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Paul Thurrott has some pretty good coverage of PDC going here

These are all from the PDC build (#4051) of Longhorn:
Gallery 1
Gallery 2
Gallery 3

These are all from the PDC build (#4051) of Longhorn:
Gallery 1
Gallery 2
Gallery 3

These are all from the PDC build (#4051) of Longhorn:
Gallery 1
Gallery 2
Gallery 3

This is just like the other 200 articles that have been posted here as of late... very very skimpy on details.... the closest i've ever come to a reasonable amount of information on Longhorn is via the supersite.. I would encourage anyone who's actually interested in seeing what's currently known about Longhorn to vist that site.

There was a leak earlier this year apparently and here is a review. Review here at http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/longhorn_alpha .asp

It shows the new 3 pane vertical layout. Note the smart date grouping in the messages pane (Today, Yesterday, Sunday...). Also note the unread mail search folder in the favourite folders section of the folder pane - viewing this folder will show all your unread messages in the messages pane. A search folder is basically 'contains' messages that match a user defined filter - however the messages may actually be in many different folders.

As for new message notifications, Outlook 2003 fades in a small window near the notification area with a message preview. From there I can ignore the message for now and let it fade out, I can open the message, or I can reply to or delete the message without opening the main Outlook window.

Here are some pictures about earlier leak for alpha build of a Microsoft product.

Just noticed this poking around the longhorn screenshots. The little critical-update-ready-to-install icon is already on the desktop: http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/lh4029 _2_028.jpg

Oh, you mean THIS super secret interface named Aero?

In this screenshot, they display their prowess at pig latin: "onghornLay rofessionalPay" (bottom right).

According to this picture--and presuming only Longhorn is installed--Longhorn currently uses about 2.7GB of hard drive space.

Can we expect twice that in 2006?

The screenshots of the latest build of Longhorn can be found here.

Enjoy!

Microsoft is planning another flashy garbage infested release in 2005. Every stupid sucker is sure to buy only to get infected by countless worms and viruses and run home crying to muma. Suckers! Stop buying whiz bang flashy crap.

>> They've never even announced a date for Longhorn. What on earth are you talking about?

I quote from one of their Press Pass documents they have online at microsoft.com:

"Over the course of 2004 you'll see a couple of releases in the betas for "Longhorn" and we'll see that coming to market in 2005.

Now, I'm sure that many of you have heard about or wonder about the possibility of whether we're going to do something before "Longhorn," is there an interim release, and that's something that I don't expect us to do. Currently we have some additional releases that are coming out as follow-ons to the XP Media Center Edition and the Tablet PC Edition so we've got some great advances and fit and finish and addressing additional international marketplaces with new handwriting recognition, new guide data for Europe for the Media Center and so on.

So you'll see some good incremental moves there but really the weight of the company, the weight of all the people in the Windows client division and across the platform's division, the weight of that effort that we're doing is around "Longhorn" and that's what we're focused on and we hope to get you all really pulling the same way so we can come out with a huge wave of excitement for the industry when "Longhorn" ships in 2005."

(quotes and italics mine.)

Several online sources have credited varying target dates for Longhorn, but all generally agree that 2005 will be the earliest that it will be available to the mass market:
Longhorn Betas in 2004, GA in 2005 (ENT News)
Analyst Pegs Longhorn Release at 2006 (ENT News)
Microsoft Pushes Back 'Longhorn' Release (Open Tech Support)
A Longhorn Delay? Not Quite (WinInfo)
Microsoft announces Longhorn release date (CNet News.com)
(I have no affiliation with these sources.)

Microsoft themselves show that 2005 is the target date of Longhorn in a slide picture. (png image)

>> As if that matters. Those are early, early alpha shots, as we all know. All the cool builds with the 3D acceleration are in a different Microsoft lab anyway that hasn't had one of their builds leaked.

First, can you prove there are "cool builds" that will have 100% of the suggested features in a shipping version of Longhorn? Secondly, the history of Microsoft's software release stategy has been plainly made clear numerous times. Hype, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, Buzzwords-o'-the-day, Gross Appropriation (oh sorry, I mean Innovation), and just downright unfullfilled expectations litter the computer timescape.

For a company that has been in the software business of well over 25 years, one would think that with their talk of innovation and "exciting new time-saving" features, we would all have an operating system on our machines that used voice controlled openGL hyper speed interfaces, smart enough to do your work for you while you browsed sites like slashdot. Isn't the entire point of using a computer to save time and be more productive? This sadly is not the case today .

>> I'm not really sure what breathing room you're talking about. The developer preview of Longhorn is coming out later this year. The list of features Longhorn already boasts is staggering, and I doubt within two years that ANY Linux projects will come close. We'll still be stucking using X11 with a hacked on desktop simulator, business as usual.

Nice. For some bizarre reason, someone modded my post as a "Troll."

Incredible features? What, you mean like wiggly windows?

I mean vector-scaled, hardware-accelerated graphics. An abandonment of Win32 for .NET. A restructuring of the concept of files, getting rid of "drive letters" and such. Everything from the ability to add and remove RAM without rebooting, to XML scripted modular custom installations. Go to WinSuperSite and read the Road To Longhorn Part 2 for a full list of all the features, to many to list.

So far, Longhorn seems to be additional eye candy+a database-like filesystem.

Well, then you clearly haven't even bothered reading up on it.

Now, Longhorn will maybe come out in 2005, maybe 2006. By then we'll have a db filesystem for Linux and Linux desktop will be able to match Windows (and OS X) eye candy...

I doubt it. Not as long as we're stuck on X11 + xlib + window manager + desktop environment + conflicting windowing libraries and inconstent interfaces.

* snip three reactive paragraphs about my sig *

The thing to remember about .NET is that it's really Microsoft's Java repackaged in a form that Sun can't sue them over. It has most of the JDK 1.1 libraries pretty much intact but with package and method names changed. But they did a very nice job in fixing a lot of issues that Java has. ...
In particular .NET's assembly management beats the heck out of collections of jar files.

There's many other differences between .NET & Java than just this one. If you look closely at .NET you can see where it evolves from. For example the assembly system you mention evolves from Fusion.

Really the right way to think of .NET is Microsoft's evolution of COM/COM+". Part of .NET is the COM+ Runtime. One of the great things about .NET mentioned here is metadata. Metadata is what makes .NET web services rock.

A good consice article discusses Visual Studio 7, COM+2.0, Fusion 2.0, etc...

What isn't ever mentioned in any of these articles of course is a JIT. And of course IL is a stack based language just like Java bytecodes, so it appears Microsoft took a page from Sun on this.

And of course anyone familar with Microsoft's UI (WFC) for Java will know that WinForms is very similar. But once again this is something that's pure Microsoft.

So really when you get down to it the similarities between the two just consist of the JIT and many of the base class libraries. But how much can console I/O, sockets, files, and other basic things differ? Everything else in .NET is pure Microsoft.

There probably aren't too many people out there that know whether there's any actual code shared, and of course no one at Microsoft is saying. But when you look at the publicly documented evolution, and you look at the pretty significant differences, it becomes obvious that .NET has it's own unique history despite superficial appearances of similarity.

Longhorn will have a tiered approach. There will be the full-on 3D configuration, the middle-level, and so on. You can scale all the way back to normal 2D operations like now, and they are even including the Windows 2000 theme like XP has.

This is all covered at WinSuperSite, by the way, in the "Road To Longhorn" articles. Whether or not you like Paul Thurrott, he has the sources in Microsoft to get actual information on future versions of Windows.

At least that's my conclusion based on how each of their design generations eat up more and more pixels.

With the epicenter of UI design centered upon 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, naturally Apple wasted more pixels first (see Aqua). Alas, MS seems to be copying that trend.

For example, take this image from the posted screen snaps:

1. Why is the title bar so tall? There are lots of blueish pixels in the mid-right area that are simply going unused.
2. Why are there so many blank/white pixels in the right/lower region of the window, and also in the lower left corner?
3. Why is the window frame/border so wide? I can clearly see the edge of a sheet of paper when it lies atop others on my desk, and it surely isn't 0.5...1.0 cm wide.

Number 2 above reminds me of the way Win2K changed the default display desktop "explorer" windows. They decided it was necessary to infer the "type" of the folder being displayed, and consume a huge, wide column in the left-hand portion of the window. For Most (>80%) windows, it said something ReallyUseful(tm), like "Folder," with a big yellow folder icon. In a few obscure cases, the icon would differ, and the description in the left-hand column would display a bit more info -- perhaps thumbnail previews of pictures in an entirely image-containing directory.

Regarding Number 3 above: I know the U.S. baby boomers are aging en masse, but how big must these visual cues be? At [probably] half way thru my life, my eyes are certainly no longer those of a teen ager. Yet why do I need 20 blue pixels horizontally to distinguish this window's vertical borders (I counted, each is 10pix wide) from others underneath? The content area of this window is 532 pixels wide, so these borders represent ~4% of the content. IMHO this is wasteful.

But mostly, Mostly, that left-hand column in the windoze desktop explorer meant 1/3 of most folder windows were wasted showing blank/white pixels. Ayah.

All of these nits waste space on my dual 20" flat screen display-driven desktop (driven by a Matrox dualie card).

I paid money (lots) for all those pixels, and they are increasingly wasted in an indiscriminate manner. Blech.

P.S.: Of course, it is windoze, and so various Registry entries may allow certain customisations. Unfortunately, that level of control is also decreasing.

After having used both OS X (about a year) and Windows XP (about three months; previous Windows and DOS versions for more than a decade), I have to disagree about it looking anything like an OS X desktop. Slight modifications to it do not cause configuration windows (the majority of the pictures on the web page) to pop up that don't even contain the same text as OS X's Preferences windows. It looks like they used various XP icons and dialog pictures as if they were clip art and started pasting them everywhere. Using a slightly edited version of the XP Control Panel's Users icon as an artist icon is a good example.

However, I also don't trust these screen shots. There are a few things wrong. They included an icon from BeOS in one of the pictures (next to "Status"). They showed a lot of stupidity by remembering the last files played just so you can change the volume on them after they've already played in another picture; oh, and don't forget that there's no way to change the microphone or other assorted volumes (Wave, MIDI, CD Audio, etc.). And I sure am glad they got a picture of a computer with an illegible screen in there. I wouldn't have believed them without it. After all, there's no way to show Photoshop images full-screen on illegible monitors (if a tree fell in a forest, but...).

Microsoft is stupid. But it's not that stupid. Or is it ?

After having used both OS X (about a year) and Windows XP (about three months; previous Windows and DOS versions for more than a decade), I have to disagree about it looking anything like an OS X desktop. Slight modifications to it do not cause configuration windows (the majority of the pictures on the web page) to pop up that don't even contain the same text as OS X's Preferences windows. It looks like they used various XP icons and dialog pictures as if they were clip art and started pasting them everywhere. Using a slightly edited version of the XP Control Panel's Users icon as an artist icon is a good example.

However, I also don't trust these screen shots. There are a few things wrong. They included an icon from BeOS in one of the pictures (next to "Status"). They showed a lot of stupidity by remembering the last files played just so you can change the volume on them after they've already played in another picture; oh, and don't forget that there's no way to change the microphone or other assorted volumes (Wave, MIDI, CD Audio, etc.). And I sure am glad they got a picture of a computer with an illegible screen in there. I wouldn't have believed them without it. After all, there's no way to show Photoshop images full-screen on illegible monitors (if a tree fell in a forest, but...).

Microsoft is stupid. But it's not that stupid. Or is it ?

After having used both OS X (about a year) and Windows XP (about three months; previous Windows and DOS versions for more than a decade), I have to disagree about it looking anything like an OS X desktop. Slight modifications to it do not cause configuration windows (the majority of the pictures on the web page) to pop up that don't even contain the same text as OS X's Preferences windows. It looks like they used various XP icons and dialog pictures as if they were clip art and started pasting them everywhere. Using a slightly edited version of the XP Control Panel's Users icon as an artist icon is a good example.

However, I also don't trust these screen shots. There are a few things wrong. They included an icon from BeOS in one of the pictures (next to "Status"). They showed a lot of stupidity by remembering the last files played just so you can change the volume on them after they've already played in another picture; oh, and don't forget that there's no way to change the microphone or other assorted volumes (Wave, MIDI, CD Audio, etc.). And I sure am glad they got a picture of a computer with an illegible screen in there. I wouldn't have believed them without it. After all, there's no way to show Photoshop images full-screen on illegible monitors (if a tree fell in a forest, but...).

Microsoft is stupid. But it's not that stupid. Or is it ?

After having used both OS X (about a year) and Windows XP (about three months; previous Windows and DOS versions for more than a decade), I have to disagree about it looking anything like an OS X desktop. Slight modifications to it do not cause configuration windows (the majority of the pictures on the web page) to pop up that don't even contain the same text as OS X's Preferences windows. It looks like they used various XP icons and dialog pictures as if they were clip art and started pasting them everywhere. Using a slightly edited version of the XP Control Panel's Users icon as an artist icon is a good example.

However, I also don't trust these screen shots. There are a few things wrong. They included an icon from BeOS in one of the pictures (next to "Status"). They showed a lot of stupidity by remembering the last files played just so you can change the volume on them after they've already played in another picture; oh, and don't forget that there's no way to change the microphone or other assorted volumes (Wave, MIDI, CD Audio, etc.). And I sure am glad they got a picture of a computer with an illegible screen in there. I wouldn't have believed them without it. After all, there's no way to show Photoshop images full-screen on illegible monitors (if a tree fell in a forest, but...).

Microsoft is stupid. But it's not that stupid. Or is it ?

After having used both OS X (about a year) and Windows XP (about three months; previous Windows and DOS versions for more than a decade), I have to disagree about it looking anything like an OS X desktop. Slight modifications to it do not cause configuration windows (the majority of the pictures on the web page) to pop up that don't even contain the same text as OS X's Preferences windows. It looks like they used various XP icons and dialog pictures as if they were clip art and started pasting them everywhere. Using a slightly edited version of the XP Control Panel's Users icon as an artist icon is a good example.

However, I also don't trust these screen shots. There are a few things wrong. They included an icon from BeOS in one of the pictures (next to "Status"). They showed a lot of stupidity by remembering the last files played just so you can change the volume on them after they've already played in another picture; oh, and don't forget that there's no way to change the microphone or other assorted volumes (Wave, MIDI, CD Audio, etc.). And I sure am glad they got a picture of a computer with an illegible screen in there. I wouldn't have believed them without it. After all, there's no way to show Photoshop images full-screen on illegible monitors (if a tree fell in a forest, but...).

Microsoft is stupid. But it's not that stupid. Or is it ?

I don't know if anyone else noticed, but down in the right hand corner of this screenshot the date says May 29th. Perhaps these screen shots are not as new as we think (or Microsoft just didn't bother to set the clock to the right date).

The screenshots are really just the tip of the iceberg. What's under the hood may blow OSX out of the water if they can get it stable.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_prev iew_2003.asp

Basically:

GDI and GDI+ are replaced by the new DCE (Desktop Composition Engine), which provides full 3D support to the desktop. Everything scales to high DPI. Video flies and flaps. It only does cool stuff on signed drivers.

The XFree86 fork has some catching up to do.

I work at Microsoft. I have the latest version of Longhorn installed (that's Milestone 6 for all you MS folks out there.) The images on WinSuperSite are not screenshots.

Some of the posted images are authentically from Microsoft. However, they are simply UI mockups done well before the LH development effort began. I have no idea what Longhorn will look like in the end, but based on what I see every day when I come to work, I'd be surprised if this was it.

Importantly, many of these mockup "screenshots" appear to be fake. Like I said, I'm not in charge of longhorn UI design, but most of the mockups are provably fake. (For example, some have BeOS icons in them!)

You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.

Dude ... It's a Dell

http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/lh-win hec-03.png

Wow - the system requirements for this must be through the roof...

lh-winhec-03.png

That's an 80 Ghz Xeon processor and 20 GIGS of RAM!

I only hope that with Longhorn you can disable the absurd glossification and get it to run 10% faster.

Microsoft is working on a three-tiered user experience model. In the simplest mode, Longhorn will emulate the Windows 2000 user experience, complete with the Classic Windows display.

it seems to be leaps beyond anything that Apple has done recently

Are you serious? If you follow the link provided, then you'll see an "executive overview" of the recent build. Here it is:
1) an enhanced desktop experience that includes advanced 3D graphics capabilities and driver functionality.
2) a new display driver model that will feature radically advanced functionality, stability, and reliability.
3) a radically redesigned user interface with a dynamically composed desktop featuring compelling new visual effects like graphically tumbling, rotating, and warped windows.
4) hardware accelerated and resolution independent anti-aliased 2D scalable graphics that will expose functionality based on the capabilities of your system's 3D video hardware.
5) a rich 3D graphics architecture that is integrated directly into the Windows UI.

Here is my brief overview of when these features were available in MacOSX:
1) Jaguar 10.2
2) Puma 10.0
3) Puma 10.0
4) Jaguar 10.2
5) Jaguar 10.2

Which part of the longhorn preview was innovative? Don't forget about espose in Panther!

1. Longhorn/Aero is for the desktop, only (the server version is codenamed "Blackcomb"). So while you're right that "This Fisher Price GUI just doesn't sit well for a server OS", it doesn't matter.

2. I think Microsoft, with $49 billion in the bank, could probably stand to simultaneously develop a new GUI, and work on security, stability, functionality, etc. etc. Microsoft is no small company, and to think that Aero is all they're working in is idiotic.

3. "Limited functionality"? Clearly, you know verylittle about Longhorn and the functionality it introduces. WinFS, anti-virus APIs, 15 minute OS install, Palladium security... come on. Try on some knowledge before just looking at pictures to found your weak and poorly stated opinions.

Everything is placed in a tree-like hierarchy that is easier (compared to Windows' interface) to find things in, especially if you haven't had experience with the interface.

I'm a rabid OS X fan. I significantly prefer OS X's look and feel to WinXP, and I agree that Microsoft has failed to dictate sensible UI conventions to its developers. So many Windows apps seem to be duking it out for the "worst interface of all time" title (currently held by the main menu screens of Madden NFL 2004).*

However, I have to say that this is a pretty damn clever UI for non tech-savvy folks (which is the vast majority of them). Contextual menus are provided for each piece of hardware, allowing inexperienced users to visually identify their system components and then click on them to bring up service or configuration options. Assuming that this view can be hidden for more experienced users, I think it's a significant improvement over current desktop metaphors for beginners (even with OS X, my parents would never know to click on the Apple menu to find system preferences if I didn't tell them).

It pains me to say this about Microsoft, but this is an innovative (as far as I can tell) interface. Even though it breaks conventions (bad), it seems to be leaps beyond anything that Apple has done recently in terms of "can your grandmother use this?" user interfaces (good). If nothing else, it gives Apple some real competition in the UI department (and some much-needed "grandma-centric" inspiration to Gnome and KDE).

* Yes, it's worse than QuickTime 4.

Right, because two of the icons/images in this look nothing like this (or any of the icons from previous versions).

I wonder if providing pictures of your product and logos will become part of the Windows software/hardware certification process. I also wonder if MS is going to make non-partnered products appear with some kind of friendly warning or desparagement, thus making Joe SixPack think that they're unsafe to use or won't work completely. I bet that $15 digital camera's drivers or that $5 mouse's drivers are literally going to look like shit and not just work like shit in the future.

Longhorn still includes the classic style. And the sidebar can be turned off easily. So you just have to deal with the new task bar :)

These have got to be mock-ups. Tell me that Microsoft employees know the difference between a GHz and a GB. Look closely at the wording under the picture of the PC

omg, you are right...

compare this to this(end of second row)

The status icon is exactly the same.

http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/lh-win hec-03.png

The Information under the PC seems pretty far out... "Intel(r) XEON(tm), 80GHz RAM, 20GB1 Ultra ATA Hard Drive, Windows Longhorn Professional"

While other operating systems hope to introduce comparable technology in late 2004, Jaguar has it now. Quartz Extreme uses a supported* graphics card built into your Mac to relieve the main PowerPC chip of on screen calculations. This dramatically improves system performance, making Jaguar much more responsive.

Doesn't this screenshot look a heck of a lot like the TiVo logo? I thought it actually was the TiVo logo when I saw the thumbnail and worried for a second that TiVo had sold its soul. Microsoft might want to rethink that screen, though, if they don't want a trademark fight.

I know we've been saying this for years now, but um...

They're not ripping off of Apple at all!

I mean really. The prototype machines look much like an iMac with it's screen pushed down to the desk, and that wallpaper doesn't look ANYTHING like Apple's default.

Okay, so there are only so many form factors to make an LCD/Keyboard desktop-type computer, fine. But the rest is just more innovation taken from Apple. Apologies if any OSS predates anything I've mentioned about Apple in this case.

Iknow we've been saying this for years now, but um...



I mean really. The prototype machines look much like an iMac with it's screen pushed down to the desk, and that wallpaper doesn't look ANYTHING like Apple's default.

Okay, so there are only so many form factors to make an LCD/Keyboard desktop-type computer, fine. But the rest is just more innovation taken from Apple. Apologies if any OSS predates anything I've mentioned about Apple in this case.

Windows N-Ten Technology? Where's the redundancy?

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows has a good article about Windows 2003 testing in heteroegenous environments. Here's a quote from it:

"We've got just about every kind of server imaginable in here," Santino says, laughing. "If it's in their environment, it needs to work. Another thing that amazes customers is that they assume we won't test that [non-Microsoft] stuff. But that's not true. If you're using [IBM] DB/2, fine. We will test what they are using in their business."

I think Outlook is leaving Ximian behind, not the other way around. have you had a look at the latest outlook screenshots? Outlook screenshots

Just spend some time reading Microsoft's own product announcements, interviews, etc... they don't make any effort to hide any of this. You'd pretty much have to be blind not to see what's going on... oh wait, that pretty much describes most of /. poster community.

First, there's Longhorn...
TechWeb
WinSuperSite

But don't forget to research Jupiter, Yukon and Kodiak, and be sure to look at the extended feature sets of these products and how they can interoperate.

A quick search for some time lines got me this, but there are lots of places that keep track of this stuff:
Internet.com

Some general info on Jupiter
JupiterResearch

...and don't forget MS' own efforts to push rights enabled content into the marketplace:

for one example there is...
Microsoft
...but don't forget, games, their deal with small movie studios, etc...

MS is working with British Telecom to develop online applications and media support including appication rental that can be used for an added nominal monthly fee... all of this is web browser accessable, and while the dot's are pretty thin to find, I've heard in the developer circles that once it is stablized around MSN 9, MS is looking to offer this service out to XBox live subscribers.
news.com"

...and then there is the MIIS layer that just was released to support data tracking.
MetaConnections
"MIIS has its own data store (the metaverse) into which it consolidates information drawn from the connected systems. Rules can be applied to determine how objects in a connected system are projected into, or join with objects already in, the metaverse and to create objects in the connected system (i.e. provisioning). Other rules specify how each attribute within the object should flow into or out of the metaverse. The sophistication of these rules allows customers to create fully automated identity data integration solutions."

...or this quote:
TheWhir
"Customers have told us they need an end-to-end solution for managing identity information and access rights," said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president for the Windows Server Group at Microsoft. "With today's delivery of MIIS, we bring provisioning and metadirectory capabilities together in a single solution that enables customers to create and manage user identities with a single consistent view across the enterprise and throughout the complete life cycle of identity management."

I would point you to the Market announcements on the MS site, but they are oddly missing... but then Google saves the day here...
MS care of Google #1
MS care of Google #2

...and on and on and on... Do I really need to give you more links... I suppose it's pointless because with most of the people who can't see this, I could drop a bible of text proof in your face and you'd still denign it.

Microsoft makes no efforts to hide what they're planning, and doing. It's all out there in your face if you bother to take the time to read it.

Big business wants start-to-end accountability for ALL DATA, and they are going to get it, and Microsoft is going

Here are some screenshots of Longhorn's waving windows demo:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_prev iew_2003.asp

I've heard that the next major desktop Windows release, Longhorn, will ship in 2005. How many Linux kernel patches, new distros, and releases in general will come out in that time? A lot, and not all will be bugfixes, some will add functionality.

To me it seems as if Microsoft's effort for security and stability is an attempt for them to catch up.

All completely beside the point. WinFS is NOT a filesystem. It sits atop and requires NTFS. I imagine longhorn will simply use the same multi-forked NTFS that's in XP and 2k3.