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Microsoft Demands Removal Of Longhorn Images
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Apr 27, 2005 02:51 PM
from the now-there's-a-marketing-move dept.
from the now-there's-a-marketing-move dept.
bonch writes "After the previously reported release of the Longhorn beta at this year's WinHEC, Neowin and other Windows sites are reporting that Microsoft is going around sending legal letters demanding removal of Longhorn Build 5048 screenshots. Paul Thurrott discusses it on his site, stating that Microsoft never told anyone beforehand not to post screenshots of the publicly available beta, and links to the new galleries he has up now. 'Enjoy it while it lasts.'"
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Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:5, Insightful)
To me this pretty much looks like Microsoft ran the screenshots up the metaphoric flagpole and didn't like the salutes. Instead of spinning it as beta (which we in the IT community have come to understand, if not respect) and appropriately rough-edged, Microsoft apparently has decided to take the low road and is going to hold its breath until it turns blue (irony). Too bad, the images do suck, but I think Microsoft in its eagerness to prove "me too" for having a cool new OS stumbled mightily this time. Fortunately, having $50B petty cash makes recovery from these inconveniences convenient.
Re:Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:5, Insightful)
lol
It's probably one of the things I MOST don't get about Microsoft. For all of the money they can throw at things they sure don't seem to end up with huge quality return on investment. For me it's evidence of one of two things (I'm sure there's more to consider...): Either 1) You can't solve quality issues by throwing money at them, or, 2) Microsoft doesn't put enough money and/or effort into solving their quality issues. (I suspect a bit of the latter since their responsibility, Gates' and Ballmer's disclaimers aside, is to the share holders and if Microsoft can continue to rake in the profits with marginally competitive technology so much the better....)
I think eventually (as I've posted many times in my somewhat anti-Microsoft bent) the frustration of the consumers coupled with the continued resentment of the IT community will be the downfall of Microsoft. However that downfall won't come for a very long time considering how embedded Microsoft is in the entirety of our technology universe.
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Re:Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the problem here comes from just how not beta Microsoft considers the overall GUI shown in those screenshots...
They promised to "wow" us all with a whole new Windows experience, and gave us exactly what most of us expected all along - XP with a makeover, which itself amounted to nothing more than Win95 with a makeover.
And right about now, we have a whole lot of people at MS updating their resumes as a result of the massively underwhelmed response from not just "those Linux freaks" who would damn Billy G even if he found a cure for AIDS, cancer, and the flu all in the same day, but from fairly pro-Windows media who paid just to fly to see a demo of a beta of MS's Next Big Thing (tm)
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Re:Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:5, Funny)
Be honest and fair. XP is really NT 3.51 with a makeover, and you know it.
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Maybe "Shut Do..." is confidential IP (Score:5, Funny)
"They promised to "wow" us all with a whole new Windows experience"
And they succeeded. I can honestly say their new "Shut Do..." menu option in the Beta truly did make me go "wow".
As in "Wow, WTF are they thinking?"
Seriously, just how much work do they have left on this "Beta"? Getting kind of late in the game to have such glaring UI problems.
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Re:Maybe "Shut Do..." is confidential IP (Score:4, Insightful)
A nice strategy for presentations and demos is to make missing functionality look strange. That way when you give someone a screenshot and they see that the "Uplodes tests TOO DATABAse" button is bright orange and in an ugly font, they ask why, and you get to explain that that part isn't finished yet. It avoids the problem of people thinking that everything is finished just because there is a mock-up of the UI.
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Re:Is your job... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't like it?! You must be joking!
Think of it this way:It's not a new tactic, but it never really gets old either....
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Re:Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:5, Funny)
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Guaranteeing wide distribution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile telling people to get them off their websites is a guaranteed method of making sure everyone will download them and save them and look them over much more critically, trying to figure out what Ms doesn't want them to see. Pretty effective marketing, really.
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Re:Microsoft is pointing fingers wrong way... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Heh... (Score:4, Funny)
I bet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I bet (Score:5, Insightful)
"Dont look at this! This here! Right here, dont look at it!"
I know I wouldnt have looked if it werent for this story, and now I'm sorry I did.
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Apple (Score:4, Funny)
Nevertheless, I really wonder how many of MS' GUI designers actually consider function over pretty colors. Not to be an Apple fanboy (I don't even own a mac), but OSX's GUI seems to have function as well as slickness. I'm anxious to see if Longworn :D will do the same.
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a new trend (Score:5, Insightful)
In some ways this is like when a movie is about to be released, but the studio will not let the critics screen the film. If a studio knows their $70,000,000 film sucks that bad, they know better than to let critics screen it. It is time to get the PR people over to yahoo and amazon to leave 5 star reviews.
Plus, the screen shots MS gave out, there was nothing special there. Nothing secret. Nothing new. If someone did not tell me it was a new Windows, I would have guessed someone got a new wallpaper for their XP machine.
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Re:I bet (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as your copy of XP can keep two folders auto-sync'd over a network, then you give me a call. Longhorn can do that, and it's one of the big features I'm waiting for.
Seriously, I can't believe how many people here are focusing on the visuals. Who the hell cares? It looks fine to me, just as XP does. I don't fire up an OS to look at all the pretty colors, I fire up an OS to run applications. Longhorn has a whole mess of security improvements that make it more like Linux (i.e. non-root accounts are actually somewhat functional, so people might actually want to use them), it has smart folders that automatically look for documents matching parameters you specify, it has the aforementioned network auto-sync feature that is sorely needed for anyone who owns multiple PC's (useful for things like backup, media centers, etc.).
And those are just the features I'm personally excited about. Even without WinFS, this is a significant upgrade to Windows XP.
Before you start thinking I'm some sort of MS shill, look up my history for the last Longhorn-related post I made, wherein I bitched about MS trying to sell us something other than the desktop metaphor. I'm actually happy MS is not trying to reinvent the UI wheel after seeing these screens. XP works perfectly well enough for me from a UI standpoint; it is just missing some obvious features that a modern OS really has to have in this day and age.
People go nuts about a 0.1 incremental upgrade to the Mac OS, and are only too happy to pay $130 for it. Longhorn is a far more important and comprehensive upgrade than Tiger and all anyone can say about it is how much it sucks because it looks like Windows? Get over it. It is Windows - what the hell did you expect? If you buy your OS based on looks and you don't like the look of Longhorn, why do you even care anyway? I would think you'd already be using a different OS as it is.
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You are missing the point, dude. (Score:5, Insightful)
And as the years go by, my wife's Mac looks better and better, until I have finally decided to break down and get one myself. If aint about 'the pretty colors' as you put it, it is about PROGRESS.
The kind of progress that we wanted when we went from Win 3.11 to Win 95. The kind of progress we expected when we went from Visual Basic to C#. Or better put, the kind of PROGRESS that we USED to get from Microsoft. Disclaimer: Yeah, I used to work for Microsoft, so fucking what?
The point is; progress seems to be coming slower and slower, in the exact ways that Lucovski pointed out when he left the company. Personally, I am getting sick of hearing about shit, only to later hear that the one thing that would make me spend money beyond MSDN has just gotten ripped out.
Many of us who make our living on Windows and other Microsoft products would like something more to talk about than just .NET. Unless you have had your wife laugh at you as you search for device drivers while she just FUCKING WORKS, knows exactly what I am talking about.
In short, we are fucking fed up.
You are right, it aint about 'pretty colors', it is about showing us that the company can still produce something BETTER than what we had before. If they cant do it in the GUI, why the fuck should we believe that they can do it in the file system?
First impressions are a bitch, and these aint good ones. We've been looking at the same shit for two years now, and I dont see any progress anywhere, just ugly screens of boring shit.
Apple's shit may not be all that much better, but they at the very least manage to put a nice ribbon on it, and act like the shit is special enough to want it.
XP works; Win2K3 works damn well. But, if you are trying to show me something new, the very least you can do is take the time to make sure it aint similar to what we have already seen or at the very least not fucking ugly?
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Re:I bet (Score:4, Informative)
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Microsoft again lacks inovation! (Score:5, Funny)
Apple rumors aren't considered confirmed until there's been at least one notice from Apple Legal.
Maybe its for public safety? (Score:5, Funny)
The EULA says don't do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The EULA says don't do it (Score:5, Funny)
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NDA? (Score:5, Insightful)
If not, Microsoft is using it's multimillion dollar legal department to bully people into doing/thinking what they want.
Hold on a minute while I try to not act suprised.
I have a better idea... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not surpised.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to hype a product when there is so much evidence showing the opposite.
Re:I'm not surpised.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Purchase Music? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now look at the top left explorer bar and see the link that says "Purchase Music".
Could this be why? Where does the link go? Isn't that illegal in the settlement with the justice dept/EU.
Just curious,
Enjoy
Re:Are you sure? (Score:4, Informative)
Welcome to the world of the MacMini [apple.com].
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Screenshots? (Score:4, Funny)
EULA again (Score:5, Informative)
"Apparently, there is a condition in the EULA preventing people from posting screenshots. Nobody saw anything like that."
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Ar
What is Microsoft trying to hide? (Score:5, Interesting)
So in Longhorn, can I drag documents onto a button on the taskbar to open it, rather than holding the mouse down waiting for the app to appear?
Re:What is Microsoft trying to hide? (Score:5, Informative)
This Longhorn beta might looks a lot like Windows XP, but Microsoft is probably saving the cool GUI changes until the last beta or RTM milestone. Betas of earlier Windows version did the same thing.
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Now that really is funny... (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting, BTW, how all those car magazines get away with pictures of pre-production prototytpes snapped during their road-tests. Somehow, car manufacturers don't see a problem there.
Having said that, if he agreed not to do it he shouldn't. Period.
A couple more days for Apple to cram... (Score:5, Funny)
thurrot (Score:5, Funny)
this is perhaps the only thing thurrot has ever written that i've liked.
NOT A BETA, stripped down for driver dev (Score:5, Insightful)
Beta is planned for August. The features I work on, and most of the features I've seen in other group's demos, were not merged into this build.
Microsoft Copies Apple's Bad Ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
The Motif/Windows Classic version may be butt ugly, but at least they're easily distinguishable and big enough to click easily.
Not so much "gone" as "still there." (Score:5, Informative)
Shot 1 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 2 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 3 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 4 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 5 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 6 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 7 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 8 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 9 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 10 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 11 [winsupersite.com]
Shot 12 [winsupersite.com]
And here is some random text to attempt to satisfy Slashdot's inane content filters. Apparently, it has to be quite a bit of text. I don't know what the average line length is that it requires, but it looks like it's unreasonably high.
Re:First Post People Suck (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First Post People Suck (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First Post People Suck (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just me, or is the recycle bin icon also butt ugly? Actually, I think the whole GUI looks terrible. Windows XP/2000 looks nicer than this crap. All these screenshots look like Windows XP SP3 with an ugly skin.
I don't see how Microsoft could have progressed so little since the release of Windows XP in 2001.
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Re:First Post People Suck (Score:5, Insightful)
Screenshots tell all. Microsoft is asleep at the wheel.
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Re:First Post People Suck (Score:5, Funny)
of course it does. recycling is the domain of left leaning hippies, therefore the left leaning recycling bin. Real Men use a trash can.
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Re:First Post People Suck (Score:5, Informative)
"1:07pm
OK, Microsoft has provided its explanation. What it boils down to is that there may be certain technologies in the Longhorn Developer Preview build for which Microsoft has not filed patent applications, and the confidentiality provisions protect or mitigate the company's filing rights. One of the focus areas of IP protection has been user interface, hence Microsoft cannot permit screenshots of the UI. I was told that Microsoft had left its Media Center user interface unprotected, and that UI has been stolen and replicated in numerous other places. They don't want that to happen to Longhorn."
From the Thurrott link.
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Re:First Post People Suck (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because the UI was really the highlight of the features shown, what with the truncated titles, execrable icons from the 1990s, and dreary grey tinge. Lots of new ideas in there.
?
This is a damage limitation exercise because of all the bad press. When even your fan sites are calling it a 'train wreck' any publicity is bad publicity.
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Re:First Post People Suck (Score:5, Funny)
E.
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Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
1.) Comparing a leaked copy of the OS to screenshots is silly.
2.) Apple didn't sue over the leaked copy of Tiger. They watermarked it and caught the guy through technical means.
3.) I think you seriously need to rethink your definition of "right to know" as it is nothing like what anyone I know uses. See I have a "right to know" MS is dumping toxic waste in my backyard. I don't have a "right to know" anything I want about their unreleased product.
As for harming MS, if you can't see how these screenshots do that you haven't been reading the critical reviews of it. It has been widely panned as actually managing to make XP's interface look positively sleek and elegant.
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