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Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows IT

Longhorn Preview 605

Posted by Zonk from the i'm-ready-for-a-filet dept.
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.
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Longhorn Preview

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  • Amazing! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:38PM (#12248883)
    Wow, a Longhorn "review" from Microsoft itself?

    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*

    • Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Funny)

      by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:43PM (#12248949) Homepage Journal
      Security enchancements can only mean one thing:

      Preinstalled spyware, so you don't have to risk going out onto the internet to find your own.

      • Re:Amazing! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Nik13 ( 837926 )
        Security enchancements can only mean one thing:

        I thought you were gonna say "because it just couldn't be worse than before, no matter how hard they try".

        My guess is:

        -LH will still ship with IE which will have a LOT of holes and more will be found over time. "Their" antispyware may not be too bad, but it's like fixing a flat tire everyday... Why not make IE secure instead? ... (Can't see ActiveX support beign removed, either)

        -(Home) Users will still run as admin for everyday stuff. You know what follows

    • Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:43PM (#12248952)
      I liked this one:
      But while the OS bears plenty of similarities to Tiger, Allchin stressed that Microsoft has broken new ground in Longhorn. For example, document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small picture of the file itself. The icon for a Word document, for example, is a tiny iteration of the first page of the file.
      Some new ground. Both KDE and Gnome have had this feature for a good while.
      • OS X, too. I guess by saying "Microsoft has broken new ground" it just means it's the first time Microsoft has done it with their OS. Out of the 3 major desktop OSes (OS X, any new Linux window manager, Windows), they're dead last. Eek... I'm becoming a Mac fanboy (I just got my first Mac, sorry).
      • Uh, I remember that one from OS/2.

        Nice to know their IBM partnership fed into the development of Windows. I guess it does take years for code to find its way out the door.

      • Re:Amazing! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Durandal64 ( 658649 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:06PM (#12249297)
        That particular feature seemed like a stupid idea, to me. Why would I want to see the first page of any Word document in a 128x128 pixel frame? All that tells me is that it's a document containing text of some sort, not necessarily that it's a Word document. It doesn't make identifying the document easier and it blurs distinctions among other similar types. What's so great about it again?

        • They're not 128x128 (Score:4, Informative)

          by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @05:10PM (#12250066) Homepage
          I also saw Allchin's roadshow. The icons scale on the fly, like desktop icons in Mac OS X. You can work a slider to bump them up to a fairly large size.

        • Re:Amazing! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dfj225 ( 587560 )
          I was thinking the same thing. For documents, this seems pretty much useless. For images it works well, but XP already does this. What approach I really like is the one Mac OS X takes where you can click on an icon and (in pane view anyway) get a preview of it to the right. This makes more sense because the preview is larger than the icon, and I only see it if I want to see it.

    • Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Funny)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:52PM (#12249101)
      Last year at WWDC Apple had huge posters that said things like "Mac OS X, introducing longhorn" and "Redmond start your photocopiers".

      I thought it was cute, now I know it was prophetic.

    • There are other differences... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NYTrojan ( 682560 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:54PM (#12249127)
      The most important of which is compatibility. Windows will run on an endless combination of different vendor's processors, motherboards, etc etc. Windows has the whole PC thing going for it. With Tiger you are locked into Apple hardware.

      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:There are other differences... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Attitude Adjuster ( 683211 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:03PM (#12249251)
        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.

        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.

        • 64 bit? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Heisenbug ( 122836 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:49PM (#12249836)
          Did you see the /. post from an Apple dev a few days ago, saying that putting the windowing interface in 64 bit actually slows it down due to longer pointers, and doesn't have any benefit? The claim was that, if they created 64 bit versions of the interface code, they would then have had to tell their developers not to use them. In the meantime, all of the proc-intensive tasks that would benefit from 64 bit are already using it, and the proc is designed such that using whichever is appropriate doesn't impose a performance penalty ...

          I guess my real question is, do you know something I don't (most people do), or are you just "hoping Tiger is finally a fully 64 bit version" because 64 is twice as much?

          • Speed holes. (Score:4, Informative)

            by Colol ( 35104 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @05:08PM (#12250049)
            It's the Type-R obsession back to harass us all again. People, apparently including the parent to your post, have this silly notion that everything has to be "fully 64-bit" even when it serves no damn purpose (and even when it slows things down!).

            64-bit is not a panacea. 64-bit is useful where it is useful, but that's not everywhere. Just like you don't ride around in a U-Haul truck around 365 days a year because it has a lot of room, you don't need 64-bit support in, say, TextEdit or the window manager.

            What are you going to do with 64-bit addressing in a simple text editor or the window manager? Nothing. Nothing at all.

            I drive a Jeep. It's got four wheel drive. I'm not going around complaining about how all the roads immediately around me are paved -- they don't diminish my ability to use my four-wheel drive when appropriate. So it is with 64-bit processors. Not everything needs to be optimized for them. Some applications won't see any benefit, and some may even see a performance decrease (kind of like how tooling around town in 4Lo just because you can will leave you without a drivetrain).

            Do anyone really want a 64-bit version of TextEdit just so you can say your OS is completely 64-bit optimized? Give me a break.

            • Re:Speed holes. (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Jerf ( 17166 )
              I think you're partially misidentifying the problem, or at least leaving off one gigantic source of confusion. The AMD64 instruction set, from what I've heard, runs about 30% faster than the same code compiled in 32-bit mode, and the latter probably has better optimizations, too. (It takes years for compilers to fully optimize for an architecture; I believe 5 years was an old rule of thumb but I think the lead time has been building since multi-pipelining procs came out.)

              But that's not because the processo

      • Re:There are other differences... (Score:5, Informative)

        by mihalis ( 28146 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:20PM (#12249454) Homepage

        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.

        The Mac Mini starts at $500 and it's a bit nicer than a home-brew $600 system would be, since it's very small, cool and quiet.

        I do take your point that the $600 homebrew PC you mention would likely have a bit more oomph in the CPU and graphics card, however you should also bear in mind that Mac OS X is really quite efficient at many things, for example Apple really gets the most performance possible out of its carefully chosen components, so things like video editing are surprisingly good on "weak" PowerPC G4 cpus. I have done about 10 DVD projects on my powerbook which has significantly less raw compute and pixel-pushing power than a Mac Mini.

        Depending on your actual needs, the Mac Mini could really meet your needs and budget well (I would recommend simply giving one a try in a shop, ideally running the applications you would want touse).

    • Except that one is, you know, shipping this month.

      Which, unless you're looking to switch computers now, is irrelevant. Either you own a Mac (I do) and you're stoked (or underwhelmed) by Tiger, or you don't. If you don't own a Mac, Tiger's irrelevant. For those poor souls, I imagine Longhorn SP1 can't come soon enough (I'm pretty much assuming you don't want whatever ships first). XP was a dated OS when it first shipped.

      I don't understand the compare/contrast thing. None of these features are truly ne

    • Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by llamaluvr ( 575102 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:08PM (#12249313) Journal
      ...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?

      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.

  • Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Flywheels of Fire ( 836557 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:38PM (#12248885) Homepage
    In an earlier [zdnet.co.uk] article, Mr. Billy said:

    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?

    • "designed to take advantage of all this muscle"

      Y'know, like "to fuck with", "to shag" etc?

      I never can tell with MS, after all they have redefined the meaning of so many words and terms; innovation, secure, reliable, scalable etc etc.

    • 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.

      We'll have much better computers than that by time Longhorn finally ships.

    • Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:52PM (#12249096) Homepage
      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.

      6. When we have all this muscle, do we really want it all to be spent on more complicated drop-shadows in the OS?

      • Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Funny)

        by myov ( 177946 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:23PM (#12249504)
        Apple vs MS:

        Apple - Apple is a hardware company so they want to sell boxes, not software, yet each release of OS X is faster than the previous one. Tiger is expected to continue this trend.

        Microsoft is a software company so they want to sell software, not boxes, yet each release of Windows is far slower than the last one.

        There's a reason why I can still use a 6 year old mac with the current OS.

        • Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by orin ( 113079 )
          There's a reason why I can still use a 6 year old mac with the current OS. I got to 10.3 on a DV iMac (350Mhz, 192 MB ram) which I purchased when 10.0 came out. The experience wasn't all that great, so I shifted to Ubuntu. Linux runs great on an older iMac - the newer versions of OSX do not.

      • Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tehshen ( 794722 )
        I use drop shadows (using YzShadow for windows at the moment) and it actually makes the windows stand out more without looking ugly - you can see the active window much more clearly. Don't dismiss it as just another user-interface tweak, please.

    • Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Funny)

      by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:12PM (#12249344)
      Sounds to me like Longhorn will be a big contributor to the need to upgrade the electrical grid.

  • Right (Score:5, Funny)

    by anonicon ( 215837 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:39PM (#12248892)
    "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."

    And you'll see all this and more when it's released in 2007.

    Honest. :-)

  • The Longhorn advantage? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by It doesn't come easy ( 695416 ) * on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:40PM (#12248900) Journal
    The fact that Microsoft has had to work hard to try and catch up to OSX's level of security is a Longhorn advantage? Wonder if they made it yet....

    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?
    • ...Allchin stressed that Microsoft has broken new ground in Longhorn. For example, document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small picture of the file itself. The icon for a Word document, for example, is a tiny iteration of the first page of the file. Folders, too, show glimpses of what's inside. Such images can be rather small, but they offer a visual cue that aids in the searching process, Allchin said.

      New ground?! This feature has been around in KDE* (and in Gnome* can't re

    • Icon Security (Score:5, Funny)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:04PM (#12249265)
      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.

      I think that files with viruses in them show a little icon of you reintsalling the OS, as a portent of the future you might have by opening it. So I guess that's security related. By default it ships with an icon of Balmer doing the installation unless you have a USB camera hooked up, then it automatically detects an install and takes a snap while you're in hour two for best effect!

      Who says Microsoft cant innovate.
    • The really interesting part of using a preview of the file's contents to create an icon? Malicious contents.

      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

  • "Enhanced" security (Score:2, Insightful)

    by slobber ( 685169 )
    High on the list of features are security enhancements Generally speaking, it is much easier to "enhance" security of something which is not all that secure to begin with, so in itself it could hardly be touted as an advantage compared to other OSes.

  • Heh (Score:3, Funny)

    by Skiron ( 735617 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:42PM (#12248942)
    'High on the list of features are security enhancements.

    'Enhancements'? How can you 'enhance' no security to start with? 0 +0 = 0.
  • Heh, personally I couldnt care if MS releases longhorn in 2007, I would like to see a windows version that isnt half assed up. Id like to (for once) not worry so much about security too much. Id be willing to wait a few months/a year or two for MS to really make LH as good as they can.
    • I understand the wish but don't hold your breath...Longhorn is about boosting sales above all else, just like every other Windows version that has ever been published. Just look at this "interview"...

      "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
      • Oh, it's far worse than that. Microsoft's #1 selling point for Longhorn is security. "Buy this product because it's more secure than the product we sold you last year." They've been doing that for a while now. They're getting good at it. Ship a product that's known to be flawed, then charge for a product that's known to be flawed slightly less, and advertise it as a big improvement.

        Microsoft ought to change their slogan to "We're doing the best we can." Nobody would believe them, but it would at least be s
  • High on the list of features are security enhancements

    Wow! I sure need that, since my OSX installs are all so virus-prone!

  • PCMagazine (Score:4, Informative)

    by elid ( 672471 ) <eli.ipod@g m a il.com> on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:43PM (#12248950)
    has info as well [pcmag.com]

  • Oh, come on (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:44PM (#12248962) Homepage
    OK - so I can deal with the timing not being coindidental. (Yeah. Right.)

    But this part made me go whaaaa?:

    The icon for a Word document, for example, is a tiny iteration of the first page of the file. Folders, too, show glimpses of what's inside. Such images can be rather small, but they offer a visual cue that aids in the searching process, Allchin said.


    Oh, no, thank you very much. First, I don't want those system resources wasted trying to figure out what the icon should look like every time I update or save the file, let along when I move stuff into and out of the folder. Individual icons for items? Sure! But why are we wasting all the extra time that could be used making the OS faster.

    And I loved this part:


    Allchin said that Longhorn also goes further than Tiger when it comes to what one can do with search results, saying it offers new ways to organize and view the information. While the look of the OS hasn't been finalized, the translucent windows and other graphics tricks are expected to find their way into the finished software.


    Oh, for joy. It's not enough just to find what I want, but I need to sort it by things like "date" and "creator" and "file type". Oh, wait - Spotlight will do that too!

    The whole presentation sounds a lot like "Hm - another product is coming out now, we need to have a good reason for people to delay. Institute standard plan #2: Convince people that our stuff will be better 'When it's done', so don't buy that other stuff now!"

    The question is, with Longhorn at least a year out, will it work any better this time?
    • The icon for a Word document, for example, is a tiny iteration of the first page of the file. Folders, too, show glimpses of what's inside. Such images can be rather small, but they offer a visual cue that aids in the searching process, Allchin said. Can I turn this feature off? It's going to make it a LOT harder to hide my porn collection!

  • Processor speeds (Score:2, Informative)

    by deuist ( 228133 )
    I sure hope that users have fast CPU's and a butt-load of memory. With the new icon "feature" that gives a mini preview of each document in a folder, I can only imagine how long simple navigation will take. And I thought viewing My Pictures in thumbnail mode was slow.

    • Re:Processor speeds (Score:3, Informative)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      How long does it take on KDE with a P2? Oh wait, its not that long.

    • Re:Processor speeds (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Punboy ( 737239 )
      Actually, its a quite speedy thing to do. the KDE project on linux has been doing this for quite some time now, and I've found the Explorer in WinXP actually lists files SLOWER than konqueror, even though it doesn't do previews of any files. Also, Konqueror displays the filetype icon first, then replaces said icons withe previews as it loads them. And, thanks to the thread scheduling and priority handling in Linux and other POSIX-compliant OS's, the thread that processes the threads is put on hold when anot

  • In other news.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by PaxTech ( 103481 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:45PM (#12248984) Homepage
    Duke Nukem Forever will make Half Life 2 look like a piece of crap. Someday.

    It's the same story Microsoft has told for years.. "Yeah, those other guys might have some cool shit, but the stuff we're working on is WAY better. Don't buy their stuff, wait for our new thing to come out. It'll be available Real Soon Now."

    Apple will be releasing Mac OS X Ocelot by the time Longhorn hits the market.

    • This has been MS SOP for decades. Say, "Oh, don't buy x. We're working on (x+5) product, in a few months it will be out and beat the pants off of x. It will be so smart and so fast it will do all your work before you even start the app!" Then as time goes by, they promise fewer features and say it will release later, on an on, until something half-assed shows up, or not at all.

      That's basically the textbook account of what they did to Lotus 1-2-3, isn't it? And people call MS developer-friendly.

  • Who gives a fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:46PM (#12249007)
    pointed out some advantages that Microsoft had over Apple's OS

    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.
    • 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).

      Really? I haven't seen one advantage actually listed. Maybe you can help me figure out what they are supposed to be... I'm pretty much lost at sea here.

  • Maybe.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Captain Nick ( 741204 )
    We'll see OSX on an intel platform by then... but then again, prolly not. Been discussed before, but wouldn't it sweet to see side-by-side comparisons, on the same hardware, etc, of MacOS and Windows?
  • So as a fanboy with nothing to do on a friday afternoon with no class I must take issue with the whole easier to roam from network to network thing... As a student at a private California university (not ucsc as per my name), we have different wifi networks all over the place. I'm using a PBg4 with airport express and mac os 10.3.8. Whenever and wherever I open up my laptop, it automatically connects me to the best (or predetermined) network available, and it usually takes 5 seconds. The only time i've

  • Advantages? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jhealy ( 91456 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:48PM (#12249026)
    Allchin pointed out some advantages that Microsoft had over Apple's OS:
    -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)

    by jbrader ( 697703 ) <stillnotpynchon@gmail.com> on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:48PM (#12249033)
    How many people trashed tis article over at osnews and are now over here trashing it again?

  • Shades of Wang Freestyle (circa 1991) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:48PM (#12249034) Homepage
    "document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small picture of the file itself"

    Wang was doing this circa 1991 on AT-class hardware.

    I didn't think it was all that cool at the time and I don't think it's a particularly good idea now.
    • I could see this being remotely useful if the flow of text (in the thumbnail) made it easy to tell what kind of file it was - for example, the text flows differently in a resume than in an article (or, well, it had better!) - and one had no other way of figuring things out.

      So if, for example, the user has a habit of naming all their files things like AAAAAAAA.DOC, AAAAAAAB.DOC and so on (which, honestly, some Windows user out there is probably crazy enough to do) they'll think this is great.

      This is hardly

  • Good for Longhorn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CSMastermind ( 847625 ) <freight_train10@hotmail.com> on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:49PM (#12249042)
    Now I'll admit I'm a happy windows user. I have Knoppix and Ubuntu close by but for the most part I use windows...because it works for me. I does what I want it to do and does it at an acceptable level. I for one am both excited and disappointed about Longhorn here's why:

    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 :-( ...maybe that's just me). I enjoy the concept of steaming video to any window and think that eliminating the difference between web and desktop apps is great. I didn't like what they pulled with WinFS but if it means the final product is better, than I say fine by me.

  • appearance? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rayde ( 738949 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:53PM (#12249112) Homepage
    what i want to know is if Longhorn will offer a better looking default UI than XP... I *HATED* the green and blue look it has by default. And the available themes were almost as bad. sure it could be customized with stylesXP or whatever, but that's a pain. and since i deal with support of other people's systems alot, they usually stick with that horrid default setup. bah!

    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.

  • From the makers of "Free ,as in costs money" we have "advatage, as in Same thing later".
    I have to ask which dictionary they are using ..
    Seriously i know marketing people are usualy full of crap , but normaly they try to avoid silly statments that are near out and out lies

  • Shades of Blues Brothers (Score:4, Funny)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:06PM (#12249300)
    Allchin said that Longhorn also goes further than Tiger when it comes to what one can do with search results, saying it offers new ways to organize and view the information.

    "We got both kinds of search views. We sort by date OR time!"

  • The sad part is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wandazulu ( 265281 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:19PM (#12249427)
    I mentioned that Longhorn would show a "preview" as the document icon to a family member who is less than computer savvy and she thought it was the greatest idea ever. She really did say "that's why windows is great..they're always improving the way things work." When I told her the mac had this for ages, she shrugged and said 'I never used a mac.'

    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!!
    • When I told her the mac had this for ages, she shrugged and said 'I never used a mac.'
      That's the worst part: the cognitive dissonance. When you point out the irrefutable fact that reality is the opposite of what they believed, they just ignore you. It's maddening!

  • Wait... (Score:5, Funny)

    by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:31PM (#12249615) Homepage
    Lemme get this straight.

    Microsoft: "We don't have Longhorn ready yet, but Tiger, that OS from that other company, is shipping in 14 days if you want a 99% approximation of our OS that will ship in two years."

    Apple: "Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger': Even Microsoft Says It's Good."

    Isn't Rule Number One of advertising never to mention the "leading brand" by name? Sheesh, you'd think M$ would have learned by now.

    p

  • Share music files (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pascal Sartoretti ( 454385 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @04:31PM (#12249618)
    From TFA:

    For example, a PC with Longhorn might show all the music files together, whether they are on the local PC or another machine on the network.

    I'm surprised, this already works on my WinXP machine. The application is named iTunes.

    Oh wait...

  • The only relevant thing in the interview (Score:3, Insightful)

    by theolein ( 316044 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @05:43PM (#12250428) Journal
    While it's pretty obvious that Allchin would tout the features of Longhorn, but the real importance of Allchin giving an interview right now, after Tiger's announcement, and then basically spending half the interview comparing Longhorn favourably to Tiger lies in exactly that: Tiger. I have no idea just how insecure OSX and Apple make Microsoft feel, but, given that it is usually suicide to mention a competitor in an interview, and the timimng make me think that Microsoft is beginning to feel afraid that they might lose one or two marketshare percent yet another OS apart from Linux.

    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.

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