MS Says Longhorn To Arrive 2005

Lawrence Person writes "According to this article in PC World, Microsoft 'publicly confirmed 2005 as the release year for Longhorn, the successor to Windows XP.' And of course, we all know tha Microsoft release dates never slip..."

Comments

Hype?

[saitoh]

Part of me looks at this and goes "so?" and part of me thinks about the opposite extreme with where Apple doesnt say anything (or much) is coming soon and just releases it and lets people find it themselves...

But seriously, isnt this just a tad bit too far in the future to look toward? Or is this just to get people to quit emailing/speculating about when its coming out.

Re:Hype?

[plcurechax]

Not unlike the time they were warned by the courts against marketing of vapourware. From the Pre-slashdot era.

Competitors found MSFT spending nearly as much on advertising not yet ready products as when they were released (pre Win95 actual release hype).

Competition

[Phroggy]

What kinds of features can we expect in Longhorn that Apple won't already have had for awhile by the time it ships?

Apple should be shipping Mac OS X 10.3 (or whatever they call it - codename Panther) running on 64-bit PowerMac G5 systems in September 2003. Two years after that, they'll have had another major release of OSX, and even the iBook should be G5-based.

How does Longhorn compare to XP and OSX for home users?

Where's the beef?

[sssmashy]

Does anyone know why MS chose the name Longhorn for the Windows XP successor? In Texas and Alberta, "Longhorn" is instantly recognizable as a well-known breed of cattle.

I predict that "Where's the Beef?" jokes (currently in hibernation since the 80's) will reappear on the cultural landscape in 2005, as the Longhorn release date is inevitably delayed by Microsoft...

Re:Where's the beef?

[atlasheavy]

That's almost correct.

It's actually a bar halfway between the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains in British Columbia. You may recall that Windows XP's codename was Whistler. The version of Windows after XP was supposed to be Blackcomb, but it grew far too large, so MS slapped an interim release (Longhorn) in there. In other words, Longhorn is right between Whistler (XP) and Blackcomb (Probably Windows 2009).

Fun fact: the Windows group spent a while in the 90s naming everything after cities in Illinois. Chicago, Cairo, etc.

Fun fact 2: Last summer, you could see guys wandering around Redmond wearing Don't Mess With Texas t-shirts given out by their product group.

Re:Where's the beef?

[misterhaan]

okay not as lazy as i said:

Longhorn
The code name Longhorn is a reference to a rowdy bar at the Whistler ski area in British Columbia. The bar lies between two peaks, Whistler and Blackcomb. Whistler was the code name for Windows XP, the operating system launched in 2001, and Blackcomb is the code name for the operating system that will come after Longhorn.

source

Re:Where's the beef?

[mrbrown1602]

I believe its a bar a lot of MS employees goto. Whistler (codename for XP) is a mountain, and Blackcomb (another codename, i'm unsure of the product) is another mountain. When MS employees go skiing, they usually meet up at the Longhorn lodge, or something like that.

Nice marketing ploy

[Emonair]

That places the release just after software assurance expiration.

Re:Release date

[haystor]

The reason why Netscape left my computer was that DNS queries would lock all of netscape functions. I just hated going to a site and waiting for a DNS timeout before I could regain control of the browser.

IE 4's rendering speed was a huge improvement as long as you didn't touch the active desktop stuff.

Re:Release date

[DrSbaitso]

The actual precedent is somewhat less clear than you indicate. First of all, the "DOJ" did not rule on anything. They were the prosecutor for the US government; the District and Circuit Courts of DC "ruled" in the personages of Robert Penfield Jackson, Colleen Kotter-Kelly, etc. Also, Microsoft's argument was that by developing an integrated product, the result was superior to standalone products. A consent decree in Microsoft II ruled that this is okay as long as the integration provided "some" additional functionality.

Personally, I believe that Microsoft illegally tied the two products, because the way they programmed the integration seemed to exist solely to preclude disabling IE, but that's just me. As an interesting side note, one of the most important things about the service pack to Windows XP is its consent decree compliance. Now, you can turn off IE, Outlook Express, and (most importantly, at least now) Microsoft Virtual Machine.

Re:Cheap Shot

[Enry]

MSFT was using release dates and pre-announcements like this for a while to harm their competitors.

Company A would come up with some new feature and announce it. MFST announces that the will also include the new feature in 6 months. Company A's sales go down the toilet as users wait for MSFT to release their product. Company A goes out of business. MSFT finally implements it 2 years later. Poorly.

Besides, MSFT has almost never been on time with their releases.

Database file system.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually an anticipated release for me. The new file system will make things interesting how we 'work' with windows.

The WINFS was the much discussed database filesystem. To reflect, current NTFS file system has a location on a disk and it maintains that location for the lengh of the system. It has no real corolation to the other files and searching is just a raw, filename search. B/c of this, indexing services was created to mark the new files and where they are located (yet another service) for 'quick and easy' file searching. Another issue was the fact that files aren't grouped in a particular way. You'd have to categorize them yourselves (make specific directory names, etc.).

With a database file system you can eliminate some of the overhead and problems that plagued the NTFS which wasn't designed with multi-usablilty in mind (it's mind was more on file sharing and security... heh). No longer have to worry about indexing, and fragmentation (not really a problem on servers).

From what I understand, only a few companies like Oracle was able to achieve a database system (though it's not an OS).

A database file system could open a whole new option when creating a distributed environment.

This is also why NT4...

[Anonymous Coward]

... support, including all online support files, downloadables and knowledgebase articles, etc, are going to vanish forever off MS's websites at the end of 2004. January 2005 marks the absolute and complete end of all forms of support for NT4 from MS. Even says so in writing on MS's website, I read it there but don't have the URL handy right now.

If you think you're going to need to support NT4 yourself for any time after that, you'd better get started to downloading all the support materials you can *right now*, while it's still available. You've been warned.

Re:Release date

[Uber Banker]

Yes, my entire company is based on WinNT! I was amazed when I joined, but what the hell, it runs office, some Excel macros, Stata, email and web. These days we're moving to document management and content management systems, but they all integrate fine. Bloomberg is on seperate consols.

Fact is, most corporates need little more than an office suite with some bells and whistles. NT is perfect for that, any change would have to be a long lasting one M$ trying to impose their licencing as outined earlier.

Re:[OT]Re:Release date

[cpt kangarooski]

Because browsing HTML and and finding files on a hard drive aren't analogous?

I agree. However, I do think that integrating a browser is a good idea, because it permits for the display of local files qua icons, with potentially useful arrangement and formatting yet while easily editable by users.

For example, a CD with an installer program could, when browsed to, display a file browser window containing relevant icons in a spacial arrangement best suited to help users, with instructions printed alongside them directly in the window. (on the Mac this has sometimes been approximated by creating files or folders with 'invisible' icons but visible and descriptive names -- sometimes the icons are arranged like mosaic tiles to form a picture; see the MS Office 98 and Marathon 2 installer CDs for examples)

However, MS was motivated by evil, not a desire to help users. And they've ignored the UI potentials that this could provide.

But I do think that if it were UTILIZED it could be pretty helpful. The trick is doing it right; merely browsing through folders as though they were web pages (e.g. back/forward, etc.) is crap.