New Longhorn Screenshots And Schedule 688
Mozillabird writes "WinSupersite has recently updated the Longhorn release schedule and has provided some new screenshots of Aero. The first beta of Longhorn is May 2005, though there is some speculation about how much of Avalon and Aero will be implemented in that beta. The "big beta" is scheduled for this Fall."
useless info in status bar (Score:5, Interesting)
This makes me think about the utterly stupid winXP feature that displays the number of files in a selected zipfile... is that usefull for anybody ? Why do you zip files in 99% of the cases ? TO REDUCE SIZE. so what do you want to know about the selected zip ? Right : it's size. For all other items, the filesize is shown, except for zips.... DUH !!!!
The person who suggested that feature should be shot with a ripe banana until dead ensures... twice !
Bad HIG? (Score:3, Interesting)
all of these screenshots do not impress me (Score:3, Interesting)
No screenshot of this "New OS" has yet to impress me. Maybe it gets it's hype because "New OS" = boost in hardware sales. But you know what. When the majority of your hardware sales are sub 500 pc's you're not going to make up any profits on the early adopters who buy the bigger and faster machines.
What have we gotten with every new version of Windows.
Software quits working
Have to buy new versions of antivirus and other utilities in many cases to get full functionality and also see above.
Waiting on hardware to get "New Seals of MS Approval" which IMO is silly because that WHQL crap never stopped Nvidia drivers from causing the nv4_disp.dll BDS's.
Oh and this "New OS" that was supposed to run on pc's that were wildly faster (10Ghz) machines. Where are those new machines??
Longhorn is a shell of the promises that were made, it most likely incorporates code from XP/NT4 base so will incorporate security holes and bugs and probably new avenues of attack. It's just plain ugly, and probably will be slow at best on existing equipment.
If you're looking for a new OS you may be better off with OS X on a PPC, or Linux on x86.
More Apple copying (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Avalon and Indigo Preview (Score:5, Interesting)
Try running 50 copies of your calculator app and just watch as each one drops to hardly anything.
Nice fonts! (Score:5, Interesting)
Blue, Green, and Purple? (Score:4, Interesting)
I call fake on the screenshots! (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if the interface work here isn't fake, there has been some copying/pasting going on OR Longhorn doesn't have file size and date functionality yet
Re:I call fake on the screenshots! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does
"View All Documents"
Have a reference number
000125-J00896
While
"View All E-mails"
Doesn't?
Oops.
Re:useless info in status bar (Score:4, Interesting)
2) OS X, did not exactly make that feature, it is just sudo, with a pretty face. Windows has runAs which similar to su.
3) Unlike sudo in longhorn, the system actually uses lowest priviledge, as in even if you are logged in as an admin, your applications lauch with lower priviledges, unless you authorize them.
4) Aero i dont is backported....
Thumbs.db (Score:2, Interesting)
For Longhorn, according to the developer working on the thumbnail views, there will a remedy to this - there will be a global 'thumbs.db' file that all folders draw from, thus removing the file that I often delete in frustration.
It must be better. It's taken nearly 8 years... (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's so great...
-Why is application launching only 15% faster than XP, despite requiring a 3GHz Pentium?
-Why can Microsoft only seem to get screen real estate back by shrinking existing controls?
-Why is this Paul Thurott person so enamored with what will essentially be a has-been OS with the features and security of something you can buy today from Apple?
If I was Steve Jobs, I'd release Tiger for X86 at MacWorld 2006 - get the PC users hooked before Microsoft can evern release their Tiger work-alike to manufacturing.
Chumps.
Re:A little comparison: (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless of the past, Microsoft announced and demo'd this feature BEFORE Apple even mentioned spotlight. I'm not saying Apple copied MS, I'm saying MS *DIDN'T* copy Apple, not this time anyway...
Re:Ugly as sin? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:useless info in status bar (Score:5, Interesting)
As for ripping off, I think the similarity between Aero's back and forward buttons and the KDE Crystal icon set's [kde-look.org] is rather striking. Microsoft's version does look a tiny bit better, though.
Re:Why will users learn a new ui. (Score:3, Interesting)
What the hell are you talking about? The first version of Windows I used was 3.1, and I'm using the XP interface now, and will be using the Longhorn interface when I upgrade to that.
It's branding (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:useless info in status bar (Score:3, Interesting)
The trouble is, it doesn't even do a good job at it. IMO the single most important piece of information is the file name, in case it's too long to be fully visible in the list view above the status bar. But the statusbar in the screenshot has even less space for the filename than the list view does!
Re:A little comparison: (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:How Many Times (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My take on the screenshots (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe I'm strange, but I consider that a feature, not a bug. I like being able to change the perceived file type without having to edit the file contents or metadata or whatever. AND I can ascertain the perceived filetype in a simple console dir listing.
Re:A little comparison: (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think who came up with what idea first is really important here, since with increasing computational power, searching could only get faster and more practical - it was an inevitability that searching would become a more important part of the desktop user experience. However right now OS X is winning the race over Windows, IMHO. WinAmp has included find-as-you-type since early versions. Now iTunes, Mozilla, Finder, and Firefox have it.
Microsoft does watch patents very closely (Score:1, Interesting)
MS keeps a very close eye on patent filings and yes, they inform their business decisions.
For a taste of their style, read "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates," particularly the section related to Pen Windows. An entire OS branch was instigated by one demo by a potential competitor who was looking to do a deal with them.
Re:My take on the screenshots (Score:2, Interesting)
I spent 50+ minutes trying to figure out why my dads webpage wasn't loading correctly. He was doing one of those "complete morons page to HTML" type things at the local education center, and for some reason the [start page] wasn't finding the images.
Well, turned out that he had named a shitload of pictures [filename].jpg.jpg.jpg as well as in the HTML code referencing to [picture] instead of [picture].jpg since he didn't see the extension and got confused.
After that I pointed out that start page.html isn't a kosher name for the entrypage, and due to the stupid "feature" he ended up renaming it to index.html.htm
Since this was over phone, I'm REALLY happy that I had my headset handy and didn't have to hug the freakin handset for close to an hour!
Re:A little comparison: (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like you haven't learned that there are different Linux distros yet. I have Yoper Linux on a 233 MHz that boots faster than my XP on a 3 GHz, not to mention how fast the apps start. Gentoo is pretty fast too.
See, with Linux you can find lots of options and tradeoffs depending on what you want. With Windows you get XP or your option is something older, less functional, slower, etc.
Re:useless info in status bar (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty sure that was ripped from Linux, before OSX even existed, and I'm also quite certain Linux wasn't the first either.
Re:Apple's patent on desktop search before Microso (Score:3, Interesting)
From someone who worked at Xerox: [mprove.de]
(I worked at Xerox on Star/Viewpoint from early '83 to '89.)
This was true of the first version of Star, but this problem was recognized very early, perhaps even before the first shipment of Star. A new project, known internally as Phoenix (although spelled "fnx") was designed to solve this problem. It drew from the Mesa Development Environment (known informally as Tajo) which originated on the Alto (I think first release was in 1977). The result was an open toolkit known as BasicWorkstation (desktop) and a compound document editor which had a "generic frame" mechanism. The Viewpoint Document Editor (as it was known) continued to use much of the Star code (including Traits), but reworked.
It was "closed" in that Mesa wasn't widely used in industry, although we gave several universities grants of hardware and software, the Xerox Development Environment (public brand of Tajo). Mesa was very similiar to Modula-3, and like any system with a large number of libraries (e.g. Smalltalk-80) it took months of learning before a programmer could be productive.
Interesting note about the wastebasket. When Macintosh came out Xerox bought a couple. I remember people being annoyed about this. I was told that an early design of Star included a trashcan, but it was decided that it was unnecessary in the version that was shipped. In Viewpoint (1985) we added a trashcan, but felt that we should use a "wastebasket" icon.
The document centric model (not knowing about applications, no quit) came from Star. In Viewpoint you had control over apps launching, but once launched they didn't quit. Most apps were launched at boot time -- hence the 3+ minute boot! As a result of this painfully long boot, a colleague (Makota Mita) invented a sleep/quick restart feature that took about 30 seconds to put the sytem to sleep and awake again after poweroff.
Star had "stationary" as well, although it didn't have the double-click-to-tear-off UI. Instead, users would open the Prototypes container (see icon in lower right of this image)
This prototypes container (labeled OSBU here because the photo was taken of someone's workstation who worked in the OSBU network) had one copy of every object available to the user -- blank compound docs, compound doc with lots of graphics examples, folders, networks (where you found printers, file servers, mail servers, address book/directory server), small database (aka record file), etc.
Note: I'm not saying that Xerox invented everything. I think Lisa and Mac introduced several ideas (e.g. the suspend/resume for each file in Lisa is a GREAT idea) that we didn't do, but there are more similarities than people sometimes think.
Dave
Re:Apple's patent on desktop search before Microso (Score:0, Interesting)