WinFS? (Score:5, Interesting)
As for "file locations" being managed by applications - mmm, no thanks, I rather group files by projects which can involve many applications. What I'd really love is a return to the functionality present in Word for DOS, where the application would look in the current working directory for project specific configuration files.
Bill Gates, Speech Recognition and Crediblity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Anybody who follows Gates knows that he has been serious about speach (sic) recognition for a long time.
It's hard for anyone who does not "follow" the cult of Gates to take anything he says seriously. He's been promising the moon and stars for decades but has yet to deliver anything but mild UI modifications. Generally, his company writes down a wish list of competitor's features and promises to deliver them bigger and better in his "next" release. As the years roll by he drops all of the features until he's left with something like Vista, which offerst the user little beyond DRM madness and a UI upgrade, which he then invariably promotes as "revolutionary".
Despite all of that, I thought he liked to talk about handwriting recognition. You know, the tablet PC, that' he's promissed the world since the Apple Newton. Palm, OpenZarus and Xstroke all beat him to the punch and his tablet PC has yet to catch on.
He might as well claim his next OS will have AI and do "seemless" speech recognition. He won't loose much credibility that way. At this point, he's got so little to use, I'd sooner believe penis pill spam.
I think Mark Twain said it best (Score:5, Interesting)
We've heard it all before. Seriously. And it happens just like that: "Yeah, we know XP isn't that much of an upgrade to MS-Windows 2k, but you should see Longhorn! Oh, it's gonna be great! It'll milk your cows, skim the cream, and make fresh ice cream! It'll put your kids through college! Oh, and it'll, uh, make your complexion clear up, and get rid of your herpes!"
Every time Microsoft releases a less-than-stellar product (which is invariably), they start bragging about how great things will be in the *next* release, on which they haven't even started working. That's the Microsoft modus operandi: promise more than the competition currently has, and deliver less. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Re:Who wrote this? (Score:5, Interesting)
While I have no reason to doubt either the blogger, or the uhm... other blogger. My bullshit detector is hovering at about '9'. It wouldn't be the first time someone sourced themselves in the pursuit of adsense dollars. Or just to lend themselves some credibility for that matter.
I'll agree with everything else, BUT... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Definitely, Vista is very very improved OS.." (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow.. didn't realize that. WTF were they thinking?
I'm currently on a 2gb vista test machine and it's going into swap all the time. 2gb is really not enough... it's dog slow due to the swapping.
Add to that:
Broken program files menu that doesn't cascade (so you have to know where what you're looking for is before you look for it).
Font bugs that regularly turn the fonts to unreadable crap requiring a reboot.
Claims to have NFS client but this does not actually function.
Running about 50% of available software switches aeroglass off. Sometimes it doesn't come back on without a reboot.
S...L...O...W... I mean this is a dual processor 64bit machine and it's slower than the celeron running XP next to it.
Re:See Apple for details (Score:5, Interesting)
The delay in Vista seems to have been caused by the desire to release (even internally) a single "OS product". But the fact of the matter is that an OS is composed of hundreds (thousands even) of small parts. MS is trying to release "the latest and greatest" of each part simultaneously. The inevitable ping-pong between departments trying to get it all to work with one another causes massive delays.
FLOSS usually avoids this problem because each project is developed completely independently. Most projects do not use the bleeding edge GTK library for instance. They use the latest "released" and "stable" library. Even though GTK development continues, projects usually don't care. They tie themselves to a stable rather than moving target.
It is generally the job of the distro to make it all work together. But again, they are working against stable targets for the most part. Nobody says, "Hey it's a week before release and the GTK guys released a new version of the library. Let's delay and make everything use it." (Generally speaking that is -- I'm sure there have been exceptions).
Of course there are some problems. Sometimes you just *have* to release 2 versions of GTK in the distro. But who cares (Yay for ld.so! Why the Windows people can't see the benefit of dealing with shared libraries like this in completely beyond me...) Of course worse is moving between versions of something like perl.
It's strange... I've tried to convince several of the companies I've worked for to operate in this manner, but I can't get anyone to try it. Have 2 different groups: Development - that works on a backlog of tasks and incrementally improves various pieces of the product; and Release - that takes versions of the development pieces, matches them with marketing requirements, makes a cohesive product and releases when the marketing requirements are met.
I keep trying to tell people that there is no need to freeze development just because you are doing a release. In some shops I've worked in I've literally sat on my ass for months waiting for the release to go out (while some other poor schmuck is camping in his cubicle trying to finish some last minute requirements).
Re:64bit linux world-domination-201 by 2008 (Score:2, Interesting)
A couple I do some work for bought a brand new machine; it happened to be 64bit. They noticed lots of problems that their "old" machine didn't have.
For example, programs they relied on (quickbooks was the major one) didn't play nice with 64-bit. In fact, most of their store-bought programs didn't work with 64bit.
Their choice was to buy new versions of this software (though some of this software didn't have a version compatible with 64-bit machines yet...) and spend more than $1000, or return the 64bit machine and get their old one back (gift to their daughter).
Operating systems and platforms simply cannot advance as quickly as they want, and leave software behind.
Re:Who wrote this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:See Apple for details (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple doesn't charge for security updates either. SP2 was basically just bugfixes plus windows firewall. SP1, iirc, was just bugfixes and offered no added functionality.
Apple's 10.x updates always offer added functionality in addition to bugfixes, be it expose, spotlight, or the upcoming spaces and time machine. Their 10.x.x updates are generally just bugfixes, and those are free.
p.
Re:New Generation? I Think So (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, you can say: "Pickard, what day is it?" and Mac will respond: "It is Saturday".
Re:See Apple for details (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple releases patches on a monthly basis, as does Microsoft.
Apple releases updates on a quarterly basis; Microsoft seems to do it on a yearly basis.
Apple releases upgrades on a yearly basis; Microsoft seems to take 5 years to do it.
Some further explanation:
A patch is a small change to fix bug.
An update is a collection of patches tested together, as well as small updates in functionality.
An upgrade is brand new functionality that was not available before.
Re:"Definitely, Vista is very very improved OS.." (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Definitely, Vista is very very improved OS.." (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but what if I want to edit a simple word document? What if I am working on a group project, and someone sends me the final report ridden with typos?
I guess I would just have to open it up with Mac OS X's built in "TextEditor" - which reads HTML,
What is the world when all Apple computers ship with a basic
As you said (Score:5, Interesting)
Few things I'd like to see are:
1) Tight integration to client devices. I stuck MCE onto my PC and it really was a pleasure to see my TV stuff picked up by their lovely BDA drivers and all that Tivo stuff appear. Whilst that was nice, it was nowhere near the f'in quantum leap when I pointed my 360 at my big PC over the wifi and got all those features suddenly appearing on my 40" screen.
Wifi implementation is very cheap and MS are normally good at allowing 3rd parties to access their tech (unlike Apple), yet have not quite managed to sell it very well. I'd like a clock radio that played my podcasts etc - I think I just like the idea of having a big central PC that can do all the heavy lifting and a number of thin clients that can all access it (and not all have to have their own bespoke software running on the back end).
2) Haptic stuff. Look at the Wii. Could be basic stuff like a laptop just turning off the screen if there's nobody sitting infront of it or mouse gestures like strokeit integrated into the GUI.
3) Telephony. I've no idea why I have an IP deskphone and laptop sitting on my desk. They have messenger which provides perfectly good person to person calls, they have outlook that provides a centralized mail and calendar resource - can't they just bolt on telephony? Point my deskphone number to my laptop wherever it is, divert to mobile if my PC is off, hold calls if I'm in a meeting etc?
4) Have some balls when it comes to hardware manufacturers. Apple is able to say 'right, we're using the new bios thingie' and make the hardware. MS tentatively seems to make steps towards it, but continuously supports old stuff. Now I know they have to support the old stuff and I know many people appreciate it - but they need to clearly define what hardware they want people to use to optimize 'the experience' and tell Dell. They have started to do this with the Vista certification - I've no idea why people bitch abotu this, but if you want flashy graphics, you need a decent PC and you need people to be able to buy that decent PC with confidence. The quasi-flash drives supported under Vista are a good thing - but I WANT MORE.
5) Better implementation of Bluetooth (and whatever comes along next). I'd love to be able to have my PC boot up (maybe into hibernation) when my phone walks in through the door. Popup on my phone screen with a summary (at least) when I get an email.
Just reading through my points, it seems I want integration. I may be in a minority as most people here seem to get their knickers in a twist when MS bundle a browser with XP - but I want all my stuff to just work together nicely and out of the box. I can't expect MS to support every device, but maybe if they just published some open standards (or formally adopted the perfectly good open ones we already have) hardware manufacturers WOULD comply (as I would buy).
Re:See Apple for details (Score:4, Interesting)
Having the source code is a great advantage. A
Re:See Apple for details (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks to the Vista delays XP has been a very stable platform (yeah, i hear the jokes, in terms of support continuity). Even the copy of windows 2000 that i am writing this on is still getting sufficient updates and i bought it before Mac OS X 10.0 came out. Somehow i have a gut feeling that this would not be the case if an early Longhorn release would have turned w2k into a second row legacy OS years ago.
From the customers point of view the slower update cycle is more a feature than a bug, even if it is certainly unintended from the manufacturer side. Note that this was probably different back in the days of windows 95, when desktop operating systems flaws were obvious enough to make technical and nontechnical people excitedly wait for the opportunity to spend money on an upgrade. Since w2k these things seem to have changed: did _anybody_ change from 2k to XP before a hardware upgrade came with a bundled licence? (corporate installations are a different topic alltogether)
Re:New Generation? I Think So (Score:5, Interesting)
So, at this time, one job was the person who listened to a recording and transcribed the recording into written text, oftimes reformatting it in a prescribed fashion. Though the shuttle is piloted largely by three redundant computers, we still have people transcribing letters. To be sure, some of this has to do with the amount that is costs for a human to do each of these tasks, and the accuracy, but a lot has to do with the difficulty of automating creative tasks like cooking and cleaning and transcribing. Add to this that in many cases people wish these tasks to be done how they like at the moment, and not in an absolute prescribed form and the result is a huge engineering problem.
So, if we begin to live in the 21st century, and leave the bigoted preconceptions behind, then we see that speech recognition is a specific solution that efficiently utilizes a specific resource, the human brain. And, if like in flight, we do not try to emulate the flapping of the wings but the result of the flapping of the wings, then we might see that the keyboard based solution is in fact an efficient solution that utilizes the strengths of the current resource, the electronic computer.
This does not mean that speech recognition does not have its place. Apple uses it to allow the launching of applications and the like, which is useful for certain people. More advanced speech recognition is available for those who want it. However, spending time on this instead of say, a pseudo self organizing file system, seems quite pointless.
Linux is NOT the answer (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:See Apple for details (Score:3, Interesting)
*If* we got the requirements right up front and *if* the market hasn't changed since we started and *if* nobody has gotten a better idea since when we started, then there aren't going to be any serious delays (baring really bad estimation). Of course that's a lot of "if"s and basically it never works out that way in practice.
Generally, there's a well used trick to divert blame from the requirements end of the thing into the development end of the thing: under specify the requirements, change your mind and then blame the development guys for getting it wrong. (Actually this is usually done unconsciously -- Have some really vague idea in your head what you want but be too stupid to realize that you didn't think of anything at all. Ignore complaints from development that they don't understand what you want and that it could be anything. Push them to deliver your "great" idea, not realizing that you've really just specified that it be "great" and nothing else. Complain when it turns out to be a hodgepodge of unrelated half thought up crap that nobody can use -- also known as the "Magic Pixie Dust" feature.)
The way out of this trap is not to blame marketing/program management/"designers"/whoever for bad requirements in the first place. That way they don't have a reason to shift the blame somewhere else. Acknowledge that requirements gathering is basically impossible to do up front and encourage requirements to change all along the development path.
Normally you can't do that because you plan the "release" up front and then get the developers to make it. If you move the release planning to the back end, then the release guys are only allowed the release what they have (not what they think their going to get 18 months from now). If they think they can sell it, then they release it. If not, they wait. They get to make the call when the software is "ready".
But what if they "need" a requirement before they can sell it? They can put it in the queue just like all the other requests. FLOSS people (usually working part time) can manage stable releases every month or so. In my experience a decent team can turn out stable releases in a full time environment every 2 weeks (I'm trying to find a way to get that to 1 week, but I'm having difficulty -- others claim to have done it, though). Thus the average amount of time you have to wait before the feature gets started is 1 week.
But (and this is the important point) if the release team decides that it should release without the "needed" new feature, they can. It's a business decision. Nothing more.
Re:Fiji (Score:4, Interesting)
1) new windows is announced
2) it is delivered 1 to 3 years later than promised
3) oddly, it turns out a new windows actually arrives in stores every 5 years like clockwork.
Hmmmm.... I'd say it was an MO. MS is always ontime. The early announcment is just a bluff to keep people from buying the competition. Hey don't switch to linux cause vista is gonna be so good and it's comming out soon.
Re:"Definitely, Vista is very very improved OS.." (Score:3, Interesting)
i have 2gb ram, currently it is using 880mb. when i first boot up without running any extra things its uses up about 600mb
as for the rest:
Broken program files menu that doesn't cascade (so you have to know where what you're looking for is before you look for it).
thats not true. it does cascade on the left where it says 'folders' (this is hidable so if you dont see it you need to click "folders" button thing on the bottom left. i mightve changed something in the options to enable this, i dont know.
Font bugs that regularly turn the fonts to unreadable crap requiring a reboot.
havent had this problem...
Running about 50% of available software switches aeroglass off. Sometimes it doesn't come back on without a reboot.
only thing that does this for me is windows media player classic (the one thats distributed with k-lite codec pack). it hasnt failed to come back on yet, though.
S...L...O...W... I mean this is a dual processor 64bit machine and it's slower than the celeron running XP next to it.
i have to agree about slowness. vista feels MUCH slower than xp or server 2003 i had previously.
some other problems:
- i have an ipod. vista has a built in support for ipods. if i leave it plugged in, sometimes it can be nearly impossible to safely 'eject' it. once you go to safely remove hardware and press remove, it freezes for a little while and then opens the ipod disk drive folder as if you just plugged it in. also leaving the ipod plugged in can and will cause blue screens that require a reboot. i havent seen blue screens since windows 98... its strange to see them in vista again.
- because of the new security model (no administrator account), many applications fail to work properly because they run other apps that require admin privileges. the solution to this is find what it is they are trying to run, go into properties and change it to run in admin mode for all accounts (not just yours). this is pretty cryptic and i doubt less technical people will be able to figure this out on their own.
- vista seems to crash and freeze up quite a bit. its nowhere near as stable as win xp was (which wasnt completely stable to begin with)
- from a regular user perspective, i dont really see anything new other than the prettied up gui and huge annoyances due to the new security model (although you can turn it off if you want). it seems like vista is trying really hard to copy everything good that macs have while still remaining windows, but its not really working out too well.
Re:See Apple for details (Score:2, Interesting)
Aha. Ahahaha. Aha, ha, ha. Ha. If you think it's as simple as that, you've never tried it. This bit particularly:
Most projects do not use the bleeding edge GTK library for instance. They use the latest "released" and "stable" library.
is so wrong it made me giggle. Not just GTK: everything. Most projects will just pick any old version of the eleventy-billion dependencies they have and use them without any regard to things like deprecated methods, or backwards compatability. You'd be amazed at how much software just breaks if you so much as change the patch level of a dependency. I'm continously horrified at how much software simply ignores little details such as private header files, internal APIs, non-standard API's (Ever heard the phrase "All the world is a VAX"? Well now "All the world is Linux"). It's horrifying. Most OSS developers wouldn't know a stable interface if you tied it to a brick and droped it on them. Seriously.
P.S: Sometimes, static linking is a good thing. Seriously. Trust me on this.
Re:See Apple for details (Score:3, Interesting)
This meme is as old as the BSD is dying one and just as tiresome.