Aqua-Soft Forums

What is Microsoft aiming for with Longhorn?

Hey guys,

Out of curiosity, what is microsoft aiming for with longhorn? as far as i could tell from those screens from the latest build, its preetty much just the same as windows xp, except a different skin and the ability to support larger sized icons. is microsoft introducing any sort of dashboard feature or something? I noticed they've changed a few things subtly, like the way search looks, etc, but these changes all seem to be aesthetic. now, apple is planning to release "leopard" by the time that longhorn comes out, meaning that longhorn will be two OS's behind. other than increased stability, they HAVE to have added new features, right? from what i recall, windows xp was built from the ground up. is longhorn just built up from windows xp?

#292905

IMHO, trying to shut up the people complaining about using an operating system that's nearlly 5 years old. what the heck were they doing those past years?

2001 : what a good operating system!

2002: still good!

2003:why make another? this one's the best we can ever make! oh ok. we will just make service pack 2! a MAJOR update to Windows XP!

2004: people are getting nervous. what do we do to shut them up? aren't they satisfied with the "best operating system" in the world?

2005: we can't mee the deadlines. we will just not finish 2/3 of the stuff and nobody's going to notice.

meanwhile.

2001 mac osx released

2002 jaguar released

2003 panther released

2004 working on tiger

2005 tiger released ALREADY started on operating system for 2007

which company's more responsable?

#292926

True, but you have to wonder something about apple. Are they just working on one every year to make people shell out 100 or so bucks every year? Why not just release one every two or three years instead of every year? It's very costly to buyers.

#292935

i don't mind about the price actually. i'm willing to pay. but it dosen't hurt to have a two year process instead of one, but i hate it when i have to wait a decade just to have a software update. i'd rather pay 100 each year to have the most current technology than to have none updated at all.

also, apple is slowing down the software updates from 1 year to two years. every 2 years we will have a software update and that's not slow or fast at all. it's perfect.

#292965

windows xp wasn't made from scratch. it's based od the NT kernel which has been around for a decade.

#292967

Hmm. and I take it so will longhorn?

2 years is indeed perfect.

But Apple will eventually run out of cat names lol ;)

Yeah, Microsoft needs to rework it completely though

#292970

from what i recall, windows xp was built from the ground up. is longhorn just built up from windows xp?
As Ivan said, that is not true. Windows 2000 is NT 5, and Windows XP is NT 5.1.

From my understanding Codename Longhorn will feature a new file structure (in addition to NT) that integrates with XML. They are pretty much keeping development and features hush-hush for now.

#292972

yup, i dont know if it would be a chopy OS

#292973

windows xp wasn't made from scratch. it's based od the NT kernel which has been around for a decade.

Neither was MacOSX, I believe its using a Unix kernal, which is the base of all operating systems.

#292977

Neither was MacOSX, I believe its using a Unix kernal, which is the base of all operating systems.
Nope. You're lucky Contra isn't here as often ;). Unix is its own OS. Mac OS has some Unix in it, but it's not Unix.

Here's one of Contra's explainations : http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showpost.ph...063&postcount=3

Edit: I may be wrong. Even though it was not certified to have the official Unix seal, it doesn't mean it wasn't built on Unix. I will retract my previous statement.

#292980

It's built from the darwin unix variant. Apple helps developing this kernel, which is open source and free.

#293005

the way i see it why would microsoft pay mind to apple?

regardless windows xp have sold more units itself then apple computers combined

plus winxp is a very good operating system-yeah vulnebilitys are there

but isnt everything popular hated on?

why would i want to leash out 100 bucks for an operating system thats more eye candy then anything

im not saying the os is bad but is ridicoulous how people fall into apples sells pitch

apple fanboys go out of line to say something bad about microsoft wich is what apple wants to be when it grows up

let me see apple being in the same position that microsoft is and i would love to see how they would react to it

#293040

windows xp have sold more units itself then apple computers combined

The reason that Windows has sold more than Apple is because there are a LOT of stupid people that use XP. I work for a computer store that I will leave unnamed... and I get about 3 people a week that have a Win95 system and just now heard about XP and NEED to have it regardless of if there system is up to date enough for it...

Plus, most of the general computer user population are people that can barley turn the computer on much less know how to use it... so they buy some POS system for $500 that feels like it came from a crackerjack box...

For quality comes a price... and that’s what apple has.

#293065

it's not because of microsoft that makes windows xp popular, but it's the other companys that make it appleal more. Games, cool aps, tons of freeware and shareware programs.

because of people, a comany will become stronger. and when it becomes stronger, more people will support it. it's a chicken-egg dilemma.

#293073

Same thing Apple is aiming for with Tiger....

Money and new customers...

#293074

wow, in a million years, i never would have guessed that this would turn into an apple vs. pc war. good stuff guys!

to point: longhorn, in fact, is being built from the ground up. no code borrowed from nt5.x. (at least, that's the theory). that's why the date has been pushed back repeatedly. apparently, ms wants to 'get it right'. i think they've probably learned quite a bit about vulnerabilities over the past decade, so i think they got a good shot at having a 'secure' kernel. and the new graphical engine (codenamed 'avalon') is supposed to open up an amazing desktop experience. looks promising, but we'll see.

okay, back to ms bashing...

#293127

OK, people lets try to not turn this into flame war. We know how strict things are when it comes to Mac vs Windows arguments here.

why would i want to leash out 100 bucks for an operating system thats more eye candy then anything
Actually, Tiger included very little eye candy. The main things that sold it were Dashboard, Spotlight and Automator. And sure you got some new wallpapers :D . Apple does have a Critical Updates thing, its just called Software Update. In fact that's were the New Posts icon above comes from. And it doesn't use IE :). But since there are not many vulnerabilities exposed, its not as often. Mostly its to include more drivers or bug fixes. But what you pay for are new features in a Mac OS X line.

#293141

I think the main problem with WIndows, or at least something that Apple can afford to have, but not Microsoft, is this idea of a 'unified' system. IE. the fact that the system is built from the ground up to run a mac operating system, and apple is the one that determines witch models with what specs it will release, so at the end of the day, apple knows that "when i release tiger, its guaranteed to run smoothly on all these systems." ie. it knows its lowest common denominator, and it works from there, and adds and detracts from its systems in order to fit it's OS's needs.

Microsoft doesn't have that. They have to work with what other companies provide. It would be different if MIcrosoft started selling actual systems (and I think that would be incredible. I'd sure as hell buy a computer if Microsoft built it), but then many companies would just go out of business. So anyway, in a sense, with PCs, everyone has a different PC, so performance really tends to vary, which in a way, I don't think is Microsofts fault.

I dunno if any of this made any sense, but yeah...

#293164

Thus lies the ultimate PPC vs x86 argument: Customization versus Standard.

Oh, and the use of i.e. (id est) gave me a little jitter when I was reading it. I can never get used to that abbreviation, damn Microsoft.

#293168

haha what's so special about the abbreviation "i.e."?

#293172

the way i see it why would microsoft pay mind to apple?

regardless windows xp have sold more units itself then apple computers combined

plus winxp is a very good operating system-yeah vulnebilitys are there

but isnt everything popular hated on?

why would i want to leash out 100 bucks for an operating system thats more eye candy then anything

im not saying the os is bad but is ridicoulous how people fall into apples sells pitch

apple fanboys go out of line to say something bad about microsoft wich is what apple wants to be when it grows up

let me see apple being in the same position that microsoft is and i would love to see how they would react to it

I think that's maybe the more unintelligent post I've seen in my whole life....

Do you think that paying 700 USD for an old out of date OS (like Windows which is 5 years old) makes more sense than spending 150 USD on a brand new OS that has all the features you can dream of? I personally do not think so. But if that's your opinion and that you want to keep it, just keep it...

And I think Microsoft do pay mind to Apple, the proof is they have already stolen many Mac features in the past to put them in their Operating System.

A last thing... You really think Apple is just eye candy? Every day, I am running 25 apps on my powerbook at the same time and I never get anything to crash. My computer just let me work the way I want to work. It does not ask me 30 times a minute if I want to update my virus definitions and then just let me do what I want to do...

#293175

haha what's so special about the abbreviation "i.e."?
Internet Explorer ;) .

#293179

now. both companys are copying each other. in a sense. it's nearly possible to have a revolutionary idea that not one other person outside the company has thought of. the companys are playing leap-frog in technological advancements. and i don't mind that. ie can equal: incredible experience, idiocy evaluation, and a lot of others. can anybody come up with others? i'm quite drowsy right now........

#293180

Who is copying what?

Spotlight --> WinFS? Oh, like searching is such a revolutionary technology.

Taskbar-->Dock? Please.

Like steelfist said, they're both trying to satisfy the people, and if they're aiming at the same crowd, you end up with the same base ideas...

-NC

#293223

well. the only thing i think of that apple might copy from microsoft is the ability to flip windows around (actually, it's more of copying from project lookingglass) which is quite a useless feature that longhorn will present to impress people. i found a couple articles on copying. some supports tiger, others support longhorn others have no idea :D

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,...,1619063,00.asp

http://www.theserverside.net/news/thread.tss?thread_id=27041

http://ecoustics-cnet.com.com/Tiger,+Longh..._3-5253421.html

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...6/ai_ziff130665

http://tonytalkstech.com/2004/07/05/whos-i...ghorn-or-tiger/

http://www.spymac.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=174490

quite amusing. especially the last one. Tiger borrows heavilly from Longhorn

The big truth about the upcoming release of Longhorn is that they procrastinated BIG Time.

#293370