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Gates Explains Longhorn Delay, Diet
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has set late 2006 as the deadline for shipping Longhorn, but to make that date, it had to delay the full implementation of WinFS, an ambitious file system geared at letting users search through all of their files at once. In this interview with Bill Gates, he provides a summary of why Microsoft decided to drop WinFS, saying: "WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things." Meanwhile, MS Watch has published Longhorn head-honcho Jim Allchin's memo on why some Longhorn features had to be axed."
Press releases like these are free ads for Microsoft. Does anybody here not think that Microsoft knew this was going to get released:
We will not cut corners on product excellence. Our powerful vision is intact; our shipment plan changes will let customers get access to parts of the vision faster.
Why don't they just admit that the market is forcing them to release parts of Longhorn (like Monad) earilier than expected! Leaks of betas and press releases like these are easy ways to keep the Microsoft buzz elevated.
If they didn't release a product until 2008, the market (mostly linux) would have time to catch-up.
"Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Wasn't this the whole idea behind meta-tags for files? I thought thats why we had such tags in windows media too?
Or is this the same tags that winFS will use to search with?
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
One is (that) we have a date-driven release. Things that make that date get in.
Previously Microsoft were skirting around the 2006-7 point without being clear about when Longhorn would ship; it looked like they were going to try to finish features X and Y before release. So now they've moved on to a date-driven release, we can pretty much guarantee 2006 for Longhorn (client edition) and they're going to drop anything they have to, to make that date.
Bill said that the OEMs are okay with the delay, so why the pressure? Looks like Linux is hurrying Microsoft up!
"Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Didn't BeOS have something similar?
Also, won't OSX actually have something like this even before Longhorn ships (without WinFS).
Aren't there a lot of pretty advanced projects to do the same for Linux, for example beagle for gnome and the new kde search feature planned for the next release? (Granted, these won't be implemented at the fs level, but who cares as long as they work)
Isn't reiserfs4 actually providing some of this functionality (and much more) and has allready been released?
Doesn't MS have about 60 billion Dollars in the bank and still can't get its act together?
Didn't MS talk about something similar already years ago and wanted to ship it with what is now known as Win2000?
Obviously you are trolling but this is a common belief...
However, Monad is obviously a way that Microsoft is trying to catch-up with the powerful scripting ability of *nix shells.
Of couse, some linux installs with have sidebars and other copies of new longhorn features. Longhorn will likely gain some new linux-like features between now and then as well... It's just the features race.
In competitive software markets one product will always try to match the bells and whistles of similiar products. For example, IE gained pop-up blocking.
Talent borrows, genius steals.
AC
> Any guesses?
Yes, actually. That you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Come on, do you really believe that the windows development team would give that much weight and media time to a system that implemented find / -name $string -print?! And even then, that they couldn't hammer it out in a day? Please.
What they are looking to do is to integrate the filesystem into a database system, where files are organized not by directory, but by use/type/relationship. Even I have a hard time wrapping my head around what this will look like once it's carried out. What will it gain us in user experience? My gut says 'a lot' given the sheer amount of development time these people have put into the project.
I certainly feel anger, fury and loathing when simpletons critique what they don't understand.
If MS did nothing innovative before 2006, it (Microsoft) will have to do the catch-up.
He said "the market", you're talking of "the product". Those two are unfortunately nowhere as closely related as one might wish...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I really don't see what difference it makes as long as longhorn is released in the next 4yrs. No matter how many computer-savvy people decide not to use it, it will still be THE os.
It matters because the market is now aware of Linux, which it never previously was. It has major corporations backing and investing in it (IBM, Novell, HP Compaq, Sun) and it has not only mostly caught up with the "features" of Windows but has surpassed them and approaching the kind of features slated for Longhorn.
Just look at the 6.8 release of the X.org X11 server. With the composite extension and cairo you'll be able to do pretty much anything offered by the Longhorn GDI. Of course, it needs to mature, to be further tested, to be further accelerated, and to have enough applications developed for it to become useful... but I think between now and mid-to-late 2006 is more than enough time for that to happen. Add to that the network transparency of X and all of a sudden Microsoft will be playing catch-up in that respect.
Also, look at Storage and the various other FOSS projects working towards that goal. It looks like WinFS may even be late in that regard to, again playing catch up.
Put all this together with the market momentum Linux is gaining (don't be surprised if it hits double figures in terms of market share by 2006) and Microsoft's position as the dominant OS player will be under massive threat.
Also, they can't afford to fuck up again on this one. The world is getting very impatient with the whole security mess. It's simply costing businesses too much to keep on top of it. FOSS operating systems have a far better security record making them even more attractive.
I could go on and on, but Microsoft is betting their monopoly future on Longhorn. And the free desktop could literally beat it to the punch.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
So you'll convert?
You will take your hundreds (maybe thousands) of current files and insert meta-data into each and every one so they fit the new "paradigm"? I won't, and my guess is that a whole butt-load of soccer moms won't either.
I personally don't understand the need for the concept. I do my development, writing, gaming, and keep my photography on one computer. I find the current file-system completely satisfactory and sufficient for the job.
The way I work in the physical world is the way I work on my system. I keep everything in organized stacks, in specific locations. "Emails to Bob" are kept, for instance, in MyName/Emails/Bob. Not hard at all.
I see all this meta-tagging as making everyone into data entry clerks, and, personally, I don't need that.
I would entertain someone coming up with really functional reasoning explaining the need for all this.
Microsoft also tried for a very long time to hack and upgrade their old OS, also designed for single user with no networking
While DOS was still vogue, MS recognized that it was drastically limited, and began work on a New Technology. That was NT. They maintained both lines - improving and upgrading the technology behind NT until it could provide a consistent user experience with the legacy line.
It may not have been planned, but MS did a great job merging two completely seperate code bases. The DOS/Win9x codebase merged against the NT base under XP, and now, within 3 years, 50% of Windows users on the desktop run XP. The next 25% will be there within another year (the last 25% will probably take a decade; many will not move to XP until they are forced to by hardware failure, and that's their right).
and Apple's last chance to survive was to purchase NeXT, with their Unix experience, and thus MacOS X was born.
Don't forget that in there was CEO who had no idea of the business. That's an important factor, remember.
There are many similarities with Windows and Longhorn
Not as many as you pretend, let's think it through.
Microsoft has already moved the majority of it's users to an operating system that is truly mutlitasking, has fine networking support, and is in fact the industry standard for desktop operating systems. Not that it's the best mind you - but rather the industry standard. What Longhorn is adding is not core bits needed for a modern operating system. XP has those. The fact remains that if everything stayed where they are, MS could milk XP for 10 years. But of course, what MS wants is to continue to be dominant for decades, and that's where Longhorn enters. Let's face it, XP is good enough for just about every current Windows user. It performs fairly well, it's straightforward to install, it supports basically the entire universe of x86 hardware, it's cheap enough for OEMs to use, it's easy enough for users, powerful enough for administrators, flexible enough for developers, etc. It's certainly not perfect.
With Longhorn, MS is exploiting the weaknesses of the FOSS world, so they can continue to dominate the business, corporate, and home desktop market. What isn't FOSS good at doing? Changing rapidly. If a group of programmers get together and code some great new thing, it'd take years of flamefests and discussion to get to the majority of Linux users. Plus chances are it will fork within a few versions and the talent pool will be split. Add to this the fact that much of the really hardwork in software engineering is shunned - people want to work on the stuff they want - not the stuff that others want them to.
So this is what is MS thinking: implement the things that FOSS world can't do thanks to its red-tape laden world-view. Implement a filesystem layer that provides nifty functions that while aren't new are new in this scale. Writing a similiar filesystem and getting it into use in the FOSS world would not happen, or if it did, take a decade. Re-write the graphical subsystem to use strictly vectored screen elements. This is a huge boon to developers - any GUI programmer can tell you what a pain it is thinking about how your application will look at 800x600, at 1600x1200, etc. Will that panel here look funny since it will 99% empty at 1600x1200? Sure different programming enviornments will physically scale the interface for you, but how will it look, feel, and work? Enter Avalon, MS's solution. Screen elements will stay the same size while you increase resolution, but your workspace will gain resolution and capability. All of the sudden you can edit a large image in Photoshop on your high-resolution monitor without all the widgets becoming microscopic. How long would it take for the FOSS world to replicate this? X is completely widget agnostic. Every application or desktop environment has it's own set of widgets with it's own code tree and it's own egos. Not only would X have to ma
"Rapid Development" by Microsoft Press. There's this chapter on Classic Mistakes. To mention a few:
- unrealistic expectations
- wishful thinking
- placing politics over substance
- overly optimistic schedules
- inadequate design
- feature creep
Maybe this company should take some time to read their own publications.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Lately, I keep running into, Gee the Open Source world used to be cool and interesting. They used to talk tech, but no more. Now it is about gossip! However, "if you look at my other hand" Microsoft has this really cool stuff in their blogs and the likes...
I really wonder if there is not some stealth blogging going on...
Now to address your issues...
1) I read MSDN blogs and it is essentially the same material posted by ten different people. It is quite amazing how "monolithic" independent blogs can be. Scoblizer seems to be the only "oddball"
2) Slashdot has always been about both gossip and tech news.
3) More people use Open Source, hence more news will be about CEO's who give press releases about Open Source.