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."

Comments

Re:Free Ads / Free Betas

[halowolf]

What struck me about Bill's interview and the discusson about time frames and rewrites (or the denial of them as it was), was that just perhaps Windows is not structured in a way that isn't conducive to large over-arching changes. I would look at this as having difficulty in seeing what is actually the operating system and what is actually applications that sit on top.

I get the impression that for every new version of Windows, they are just having to keep on doing (or perhaps redoing) too much work creating these huge delays and whatnot. They have alot of work to do to fix security AND make Windows usable for MAH and PAH at the same time. I just can't help but get the feeling that the way they are going about creating Windows is part of the problem they have in maintaining it and releasing newer versions of it.

Perhpas I am just interested in seeing Windows evolve rather than just re-inventing itself again and again. Perhaps I'm now thinking of different operating systems.

P.S. I am a Windows user that just happened to install Linux on his old spare PC recently and might have a Apple sitting in the corner ;)

Re:Free Ads / Free Betas

[AviLazar]

You know, whenever I call a company that I have a paid subscription to and I am on hold hearing their advertisements it really pisses me off. You know why? Because I already paid for their product - I am a customer - I do not need to be inundated with more sales from them for something that I am already paying for. Do I really need to pay my cable TV company two membership fees per month for the same service? The words "Preaching to the choir" comes to mind
So advertising on a Linux site where you have less customer loyalty is not a bad place to advertise on.

As for the original reply - just because Bill Gates makes a press release does not mean he is trying to get free press. He is the richest man alive, he can buy the press (he actually did). The press wants to hear from Bill Gates, they TRY and hear from him. If this was any other company (almost any) making a press release, you would have been praising them for being forthcoming and letting the public know whats up...so lets not down the man because he is keeping the public informed.