Windows 10 Successor Codenamed 'Redstone,' Targeting 2016 Launch 197
MojoKid writes: Windows 10 isn't even out the door yet, so what better time than now to talk about its successor? Believe it or not, there's a fair bit of information on it floating around already, including its codename: "Redstone." Following in the footsteps of 'Blue' and 'Threshold', Redstone is an obvious tie-in to Microsoft's purchase of Minecraft, which it snagged from Mojang last year. Redstone is an integral material in the game, used to create simple items like a map or compass as well as logic gates for building electronic devices, like a calculator or automatic doors. The really important news is that we could see Windows Redstone sometime in 2016.
Visual Studio with the Minecraft Interface ? (Score:5, Funny)
You really will have blocks of code then
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps this is the TRUE reason why Microsoft bought Minecraft... they realized some Minecraft-happy devs on the Windows team has now littered the Windows source code with Minecraft remarks that they'd get sued. So it was cheaper to buy Minecraft than fix the source code.
Why is that important news? (Score:2)
The really important news is that we could see Windows Redstone sometime in 2016.
What, really, is important about that?
No-one was expecting Microsoft to stop at Windows 10, were they?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe next year...
Re: (Score:2)
No, Mr. Monkey. We were expecting
...you to die!
Sorry. I've been watching Bond films lately.
Re: (Score:2)
Because you usually don't need an entirely new OS every year, unless you are Ubuntu.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft have an official OS cycle of 1.5 years for interim builds and 3 years for major releases. they have been lax in meeting that goal in the past but this seems to be pretty well sticking to normal release cycle (assuming end of 2016).
Re: (Score:2)
Spïñäl Täp didn't.
Re:Why is that important news? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows Live. The only Windows with DirectX 12.1.
Only $9.99 per month per device. Includes 60 minutes of Skype credit, a bunch of storage you'll never fill up on a good service you won't use because it isn't called Dropbox, and you have to log into your Microsoft account to do anything. No, your Microsoft account. Your email address you don't use. No, not that one. Look, do you have an Xbox? It used to be called Hotmail but we don't call it that anymore. It's the one you use to view on Outlook. No, not at work, on outlook.com. Yes, even though your address ends in hotmail.com.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty much summed up what happened when Mrs Hog bought a laptop with Win 8 on it. Apart from being horrified that it automatically logs you into everything when you start it, so you try creating a local user, but that doesn't do updates or something, so you say sod it, I'll create a new throwaway account. And then you forget the password...
They finally found some use for Minecraft (Score:2)
Now it is clear why Microsoft spent so much to buy Mojang.
Re: (Score:2)
I am starting to think Microsoft bought Mojang to stabilize it and keep it OS neutral. A lot of the other entities that could have bought it would already have started using Minecraft to do nasty things to other platforms.
It would have really sucked for Google to buy Mojang. Save files would have already been mandatorily been sucked to the cloud. Ads on the launcher. And knowing Google an eol would already be announced.
So Windows 10 wasn't made to stay after all? (Score:2)
What about those rumors saying Windows 10 was made to stay, with continual updates instead of new major versions every now and then, and a possible introduction of a subscription scheme?
Re: (Score:2)
This may be 10.1. Windows codename "Blue" was 8.1.
better than Treadstone (Score:2)
XP phobia (Score:3)
The fact that the fear of change starting with XP and still to this day many businesses which are smaller still using it with plans to change scare them.
Annual new releases though will drive them harder to Windows 7 more than any other time in computer history. It means businesses which take years to upgrade due to dozens if not hundreds of apps and ancient IE intranet sites will need staff that just upgrades and changes for the sake of changes year round!
Cost accountants and CIOs will not like annual upgrades
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure how much of an issue this really is today. Just a couple of years back, for sure. It was a huge issue.
Heck, right now, many workplaces are switching to web solutions. This has one big advantage in terms of standards and legacy. There is definitely some QA here. many of these were big issues just a few years back. Be it IE6 or older windows applications. I think at my current slow enterprise role, we just got rid of the last non web solution. It still ran though on Windows 7, but its out of ther
Re: (Score:2)
I was chatting with a network contractor who came from a network solutions company. Just under half about 40% still cling to XP.
My inbox is flooded with jobs looking for XP to 7 migration experts. Most companies today look at IT as a cost and not an asset as it adds no value to the bottom line
Re: (Score:2)
Most companies today look at IT as a cost and not an asset as it adds no value to the bottom line
This is self evident unless they're an IT company.
Just because something is a cost doesn't mean you can just cut it indefinitely with no impact.
Re: (Score:2)
Annual new releases though will drive them harder to Windows 7 more than any other time in computer history
:rolleyes: 7's already out of mainstream support and will EOL in 2020. That's a short-term solution at best.
Re: (Score:3)
Dude my inbox is flooded with jobs for XP to Windows 7 migrations TODAY! They just started and in their eyes 7 is a brand new OS so why waste more money?
Re: (Score:2)
That seems like a really bad way of doing things. XP is fundamentally insecure, there are good reasons to move away from it. Instead of spending time fire-fighting XP infections and unfixed bugs, finding drivers for modern laptops that still work with it etc, moving to 7 years ago would have been the sensible thing to do.
The real reason... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If they can get it wrong so many times, maybe you should be thinking of migrating to something that's not Windows.
Re: (Score:2)
If they can get it wrong so many times, maybe you should be thinking of migrating to something that's not Windows.
I'd love to, but I guess I'm what you'd call an edge case. I need apps that are only ported to Windows and Mac. (I migrated from Mac to Windows a few years ago when Apple and Adobe weren't getting along.)
Re: (Score:2)
I have no problem with Linux, have used CentOS and Fedora at home for several years. It's also almost time to seriously consider an Android tablet, because most regular consumer stuff could be done on that platform.
But "most" is the operative word. The real reason I still have one (1) personal Windows box, (not counting the Windows machines I'm required to use at work) is that I make part of my living as a photographer, and the Adobe tools don't work on Linux (or Android) yet. (Oh, Adobe has "tools" that
Re: (Score:2)
I make part of my living as a photographer, and the Adobe tools don't work on Linux (or Android) yet.
Might want to check out Wine, looks like the support for Photoshop is really good [winehq.org].
Re: (Score:2)
what's special about 2016? Extended support doesn't end til 2020.
Very good point. So really, I can ignore the next two releases. Golden.
Because after all, Windows is not the app. Windows runs apps and manages resources. And trying to get used to a new gooey paradigm just to be able to say that I'm running the latest OS is an exercise in futility.
Re: (Score:2)
It's also an anathema to the enterprise world, where stability is valued over gimmick. Why does MS think that all those Pro versions of Windows 8/8.1 ended up being downgraded to Windows 7?
The last thing I want for my organization is to have to face a major OS facelift every year because MS feels like chasing Google and Apple's tails. MS really has lost the sense of who uses its OS.
Re: (Score:2)
As someone embedded deep in the business world, I understand what you're saying and your analysis is valid to a point, but I think you're missing the bigger picture.
For years and years vendors have been refusing to code to standards because enterprise didn't demand support for the current OS. Now that MS is building an infrastructure where even enterprise is going to expect support for a current OS means that's finally starting to change. It can't happen fast enough for me.
I installed and switched to Window
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't just about standards like RFCs and IEEE standards. This is about UI changes, about changes in functionality. The substantial differences in how the Windows 8.x UIs work as opposed to every version of Windows from Windows 95 to Windows 7 is a good example of how major changes in even the appearance of a GUI can have ramifications. The enterprise world is clearly unconvinced of Windows 8.1, which is why I can call up any one of a dozen suppliers right now and order a Windows machine not only with W
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking specifically of HTML and JavaScript, which do have standards. Companies who have been programming to "work on Windows and IE" are the ones that have been discovering that their stuff is failing now that IE is finally starting to only work right with pages coded to those same standards. You're mistaking my preference for standards for a preference to code to MS, which is the opposite of what I endorse.
Redstone (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it could be named after an obscure material in a computer game. An in-joke for those who know it.
Or it could be named after the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, or after the Redstone missile built there by von Braun and which was the base for Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom's flights into space.
Guess we'll never know.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft traditionally code-named its Windows projects after skiing destinations (Longhorn, Whistler, Blackcomb, etc.)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, like Chicago.... oh wait!
Windows 10 was codenamed after a location seen in Halo: Combat Evolved, so it follows that Redstone likely comes from a computer game. I wonder which one...
Re: (Score:2)
Given they're naming Windows 10 features after things in Halo, it's a fair bet this is Minecraft-related.
Re: (Score:2)
I knew I could count on someone from Huntsvegas to chime in....
Re: (Score:2)
Release 2 (Score:2)
Games are taking over at MS (Score:2)
Through a window darkly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps by 2016 Slashdot will have replaced its stained glass window with a legit Windows icon---
a courtesy it extends to every other operating system and to projects like GNU Hurd, which hasn't delivered a 1.0 release in twenty-five years.
Trademark? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Broken in more ways than which OS? and please bear in mind I'm drinking coffee right now and I wouldn't want to ruin my keyboard.
The OS I wrote in my spare time in my back yard.
Seriously though, can't we get a half-way decent shell? And don't tell me powershell is decent until it can do redirection <
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If using cat/type/gc/Get-Content and a pipe is too much for you (yes, it's a few extra characters) you can always install bash or zsh or whatever you prefer.
Seriously, though, you're really stretching if that's what you consider to be broken about Windows. I could easily be similarly nit-picky about Linux, for example, the default file system on many Linux distros has neither transparent encryption nor transparent compression, while Windows (NT family) has had both for the last 15 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, though, you're really stretching if that's what you consider to be broken about Windows
It's just one thing out of a million. Any product made by product managers will show their fingerprints. Any product built on the lousy code Microsoft was churning out in the 90s will still have that albatross to carry.
Re: (Score:2)
Mercury redstone (Score:2)
you know the start of the manned space race.
Oh look (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdotter 1: Every other version of Windows sucks.
Slashdotter 2: No, because your not counting Windows blahblahblah
Slashdotter 3: Hey, we're not talking about non professional second service packs, were talking about versiions that have thisorthat.
Y'all are assembling a Beowulf cluster of asininity, and Netcraft confirms it.
Re: (Score:2)
*You're* forgetting about Natalie Portman naked and petrified, with hot grits!
Re: (Score:2)
*You're* forgetting about Natalie Portman naked and petrified, with hot grits!
And that's just not right, I'll tell you what!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
sort of
Win95/ME bad, Win98 good, Win2k good, WinXP good, WinVista bad, Win7 good, Win8 bad
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I'm thinking that they are breaking this pattern now, and have a new one.
Everything after Win7 bad . . .
Re: (Score:3)
Win10 looks to be a good and solid upgrade to Win7.
Re: (Score:3)
Win10 looks
Just don't remind me how it looks. Other than that, it's doing fine.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft doesn't care. It wants more people to buy its Windows phones and tablets, and use more of its own ecosystem stuff: Bing, Outlook, Skype, Cortana.
The desktop PC monopoly is only used as a leverage for other things, because Microsoft is jealous of Apple (hardware) and Google (software and services).
MIcrosoft changed its CEO, but it is business as usual.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
they know there's a fundamental difference.
it's just that couple of the guys up high on the system were/are willing to sacrifice desktop usability in order to push people into getting their software from microsofts software market rather than directly from software publishers.
because they want that 30%.
metro was conceived purely because of that. all the other stuff piled up, all the hurry in making it was because of that(not api parity with old stuff). ALL of it was only for that end goal, even the superfic
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And the fact you could get software from many publishers, rather than just Microsoft, is why Microsoft has the massive market share over Apple. Guess history is not a good lesson.
Um, that's not why.
There is one, and only one, reason why Microsoft once had massive market share over Apple (and everyone else) in the business world: Exchange and Outlook.
Period. Seriously. Period.
Further, Apple has never restricted the sources from which you could get software for MacOS nor OS X. In recent years, it has made the user make a conscious decision to do so; but it has never disallowed Macintosh software from any source.
You're confusing OS X and iOS. Pretty lame for a Slashdotter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When my job requires me to interview senior level developers and architects the fastest way to get your resume shit canned is start spouting religious devotion to any particular technology even of that technology is a requirement for the position. It shows a remarkable lack of the flexibility needed to be a good developer.
Is that your job interviewing for senior level developers for the next version of windows? If 11 is being talked about 12 must already be being planned, right? Also just as a heads up, when you interview you represent the company. A good way for me (or anyone) to tell a company to go fuck themselves is to put a sanctimonious prick to interview who think he's all the shit because he's asking the question and has the power. No better way to show mismanagement by displaying your biggest twats proudly. What com
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
(Don't put WinME out of order and don't mix in Win2k if you aren't also going to include Windows NT)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Hmm (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
8.1 Update is not bad. I wouldn't call it bad. It is "different" enough for people not able to change to have issues (i.e. dumb people). My mom can use 8.1 just fine after bypassing 7 completely, and she isn't any geek.
Re: (Score:2)
Did name calling make you feel better? Your comment was otherwise useless drivel.
Re: (Score:2)
8.1 Update goes right to the desktop. Most people have their commonly used programs right there anyways, and Metro is just an ugly Start menu. It is ugly, but it isn't bad. The fact that most people don't customize it properly is part of the problem.
Customization means it isn't quite standardized, which is also part of the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
...I think you're the first person in history to call Windows 8.1 "good" and Windows 2000 "bad." What's your secret?
They also wrote "Windows Me - good" which suggests something like a psychotic break with reality.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The major issue that Windows 7 "fixed" from Vista was it gave hardware manufacturers enough time to write drivers for their hardware. Not a whole lot actually changed, other than time passed and companies adopted the new driver model.
Re: (Score:2)
Is that really the case? I kept Vista up to date, but it never worked as well as Windows 7 on the same hardware. Even something as simple as file transferring was clunky on Vista, or hung, or was crazy slow. Boot times were different between Vista and 7...
I don't actually know about the internals of what changed, and I realize it was 6.0 to 6.1 (right? I think...), but it certainly seemed a lot different than a "rebranding."
Re: (Score:2)
well, consider that they used the same drivers?
vista worked just fine after the updates, it just looked like crap.
ALSO, vista was typically loaded up with bullshit from manufacturers, bullshit like virtual desktops etc etc shitty widgets enabled by default. vanilla vista if you just configured to look like 7 would be pretty much the same as 7.
as to file transfers and such, there is the possibility that 7 just had better drivers for your motherboard(and not flagged as updates to vista from microsoft) or som
Re: (Score:3)
One of the big improvements was a focus on optimization [osnews.com]. There were a number of global locks in Windows Vista that were re-engineered in Windows 7 to be much more efficient on multi-core/multi-CPU machines.
BTW, don't pay any attention to the internal version numbers. These were mismatched simply for compatibility reasons [arstechnica.com], not because it was a "minor" tech upgrade or anything like that.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's see sleep finally worked, NT swapamatic o (n) algorithm replaced, indexer which caused disk to swap for hours until baked removed and replaced with instant search, networking smb fixed and almost 5 faster without drops, wddm graphics with aero multitasks where before the hour glass circle would wait with multimedia was fixed, and many others. Vista certainly wasn't ready nor baked
Re: (Score:2)
Sleep (at least on laptops) worked steadily for me since Windows 2000 until Win7 actually. On one of my Vista machines, hibernate was broken due to an NVidia driver bug (that was never fixed before that video card became unsupported), but on a Vista machine with an ATi card, it worked fine. On Win7, a (new) laptop with a different NVidia card couldn't enter sleep, but could do hibernate. Don't blame Microsoft for shitty graphics drivers that fail to switch power states (you can see it recorded in the Event
Re: (Score:2)
Apple avoided similar issues because they have taken total control of both the hardware and software where MS went with supporting the commodity market.
IOW, "You get what you pay for."
Re: Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows ME good? What dimension are you from?
Re: (Score:2)
Win2k bad? Think you made a typo. Other than lack luster hardware support compared to Windows 98, it was much better.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
XP and later are the NT series too. Win2K was the first version of NT that saw any significant consumer use. It was originally intended to replace both NT4 and 98 (unifying the two streams like XP eventually did), but they later changed their mind and released 98SE and ME. Still, 2K was far more consumer-friendly than NT4 was, and lots of technically oriented users like myself followed the upgrade path of 98 -> 2K -> XP.
Re: (Score:2)
sort of
Win95/ME bad, Win98 good, Win2k good, WinXP good, WinVista bad, Win7 good, Win8 bad
So Windows Redstone will be good, but stay away from Windows Atlas!
Re: (Score:3)
You clearly didn't spend much time around Windows 95. It was obnoxiously unstable. I worked for a small ISP from the mid-90s until around 2006, and I remember the hell that was the Windows 95 TCP/IP stack, where I got to be a master at leading even neophytes through the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel to uninstall and reinstall TCP/IP just so they could dial up and get a network connection. I remember frequent crashes, memory leaks and the general instability of 95.
They didn't really clean things u
Re: (Score:2)
We used Trumpet WinSock back then. It worked a treat. We ran Netware Lite as our network, again, it worked great - though I think we switched to the built in stuff at some point and never had any problems. That was just a 4 man shop however.
Re: (Score:2)
I had mixed feelings about W95. There were a lot of improvements over Win 3X, but stability wasn't one of them. There was one day it went down 15 times! In one 8 hour day! That's no exaggeration, I actually counted the reboots. The upside is, I got a lot of breaks. :-P
Re: (Score:2)
I got to be a master at leading even neophytes through the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel to uninstall and reinstall TCP/IP just so they could dial up and get a network connection.
That's what really screwed 95 and 98. Stuff could very easily break so badly that the only way to fix it was to re-install the component, or the entire OS. Your system could be hosed by some dodgy configuration set up by a free AOL CD and the only way to fix it was to reinstall your TCP/IP stack, which for most users meant buying a new computer.
Re: (Score:2)
The core installation is great if you're only running MS services and programs. But a lot of 3rd party shit is useless without a GUI.
I'm not going to run a core instance AND a GUI instance to maintain compatibility with that 3rd party shit. I'm going to run the GUI version and count on one hand the number of times the GUI impacted me in a negative way. Even on the rare occasion when the GUI is hit with a security issue and the core isn't, there are still other patches affecting the core that same day, so
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I love all of this revisionist history about how great XP was. It was the exact same as Vista at release. Lots of driver and RAM problems. It required 64MB but wasn't really usuable with that. It was usable with 128MB but didn't really run well unless you had 256MB or more. Just like Vista required 1GB, usable with 2GB, and ran pretty well with 4GB. This is all assuming you had mature working drivers. Once SP2 came out for XP and Vista (Win 7 is essentially Vista SP2) memory sizes were up to where the
Re: (Score:2)
Most people didn't transition to XP until they were forced to by Microsoft killing off 2K. Windows 2000 was where all the power users were until you had to upgrade directx (limited to XP only) or they stopped doing security updates. By then XP was equivalent to 2000 in usability.
Re: (Score:2)
Vista's base requirement (on the box) was 512MB, actually, although you needed 1GB for Aero. It would technically boot on 384MB, but it ran like shit even compared to normal! Running on 1280MB (stupid laptops that only have one replaceable module...) was viable, though not great, if you used a high-end (for the time) 2GB SD card for ReadyBoost (basically, a disk cache that made it a lot faster to pull stuff into RAM, which was handy when you didn't have enough RAM to keep anything but the smallest possible
Re: (Score:2)
The problem wit ME was that there were 2 different driver models, one that was backwards compatible with 9x and one that was forward compatible with XP IIRC. As long as you stuck with the new driver model it was fine, start mixing them and it was shit.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why the next version will be Windows 12, as version 11 will be skipped altogether.
Re: (Score:2)
you know its just the mine craft theme for win 10 right?!! not new OS
Re: (Score:2)
Everything except sound & wifi, based on 2 out of 3 machines I've replaced XP on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The next one will be Windows Atlas.
Re: (Score:2)
thats all I could think about. But I guess you know, kids these days.
Re: (Score:2)
What phone do you have that doesn't have a Minecraft version? It was ported to WP8 near-instantly upon acquisition. http://www.windowsphone.com/en... [windowsphone.com]
If you're still running WP7, well, um... sucks to be you? Considering that there are sub-$100 (full price, no carrier subsidy) WP8 devices, there's no excuse for running a two-years-since-last-release OS. Even carrier contracts bought at exactly the wrong time would let you upgrade by now.