Slashdot Mirror
More Insight On Longhorn's Avalon And Aero Design
Lispy writes "While monitoring the Xorg mailinglist I came across this set of WinHEC PPT-presentations (work fine in OOorg) that cover some interesting details on the underlying architecture of Aero, Aero Glass and future font rendering in Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn OS. What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?" (KPresenter works fine, too, btw.)
Let's keep posts on topic and avoid any comments others might find offensive. Thanks.
Windows is gay!
Im not very interested in the outcome on longhorn, will this improve kde and gnome?
Windows sucks. Use Mac OS X instead.
I'm thinking about buying a new computer about a year or a year and a half from now, is there any chance that Longhorn will actually be out by then, or is it still just a silly pipe dream?
--
RumorsDaily
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
When certain fonts are displayed in Windows, certain characters are cut off on the left. It seems when the bounding box of text is calculated, it is incorrect, allowing some text to be cut off when displayed. I've noticed this is IE and Word especially.
Hopefuly they can fix this in the new fonts.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
I fail to see why LH is so important. I fully intend on migrating to Linux quite a long while before LH hits the warez servers^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMarket ;)
[OT]Hey, is OO.o available in Win32?[/OT]
Almighty Railgun
You Speak a Lethal Gospel!
Bloody Gibs Follow.
Joe Beda had said that Avalon is going to be more of an advanced UI/Visualization toolkit, while Dx will continue to contain all the other serious stuff.
Now, it looks like Avalon can do 3d on it's own and maybe more too -- what's the idea behind this anyway?
Are they trying to get a fresh new API or something? It seems unlikely, since I remember Joe and Scobles saying that they will probably be using Dx for serious graphics and game development. The redundancy seems strange.
From the presentation --
Avalon 3-D are not a replacement for Direct3D
You will find Avalon 3-D useful if:
- You want to integrate 3-D seamlessly into an Avalon app that also contains 2-D content, controls, etc.
- Platform features like Remote Desktop and multimon are high priorities for you
- You want to easily add 3-D functionality without quickly without needing to learn how the graphics hardware works
You will find DirectX useful if:
- You want access to all of the features provided by the graphics hardware
- You want to have full control over how your scene is stored and managed in memory
- Plan for interop between Direct3D and Avalon
Render Direct3D in a HWND and host within Avalon
So basically it seems to help ease the creation of bells and whistles, more than anything. Weird.
And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?
Apparently an Aero testing suite will be released at least 18 months before Longhorn's release. Is this demo yet available? It's interesting to note that if this message is right, Longhorn will not be available until 2006.
Will MS publicly announce this Aero test, so that we can anticipate a real release date for Longhorn?
This is /. and you're asking about how they will like a Microsoft technology? Of course, they'll hate it. Microsoft could come out with something that that's the coolest thing since Linux and /. will still hate it.
Peeeerrrrty
Look at those two screen shots. If Longhorn wan't an OS I would bang her 4 times a day.
Then again, I would get a virus, like MSclap
=)
Icons with reflection and depth
While I have to admit it sounds cool, I can't really think of a real need for this.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
You suck. Stop editing submitions. Nobody cares about KPresenter. Just kill yourself or something.
Even if Microsoft does a good job with Aero/Aero Glass, let's not forget that it's nothing but a ripoff of Mac OS X's Quartz/Quartz Extreme-- which by the time Longhorn comes out will be even more advanced.
I think the reason that MS is showing so little of Aero is that its design will be the last thing they do before kicking Longhorn out the door. They'll need to wait to see what they'll want to copy from whatever the latest version of OS X is at the time.
More time for me to learn my Linux...
Almighty Railgun
You Speak a Lethal Gospel!
Bloody Gibs Follow.
I know there's concern amongst us that MS will, yet again, rip-off the Mac's GUI but isn't ot rather arrogant to go telegraphing it in quite this mannner?
Next they'll be renaming Direct3D as "Silicate" or maybe "Quacks".
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
call it longshot
What would Edward Tufte make of this plot? Ah well, perhaps the multidimensional rotating bar graph will be of some use, should the presenter want to conceal some data.
It's somewhat disappointing that the presenter chose not to include a lens flare, though.
Thats a really excelent analogy. *applause*
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
No, not hot.
But reading Avalon's text support it seems that Longhorn will FINALLY be able to have the same deep text support that OS X has had since at least 10.0. Yes, all the APIs are marked AVAILABLE_MAC_OS_X_VERSION_10_0_AND_LATER with most of them having support in CarbonLib 1.0, ATSUnicodeLib 8.5 (Mac OS 8.5). Nice to see longhorn might finally be catching up.
The only thing that longhorn claims it will have that ATSUI doesn't have yet is the graphics card rendering support. Ever wonder why resizing a window is so slow on OS X? ATSUI is the reason.
In what way, if any, is this different from Apple's Quartz techniques?
from the 2nd presentation (in huge capitals, orange text on blue background to make your eyes bleed. So far for userfriendlyness)
"64-bit is the future !!"
Doh. MS is missing the ball by a few 100 miles again : Billy, 64-bit is THE PRESENT. 128bit or nanocomputing is the future.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
An improved UI is just the thing we need to help spread God's word. Imagine all the different ways we can read the Bible with this! It truly staggers the imagination. Thanks to Microsoft, we will be able to bear witness to all the lands of the Earth.
From Logos, Trademark, and OpenOffice.org in a Nutshell:
- Sw Usr
Mier hun am Ministerrot 35 Stëmmen géint d'Softwarepatenter, an d'fehlen eis der jhust nach zwou fier éng Sperrminoritéit vu 37.
An Lëtzebuerg huet justement 2 Stëmmen!
Tel.: 478-4101
... let me state for the record that;
WE'RE FUCKED.
There ARE 100's of good looks for GNOME, you just haven't looked (and thats why you made that ignorant comment!
Go here and get the best themes for GNOME!
You can also visit this website!
You should try Fedora though since bluecurve looks really slick!
With the specs to run Longhorn What kind a laptop. From the previous slashdot story. 'Microsoft is expected to recommend that the 'average' Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.'"
I expect big honking batteries and lots of heat.
Windows seems to be going down the road of "show fewer things but with bigger pictures", which may be great for regular folkum. Advanced users will just scrap the bells and whistles anyway for a basic, functional setup. "Dumbing down" through simplification isn't always a bad thing though. I actually like the new WinXP start menu a lot better than the classic one, albeit with small icons instead of the huge default setting. Silver Luna isn't too bad either, as long as I reduce the size of the titlebars and buttons to classic size. Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?
...A developer stands up in the conference and says:
"w00t! Now Windows is just as gay looking as OSX! We beat Apple! YEAH!"
I love having a notebook with about 3-4 hours of battery life. In fact if I could get 7-8 hours that would be fabulous. Because of the advantages of having a notebook with long battery live my habits change. For example I will for extended period of times sit in a cafe, work, AND talk with people. I will not worry that I will run out of juice. It is a truly amazing ability.
Imagine you had a notebook with the following specifications:
- 12 hours of battery life,
- Wifi, GPRS/3G
- 1440x900 screen
- about the size of a letter sized organizer and max 1" high
- affordable
To a large degree the Apple 15" fits in with some problem area's (affordability, battery life is 3-4 hours, and screen). People's habits and needs would completely change because the vast majority would purchase these notebooks and NOT desktops. Ok gamers, and other niche folks would buy desktops because they want full power. But many gamers buy consoles.
Back to the point though, imagine a notebook with those spec's. The software that is being produced today is not the software that we would actually need or use.
So here is where I ask Microsoft, why are you doing this? I truly think that instead of pushing the envelope they want to sell yet another feature. Yet another "killer" user interface in the hopes that people will upgrade.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
These are some really nasty slides for a talk - basic presentation design says you shouldn't blast your audience with endless text in little fonts. The slide design leaves a lot to be desired - by the time they're done reading the slide they will have missed what the presenter is saying.
"640k should be enough for anybody" (Bill Gates ?)
are they creating video game or operating system?
What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?
:-P
At least the submitter understand there's no use asking for its upsides here.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I noted with quite a bit of interest that near the end of the Longhorn Text presentation, they claim that 1,000,000 sub-pixel antialiased (cleartype) characters can be rendered per second (8 to 11 point type, on a 96dpi LCD).
:(
Does anyone have any similar performance figures for sub-pixel AA font performance on Linux? I have a sinking feeling it might be closer to 10,000/second
...you couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.
BTW, would you mind telling Bill to stand still next time I send hot lead his way? It's damn hard to frag that smeghead when he keeps bunny-jumpin' 'round!
And now I have a 'nade with your name on it, Mr. "leading open source developer"...
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
Now we can make Aqua skins more realistic! w00t!
what's the purpose of this style applied to the timestamp:
left -30px? anyone remember that "msn purposely breaks opera" deal when they did the same thing?pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I think the features they are talking about are nice.. But personally I still think their sub-pixel font anti-aliasing looks bad. http://bluehalo.homeunix.org/text/ Shows the line from the PPT and the same thing typed in OS X.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
I know that foghorn is going to have a high wow-factor, but do we really want to be gaping with awe and amazement at every little tip of the veil of a system that won't be out till at least 2006?
My take is that our time is much better spent improving our prefered (open!) system, exploiting the great features that Hans Reiser has given us (which I personally find much more interesting than all the eye candy that serves to addict, distract and slow down my friends and their computers).
Extended attributes are here today. So is OpenGL. Where are the applications that exploit them? Where are the BeOS-like filesystem queries on Linux? Where are the Baldur's Gate clones? And, most of all, where is the stuff that, once and for all, asserts the superiority of the open source community, the proof that we can invent, rather than wait for the corporations to do it for us?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Now we can make Aqua skins more realistic! w00t!
Hooray! A better brand of paint for the outhouse!
In the immortal words of Colonel Kurtz, "You must make a FRIEND of the horror".
.Net secret sauce coming with Longhorn, will no longer use Remoting "over the wire". Everything is going to be SOAP and web services. Sounds wonderful, right? I think so too. BUT, many consultants are busy writing all your company's apps using remoting between servers! Guess what THAT means?
What horror, you ask? A major Microsoft upgrade. We cal look forward to the following exciting experiences in the coming Longhorn apocalypse ("I love the smell of burning CPU in the morning... It smells like... Job Security!"):
1. Indigo, the new
2. All your computers are going to be landfill fodder, because Longhorn's hardware requirements are going to SMOKE 'em. Ah, well, we didn't need those 20,000 PCs anyway. And, the budget looks so much better cratered. It's like a big empty swimming pool. Makes me think of summer.
3. Performance? The users are asking about performance? Um... HUSH! Look at the pretty screens, children! Ooh, transparency!
4. Filesystem? We don't need no stinkin' filesystem. Let's put everything in a DATABASE!!!
Ok, they might not get this into Longhorn, but it's coming. All your apps that touch the filesystem? Kiss 'em goodbye.
5. More DRM. What's that? the users didn't ask for it? Let's surprise 'em; they'll be so happy!
6. A new, different and strange iteration of IE to worry about. Sigh; better set up resources for the recoding of all your web pages, just in case.
Ah, well. It should be exciting! And, who knows? Maybe the Indians will find it all just too ugly to work with and offshore all the work back here ("Oh, this is just too UGLY, you may take it back, please... No, really. No, I must insist. Oh, you are too kind, sir, but NO, I REALLY must insist... Oh you are making me very ANGRY sir, do not make me go medaeval on your unruly buttocks in the manner of Marcellus!").
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I believe this should, mind you, SHOULD raise the heat under the open source movement.
Do your OS of choice under the following:
Make it so it runs on anything from legacy hardware through current hardware.
Don't engineer it specifically as how YOU would want it done, engineer it as how you think Joe Sixpack would like it to be done. Do you know how MS keeps its market share? By making adaptive shifts to their new setups as small and painless as possible. Stop assuming everyone who wants to try Linux already knows every manual and howto available.
Screw the DMCA, reverse engineer everything (do it the old fashioned way, get 50 coders to examine 1/50th a part of the driver code, then compile accordingly, that's how it was done with IBM). That way everything can be supported.
If you want to be mainstream, start acting like you ARE mainstream. This "Lookit me, I'm a rebel!" illusion is just that. That's how Apple did it, that's how Microsoft did it. And look at them now. The rebel theme is only good as long as you expect to lose money.
I'm a MS user myself, but the DRM crap and all makes me WANT to go Linux, but the fact that not every Linux dev doesn't support EVERYTHING I want to do or use, means I'm stuck with MS until they realize this.
It's like wanting to escape from prison, while everyone else is debating the best kind of file, and what kind of cake to bake it in.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
while somewhat offtopic this has to do with longhorn. i have a friend who has friends on the longhorn development team. I hear they are having to re-write some of it because they invested to much in inter-threading processes. It appears that a Windows XP 2 will come out becaues longhorn is taking so long.
leprkan...
My 2 year old Powerbook is doing most of this as I type. It irks me that these people don't give Apple credit for leading the way.
That said, I think raising the bar for Wintel notebook graphics hardware is a Good Thing. Dx9 Graphics minimum is gonna make my job as a games programmer so much sweeter.
Isn't power consumption going to be more of a hardware issue - I mean, Dx9 chips nowadays have how many transistors?
"My cat's breath smells like cat food." - The Tao of Ralph Wiggum.
Thats basically what terminal services does now...
From the whitepaper:
"RDP uses its own video driver on the server side to render display output by constructing the rendering information into network packets using RDP protocol and sending them over the network to the client. On the client side, it receives rendering data and interprets them into the corresponding Win32® GDI API calls. "
Windows's idea of eye candy was that menus (and submenus) would all slowly fade in. The process of navigating deep into hierarchical menus was maddeningly slow--at least until everyone turned it off.
In osx, menus appear immediately, and then fade out after you select something. This is not only pretty, but functional: it gives you visual confirmation that you've selected a menu item, which can be helpful if whatever you've asked for doesn't produce obvious or instant results.
Microsoft's cargo cult design process often leads them to such mistakes. They manage to take the wrong lessons from other people's work, and conclude that what people want is snazzy looking things which tax hardware. The real lesson is that people want visual continuity and feedback in order to speed up their use. But Microsoft never seems to get as far as understanding the point of anyone else's design, just the appearance.
Actually, I meant it to look that way. It is a little CSS to make the date overlap the title. I think it looks good. I guess it is a style thing. Joe Beda
I hope MS really commits to this 100%, because it will be a great mistake. If they haven't noticed, people are no longer buy new machines at the same rate. Now that many families have multiple computers, the need for new systems is no longer there. Even if MS goes with some super secret optimized XML parser, it is still going to eat a ton of CPU and ram. Just look at the most recent research in binary XML. IBM, Oracle and lots of academic researchers have shown binary encoding doesn't provide much benefit for XML. Webservices is nice, but it's hardly the magic sauce of service oriented applications.
The text rendering technology impressed me. The new APIs did not.
When will Microsoft learn...developers don't want great big heaps of their grand designs. There's just too much of an investment to learn their way of doing things, there are too many cages around the good bits, and everything breaks when you go off the beaten path.
Example: few 'real' apps use MFC - and certainly none of Microsoft's. They expose 'Fisher Price' versions of their tools which they hand code in good old SDK.
I mean, does anyone *really* use DCOM? I guess COM has held on bascially because there isn't that much that is 'Microsoft' about it and it basically works. But what happened to ATL? DDE? ActiveX? In fact, the only useful Microsoft software tends to be the stuff they acquire (Visio, SQL Server)
Now I have not used one iota of Avalon, but I remain unconvinced it will be anything other than their typical developer traps with a bit of 'hello world' cute app as bait.
Meanwhile, Linux hacks change the world with Perl scripts. Go figure.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Star : Bill Gates
Hooker: Darl McBridge
Billy has tuny winy but satifies McBridge Come and see Billy has lot of diseases and never uses condom.
So we are talking off on vapour ware thats is coming out in 2008.. man M$ fud ..just like windoze 95.
Never trust anybody whose page doesn't format properly in Mozilla. Heh heh.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
.. advanced functionality.
So what does OSS Gkk/Gnome and Qt/KDE have to offer instead?
I think it warrants a +1 Funny.
Seriously, though, I mentioned BG because I think it's a great game and have been wondering about open source 3D RPGs. It's a bit relevant to the discussion, because Longhorn is going to have some advanced 3D features, whereas in the open-source world 3D hasn't really taken off.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Let me give you a hint:
it involve a little known raunchy flick where one of the main characters, a plumber, was nicknamed by that very name
The real meat of the whole thing starts here.
A really, really long chain of postings between the guy who wrote the article and a guy who seems to know OSX rendering pretty well.
My take on this is that OSX has tacked a lot of issues with making vector display practical, and trying to maintain a good balance between "everything is a vector and you all need new computers to run the OS" and "everything is a bitmap and you can run this on a 286". Personally I think a lot of graphic designers will be aghast at the limitations an all-vector approach will impose for things like icons - you can see guys spending days tweaking pixels. You may think you've done them a favor by taking that options away, but these are the guys that make your interfaces look good! Treat them nice, I say.
I would also say each is holding his own pretty well in this argument, it did not get too far into name calling and the like (gets more technical as you progress - my link takes you pretty much to the point wher ethey drop the childish bits). I do think the Avalon guy is a little more ignorant of what is going on in OS X rendering-wise than the OS X is of Avalon - the OS X guy for a while was unwilling to believe that anyone would actually take an approach with only vectors, but understood fully that aspect later on.
The Avalon guy has a good point that it's cheaper to send a lot of vectors to the GPU than to calculate very high DPI images for display... but I think the OS X guy has a good point that you can't have the GPU do everything.
Here's a simply summary from my read (not comprehensive):
Article guy: Maintains the vector retained model is the only scalable UI solution. UI's should only be collections of vectors (including all icons and the like) with everything, even text, being rendered by a GPU on your video card.
Also maintains that parts of OSX are not really PDF/DPS based, and therefore will not scale.
Has not yet answered if he thinks it's a good idea for the GPU to be doing typography (like kerning).
Longhorn will require new GPU's for sure, from everyone.
Avalon target is display showing about 10,000 primitives.
Avalon targeting high (300dpi+) displays, only path to good performance is feeding vectors to a video card.
OSX Guy: OSX does use PDF/DPS model correctly, elements will scale - renderer can be set to any DPI. To use the GPU for all drawing operations is madness - OS X has quick operations for things like video, and slower but much more exact operations for things like 2D operations. To use GPU for all operations is going to be a disaster as they cannot handle quality 2D operations (like exact text rendering) all that well.
Showed how saving a window as PDF yields scalable elements (not just a raw bitmap).
Maintains that OS X can support high DPI displays, you just change the rendering target.
Can rotate window contents in real time.
Expose is not supposed to be an exact vector resizing as such an operation should be very fast, not exact.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If Apple continues to patent its UI elements Microsoft is going to be in a lot of trouble and will be doing a lot of redesign or groveling at Apple.
Much of what I have seen in the way of screen shots and videos, makes Avalon and Aero look as they are "borrowing" an awful lot of MacOS X's look and feel as well as many UI elements. Even the window widgets are gaining Mac like colors!
This makes Longhorn look very nice but if Apple continues to patent their "look and feel", and they should, it would provided them with a nice bit of leverage with MS. Microsoft might even have to stop "borrowing" features and stop calling them "New and Ground breaking Microsoft developments".
This could become very interesting!
64 bits should be enough for everybody.
If Apple continues to patent its UI elements Microsoft is going to be in a lot of trouble and will be doing a lot of redesign or groveling at Apple.
Right, as if MS doesn't hold any patents that they could hold over Apple...
Microsoft is very clever. They are upgrading their technology to the point that applications written in native APIs would be much better (at least visually) than applications written with a cross-platform library. Some presentation says that "GDI apps will be software-rendered off to a texture, then use the 3d hardware to map this texture to the display. It will be slower but acceptable due to related performance of CPUs".
Avalon would give a significant advantage to Microsoft, and at the same time spell an end to really successful cross-platform libraries like Qt and WxWindows. Well, not really an end, but it will seem that Qt or WxWindows or GTK developed-apps will be a product of the stone ages when comparing them with Avalon apps. The Microsoft APIs will be totally managed, which means "goodbye C++": either use the managed APIs, develop on Windows only, be fast and smooth, or develop with a cross-platform library, but be slow, and be ugly.
I think that if the Unix world does not move fast and embrace the new technologies quickly, make a new X-Windows system or something similar, Linux has even less chances of getting a respectable share of the desktop market.
The Microsoft model also shows that it has an advantage that the open source model does not have: the ability to follow technology quickly. This is partially because of the ties of Microsoft with hardware vendors, but also partially with technology being driven by economics rather than good willing of people.
Another thought: what will happen to Java ? Swing is already slow and ugly. Imagine putting an Avalon app side to side with a Swing app! the Java app will be like coming from the stone ages.
Does the world really need Avalon ? I think not...we already have good text support, good interfaces etc. But it will be one of those things that nobody thought it would make a difference, but when it comes out, everybody will like it, and everybody will "need" it.
And a final thought: Avalon will make remote desktop very easy to do, since computers on the network will exchange 3d data and not bitmaps. This particular capability may be the final nail in the X-Windows system coffin.
All kidding aside, what little I've gleaned so far while skimming these slides sounds very impressive. The attention given to text is very respectable. The notion of pushing GPU hardware as far as it will go is as it should be. Longhorn looks extremely ambitious.
What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?
We will think it is horrible and and the downsides outweigh the advantages and is just an other tactic my Microsoft to gain more dominance.
Until we implement it in Linux then it is OK and we couldn't live without it.
Now what was the technology now?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Name some, and the proof that M$ did it BEFORE Apple...
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows
Well, I don't know if they patented it yet but giving everyone except the user more privileges on their own computer is one.
Then there are Windows excellent spyware API's. Don't forget their built in disk compression....oh wait, that was not theirs.
The problem is I use XP pro...so most of the jokes I could make a cruelly funny.
What is funny is that MBU at MS really made use of the transparent windows in latest version of Office for OS X. I doubt Apple will press the matter with the patents with MS, it would make better sense to keep them in reserve in case Ballmer gets weird with the MBU or if Apple wants another MS title on the Mac platform. I do get a chuckle every time an MS press release touts these features as "new" and/or "breakthroughs" when the Mac has been using them for at least a year. Their auto discovery networking "breakthrough" press release at WinHEC really got me going.
I Have never noticed any "spyware" apps run on my system, and I'd now, as I'm a network engineer that monitors for things like that...
I also am forced into using XP pro (at work for the Feds). I'm amazed at how much like OSX even XP is. Even one of the user icons is exactly the same (the rubber duck). At home i have a Dual 2gig G5 with a 23"HD LCD, at work I have a 3.2 gig P4. In at least my observations the G5 os "seems" a lot faster and Much Much smoother. I'm dying to see what more the evil empire duplicates from Apple in Longhorn.From what I have read over time, the MBU of M$ is the most UN-windows group there is. Though if my understanding of Patent law, wich I fully admit is very very small, Apple would have to fight all infringments of it's patents with all companies that choose to utilize them. I would think that Apple would be able to negoiatiate a resonable settlement exclusively for the MBU of M$, without opening it entirely for the blanket infringment that Longhorn will I'm sure partake in...
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows
So is Gates Kilgore (the crazy but mainstream guy) while Jobs is Kurtz (the crazy and outside the mainstream guy)?
wow, what is it like to be paid by MS to post to slashdot?
but there just isn't the support for applications and hardware
Any apps besides games? If so you aren't looking hard enough for the linux ones!
As for hardware support, I call Bullshit!
I was referring to Microsoft giving its Applications such as outlook and explorer the ability to install programs without the user doing much or nothing at all.
As far as spyware goes everytime I run Ad-aware on the PC it will usually find something that should not be there. Usually cookies that track all visited websites. Often it finds more. Admitted I pick these up on questionable websites that one would not visit at work. Whenever possible I use MacOS X to visit those sites and render their little tricks useless.
I have been using both Macs and PCs since the day the came out and old CPM machines and Apple IIs back to 1978. GUI-wise there are some similarities between X and XP but under the hood is a different story. I much prefer the OS X and the underlying Unix layer....good stuff!
Yes, the MBU is the most unwindows part of Microsoft but MS has been diminishing its role. It no longer makes Explorer for the Mac and therein lies the problem. Some of Microsofts content creation tools create sites that do not work with any other browser besides Explorer....worse yet, some sites only work with Explorer and Windows!
Apple has the right to enforce its patents with whomever it chooses too. It may charge MS for the right and give a free license to another if they choose.
Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?
Avalon is vector-based and resolution-independent. So you'll be able to just change the size yourself.
Another huge whiny issue solved.
Funny, one could ask the same thing whenever KDE adds new pointless features. That icon label shading is the most amateurish horrible visual effect I've seen in a desktop operating system. They couldn't even give it a decent fadeout effect?
Come on, you're being silly here. Longhorn has tiers of operationg going all the way back to a "Windows Classic" theme similar to Windows 2000. Microsoft is making sure they have a reliable presentation layer for a new generation of computers that will provide visual quality and not just bland text labels on top of gray like we've been getting since Windows 95. I like technology, so I like to hear about the stuff Microsoft's researchers are coming up with.
I forgot, this is a bash-Microsoft article. Brains must be turned off as a requisite for posting...
Anything's better than FreeType's anti-aliasing. I'm constantly told by fanboys how "FreeType looks better than Microsoft!" and they give me a screenshot with absolutely ugly and horrible rendering, completely with varying levels of thickness on characters with curves like numbers and lowercase letters, even with the byte interpreter on. Apparently I'm supposed to ignore these flaws and declare it better than Windows.
OS X stands as the bastion of high-quality text rendering (and why wouldn't it, considering it uses PDF as a display layer). XP is a very close second.
Speaking of Mozilla and Firefox, ever noticed how text always spills over into those table cells on the left side of Slashdot? Is it Mozilla or is it Slashcode?
Hasn't happened since I switched to Opera when 7.5 came out.
1. Indigo, the new .Net secret sauce coming with Longhorn, will no longer use Remoting "over the wire". Everything is going to be SOAP and web services. Sounds wonderful, right? I think so too. BUT, many consultants are busy writing all your company's apps using remoting between servers! Guess what THAT means?
Oh my gosh, you are so right! A vague description of unnamed "consultants" who are busy writing my company's apps using remoting between servers! You have convinced me with your facts, sir.
2. All your computers are going to be landfill fodder, because Longhorn's hardware requirements are going to SMOKE 'em. Ah, well, we didn't need those 20,000 PCs anyway. And, the budget looks so much better cratered. It's like a big empty swimming pool. Makes me think of summer.
After all, you'll still be using the same PCs you use now in 2006, right?
3. Performance? The users are asking about performance? Um... HUSH! Look at the pretty screens, children! Ooh, transparency!
Complete troll. You don't know what performance will be like on a 2006-level computer with a standard DirectX 9 video card. How could this possibly be insightful? KDE has transparency too, and it's slower than syrup in winter.
4. Filesystem? We don't need no stinkin' filesystem. Let's put everything in a DATABASE!!!
Ok, they might not get this into Longhorn, but it's coming. All your apps that touch the filesystem? Kiss 'em goodbye.
Except that NTFS is still there, so apps that access NTFS will, gasp, still be able to access NTFS since it's still there. WinFS is just a database service running on top of NTFS. But, hey, what's a little Slashbot misinformation to spread false memes that magically become "truth", eh? Just like how WinFS was "cancelled" and Longhorn is "vaporware."
5. More DRM. What's that? the users didn't ask for it? Let's surprise 'em; they'll be so happy!
Name a single bit of DRM in Windows XP. Activation? Regular users don't care. Windows Media Player? The first thing that pops up is a privacy page allowing you to disable automatic CD detection (which, you know, all Linux media players seem to do automatically without asking you).
If you don't want to use signed content, use something else. How is this difficult? You think there won't be free alternatives for Windows if you're so paranoid about your warez phoning home?
6. A new, different and strange iteration of IE to worry about. Sigh; better set up resources for the recoding of all your web pages, just in case.
Please cite a single example of what will be "new, different and strange" about the new IE, seeing as how you've never used it since it's not out yet and couldn't possibly know.
If something works in IE now, it will work in IE7. Microsoft isn't going to break 90% of the Internet for Longhorn. Things seem to be running just fine despite Slashbots' innate hatred of IE.
Ah, well. It should be exciting! And, who knows? Maybe the Indians will find it all just too ugly to work with and offshore all the work back here ("Oh, this is just too UGLY, you may take it back, please... No, really. No, I must insist. Oh, you are too kind, sir, but NO, I REALLY must insist... Oh you are making me very ANGRY sir, do not make me go medaeval on your unruly buttocks in the manner of Marcellus!").
Any moderator modding this up needs to have their heads checked. I fully expect to see this troll post linked on Anti-Slash within the next 24 hours.
This is sad. Unfortunately, I know how you feel. This is a clear abuse of the system. You should definitely contact everyone responsible.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Text is slow on the Mac, but it's actually the layout, not the drawing, so hardware acceleration for drawing wouldn't help (much), but caching the layout will, and most (if not all) programs already do that.
But generally everything (except OpenGL) on Mac is cpu rendered and then uploaded as a texture to the graphics card, it is mainly this latter part (uploading) which slows it down (since the graphics bus is a bottleneck).
When resizing, the entire bitmap is invalidated and needs re-uploading, which you can verify by resizing an empty window, which is approximately the same speed as one containing text.
I'm doing my daily meta modding, and I'm metamodding the "Troll" moderation for this post as UNFAIR. I encourage other intelligent M2ers to do the same.