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Why Panther May Tear Up Longhorn
Sophrosyne writes "Microsoft Watch has presented an article on Longhorn, which is due not before 2005, and compares it with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), which may be released this September. The article touches on some of the areas where Windows is ahead in operating system design and technologies, as well as how Panther plans to compete. Included in Microsoft Watch's article were links to a Extreme-Tech article on Desktop compositing, and 3D User Interfaces. It also contains videos of Longhorn's 3D Quartz-like user interface in action." If processor power is so important, why are we so willing to waste it on making windows do funny things when we move them around? Just wondering.
between Longhorn's Windowing System and Quartz is IE will have it's css extended to allow you to do crap like that to arbitrary windows, so popup ads will be mesmerizing.
the groundwork is in place already. It's only a matter of time before it's applied to the windows themselves.
Did anyone watch this clip of the new prototype GUI?
This is it. This is what e-mail viruses are going to look like in four years.
Wiggly windows? It's going to take them two more years to bring me wiggly windows, and twirly video clips?
I've seen effects like this before -- on flashy scenester 'demos' for the Amiga, in 1992. Often surrounded by clouds of vector balls and bad techno. It was pretty back then, and I suppose it's pretty now. But how does this make for good UI?
Why in the ever-loving world would I want my windows to wiggle when I move them around? It's taken ten years of graphics hardware development just to get them to stand STILL, locked to the refresh rate of the monitor!
The Aqua interface on OS X has a setting that sucks windows down into the dock. It's just as pretty, and just as irritating. You turn it on when you want to frighten other laptop users with your great big powerful UI. Then you turn it off again, because it's ANNOYING.
Longhorn schmonghorn. I think the reason Microsoft isn't particularly focused on this is because they realize that it doesn't really matter that much, in terms of productivity. Apple has leapfrogged them in the development of a 3D-accelerated graphics framework, but how much does this really bring to their end-users' productivity level?
Then when Apple becomes a monopoly, we will all switch to Windows 2015PROXP+ becuase we want to kill the big mean Apple monopoly!