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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. "
**For the Windows users that are going to inevitably say "Well my XP box never crashed and I don't have to reboot for a week! I play mad gamez and it stays good! So it's stable, you are just a open source zealot!", just shut up. When the big kids talk about "stability", they mean that a server remains stable indefinately while performing multiple critical tasks. If one task fails, the OS is capable of maintaining peak levels of performance despite the failure of one component/application/process/whatever. Not having to reboot your Win2K Server for 20 or so days when all the box was doing was providing file sharing and running a small Active Directory domain for a measly 100-200 users is not "stable". That kind of stability was surpassed by UNIX over 20 years ago (and every other mainstream OS since, as well). This post was first.
Even as Slashdot Subscriber, the site was slow/unresponsive. I'm surprised Slashdot people are that interested in Longhorn. So anyway, here's a mirror.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
The new screenshots of the 'Aero' interface mainly seem to be concerned with Digital Media integration..
So er.. much like Apple then. For a change.
Nice to see MS playing 'keep-up' as usual.
I wonder how much influence gnome and kde have had on the Windows GUI designers...?
It looks so radically different from two versions ago (2000).
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.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
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 they have really shitty design interface people, but would someone, for the love of god, tell them that pastels are really bad for eys strain over significant time intervals (or with that ugly shit, 10 seconds)? Please, ditch the pastels. I'm NOT a machead, but Apple's done a good job of picking colors with slightly lower saturation levels, with the result being a very pleasing interface. WinXP (and evidently this crap) make me want to slit my wrists.
Also, what's with the 800 pixel menu bars? Were these screenshots taken from a computer for the legally blind or will those using windows really have to look at that shit?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The graphical screens seem to be more and more CPU/memory intensive. I remember having performance problems on my 1.6Ghz pentium 4 with 256 MB RAM and solution as per MS knowledge base was to change the graphical settings and make screens look more like Win 2000 from Win XP !!
But MS always leaves more to be desired by making an OS such that it obsoletes the increased processing power in 1 or 2 years... so that the cycle or upgrade remains...
--Sig
I am telling you, you won't believe this !!
Nice to see Microsoft jumping on the "we can use those BeOS icons" bandwagon. (Look carefully.)
blog |
While I applaud the Apple 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 Panther you can disable the absurd glossification and get it to run 10% faster.
(Well you can turn off the eye candy in Jaguar but I leave it on anyway ;-)
Interesting things here. They had pictures of many items, including a picture of a Dell which leads me to wonder if were looking at paid product placement, programmer placeholder, or a picture that would come include with a driver? Perhaps such pictures would be part of an OEM customization kit? I also noticed that the option for copying music from a device was to use windows media player. Last I checked, copy and paste works just fine, so is this some kind of DRM thing? That would certainly not be compatible with Ogg Vorbis. I didn't see a simply copy from option without using Windows Media Player, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be done as just another disk.
The one thing I saw that I really liked was a data syncronization utility. The ability to keep your contacts in your PDA, phone, email and whatever else all synchronized without using multiple computers strikes me as a good thing. Presently you usually need dedicated syncronization tools, and they tend not to play well with each other. Now since Outlook Express isn't going to given out anymore, and there not about to include Outlook itself, it makes me wonder what they are planning to do address book wise, and how this ties into syncing, presently a pain with phones and PDA's typically needing different software.
This is a complement. The Opensource community is always accused of copying and not innovating. Now MS is the one copying.
ok ok I admit Next was first with this.
http://saveie6.com/
When the new Longhorn DRM hardware comes out, I'm going to buy a top of the line standard hardware computer so I have a computer that will last me many more years. I will never, ever buy the Longhorm DRM hardware unless there is a way it can be turned all the way off.
It's like somebody at MS looked at OS X and noticed that things were shiny a lot and dialogs were sparse, and decided that the answer resided in making *everything* shiny and sparse.
Hello, you've missed the point!?
What exactly is Microsoft steering the desktop towards? Who wants or needs more digital media integration in the OS? I can see some uses for a home computer, if they're trying to go the Entertainment Center route. My guess is that in 2005 or whenever it will STILL be easier to burn the video you want to watch onto a DVD or video CD and pop it in your DVD player. I have a s-video cable running from my 'puter to the TV now, and it works, but its kind of a pain in the ass, and the solution doesn't lie in tweaking the OS, it's more like a remote control device such as the one that came with my TV capture card which I haven't bothered to program since it's just a lot easier to get up off the couch and double-click the matrix icon in my Kazaa folder.
But what use, if any, does this digital media integration have in Microsoft's largest market, the business world? I can see that maybe PowerPoint presentations will become spiffier, with video footage spliced in and stuff, but that doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the OS. And beyond that, most people are NEVER going to put AV segments in their powerpoint presentations. It's cool at first but the bloom quickly fades. So, my question is: How do any of these digtial media enhancements actually enhance Windows, how do the ADD VALUE to the product, what kind of USEFUL functionality will they provide? Very little if you ask me.
It seems to me that they should be more focused on building a better mousetrap, not adding niche features to a rickety mousetrap. For example, if I'm playing Enemy Territory in 800x600 and my desktop res is at 1024x768, and I ctrl-shirt-esc to jump out to the desktop to queue up more songs in Winamp, I can't see winamp because my screen in still in 800x600 and winamp is in the lower right corner, off the screen. And you can't alt-tab to it either. Now maybe that's winamp's fault, but something like switching between apps is what a OS is supposed to be good at, and I can't do it, so I don't really give a rat's ass about a more integrated digital multimedia experience if I can't even perform a simple act like listening to my MP3s while fragging nubs!
No designer can make drawings as n00b-friendly as Susan Kare. I don't give a rat, I still think that MacOS before 8 was teh best for the n00bs. Me, I liked GS/OS because you could exit to a command line, but it was the same basic OS underneath as the Mac. (Except programmed for a 16-bit 65816, not a 32-bit 68000)
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
As they said on the Simpsons, "It's the Shinnin', boy, do ye want to get sued?"
-30-
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.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
In your opinion, yes.
In my opinion, I think that Mac is a little too addicted to the mouse for total computer operation. Yes it's possible to operate a Mac off a keyboard, no it's not feasible.
Hmm... interesting how one of the UI screenshots needed call-out text boxes to tell us what we were looking at. Does anyone else think that's a bad sign? Note that Mac OS S screenshots displaying new UI functionality in Panther don't need such explicit "point to the widget" explanation.
Another interesting point from the MacOS user experience: the original incarnation of OS X's Aqua interface was candy-colored almost to the point of distraction. From those Longhorn screenshots, obviously the Windows UI folks saw that & said "I'll bet we can out-shiny that!" However, in the two years since the original Aqua, the OS X UI has been toned down considerably based on real user's feedback & common sense.
How long before Longhorn's Aero interface does the same? Two years after it's (finally) released? Screw that; even my X11 windows served back to my laptop from the Solaris box are easier to work with....
--Mid
Every WinXX release since 3.1 has been incremental improvements under the hood, with a lot of eye-candy changes to make it look like more has changed.
The default XP UI is still clunky for non-tech users, and some of the glitz to Longhorn might be good for them. They've almost reached the simplicity of the old mainframe fill-out-form and submit interfaces that IBM had by the mid-late '80s -- the rest is all eye candy and gloss.
Maybe this time they won't force me to spend hours figuring out how to shut off all the eye candy so I can get some work done instead of spinning cycles on feedback that just annoys the cubemates and strains my eyes. Maybe I won't need to upgrade the CPU just to maintain UI responsiveness.
Then again, it took how many years for Longhorn to reach the point where they'd leak screenshots? Any bets on whether the "hurd" beats this latest Microsoft cash grab out the door?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Ever tell a user (like my sister) to download a new program? Inevitably, they do so and then ask, "so where did it go?" Not knowing about filesystems may make life "simpler" but it doesn't make it any "easier".
Theoretically the shiny new interface should be accompanied by rock-solid reliability, but it's not.
Perhaps this is where someone can surpass Microsoft? There were probably points in the history of most complex devices that a user really had to understand how it worked to actually operate it. But thanks to people pushing the usability envelope, you no longer have to be an engineer to heat up yesterday's coffee. Perhaps we're all off base thinking usability is just a pretty UI. Perhaps we should be working toward an operating that is stable, secure, and easy. Granted, things have to be pretty complex under the hood (as is the case in many "simple" devices), but why can't the kernel be stable and secure enough to allow a user to not have understand how a filesystem works?
Linux, IMHO, is a reliable OS, but too many people involved in the development want to keep it complex because knowing those complexities is a badge of honor. KDE and GNOME have come a long way, but until the complexity of the kernel is "dumbed down", Linux won't necessarily be any better than Windows for the average user.
Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. --Ludwig Wittgenstein
Well, a lot of people are complaining that the new design is ugly, wastes screen space, etc. Mostly, I agree. But I did notice one thing that was actually a useful innovation!
:)
On the volume control dialog, they have per-application volume settings. I think I would find that amazingly useful; I know when I'm watching a movie in mplayer, it seems like the audio is quiet (just the way it was recorded), so I turn up the volume, and then the sound effects in gaim become uber-loud during the movie. Yeah, bad example, I can mute gaim so it doesn't interrupt the movie, but my point still stands. If you don't like that one app is being too loud relative to another, you can control their volumes independantly. That's cool! I wonder how long it'll take OSS to implement this
Hmm. First of all, I'm a programmer; I can create software, I work primarily in Windows but I'm at least "adequate" with *nix for basic things, and I'm comfortable with the command line because I'm 27 and while that's not very old, I *have* been using computers since the 8-bit days.
:P
And I don't really like your stance that "simplicity and convenience" is a bad thing. At least not, in and of itself. I think that, ideally, a computer should be easy to use as a toaster, yet it should still allow me to fiddle around "under the hood" if I want and get my hands dirty... or even shocked. I think that OSX and modern Linux distros are a positive sign that such a balance IS achievable.
I mean, isn't the original point of computers to let us get stuff done, by doing the number-crunching for us? Some "hardcore" users like you who decry simplicity and ease-of-use have, I think, begun to view computers as an end, and not a means.
The operating system, software, and hardware should be totally out of the way when I'm trying to draw a picture, write a paper, or play a game. It really should be as easy to use as a toaster for most tasks.
What if our houses, roads, and office buildings were constructed with the same passion as the average geek feels towards computers?
I don't know, man- the average archetect is pretty motivated. At least the ones I know of. The main problem is budgets- most people don't want to pay for more than boring "box" architecture when building a new strip mall or whatever. You can be the most passionate archetect in the world, but if your clients will only pay for boring concrete slabs 99% of the time, what can you do?
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Though frankly, they still dont have a decent competitor for everyday desktop computing, which is a shame.
WRT Linux, I'm inclined to agree. But Mac OS X is way more than a "decent competitor." In fact, I feel it surpasses Windows in every aspect of desktop computing. The *only* thing that Windows has over OS X is games. Other than that it can't hold a candle to the user experience that Mac OS X offers.
Oh, and I thought this even when 10.0 was released, and switched to Mac because of it.
I dunno who it is
but it prolly is fhqwhgads.
I really think this task based UI is a horrible direction to go in. It limits what you can do with the computer to following a few preprogrammed rabbit tracks. I could see how this is a great interface for Kiosks and such as you can perform your task without having any previous experience with the machine, but not for a general purpose machine.
Think of it this way. The UNIX environment is one of the most powerful work evironment that I know. It is based on the theory that you have data and a bunch of small tools that operates on this data. There are an infinate number of ways to combine an use these tools, creating a very powerful work environment.
Traditional Application-Centric WIMP interfaces (like Mac, Win, KDE, etc) are not quite as orthagonal, as tools are limited to use within certain applications, often resulting in programmers having to reimplement the common tools in each application, and users having to relearn how to use the tool for each different application. So you essentailly have a bunch of independent little orthagonal systems that the user can work in, but any simularity between simular tools in different applications is up to the discresion (and limitations) of the programmers.
It seems that MS is completely abandoning the concept of orthagonality in the new longhorn UI. It looks more like a glorifed ATM machine than an environment for creative content generation.
The Humane Environment project that Jeff Raskin is working on appears to have far more potential. It is an attempt to (among other things) bring the (unix-like) concept of small tools to user-land. Ie there are no applications, just documents and tools (or commands) that operate on documents. They appear to be focusing not on minimizing the amount you need to learn for a task, but rather on maximizing the amout that you can do with each peice of information you learn. For example once you learn how to use spell-check, you can spell check any text anywhere. Once you find a tool that you want in a menu, you automatically know the short-cut (hold down the command key and type the name you saw in the menu), as well as how to use the command in a script - another powerful feature of Unix. But imagine if everything you did on your system be it manipulation graphics, sound, or text, etc, was scriptable. And you didn't have to learn a different language for each application (because it is systemlevel scripting, like unix sh), and you didn't have to relearn all the functions (they are the same commands you use interactively), and the original programmer didn't have to do anything special to facilite this (all commands are scriptable, just like UNIX).
This is the idea anyway - they still have a way to go. My only concern is that the project may end up getting too focused on the low level user-interface details, rather than the high level posibilities. That the atomic parts of the UI might become so different that it is not given the chance that it deserves. Or that the developer community might get so caught up in perfecting every detail of the atomic interactions that progress is slow, and other developers are scared away.
Anyway, I really hope Microsoft shoots itself in the foot with this one. It would give us a little more time to come up with something genuinely different and better, rather than just try to present an incrementaly better clone.
Seeing that screenshot with the Phillips logo made me wonder if they would have a "logo placeholder" for companies when they write their drivers or if they'd charge extra to show their logo instead of some standard text. I wouldn't put it past 'em!<br><br>--AB
Software engineering can't be compared to nuts-and-bolts engineering because it doesn't WANT to be compared to nuts-and-bolts engineering.
It deemed to hard to do true engineering on software. Thats bunk, coders just want to be "artistic" and forget engineering.
You don't see Fords engineers going "but building a car is really complex, cut us some slack."
My example is not void, Microsoft just doesn't want to work on engineering their software enough.
Oh and the remedy should be based on what you pay for the software, therefore your including Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD is void.
BTW: the Enterprise version of Linux that are sold for a price should live up to this level.
That's more right than you know. To me, it looks like a super-mutated version of MSN.
And I say this as someone who spent 6 months not too long ago doing freelance design work for that same company... trust me, those aqua-like buttons, all the gradient mayhem, drop shadows on absolutely everything... it's all MSN.
Used to drive me nuts, too. MSN, a web company, chooses nothing short of the entire spectrum of colours in gradient form for all their branding, right down to a logo that incorporates that same spectrum. So much for 'web safe colours'.
(It's like the iMac all over again. The idiots looked at it and thought 'i guess transparent computers are popular now', without pausing to realize how the iMac's transparency was just one facet of the design. You slap a semi-clear enclosure on your old product and it'll just look like the Princess Phone Radio Shack garbage that it really is.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
You realize that by suing Microsoft for shipping a "defective product", you also open up RedHat and any other company that does not ship %100 secure code to a lawsuit.
Basically, there is no such thing as a perfectly written program. Most software is written to what is known and capable at the time - programmers are not omniscient and cannot possibly foresee all potential security holes in code. In addition, what may seem like a good idea or feature at the time, may later turn out to be a mistake, but there is no way of knowing that.
Secondly, you also open your company up to lawsuit. By the same idea that you can sue Microsoft for not being omniscient, you can also be sued for not foreseeing that there were possible security holes and providing appropriate protection. If your company was harmed, you could open yourself to a lawsuit for failure in due diligence.
Thirdly, there is a difference between a physical product such as a Crown Victoria and a software program. A Crown Victoria is the sum of its parts and systems, and as such, when parts or systems fail, it can and has killed people. Unless you can say the the same thing about the software you run, you are making an invalid comparison. Of course, if you can and can prove it, you can be sued for failing to provide physical backups - that is the tack I would take.
Finally, lest you think this is defense of Microsoft, it is not. This is a defense of software programmers everywhere (who are all of varying skill levels and abilities). Your bitter refusal to accept that there is only so much anyone can do will probably bite you in the end.
Enjoy your day, if it is possible.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
and treat it like a SCSI disk in Windows, it'll work in Linux.
Most every player nowadays does this (except for a few Rios and the iPod, and they are MORE expensive than the competition). Usually listed under features you'll see some revolutionary "Carry your files on it!!!" thing or whatever.
I mean, come on, the Nex IIe, for example, is practically free (minus flash cards) and you're complaining?
In short, get a clue.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Bullshit. Microsoft does not make any guarantees that their software is secure. Neither does Linux, by the way.
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?
Because people in general will keep using their software even if they don't spend that 5 billion. Does that answer your question? It's all about the demand and supply. You may feel mad about it, but as long as millions and millions of users care more about the usability than security of the software it's not going to change. Yes. Those two are actually mutually exclusive properties.
BOO! TERRO
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 ?
The idea behind Expose is to handle your program switching graphically as opposed to with text (although text labels are still shown). With some people, they're more quick to recognize items based on their color and shape rather than a text label. Expose takes this idea and applies it to the desktop. Move your mouse in a certain corner or press a key combination and all active windows are shrunk down to a size where they can all be displayed, still showing the content within the program (Quartz Extreme rocks). Move your mouse into another corner and all of the windows within the active application (i.e. your 15 Safari windows only) shrink down to a size where you can see all of them. Move to another corner and all windows fly away and you have instant access to whatever's on your desktop. It is truly something to experience rather than read about. After using it for 30 seconds you will wish Windows could do it.
As far as the 'order' of the windows, instead of following a specific order of "which one opened first?", Expose appears to move the windows based more on their current size and position than anything else. This makes the experience more visually pleasing IMO than keeping a strict order and moving and sizing windows based on that.
This is my United States of whatever.