New Longhorn Screenshots Leaked

Badgerguy writes "The Supersite for Windows has some shiney-blue looking leaked screenshots of LongHorn. The new screenshots of the 'Aero' interface mainly seem to be concerned with Digital Media integration - which has become deeper still. A new 'SyncManager' screenshot is up there (copying of iSync?) as well as some pictures of LongHorn prototype hardware, which looks like a cross between a desktop PC / Notebook / Tablet PC. "

Comments

Dumbing Down

[rwiedower]

Every time new screenshots come out I'm reminded of my 13 year old kid sister. When I was 13, I knew a decent bit about computers. I had played Zork and could throw together a program in basic if I wanted to.

When I ask her how things work on the computer she has now, she's used to XP and having almost everything explained in simple, child-like steps. If I ask her to save something "to the hard drive" she doesn't know what this means.

While I applaud the M$ goal of making computers as easy to use as toasters, a ever widening gap is occuring thanks to pretty UIs that leaves those of us who know how things work under the hood in a separate world. I only hope that with Longhorn you can disable the absurd glossification and get it to run 10% faster. Or maybe to have ssh built into the telnet command line. That would be nice.

Re:Dumbing Down

[benzapp]

You don't understand.

The very foundation of our entire society is to crave simplicity and convenience. People no more want to learn to use a computer than learn to build a house, or walk to the store, or a host of other important and healthy activities. We have been trained to desire as little work as possible in every possible way. For most people in America, the ideal world would be to be able to buy as much useless shit as they want, never have to work, and sit in front of their TV for all eternity.

We have been raised to DISDAIN work forever. How would our society function if people didn't WANT to sit in school until they are 25, so they can work hard for 40 years then retire for 60 years.

People aren't just stupid when it comes to computer, they are stupid regarding everything. What if our houses, roads, and office buildings were constructed with the same passion as the average geek feels towards computers? By training us to despise work, people do not put their heart and soul into their work. Look around you.. our world is dull and lifeless, and its no wonder why.

Re:Dumbing Down

[micromoog]

When I was 13 I was ultra-1337. Now my kid sister isn't, and I blame Microsoft.

Maybe, unlike you, she just doesn't give a shit?

Re:Dumbing Down

[Miguelito]

"...that leaves those of us who know how things work under the hood in a separate world."

Well, look at it this way... it's job security.

Not that I want to spend my days fixing windows machines (I get enough frustrations with just fixing my family's systems). I'm a Unix SysAdmin.. but of course to everyone else, I can fix all computers (and sometimes they think, anything electronic). Sure, I usually can fix all their computer woes (which almost always turn out to be windows problems) but when it comes to failing hardware they still think it's a simple fix... when, in reality, it might be extremely hard to narrow down and will likely require buying replacement parts.

The tired analogy of comparing us admins to car mechanics and the like is becoming more and more accurate. My brother-in-law happens to be a mechanic. We're almost opposites to each other in respect to cars and computers.. I know computers intimately, and fix theirs, or help add new things when they need it. He knows everything about cars and fixes mine when it needs it. Neither of us knows anything about the other's area of expertise. Works out for us in the end.

Re:Dumbing Down

[Delphiki]

It's not that people are stupid. That's an incredible arrogant and geek centric way to look at it. Get over yourself. They don't want to have to know how computers work because they shouldn't have to know how computers work. They should just be able to use one. It's called specialization. if everyone had to go spend all of their time learning about everything they needed in their life and building their own house and growing their own food and so forth, nothing would get done. Instead they should be able to do whatever it is that they do and have those things made as accessible as possible by whoever's job it is to do those things.

UI simplification is a good thing. A very good thing. A lot of people loathe computers, because of software which was built on the mentality that it's not that hard to learn, so people can just read the manual and figure it out.

People should be able to buy computers, use them, and find the experience enjoyable. That means they shouldn't have to worry about reading the manual. Apple and Microsoft both understand this. The geek community and especially the open source community need to catch on now.

If I go to buy a steak, I shouldn't need to know how to birth a cow, I should just have enough money to pay for the steak, and maybe an understanding of how to use eating utensils.

God thats ugly

[splatter]

Does anyone else find this new interface Microsoft is leaning towards as being a eye sore? God the huge buttons and bright colors.. I thought XP had some ugly colors and fonts.

yikes

DP

Chewbacca Defence

[schwep]

Update the GUI and people will forget about the insecurities and DRM being pushed down their throats...

Cool

[stratjakt]

Whether you like the interface aesthetics or not (big deal, you can switch 'em back, no doubt, just like I do in XP), there are some nifty looking new features I saw before the site just got too slow to keep looking.

I notice in the audio properties box, you could dynamically mix the volume level of any running application - that's friggin cool. Now I can watch a movie or something and not have every IRC notification in the background blare over what I'm watching, I can turn it down.

Oh well, bash away, I'm sure you all hate it for completely non-technical reasons.

Does Stability Sell

[FortKnox]

Honestly, if MS released a brand new operating system that looked identicle to XP, but was just ultra secure and ultra stable, would it sell?

Or would managers and housewives just say "its the same thing!"
Plus you want to keep pushing the GUI that made it popular in the first place. Why give Linux a chance to gain in the desktop market?

**For Linux Zealots that are going to inevitably say "Well if MS is going to sell secure and stable OS everyone would want a copy!, just shut up. When the big kids talk about "selling software" we are talking the major buyers, here. Which aren't necessarily the tech saavy.

Yes, that last paragraph was an insult to the parents obvious troll-paragraph. I run a SuSE server and an XP box. Both have been up the same length of time without a crash.

Huh?

[numbski]

You talk like there's a *wrong* time to grind your axe when I comes to M$. :P

I have to agree with the parent though. They are moving toward higher media integration, which is copying Apple to the hilt. Interoperability and security have ALWAYS been low on their hit list. They don't care if what they make works with anyone else, because they have so much market saturation that they can more or less say "screw the rest of you".

*sigh* I always have to explain to people that 90% of the OS's out there are great, standards driven, and work well together...there's all sorts of free software out there, that you can even modify the source code to make work the way you want.

The problem is, Close to 90% or more of computers are running Windows instead. I still have some people I encounter that have never heard of the concept of a computer without windows, and get downright defensive of the concept of a computer WITHOUT windows. :(

Re:Huh?

[Eric Ass Raymond]

Microsoft has talked about security for too long, they're the boy crying wolf now

Neither LoveSan or SoBig is not Microsoft's fault. They had the patch ready months before a potential exploit became reality - the idiot system administrators who do not read security advisories are to blame.

I'll keep saying this until someone proves me wrong: if Linux were as prevalent and popular as Windows is today, we would be in exactly the same position because of the stupid system administrators.

It's not the OS - it's the human factor.

Re:Huh?

[JWW]

Bullshit, the DCOM vunlerability should never have been in there in the first place, it was absolutely shoddy coding on their part. At my company the patch was not through testing yet, and I don't blame them for it either.

I understand that in your little world administrators have nothing better to do but sit and wait for the latest patch and then immediatly go install it, oh and with no ill affects either.

In the real world many companies have half the IT staff (or less) than they used to and they're overworked even before having to install patches on EVERY machine.

The exploits in Windows were DEFECTS in the product. My company pays millions to put that product on thousands of machines, and it was defective. I plan on asking IT higher ups if we are planning any legal action against Microsoft for selling defective products.

When Ford gets sued because Crown Victorias explode when they are rear ended by another car, Ford doesn't get out of the lawsuits because "someone else ran into the car" they pay through the nose because their gas tanks are defective. Microsoft deserves the same treatment in the courts. Its the only true way they will EVER take security seriously.

Re:Huh?

[JWW]

A building isn't a car either, but its still engineered.

This is just a cop-out of software engineers.

One of the main reasons that software is not truly engineered is that everyone makes up their own specifications. When you look at RFC's they look very much like engineering specs, and older technonogy like TCP has engineering like specifications too.

Now Microsofts problem was in the implementing of DCOM over TCP/IP and the security they used. Its their own specification, and not subject to proposal and being reviewed as the above mentioned RFC's are. Sure other protocols and implementations have had holes and exploits, but new RFCs can then be written and the hole fixed. This is exactly the same as saying the bridge design used for the Tacoma Narrows bridge will never be used again.

But it is that propietary code Microsoft writes and hides and does not publish full specifications for that is making their OS vulnerable to worms. It is their defect, they should own up to responsibilty for it.

And yes, if they did publish full specs for their system calls and interfaces, or God forbid, released their code for all to review, I would cut them more slack.

Re:Huh?

[FatherOfONe]

His example isn't void.

I will change it, so you will hopefully understand it better.

What if someone figured out to hack in to the OnStar system by GM and shut every GM car down? At first people would be mad at the person who did it and some would probably sue GM at this point (they may or may not win, my guess is that they would get some money from GM). Now picture if this happened every month or so, and GM said that ALL people who had this OnStar SOFTWARE installed needs to press an update button on their car every so often to load security patches. Now to keep with this analogy, some people that press the button have such major problems that they have to have their car towed back to a service station just to get it running again. This makes people nervous about pressing the button... Then a big attack comes and because a large percentage of people were too lazy or to nervous to press that button, their cars get shut down while driving. Some die and some GM cars kill other people. Now GM would be put out of business so fast it would make the breast implant thing look like a small claims case. This ALL would be because of a software error.

Am I saying that some admins don't share some of the blame? No! But this isn't the first or even the 50th severe security patch that Microsoft has released.

Now I will not keep saying this.
Gartner and company MUST start factoring this in to the TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP of running Microsoft software. If you need an admin that must do nothing but patch your companies OS (testing included) all the time, then that hard cost MUST be included in TCO!!!!

As for your comment about Microsoft owning the lions share of the market and that is why they are attacked, I disagree. The real issue is that Microsoft has, from the beginning, tried to make their applications easy to integrate. They developed DDE and OLE. Both with NO real security built in. This was great for their users because it enabled Microsoft to get products out faster and made it far easier to work with them (from an API viewpoint). But look at Java Applets VS Active X controls. Java has the lions share of that type of market and yet you don't hear about security problems with it. Now ActiveX.... well lets just say it is an abomination with little to no security design. You got to love the fact that stuff can get installed on your Windows system without your approval over the Net!

Also look at some of their more recent products. Windows95 sent passwords over the network in clear text!!! No other operating system at that time even thought about doing that!

The last issue is that Microsoft is the worlds largest software maker with around 40 BILLION in the bank. What if they took around say 5 BILLION and really focused on their products security. I guess the question is why didn't they do that? The answer is that it would have taken cash off of their bottom line....

Kind of like an automotive company that cuts corners on stuff to save money... but then they get sued if things go bad and people get hurt....

Screen Real Estate

[Synesthesiatic]

From a quick look at the screenshots, it looks like the interface has a lot of whitespace taking up screen real estate.

In particular, look at the one in the bottom-left of the first batch. It's a simple autoplay dialog, but it takes up 640x492! There's no excuse for that kind of waste.

I know I'm probably in the minority, since I'm not one of those people that maximizes EVERYTHING (my roommie runs IE maximized at 1400x1050!), and I'm not opposed to a little eye candy, but why should a simple dialog with all of five choices take up that much space?

Simplified UI

[Gilmoure]

Reminds me of the sort of front end you'd see on lab lockdown software in an elementary school. How come closed source OS developers (MS and Apple) don't want to provide variety to their GUI? Why does it fall to third party folks to write hacks that let you customize a system. Yes, 95% of regular users will never think beyond their desktop pic and screen saver but for the rest of us...make it an admin thing or something. I don't care what you have to do to keep grandma from fscking up her machine, just don't lock the rest of us down.

Re:Simplified UI

[GlassHeart]

95% of regular users will never think beyond their desktop pic and screen saver but [...] just don't lock the rest of us down.

How much extra are these 5% (I'm being generous to just use your numbers; it might be much smaller than 1%) of users willing to pay for the extra code Microsoft has to write and test? I don't like Microsoft at all, but it makes perfect business sense to ignore this 5% who probably would rather use Linux anyway.

Win over?

[sterno]

They aren't going to win any more of the desktop market by making it look fancier.
They don't have to win over anybody? They just need to avoid losing them. Ultimately that will most likely happen through continuing to make people need windows rather than choose it on its merits.

Yea, it's called Aqua from Mac OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

If you say that Microsoft can't improve on the interface of Windows, then you have certainly not used the interfaces available on MacOS (for any version, not just X). It's a heck of a lot easier to navigate around MacOS, and I don't say this out of experience; I say this because Apple specifies a Human Interface Guideline that Microsoft does not have for Windows (even Microsoft has to follow the HIG when they make Office v.X). Everything is placed in a tree-like heirarchy that is easier (compared to Windows' interface) to find things in, especially if you haven't had experience with the interface. I personally still use the classic view in Windows 2000 and XP, just because their new interface is NOT better than the old one. Their changing the interface only makes it worse and bloated, which requires more exploration and getting used to than it should be. With MacOS, nothing needs getting used to. If you want to change something, you just follow the yellow brick road. It's as simple as that. Microsoft has yet to make that step into improving the simplicity of their interface. You don't complain only because you've used it since Windows 95 and classic view is an option that you can find after having getting used to the insanity of the placement of functions/options like that.

Re:Yea, it's called Aqua from Mac OSX

[schnell]

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.

Re:Yea, it's called Aqua from Mac OSX

[Jenova_Six]

I say this because Apple specifies a Human Interface Guideline that Microsoft does not have for Windows

What are you talking about? Microsoft most definitely does have a user interface guideline for developers, with very defined rules for the "look and feel" of a Windows application.

I Disagree

[Obiwan Kenobi]

When I ask her how things work on the computer she has now, she's used to XP and having almost everything explained in simple, child-like steps. If I ask her to save something "to the hard drive" she doesn't know what this means.

And to non-geeks, this is a bad thing. To the rest of the world, it's not a big deal. They don't really care if their hard drive has 8MB of cache and runs at 7200RPMs. They don't care how much space is on their hard drive as long as they don't get a scary message saying they've run out of it.

And they certainly don't mind getting told, step-by-step, how to do certain tasks.

The reason that "leaked" screenshots of the new version of Windows gets posted on /. is because, no matter how much we try to deny it, we probably envy the strides made in UI that just aren't being done in Linux (yet).

Case in point: you're 13 year old sister doesn't need to know about xcopy or directory structures or file trees in order to save or retrieve files. And better yet, a grandma can do the same thing and while we see them as childlike step-by-step shortfalls, the simple fact is that UI brings computer efficiency to the masses. Is it as efficient as we are (or can be)? Of course not. But it lets them use something that they had not been able to use before (I'm speaking mainly of the grandmas at this point).

Either way, I think that dumbing down is a great thing. Because this gives users a choice: You can go step by step and make something work. Or, if you're curious, or if you're a Power User (tm), you can turn that off and work with more control and finesse than thought possible. I know the Aero interface will be disabled the instant

I install the newest Windows, but at least it's there for those who need it.

And those are the people you seem to have forgotten in your posting.

Re:Wrong direction

[trompete]

You are totally right. Mod parent up please.
Windows machines are best used as gaming machines. The only way I ever hook mine up to the internet is if it is behind my trusty DSL router, which has protected me time and time again.
If I didn't play games, I would have bought an I-Book or a G-4 a couple years ago.

And we thought XP was bad..

[Ogerman]

I don't use Windows, but several of my less geeky friends do. Just about every one of them has stated at one point or another that they hate the "new interface" of XP--especially Explorer. It's not surprising to me. Microsoft keeps designing interfaces that, by default, hide more and more information from the user while adding chubby new graphics and context sidebars. I get asked questions like "how do I make it just show all the files and directories on my hard drive?" Longhorn seems to be a step further in the direction of hiding more details to make the UI not user-friendly, but rather idiot-friendly. It may be more immediately useful to someone who's never touched a computer before, but it certainly isn't always efficient for the typical user. And if you look at those stupid interface studies that supposedly compare XP to KDE, you'll notice that most of them study near-illiterate users.

Chalk up yet another reason to convince people and businesses to switch to Linux / Free Software.

Re:Leaked Screenshots????

[leifm]

Intentionally leaked screenshots are the only thing Paul Thurrott is good for. If you actually read his stuff you get quotes like this:

"Windows Me (as in the dreadful, "get to know Me" tagline)--is a lame duck technologically, but it offers enough reliability improvements and new features for me to recommend it heartily to most Windows 9x users"

Dear god

[_KiTA_]

I work for tech support for a ISP. Oh my god.

I thought WinXP and it's "Categorial" Control Panel was hard to explain and keep track of for users.

This is a new form of hell.

Does MS specifically *try* to make support's lives miserable? Dear god. There's something to be said about some stability. Between Win 95 to 2000, at least I had the capability to tell people "Oh, go into control panels, and double click the one that says "Networking"" when I needed to get someone's DNS settings fixed.

XP it wasn't that simple -- I had to make sure the user had their control panel in "classic" view, and I'll be damned if Microsoft didn't "help" me by making the button to switch between the two a fake hyperlink. At the very least, they could have made that hyperlink underlined so an average (or below average) user could figure it out, but no, they won't even go that far.

Longhorn looks like it's going to be even worse. Now I'm going to have to waste money buying Longhorn right when it comes out (or waste time and a CD-R downloading it) and waste time memorizing it so I can walk people through the brain dead Fisher Price system designed for 5 year olds. And I'd be willing to wager money that they'll make it "helpful" by hiding DNS, IP, et all settings under 50 pages of wizards and candy sheets.

I already had to answer phones for 2 weeks for Microsoft for free because of MS Blaster, and will have to for another week or two because of SoBig.F.

Now, come next year, I'm going to have to memorize an OS that looks like something from Clippy's wet dreams?

I'm sick of cleaning up Microsoft's messes.

On the flip side, it looks like they've stolen enough MacOS X and Linux GUI ideas to make it so slightly above average users won't need to bother me, so I guess it's not all that bad. Some of it is almost interesting, like having sound volume -- FOR EACH PROGRAM. Some of the extended stuff looks like it might be pretty useful, if a bit sugarcoated.

So, in Summary:

1. Tech support is hell.
2. New GUI + Confused Users = bad news.
3. Longhorn looks interesting, but I don't want to have to support it.
4. 3 may change depending on future screenshots.

Re:Wrong direction

[buffer-overflowed]

Hi, I'll be speaking for the Linux fanbois[sic] in the audience.

As Mr. AC so kindly pointed out, Windows(including XP, 2003 server, 2000 advanced server, NT4, etc.) falls victim to it's GUI reliance in the server arena. It also falls victim to the bi-monthly virus, critical patch and/or worm attacks that MS is so famous for.

To put it bluntly, it's less secure then Linux, and no more warranteed then Linux. It has no place on any critical systems (and neither does Linux unless it's waranteed as fail-safe).

Yea, terminal services is pretty cool and all, but it doesn't have the speed, elegance and lack of overhead of something like ssh.

That GUI you windows people so rely on costs you, whether you admit it or not. It costs you hardware and performance for no real functional gain.

Second, XP is a home or workstation OS it shouldn't be comparable to a server OS. One OS does not fit all. I wouldn't run an AIX desktop, nor would I run a VMS desktop. Why would you run a Win2k3 Server desktop? For kicks or because XP doesn't cut it in the robust department?

Yes, things have come a long way since Billy G plugged in a USB device into a Win98 box and uttered the words "whoops" but they're still not perfect.

See also: releasing commercial software chocked full of overflow bugs.

See also: critical flaws in the MS API that allow escalation of privaledges. AKA: Shatter Attack

See also: not understanding the concept of a salt when encrypting passwords.

So back off MS Fanboy. Your OS isn't near as good as you think it is.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to reboot into Windows so I can play some video games.

Re:Aqua? Aero?

[kpaul]

Of course you mean "Fuego" and "Terra"

Typical of Microsoft... no real innovation

[Frobozz0]

Microsoft has once again proved that even though they're now capable of slapping some paint on an old house, they still can't fix the foundation.

I honestly can't believe how complex they've managed to make even simple tasks. These screenshots, aestetically, look great... but they still bury functionality in the wrong places, and put simple tasks under 3 different sub-menus.

How does this help anything? It doesn't. But what does it prove? They're scared of Apple's OS X. They copy basic concepts of functonality and pleasing look, while missing all the fundamental reasons why Apple's OS works like it should. SIMPLICITY. I'm not saying OS X is perfect, but Panther looks like a great stride and will be available in a month or two. Longhorn... which should be called "Shoe-horn" won't be out until mid 2005.

Does Monopoly Sell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, if MS released a brand new operating system that looked identicle to XP, but was just ultra secure and ultra stable, would it sell?

MS Windows has always sold past a certain point in time, regardless of fucking quality. Because MS has a recognized illegal monopoly which hasn't been remedied.

Jesus Christ.

This will never get posted, because I'm just an AC. But what the hell.

The problem with MS at this point has nothing to do with how shiny the GUI is or how stable the OS is. MS has sold its OS without consequence for some time. Stability, security, usability--none of it matters.

We could argue until we die about whether or not Linux GUIs are comparable to those of Windows or MacOS, and then our children could continue the argument about whether or not Windows is as stable.

The issue isn't that Windows isn't stable, or that it has the best GUI. The issue is that we will never fucking know given the status quo whether or not users really want the added GUI features, because there are no consequences for MS that would motivate them to build a better GUI.

Honestly--really--does anyone here want more bloated GUI? Does anyone here know anybody who wants added bloat? Let's rephrase that for MS apologists--does anyone know anyone who wants the added GUI features?

I don't know anybody. The Joe Sixpacks I do know get pissed because their system is so laggy, and are astonished whenever I manage to speed it up by getting rid of the crap.

Of course, you'll come up with some anecdotal answer otherwise. And you might be right. But right now, all you'll be doing is accepting MS Longhorn post hoc as satisfactory, because you have no other realistic choices of OS. And all I might be doing is complaining about it.

I get so frickin tired about these arguments on Slashdot and elsewhere about whether or not Linux has a satisfactory GUI, or Windows has satisfactory security and stability.

The question isn't "if MS built a universally recognizably stable OS, would it sell?" Because of course it would sell. It sells right now. Because it has a monopoly.

The real question is "if MS were forced to compete in a diverse OS market, what other OS features might we see? Would MS then sell?"

When will we stop equating "satisfactory" with "optimal"?

What other market is like the OS market? If the OS market were like cereals, you would walk into the grocery store and see only corn flakes. Your choice would be "do I want the new corn flakes or not?" We would be having arguments about whether or not the corn flakes are crispy enough. A group of people would be saying "people like corn flakes; they don't need or want other cereals that might have dried fruits or some other wierd thing in them."

Sound silly?

Of course it does. It's not about MS being good enough. MS will never be as good enough for me, because I know there would be something better if it actually was forced to legitimately compete.

And you can't prove me wrong. If you want to, demand consequences for MS.

I get so sick of these screenshots being released every couple years, when we have the same discussion in which we rationalize why we have little choice of OS.

Re:Aqua? Aero?

[NonSequor]

Because 3D virtual reality GUIs suck unless you live in a four dimensional universe (by that I mean a universe with a proper fourth spatial dimension).

Being able to view data in three dimensions isn't useful when you must view it straight on in order to interact with it usefully. A 3D interface will not accomplish anything special unless you actually have to work with data that can only be displayed in three dimensions, which is relatively rare and where this is necessary, specialized interfaces have been developed.

A lot of people think that 3D interfaces are the natural progression from 2D ones since three is one better than two, but few of these people actually stop to think about it.

Support

[jeti]

Try to give telephone support to someone if you don't even know how the OS looks.
It also is nice if people are able to sit at different machines and don't have to relearn or reconfigure everything.
Customization is fine as long as it's not just a weak excuse for not setting up stuff properly in the first place. And sometimes it's better if beginners don't have to deal with it.

I Work At Microsoft:These Are Not Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

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.

These files are FAKE

[zim2411]

Unless there are some SERIOUS typos in the longhorn OS, (which I doubt) these pictures are FAKE. Look at the one for the Hardware Devices. It lists the system specs as "Intel Xeon, 80ghz RAM, 20GB1, Ultra ATA Hard Drive, Windows Longhorn Professional." First off, there is no 80ghz Xeon. Second. What does GB1 mean? Third. Wheres the ram? Another problem in a picture are the typos. For the Music Companion propterties, in shows that the MP3 player has 900 on board memory, and 100 meg flash card. It also says that 900 megs will hold 100 songs. What!?! The real one has 64 megs of internal. ( http://www.reviewmart.com/ele-philips_sa220 ) On the Rush Media Player picture, it says "Here's room for text but I don't thing we need it." (No spelling errors there,) What?! This is all a load of crap. Some one went through alot of trouble to photoshop in this stuff. The only pictures I believe are the real longhorn, are the 3 at the bottom.

Re:Wrong direction

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

This is not a troll. A rant, maybe.

Look. MS Win\2003 and future versions contain public-keys for encryption, for which the licensed user (not owner) holds no corresponding private-key. Who holds the private keys? Microsoft, for sure - and whoever they escrow to at Three Letter Agency.

Sony Pictures may well hold private-keys, distributing the pub-key to you by use of MS's APIs in a software installer. The implications of this is that your computer cannot be trusted by its user.

Oh, and the worm comments seem like flamebait? The DCom-RPC vulnerability is YEARS old in the code - 1997. Never caught by the people who had access and ownership of the source. Not after bringing in special tools for reviewing code last year, not after a 5-month security related delay for review of 2003 Server. This is an OBVIOUS place to look for flaws, being RPC, and automated tools for checking buffer code is not rocket science.

The newest (of many) problems in the IE use of the OBJECT tag was so downplayed in the MS announcement yesterday, that I have hardly heard a mention. This is not a joke to leave unpatched, and it is related to IE ignoring RFC compliance on 7-bit MIME-type headers, and weakness in the mechanism for defining "zones".
See if you can tell that this announcement:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /MS03-032.asp
relates to this disclosure by eEye:
http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AD200 30820.html
You think that Linux or Solaris or whatnot suffers equally? A regular user of an account on the box cannot establish the trust policy for code executed outside of his own shell.

We can go on for pages and pages in this vein - instead just manage to look through the relevant list-archives for Full-Disclosure and Incidents, etc...

Windows is a little, dirty-toilet OS.

All the UI's have their ups and downs.

[Nephroth]

A lot of things can be said for or against the windows UI. Personally, I have few complaints with windows 2000 and lesser in terms of UI. I dislike XP mostly because I prefer things to be compact and streamlined and that, my friends is something XP is not. I dislike frivilous graphics and frivilously large toolbars etc. I understand that some computer users may like that, but an option to shut off "all the fruity colors" should have been made available. Sure, XP is skinnable, but the "classic" skins are still bogged down by the fact that the windows XP environment habitually sacrifices user efficiency for initial usability. Sure, lil' sis can save and open files without any real help, but in about a year once she's matured a bit and knows a little more, will she not be frustrated by the fact it takes twice as long to do it than in other UIs?

Lets not leave out Linux, I enjoy Linux as a hobby, but as far as the most popular UI's go, it's just as bad. KDE and GNOME aren't horrible, but they could be a lot better. It takes just as long to accomplish something in either of them as windows XP simply because you often get too much detail, when I click my task bar, I don't want to be assaulted by the 8000 or so selections that you get even in a fairly bare-bones GUI install. Granted, they can be removed, but not easily. Linux will not take off as a desktop system until it can take reliability and combine it with ease of use. I'll admit right now, I'd MUCH rather install new hardware on a Windows system. Why? because even when installing hardware that I know nothing about and don't have the drivers for is a hell of a lot easier than doing so in Linux.

I know full well that this will get tucked at the bottom and ranked as a one because I'm reiterating a lot of points as well as being simply irrate, but the solution to all of this isn't Linux aquiring a few traits or Windows aquiring (or losing) a few others, what it amounts to is in order for the OS market to work there need to be more than two or three OSes available. (Fanboys, now is the time to mention WHEATONEX or whatever off the wall OS you run, but I'm talking mainstream here, not ecclectic little known ones)

The market should aim to be like that of cars, car companies produce many models, each one with a particular type of user in mind. Small economy cars are aimed at people who just need something reliable to get around, they don't have to be amazingly fast or have a lot of features, it just needs to work and be fairly safe. Larger family sedans are aimed at people who have a lot of things to do, they are more task oriented. They aren't necessarily fast, but they are very safe and very reliable. Trucks are aimed at the purely utilitarian user, they are durable and very powerful, but at the same time they are big and slow. Sports cars are aimed at the flashy user, they are fast and look nice, but they offer little protection in an accident and are really only suitable for city or highway driving, you can't drive them in the winter and you certainly should drive them in the country where stones and potholes will damage them. But most of all, more than anything else, no matter what kind of car you drive (bear with me, I know I'm about to get hit with "but I drive an electric" or "well, I converted my 1987 chevy celebrity to run on LP!") they all run on gas, they all take oil and other fluids. *in case you didn't get it, the fluids are the software in this case, not electricity or something*

The computer industry has a lot of changing to do before it truly matures, first thing that needs to be done is money grubbing organizations like the MPAA, RIAA, and others need to be put in their place and made to deal with the times just like all the other companies out there. Secondly, we need to dismiss socialist computing notions like networking every item in your house. I know it seems cool in Sci-Fi, but it's a bad idea unless computers are 100% safe, reliable, and infallable. Until then, we need to stick with, for the most part, having to flip the light switch ourself.
Lastly, we need to get it out of our heads that computers are just Microsoft vs. *nix, and that something as frivilous as a UI change will change the computing world, it's going to take a total paradigm shift in order to do that.

Re:Aqua? Aero?

[Have Blue]

You already use the third dimensions every time you place a window overlapping another window. All that's missing is perspective.

Also remember that there are always the things that are built on top of a technology that are assumed to be impossible or sometimes can't even be imagined until the technology itself is widespread. Desktop publishing was not possible until the 2D GUI was established. Mac OS X's Expose depends on its abstracted window system and hardware-accelerated "renderer".

Re:Toyish?

[Safety Cap]

There is nothing new here so compelling ~.

There is one thing: you don't have a choice from here on out thanks to Microsoft's Windows Desktop Product Life Cycle Support and Availability Policies for Consumers. Once XP end of lifes there are no more activations, so if your computer crashes or you upgrade enough of your hardware then you have an expensive coaster instead of an OS CD.

Think you'll upgrade then? What about your mom?

If you are on NT or W2k, you have some time, but consider that although NT EOLs in June, 2004 and Wk2 EOLs in March, 2008, it is doubtful that patches will be written for W2K for much longer--NT is dead as far as patches are concerned; anyone who still runs NT can go pound sand for all the support they're going to get.

Ching, ching! Bling, bling! -- that's the sound of money flowing into Bill Gate$'s pockets.

virtual desktops?

[SHEENmaster]

I see that as a great 3d interface, available in Linux for quite a while. Rather than reinventing everything, just make several different layers of 2d environments, and stack them. Give them opaque backgrounds with a single interface for navigation on top. By flipping the slides, you can access different sets of open programs.

My favorite implimentation of this is that of OpenBox(and the other boxes). I can wheel on the empty background to switch desktops. No wasteful program runs as a background, and I can move a window from one desktop to another by dragging it across the edge. With this method, I can keep my editor and compile on one desktop, and instantly flip to a web browser if I need to check documentation.

Mac OS 9 and Linux(by which I mean XFree86 w/ a decent wm on any platform) also have the ability to shrink to just their titlebar upon a double click. Not as essential as virtual desktops, but definitely worth the ~30 lines of code it takes to impliment. Panther's Expose uses a different approach by which all windows, or all those of the current application, are resized to fit on the screen. Clicking on one exposes it. The idea has potential.

(Windows has kept the same interface for the past 8 years, but not because it's the best.)