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Windows XP To Get Longhorn Technologies
SilentChris writes "According to CNet, Microsoft is revising their plan for Longhorn. In addition to scaling back WinFS, they will also have separate releases of Avalon (the new graphical system) and Indigo (a new network architecture) for Windows XP and 2003. If most of the updates will be available for current versions of Windows, what is the incentive to upgrade?"
Silly Chris, It'll introduce more bugs and keep you more tightly bound than ever to Microsoft Update, because you'll have so much time and energy vested in keeping your system going you'll be terrified of switching -- I think it's something like the Stockholm Syndrome. Maybe it should have it's own name: Redmond Syndrome.
Further, you'll probably find everything doesn't work as well with your current video card and networking so you'll have to buy *NEW* stuff from vendors -- stuff endorsed by Microsoft as being up to snuff with their shell-game specifications.
As for Longhorn, you'll still buy it like all the other cattle (Ha! Longhorn! Cattle! Now I see the connection!) when it comes out, by the way, I expect the successor to Longhorn to be Bighorn (Guess the species! ;-)
Now please excuse me while I bash my head against the wall for having made sport of my Sith Master, Bill in a prior post.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"[W]hat is the incentive to upgrade?"
I want to know that too. I'm running Win98SE without any trouble. Why should I upgrade to Longhorn?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I have changed my plans. Pray I do not alter them any further.
-MSFT
I think that they will MOST certainly have other products ot unveil at the same time. They wouldn't just release ALL their new code for an OS, thats just not like thair business model.
1st...?
"If it moves, shoot it till it stops moving" -Tex, Brute Force
Is that, like XP, MS will pay off application developers to cause their apps to break in previous versions. A great example of this is with Adobe, who's latest video offerings only work on XP, forcing me to upgrade.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Wwell it seems longhon keeps falling behind schedule, and Microsoft keeps cutting back features to keep the same release date. Maybe Longhorn will be another Windows Me, just something to hold everyone over until they get another release out.
If most of the updates will be available for current versions of Windows, what is the incentive to upgrade?"
That it will WORK!
Why does there need to be an incentive to upgrade? People allways complain that Microsoft "forces" them to upgrade (not that they ever have in my opinion), shouldn't we all be happy that thats not going to be the case (assumming that these two things are the only diference between XP and Longhorn, not that they are)?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I didn't know about Avalon, but Microsoft has said for quite a while they were going to be releasing Indigo for platforms other than Longhorn. Indigo is a technology that will be replacing .NET remoting and it allows for secure, reliable and transactional communication between .NET applications. It only made sense to have a version available for other versions of Windows to make sure that applications could communicate.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
What the the reason to upgrade to ME from 98? What was the reason to upgrade to XP from 2000? People like upgrades. Upgrades, no matter how small, bring features. Upgrades have the appearance of better quality and more "on-the-edge."
Plus, even if two technologies get ported, Longhorn is supposed to be a "unified" desktop with Internet, mail, etc. This is one major reason to upgrade for the tech-newbies and possibly the tech-geeks.
You upgrade because DirectX or XNA, or whatever the hell they call the next graphics subsystem used by games will only be available on Longhorn. Why else would you upgrade?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Errr... .
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
A few months after Longhorn comes out, all these XP features will break, legally if not logically, and you'll have to buy Longhorn anyway. How's that for an incentive?
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Blood spurt gush!
Seriously, Apple is adding features that were supposed to be in Longhorn into Tiger and it will be available early in 2005. Meanwhile MS is removing those same features just so they can hit a 2006 launch date. Huh?
The funniest bit was all my Windows collegues telling me about how fantastic Longhorn was going to be and how it would allow MS users to overtake the Mac.....
Guess not!
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
C'mon, this is the man credited with saying (on more than one accasion I might add):
"Bwahahahahahaha. Fools! I'll destroy them all!
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
What was the incentive to upgrade from Windows 2000 to XP*. Let's see, we had:
- Rearranged control panel
- A new theme
- Ummm...the search puppy?
The die-hard fans will upgrade because it's the latest and greatest, everyone else will get it with their next computer, and the corporate world will wait 3 years and then take the plunge.
This is still a blow to Microsoft, but not a major one. Maybe another baby step away from the OS monoculture.
*I know there was more incentive to upgrade from Windows ME, but I'm sure many a 2000 user switched over as well.
Microsoft is adding these features to Windows XP and Windows 2003 server in order to give developers a reason to use these technologies. So they can use Avalon and Indigo in their applications and still have people on older OS's be able to use their applications. Much like how .NET was backported to Windows 98. Developers wouldn't develop applications in .NET if they knew that only a small percentage of Windows users would be able to use it.
It's a win-win IMHO, Windows developers get to use new features and develop application using more intuitive and powerful tools and Microsoft gets a larger application base for Longhorn.
-- D3X
If Avalon and Indigo is the new ways of displaying and programming applications. As a company why would I start porting my apps to it if it won't be used until 2006! If I have a pratical application now, then when 2006 comes out a lot of "native" apps .
I suppose they do this so that developers can deploy their new apps (based on Avalon and Indigo) on the XP platform as well. It makes sense - and will give a more rapid transistion. (Instead of waiting for Longhorn to get the marketshare needed to have custom Avalon/Indigo-apps written for it).
;)
But what do I know?
(The color theme for it.slashdot.org needs a revision btw)
If most of the updates will be available for current versions of Windows, what is the incentive to upgrade?
Remember the product activation in XP? All MS has to do is end-of-life XP and you can't re-install it because MS won't authorize it. You'll be fine with your current system until you need to do a re-install, then you'll buy the next version even though it offers you nothing new and you know you'll have the same problem in another 3-4 years.
When Windows 98 came out, PC magazine or some other Ziff Davis publication ran a pretty good guide Assemble Win98 for free where they basically gave pointers to different place on Microsoft Web site, where one could download the enhancement incorporated into 98. Naturally the core files were not there, but new version of IE, ActiveDesktop and other technologies were all available through a separate download. Of course, no such thing as automatic WindowsUpdate back then, so few customers knew or cared to snith around microsoft.com/downloads.
The result? Win98 became the best-selling OS ever, as most of the people pretty much thought paying $80-90 for an OS that was going to last them 3 years or so would be no big deal.
So new MediumHorn with proper marketing and few pizzazz added will be just as welcome as Win98.
...because MS and Adobe would work together just to screw you over.
Chances are the Adobe app is making use of features _new_ to XP. So, what you are essentially bitching about is that these new features were not back ported to whatever previous version of MS OS you used.
And of course, if MS did back port these new features, you'd be bitching how MS is always adding new fangled features to released version of OS that do nothing but add bugs, insecurity, and instability.
Just admit there is nothing MS could ever do to appease you, and quit fucking using their software. That's why god gave you Linux.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
This is a smart move. First they schedule the release way ahead in the future, so the competition thinks they have plenty of time. Then, they release the new futures early, so that they are first to market. By the time Longwait is released, there will be plenty of application support already. In the meantime, the hype their technologies sky high so people will forget about looking for alternatives, let alone implement them. Wow, respect.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
MONEY
I like it!
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
who really upgrades anyways, pre-installs is their bread and butter with regards to keeping their OS monopoly rolling. What is interesting is that they expect existing computers, running their current OS's, will be able to run the updates from their next OS. THIS IS NEW for the most part. Usually, they shoved so much kludge into the next OS that only current hardware would/could run the OS.
So, if they can't force hardware upgrades then they will be slowing down sales of their future OS. This isn't typical for Microsoft and I don't expect this to happen. Or atleast they most likely won't be upgrading XP or 2003 to the 2007 version. Just small bits and pieces.
gawd, remember when they wouldn't upgrade USB support into Win95? OEMs were probably hammered into only pre-loading Win98 with that incredible USB support.
Trust me, Microsoft will not do anything at the expense of OS uptake( not upgrade ). XP won't get much useful stuff. that'll only be in 2007.
IMHO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
... but the joy of hacking the latest Microsoft license registration procedure.
My best sig is this one.
Longhorn will automatically render the Slashdot IT page in a better colour. It might even get people to switch from Linux to Windows.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
While I realize that the majority of the /. crowd is from the UNIX world, I also realize that it would be more professional to replace the broken window graphic with something more appropriate.
The technologies coming out of Microsoft might not be as innovative as they claim it to be, but it's certainly groundbreaking for a company with such magnitude as Microsoft to consent to the superiority of researched technologies.
Longhorn is going to include some exciting new technologies such as Avalon, WinFS, Indigo, and most importantly their new Monad (you really must research this, as it could do for Longhorn what BASIC did for Microsoft's first operating systems). While these are just codenames for abstract ideas (and possibly just buzzwords) it will certainly be exciting to see some of these things deployed.
This is the longest Microsoft has ever waited to release an OS. Windows 95 to Windows 98 took only 3 years, as the names describe. Windows Longhorn looks as if it will take up to 7 years. What can be done in seven years' time with hundreds of emplyees? Amazing stuff.
Linux has some serious issues. I'm not going to argue how many compared to Windows, because that argument would be futile. Instead I will offer my "credibility" as an unbiased commentator:
I'm 17 and have been using Linux since 2001 after getting my first computer sometime in '98. It didn't take long for me to fall in love with it. Since then, I've been using Debian GNU/Linux for the past few years, and enjoy it's breadth of developer friendly software. I've used FreeBSD, and plan to play around with BSD's like OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, and even get a Mac G5. I also plan to make my own Linux from Scratch, an embedded uClinux distro with BusyBox, and other fun things like that; eventually working my way up to hacking on the Linux kernel. I would also enjoy testing out Hurd, as well.
However, if what's coming out of Microsoft is as developer friendly as advertised to be (what really IS these days anyways, but that's not for me to predict) then Linux might have a problem. If people are really going to be able to hack up some XML applicaton like what's hyped, there might be some serious problems, no matter how many Mono's or GNU DotNETs there are.
Until the community stops getting cocky and starts getting worried, nothing will ever go anywhere. Being afraid is a good thing(tm), because it gets people working harder.
So, again, I emplore somebody to please change the graphic to more accurately represent what we have to fear this new century.
-Devin Torres
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
Will Microsoft use activation to force me to upgrade? In other words, will Microsoft ever stop giving out activation codes for any of the products that require activation?
No, Microsoft will not use activation as a tool to force people to upgrade. Activation is merely an anti-piracy tool, nothing else.
Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP throughout its life and will likely provide an update that turns activation off at the end of the product's lifecycle so users would no longer be required to activate the product.
They're not scaling back WinFS. There's no where in the article it even states this. All it says is that it will be available in beta form upon the client release.
For some reason, Slashdot has trouble reporting anything accurately on WinfS. Anyone remember the previous case where Microsoft decided not to include some of the more esoteric features (like some networking functions). Slashdot, of course, picked it up and reported it as "WinFS cancelled," and other tech news sites picked it up. For months, people on Slashdot continued to refer to WinFS as cancelled, when they were blissfully ignorant to the fact it wasn't. Sigh. All it takes is a little basic research first.
I'm starting to think that Longhorn might suffer the same fate as Apple's mid-90s Copland project. They create enormous hype for it, give developers plenty of betas and do lots of previews, but it never ends up materializing. And then, the best features from it get rolled into their existing operating system (Copland -> Mac OS 8, Longhorn -> Windows XP) and it gets canned. Then, years later, they realize that they really should have completed the objectives of the project because their existing system is getting old and stale.
Of course there probably won't be so many parallels, but I do suspect that Longhorn will end up vaporizing and the most-demanded features and the interface will be integrated into the existing platform.
Signature.
Sun is doing this right now with Solaris 9.... 10.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
You upgrade because Longhorn will replace cruddy Win32 with sleek .NET, will be entirely DirectX-accelerated, and will sport a whole new interface codenamed Aero Glass. Video drivers will be pushed into userspace (finally), and various other major core architecture changes will take place.
Note that the features in this article being made available for Windows XP are APIs. Those can be easily backported. Longhorn itself, however, is a major architectural change.
Windows 2000 was the NT4 successor geared toward corporate users.
I don't know if you noticed, but XP was geared toward consumers. It got people off of 9x kernels, and for that I am eternally grateful! Not to mention System Restore, increased application compatibility, and various other minor features.
What are you attempting to say? That XP SP1 and SP2 cost money? That W2K sp1-4 cost money? That NT4 SP1-6 cost money? I don't get what you're saying.
;)
And SP1 broke XP machines? I've never heard of that, and I've upgraded around 20 AND read slashdot regularly
Jeez, if I had mod points I would mod you "unintelligible"
Okay, so I know that is the kind of thing that the FLOSS zealots say all the time. But it is so obviously true in this case.
MS is betting the company on Longhorn. No really. Their two major revenue streams, and the foundation of the modern MS is Windows and Office. Windows is a twisty maze of backwards compatibility all alike to keep both users and developers favorable to the platform. Office is packed full of enterprise features that Joe User never needs because Joe CEO does.
MS down to it's ancient roots with custom programming languages and tools, is firmly in the realm of the rich client. Linux and BSD and OS X (and SkyOS and BeOS, and Syllable and . . . ) are becoming more prevalent because suddenly fully half of a users apps are portable! No not Office or Photoshop, but Yahoo and Google. Thin clients!
The gigahertz war between AMD and Intel last left MS with a glut of processing power and no software capable of using it. Once MS caught up with the processor, they drove home the power of the rich client, and reestablished their platform as the primary environment for building them.
It's happened again. Processor power is far beyond what 90% of the increasingly computer literate public needs, just like when x86 procs hit 1Ghz. But this time there is a growing base of truly alternative development and user platforms (not just OS/2 and MacOS 8, but the various POSIX and embedded platforms) while on the other side, the thin client has a solid hold in several key applications (email, dictionaries, encyclopedias, hell, even video games).
MS wants to emulate the success of Windows 95. They want to bring an enterprise technology to the masses (NT, XP was really just a dry run for that), show users that there is a reason for all this new hardware, and reestablish themselves as THE application development environment for rich clients. It's not just getting users to upgrade (though that would make them super happy) its getting developers to use the technology.
And they've realized that they can't bet on a huge upgrade kick to make Avalon and Indigo dominant, XP taught and continues to teach them that. So bringing these heavy investment technologies to a wider audience is the only way that MS can continue to be the largest software company in the world, and see any kind of rapid return on Longorn. If they loose this battle, they become the desktop version of Sun Microsystems. A giant, who still does good work, and whose technologies still have some milage, but ultimately in it's final days
What do you need 64-bit support for?
What do you need XAML for?
What do you need Avalon for?
Look, I've gone over to a Mac. Mac OS X has some of the nifty features that Microsoft's talking about. Quartz Extreme is really cool and I'm sure Avalon will be just peachy. But these things are not why I use my Mac... in fact my Mac just barely runs QE using a third-party hack, and I've got it turned off right now. It's a G4-upgraded G3 with no AGP and second-generation PCI. It doesn't run Panther (I tried) and it won't run Tiger. But I still consider it an upgrade over my 1.7 GHz P4 even though it's 1/4 the clock speed and has 1/4 the bus bandwidth and 3/4 the RAM and nowhere near enough expansion slots.
So.. it's not the new features. It's the fact that it's a hell of a lot closer to the "it just works" ideal. It really does... just work. I don't have to deal with all the hassles of Windows, I can just use it. Yeh, Apple is heading into the same feature mess, and maybe it's a good thing that I can't upgrade to Tiger. But if I could have upgraded to something as (relatively) bug free on that P4, even if it came out of Redmond, I'd have done it. Even if it had fewer "features" than XP.
THAT would be an incentive to upgrade. New APIs that I only need because other people have upgraded so I have to upgrade to be compatible? I'd probably do it, eventually, but I wouldn't like it.
The name of Longhorn is pretty easy to track if you look at the previous version of Windows (Whistler) and the blue-sky version of Windows (Blackcomb), and know a bit about the Pacific Northwest (specifically, the Whistler ski resort up in Canada). At the Whistler resort, there are two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb. Between the lifts for the two mountains, there is a tavern called Longhorn. The initial plan for Windows was supposed to have Longhorn be a small release between XP (Whistler) and Blackcomb, with Blackcomb coming around 2006 or 2007. Thus, Longhorn, because it's a stop on your way from Whistler to Blackcomb. Somewhere along the line, Longhorn became a much more prominant release, so the codename is no longer as appropriate, but that's the root of the name.
Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows has an entry in the XP FAQ (near the top, scroll down about 1/5th of the page) and in the Longhorn FAQ (near the bottom) that mention this in lesser detail, though he gets the location of Longhorn wrong. The Garibaldi Lift Co. is the tavern at the base of Whistler. Quite a nice little tavern, too, if you've got friends who are into skiing or mountain biking and you're not.
Apple's already got it's next generation GUI and graphical layer, ala Avalon... and it's had it in various incarnations for the past three years.
:)
So even if Avalon comes out, say, in 2005, that means the competition, Apple, has implemented it for 4 years already. I do know Avalon and Quartz aren't the same in letter, but they are the same in spirit, being 3d accelerated hardware based composition and rendering engines.
As for other technologies... we'll see how fast Apple's Tiger comes out, and the next releases, regarding WinFS and other technologies
Linux just sits there happily re-implementing the best of all worlds.
GPL Deconstructed
Think about it: if Longhorn is a major break from Win2k3/WinXP, and products written for Longhorn (using Avalon, XAML, Indigo features, taking advantage of WinFS, etc.) won't run on these older technologies, what software company in its right mind would write code using said technologies? NONE.
However, if software companies could write code that utilizes these new features, and these new features would also work on older, still in-use OSes, then said technologies become an option for a software company.
This move makes sense: without it, Longhorn would have a next to impossible time gaining market traction, IMO.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Silly rabbit, upgrades are for other OS's. You see, the term "upgrade" doesn't really fit into the subscription based model that MS has been alluding to. You'll "subscribe" to the windows platform after purchasing your new PC in 2006 and you'll continue to pay and you'll continue to receive things like winFS, avalon, indigo and whatever else they think up. the fact that MS is stating that they will be available as updates indicates such a strategy. the problem however... is microsoft's "it's done when it's done" philosophy. this philosophy doesn't work well for people who pay money on a recurring basis to get new and exciting features. They, and most software companies seem to have a history of delayed software releases.
It's quite obvious why MS would do this. It's basically the same reason why they let piracy run rampantly and unhindered for so many years, and then suddenly started making stronger efforts to get people authorized via the BSA.
Quite simply, they want people on their new technology, and want to force people - as a society - to upgrade.
How will they do this? The same way they've done it in the past. Want to run Office 2000? Great, you'll "have to" upgrade to Windows 2000 as well, because it's unstable under Windows 98. Want to be able to read that document you just got from a friend? You need to upgrade to Office 2003.
Now, how do those situations translate to the current situation? In much the same way they're taking over the video game market with the Xbox, MSN Messenger, and DirectX: make it beneficial to the early adopters, get them hooked, and then draw people in via social networking.
DirectX started out as a free 'add on' - Direct3D. It wasn't used by much, because it sucked. Then people started writing games using it, and it matured to what we have today. People wanted those games, so they got them, regardless of what they were based on. I suspect this will happen with the new "longhorn" technologies: people will install the frameworks "for the hell of it", install applications using those frameworks, and friends will see the new stuff and desire it. Then they'll follow suit, so on and so forth...
In the case of the Xbox, they sold/sell a decent contender at much below production costs to try and get significant market share. They also bought out as many game providers as possible. This relates to the longhorn tech because MS is basically giving away the components - for now. In the future (aka, the Xbox2, or lonhorn itself), there will be a premium for the better products (better graphics/continued support or better stability, etc.) because they've established a market demand for those products by giving them away for free.
In essence, it seems to me like MS is trying to turn around a potentially harmful situation (mass migration due to a huge, sudden platform change) into a positive one for them. Good for them. This has a lot of potential to really harm Linux in many ways.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
What is easy to do is turn on automatic update so Microsoft can install and run anything they want on my machines anytime they want. No, thanks.
/., why don't you check your facts first? Aparently you missed options 2-4.
You're kidding right? The very first time automatic update tries to turn on, it asks you if you want to:
1. Have it download and install updates automatically (great for grandma)
2. Just download, but ask me before installing
3. Notify me, but don't download or install anything.
4. Totally turn off automatic updates
Before you join the, "windows sucks no matter what" group on
"if most of the updates will be available for current versions of Windows, what is the incentive to upgrade?"
Hah, Why do you think you'll have the option of *not* upgrading once you buy a new computer or some new hardware comes out that winxp doesn't support?
Don't you worry little droogie. You'll upgrade.
There's no mention of this in the article, but I'm beginning to wonder if MS is the "secret" company that licensed the Doom 3 engine for use with the new versions of Solitaire and Minesweeper.
The WinXP version was kick ass and had better AI than the POS 9x equivalents.
I dunno, I just hope they do something besides put in a great new engine.. maybe do something about the deck-hackers on the internet. They really like to ruin everyone's fun and it pisses me off.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I'm sick of this tripe. I don't mean to jump on you alone, but I've seen way too much of this FUD parroted around Slashdot, and you're the winner of my rant. :-)
If Microsoft doesn't innovate, then why is it that the list of improvements in the Linux 2.6 kernel reads like a feature list of NT from the early 90's?
That's just comparing the kernel, and I won't even go into the features that NT has that Linux still hasn't implemented.
You probably didn't know that NT already had those features, because most people don't seem to know much about Windows beyond the GUI. They assume that what they see on the surface is all that goes on. (And don't make the mistake that the NT kernel is the only innovative part about Windows.)
My point is that you shouldn't yell about the lack of innovation in a product just because the feature you're looking for isn't there.
Examples bug comment
It was checked into the trunk codebase after Firefox had branched, so it won't show up in Firefox until the 1.1 builds.
"It really does... just work."
I recently bought a Mac and I agree that most things "just work"... provided you stick with Apple-recommended hardware. iPod "just works". My Sony camera, despite having a basic firewire port that's properly handled in both Windows and Linux, doesn't. When you don't mind a monoculture of hardware, Macs are great.
That's one of the nice things about Windows, and one of its biggest drawbacks: you can pop just about any hardware in and it'll recognize it, configure it. I've been continually surprised digging up old ethernet cards, popping them into 2003 servers, and having them work as soon as the system starts up. Only problem is sometimes there's too much variance, and the system gets flaky trying to match 1980s hardware with 200x drivers.
So you don't look like a complete bozo when all your friends show off their Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and Linux new X.org systems. Both are looking really cool already, are getting lots of press coverage, and Microsoft needs to do something to give their customers the feeling that they are not being left behind any more than they are already. This is a "me too" release.
Microsoft has been seeing increased resistance from developers over stuff like Avalon.
"No, I _don't_ want to throw away my WinForms stuff to develop for Avalon, which may be easier and more powerful to use, but will restrict my target market to those running Longhorn," is the general vibe.
By making Avalon available for Windows XP (presumably as some sort of runtime), Microsoft makes developing against Avalon a more realistic proposition.
As for all the users in here asking "why the hell would I want Avalon?" - some application developer will choose to use Avalon, and if you want that application, you'll want Avalon.