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New Longhorn Screenshots And Schedule
Mozillabird writes "WinSupersite has recently updated the Longhorn release schedule and has provided some new screenshots of Aero. The first beta of Longhorn is May 2005, though there is some speculation about how much of Avalon and Aero will be implemented in that beta. The "big beta" is scheduled for this Fall."
Looks like the biggest selling point in the screenshots for longhorn is its new fast "searching" "feature" that looks remarkably like apple's new "Spotlight"...
(Sarcasm)But hey, if you cant beat them... cheat them.(/sarcasm)
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
"Then, Microsoft will utilize a disclosure approach it calls "rolling thunder,""
Right, because with a name like "rolling thunder", it has to be good!
will there be a large prize for writing a Longhorn virus?
They sure do make it look nice. Such polish and finish. That will always give it the edge.
What?
I took a peek at the screenshot of Aero. The UI looks clean and shiny, but I'm noticing a lot of little widgets have been taken out of the right-click menu and stuck above -- such as Share and Send To. I wonder how much of this is a GFX upgrade and how much is a code upgrade, because I'm not seeing anything really new -- just a polished-looking old idea.
For when the release date gets pushed back and Bill G. has to avoid the head-hunters.
I don't get it.
at the bottom is a bigger-than-ever status bar with info about the selected item. It seems like very little info is in tat area that is not already displayed in the list itself.
This makes me think about the utterly stupid winXP feature that displays the number of files in a selected zipfile... is that usefull for anybody ? Why do you zip files in 99% of the cases ? TO REDUCE SIZE. so what do you want to know about the selected zip ? Right : it's size. For all other items, the filesize is shown, except for zips.... DUH !!!!
The person who suggested that feature should be shot with a ripe banana until dead ensures... twice !
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Or does the Aero theme not look that revolutionary? It kinda reminds me of Bluecurve actually...
looks good, i cant wait...! :)
I'm a diehard Apple fan, but I have to admit that the screenshot does look pretty nice.
These Aero buttons look so small, they seem difficult to hit to me.
The first beta of Longhorn is May 2005 Blablabla, Duke Nukem: Forever, blabla! Hahaha.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
The screen shots look good. And given the time spent in development, I hope it will be stable and secure .... Oh and of course we all know thanx to an earlier article on /. that Winodws is more secure than linux.
"Right, because with a name like "rolling thunder", it has to be good!"
Well the name "rolling loss" was already taken.
i guess they didnt get the memo about customers hate the blue UI scheme
and looking at the screen shot, why is the text all blurred and smudgy ? or is that anti aliasing a bit too strong
yuck!!
Is anyone else just not impressed here? I'm not a big fan of the uber-eye-candy shiny GUI's, and I know for a fact that a lot of seasoned Windows users aren't either. I favor the cleaner toolkits like GTK and the Blender toolkit, which manages to find a good balance of eye candy. No highlights, no annoying gradients to make us think that the buttons are made from glass-tic, just a relatively clean GUI.
I'd like to see how a GUI like this "Aero" will go over with the Windows users who instinctively switch every XP box they touch to "classic" mode.
Release the damn thing or don't release it. I don't care. I'll just keep using Win98SE. It sucks too, but at least it works.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I'm sorry but why are people and business who have for the last 10 years been using Explorer to manage files on pc's and networks suddenly going to embrace a completely different method that is unfamiliar and will reduce productivity at all levels until the user becomes savvy enough to use it.
No screenshot of this "New OS" has yet to impress me. Maybe it gets it's hype because "New OS" = boost in hardware sales. But you know what. When the majority of your hardware sales are sub 500 pc's you're not going to make up any profits on the early adopters who buy the bigger and faster machines.
What have we gotten with every new version of Windows.
Software quits working
Have to buy new versions of antivirus and other utilities in many cases to get full functionality and also see above.
Waiting on hardware to get "New Seals of MS Approval" which IMO is silly because that WHQL crap never stopped Nvidia drivers from causing the nv4_disp.dll BDS's.
Oh and this "New OS" that was supposed to run on pc's that were wildly faster (10Ghz) machines. Where are those new machines??
Longhorn is a shell of the promises that were made, it most likely incorporates code from XP/NT4 base so will incorporate security holes and bugs and probably new avenues of attack. It's just plain ugly, and probably will be slow at best on existing equipment.
If you're looking for a new OS you may be better off with OS X on a PPC, or Linux on x86.
Sounds like this is going to be a resource hog (moreso than XP), I wonder what the minimum allowed specs are. I see that recommended on the page is:
Desktop CPU: 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HyperThreading Technology 530 (or higher) or 3 GHz Intel Xeon processor with 2 MB L2 cache, or AMD Athlon 64, Sempron, or Opteron 100, 200, or 800 processor, single or dual-core versions.
Mobile CPU: 1.86 GHz Intel Pentium M processor 750 (or higher), or AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology, Mobile Sempron, or Mobile Athlon 64 processor.
RAM: 512 MB of RAM or more, all platforms.
Didn't Apple patent "stacks"?
It appears that Longhorn will also include piles (or stacks to MS) which were a long rumored feature in Mac OS.
Microsoft released community previews of Avalon and Indigo a couple days ago. For the most part, Avalon has been working for me. I havn't used Indigo yet.
As far as I can tell Avalon isn't hardware accelerated yet but it is still pretty low in CPU usage. The fairly simple calculator sample included uses 25 megs of RAM though!
Fun stuff to play with, even if it's not production ready.
Why not just call it a gamma release? Or do they not know that the greek alphabet has more than two letters? Hell, they might as well make a release of Longhorn for all 24 greek letters, seeing as it doesn't seem like they plan on finishing the O/S anytime soon.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
"I'm a diehard Apple fan, but I have to admit that the screenshot does look pretty nice."
Yes, Apple does good work.
LET THE FLAMES BEGIN
Why doesn't Microsoft just open the entire source code of all its products and charge money for service and support?
Microsoft has, what... billions and billions of dollars? Can't they afford to do this? Are they afraid of what might be found in their code?
From the article:
"In Longhorn, applications will launch and load files 15 percent faster than with Windows XP."
How was the figure arrived at exactly? All applications and all files will load 15 percent faster?
"Additionally, Longhorn will feature a new instant-on capability that will see Longhorn-savvy systems resume from Standby in 2 seconds or less."
Doesn't "Longhorn-savvy" kind of imply specific hardware is required? Or is that just me? And to be honest, I wouldn't really sell this as a feature other OSs have had for years...OS X certainly starts up from standby on my iBook in under 2 seconds...
"Longhorn will more reliably resume from crashes,"
Surely time would have been better spent by programmers and engineers actually stopping the OS from crashing so much? I'm an OS X user, and I'll be the first to admit that when it does crash, it tends to crash badly, but at least (in my experience) the crashes are fairly rare (say, once a month) instead of upwards of one a day...
"One thing users should be aware of is that Longhorn will include a new kernel and will thus not offer the same level of compatibility with legacy 16-bit and 32-bit code that Windows XP does today. For business users, Microsoft believes that Virtual PC 2007 will help broaden corporations' compatibility options."
This seems like a bad idea - I'm guessing home users will also want to run legacy applications (that favourite game of your son's that you bought five years ago, that piece of productivity software you really like but can't afford an upgrade)...wouldn't it be better to do what Apple did during the switch between OS 9 & OS X, and bundle an emulator in with the OS? Rather than forcing home users to buy their own copy of Virtual PC 2007?
That looks like the windows I have now, but with pretty colors. I want nonblocking drive i/o and a new explorer if anything. I'm not buying windows or updates again though, it's not worth paying for an OS if I can get a better one for free. Bye bye MS!
Apparently, Microsoft also changed it from "America" to "American." Now the citizens of American are called Americanians. =P
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Oopsie, stacks are a Patented UI concept (guess what? Apple...) Wonder if Microsoft licenced it or just ripped it off on the basis of "it's cheaper to litigate until exhaustion"... BTW, UI patents what a stupid thing... in any case we know Microsoft's algorithms will suck so bad that nobody will ever dream this search tool will be useful in any way ;-)
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
This proves that the Longhorn fonts news from Poynter was right, at least. The type in the screenshots looks particularly good, especially compared to XP. Perhaps XP will catch up (or exceed?) OS X in terms of font rendering? Corbel (I think that's the main sans-serif in these screenshots, look at the 'g's) and Calibri are gorgeous screen fonts. A significant improvement over the current XP Tahoma and Verdana fest.
I predict Steve Jobs will have his designers reimplement Aqua using Quartz/CoreImage.
I meant to say Quartz vector objects/CoreImage. Obviously, Aqua is already using Quartz.
Microsoft are producing piles of shit that take so long to get out they cause the producer of said shit to suffer from piles?
Is it just me, or is this new theme MS seems to be demonstrating quite possibly the worst idea in the history of light waves?
Aside from being dark, the title bar buttons are very small, and are flush with the top of the window - meaning lots of missing them and clicking on the window behind it.
It also seems to add a lot of dimensionality that isn't really needed, and just serves to 'busy-up' the interface. Give me a clean, bright, colourful interface over a dark, plum-colored travesty like this any day.
Is this the big moment I've been waiting for, to make the big switch to windows (from linux)? Everyone else one /. seems to have taken the big Plunge. Is it my turn? Is this it? What are the pitfalls? Risks? Tradeoffs? Any advice, comments welcome. Thnx.
P.S. I've willing to make some sacrifices to make this switch, but not too many. It's not like I'm driven by ideology (or technology, for that matter). I just want to get with the program.
There is nothing scarier than a Microsoft fan site. I almost lost my lunch going to that site. What kind of person is actually *excited* about Windows? I have seen the face of the enemy.
--- witty signature
Sure it may test will with the little old ladies in the focus group.
Th color scheme looks good - for a online gay porn shop
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
How many times do we have to hear from Mac fanbois about MS copying Apple?
Apple copied from Xerox, but you don't mention that. Let's all move on, it's not the 80's anymore, MS writes their own code and Apple builds onto BSD. It's been old for years now and it's getting really annoying to hear the same repetitive crap day-in, day-out.
Looking at the screenshot, does anyone else think someone at Microsoft might be trying to flee the country once Longhorn has been released? Because there seem to be an awful lot of "Booking cruises at the last minute", "BusRoutes" etc. documents in that folder...
My only comment on that screenshot is that Bryan has too much time on his hands if he can write a 65k Word document on "Bathroom Ideas". But I do look forward to his upcoming bestseller, "Pantry Ideas"
"Right, because of course Microsoft invented searching for meta-data."
Of course they didn't, but how many "innovators" have brought it to 90% of the market?
Has anyone noticed that the pricipal colors are blue, green, and purple? As a graphic artist, I can say that these don't really go together very well. So far, the themes included in all the betas have been absolutely hideous, but have slowly been getting better. I'm hoping that Microsoft hires some compitent graphic artists to completely rework the GUI theme before release. Its sad that an OS with so many usuability enhancements as compaired to XP has to be so ugly.
I don't understand how a website is enthusiastically reporting about the evil apparatus that will be used next to milk cow users.
Wow, really exciting stuff there. I guess the really interesting stuff is under the hood, i.e., DRM, Trusted Computing, prorietary XML documents...
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. -- Mark Twain
Check out this one of an example search results page. Look at the file sizes. They're just duped between sections.. so are the dates! I'm sure you don't have 5 e-mails and 5 totally random files all with corresponding dates and sizes. Seriously, check it out.
;-)
Even if the interface work here isn't fake, there has been some copying/pasting going on OR Longhorn doesn't have file size and date functionality yet
about a Microsoft code name since Cairo.
>>The first beta of Longhorn is May 2005...The "big beta" is scheduled for this Fall.">>
And the "final beta" will be on store shelves in a year or two!
and not font smoothing. Because that looks like a bag of ass.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
I don't really care if micro$oft ripped off features from Apple or anyone else. It doesn't affect me directly. It just shows that they liked how the other did it and they want to implement it in their software. Big deal. As long as I get a product that I like, that's good enough for me. Yes, the screenshot looks like an iTunes rip. But I use iTunes on a windows on a machine and welcome apple's innovations.
Pronounced 'See Colon'.
News for Windows Nerds. The backside of computing.
MS is still wasting too much screen real estate. From the screenshots I've seen so far (and google has lots of Longhorn pics), Longhorn's GUI really sucks.
This sig kills fascists.
The reason people can't find their documents these days is because they give them generic meaningless names and stuff them in the All Documents folder.
For example: the BathroomIdeas.doc document would be more appropriately named Ideas I Had About ________ Whilst Sitting On The Toilet Reading The Sunday Morning Paper.doc.
is head straight for the settings and set "Classic Desktop".
Hows that fancy screenshot gonna look then.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
PS. Move out of your parents basement already.
>Wonder if Microsoft licenced it or just ripped it off on the basis of "it's cheaper to litigate until exhaustion"
;-)
No, that's patented by IBM (2004, an invention made during the SCO lawsuit).
>BTW, UI patents what a stupid thing...
Of course - if they were enforced we wouldn't have Evolution and a bunch of other proggies with copied UI...
> Microsoft's algorithms will suck so bad that nobody will ever dream this search tool will be useful in any way
What's it to you? You're not using Windows anyway?
Apparently file extensions are still off by default. That "feature" has caused many newbies to double-click on what they think is a .jpg or .doc, only to find out that it's really an .exe that will screw up their system.
Whenever I work on somebody's computer, one of the first things I have to do is to make the file extensions visible. Why, Microsoft, why?
If longhorn will be out soon, it seems kind of pointless to buy XP x64. I'm building a Athlon 64 system right now and for the time being it will run Windows XP x64 RC2. That release will be "good" for 360 days, if Longhorn is going to be out before then I think I will just bypass the full version of x64 altogether.
The screenshots look like someone from the Microsoft design team saw a Mac and a Fedora machine side by side, and shoved them together.
Perhaps it's just the techno-nerd in me, but I can't stand it when my computer tries to hide things like actual file locations from me, which is what the new Explorer seems to be doing. The very first thing I do when I set up a Windows machine is turn off all the GUI "features" that hide the contents of directories, file extensions, and menus from me.
Does anyone actually find these features useful?
What have we gotten with every new version of Windows. Software quits working
I take from your post you're a fan of MacOS. I am not a mac hater, nor a windows fanboy, but you sir, are projecting.
The single reason I refuse to purchase a macintosh is I have supported them in the past. Updating your system to the latest OS version? You could probably swing it on the old hardware, but 70 percent of your programs need to be re-purchased because the old ones are incompatable.
Yeah, I have some apps that ran in 98, that don't in 2000/Xp, but at least in the case of XP, I have a reason (NTFS).
I know we all hate microsoft, but lets at least try to be objective. Where I work, we are still running a program originally meant to run in win 3.1. Should we be running this program? Hells no. Can we? Yes, the bastard still limps along like a champ.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I looked at the article, but the screenshots caught my eye... took a look. Gave up trying to figure out exactly what the interfaces are presenting. I don't think the interface will be popular. The interface is noisy, way too much going on in the screen and it's all over the place (this is a trend begun in XP... I pretty much have all of any windows screens I used toggled back to "classic" (ick) windows).
The interface, to me, is confusing... again another trend I see/saw in the XP UI.
Can't wait to see in addition to the "glitz" how many flickering, spinning, etc. graphics become part of the "presentation"... Also, guess I can't wait to get my hands on a 10Ghz CPU machine to keep from choking to death on the chaff.
I'll be fine as soon as I get my cygwin up and running. Sigh.
From Thurmont's site (emphasis mine):
...
Notice the inclusion of a RC0 build, which is unusual. The last time Microsoft shipped an RC0 build of a Windows product, I believe, was with Windows Millennium Edition (Me).
Though these plans could change, Microsoft is currently planning to ship an amazing array of product editions, or SKUs, in the Windows Longhorn family. These are the currently-scheduled versions that will ship in May 2006:
Longhorn Starter Edition
Longhorn Home Edition
Longhorn Media Center Edition
Longhorn Professional Edition
Longhorn Small Business Edition
Longhorn Mobility/Tablet PC Edition
Longhorn Premium Edition
None of these product names are final, of course, and all versions except Starter Edition will ship in both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) variants.
So technically, there will be 13 versions of Longhorn.
Wow, this release is looking more and more interesting all the time.
This is starting to get ridiculous. Based on that screenshot, they've added a poorly-implemented version of the OS X Finder's sidebar (introduced in Panther,) and have applied an even uglier "visual style" that makes the OS look like it was designed for a five-year old. I don't think that I'll be purchasing Longhorn any time near its release, if ever, but as long as all of these needless GUI gimmicks can be turned off (like in XP,) more adept users shouldn't have a problem if they upgrade, or are forced to upgrade at work.
Because they spend billions too.
They need to make billions.
Not to mention they have share holders who would sue them silly.
No one would pay for support. Next to no one pays for Linux support, they pay for boxed version that come with support, ie Red Hat but they very seldom take up that support, vs looking to other sources and they almost never pay for by the minute support or by the call support. They can get free support, or call a local person for less.
Windows would be even worse because if 90% of the world were now using it, there would be oodles of free support.
No to mention to open the source would open them up to all kinds of legal troubles. I highly suspect that patent infringement cases would come out of the wood work, people would sue for a million knowing MS would just settle rather than go to court. Where as with Linux it's like trying to get blood from a stone.
I think I have a very large chance hit the "X" button when I want to maximize the window.
The "X" button is way larger than others, can some one explain why to me?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Does anyone have links to the screenshots that Microsoft requested Windows SuperSite to remove? (see the note on the side of the homepage)
WHY!!! OH!!! THE HUMANITY!!!!
:)
There's already a SP1 on Longhorn's roadmap?
I guess there are improvement scheduled to fit inbetween 2006-2007.
Microsoft couldn't possibly believe that a series of security patches will be necessary
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
when an OS meant more than 'ooh what nice eye candy'. Sadly
that seems to be all anybody cares about any more. Or have
we reached the point where there is no innovation except
(debatedly) in how the UI is presented?
For Longhorn, according to the developer working on the thumbnail views, there will a remedy to this - there will be a global 'thumbs.db' file that all folders draw from, thus removing the file that I often delete in frustration.
I'll say, those folder icons are flipping me off !
That or they're presenting a bottle of orange juice...
I've been hearing about Longhorn since before Windows 2000 shipped, actually.
If it's so great...
-Why is application launching only 15% faster than XP, despite requiring a 3GHz Pentium?
-Why can Microsoft only seem to get screen real estate back by shrinking existing controls?
-Why is this Paul Thurott person so enamored with what will essentially be a has-been OS with the features and security of something you can buy today from Apple?
If I was Steve Jobs, I'd release Tiger for X86 at MacWorld 2006 - get the PC users hooked before Microsoft can evern release their Tiger work-alike to manufacturing.
Chumps.
is how it looks more and more like a Linux Desktop... am I the only one to notice how the Longhorn UI has taken ideas in Gnome, KDE and metacity? (Or is it just my imagination here?)
Does it have a built-in stopwatch?
Every iteration of Windows wastes more and more screenspace with toolbars, status bars, iconviews etc. From the screenshot, Longhorn is even more cluttered, apparently.
Soon a file explorer view won't have any space left for any actual file icons!
they won't. The first thing every Longhorn user will do it set the theme back to what it was in the first version of Windows that they ever used. For me, that is Windows Classic (essentially win95). Of course, in my case, I've done the dance for the last time. There is no longer anything in Windows that I need that I can't get in Linux, and there is a lot of stuff in Windows, including this new theme, that I can do without. The machine that I'm typing this from is dual boot WinXP and Fedora Core 3. The last time I booted Windows was to run Windows update.
We saw file stacks in PDC 2003 long before the other OS copied it.
It is, especially because the original "Rolling Thunder" campaign failed to impress its target audience.
I hand my crown for King of Bad Jokes to you, good sir.
Who had something in the late 60's - early 70's (30+ years ago) that inspired all this? Because I can not think of anything back then that would have looked remotely like this stuff today? unless you think that the 3270 terminals were similar
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is it just me, or does the new explorer looks a wee bit like firefox? Maybe safari?
poster has an excellent point....
"Longhorn Client release to manufacturing (RTM)
May 24, 2006"
I guess most windows users will have the longhorn iso on the 25th then...
-- Would it be acceptable to just put my name on my sig?
still with the same color background
... Red for X, yellow for _ and green for + ...
... color-blind people create the M$ buttons :p
:p
M$ should learn from Apple about color code these three
very intuitive
But of course
maybe there exist skins I do not know (or care) about
Betcha he is, just like a vast majority of the other Slashbots who couldn't find logic with both hands and a shovel.
UGLY.
Longhorn Premium Edition (Corporate?) to be mysteriously leaked months before the official release version build 2600 o_O
I'm curious to see what MSFT will do this time against piracy for Longhorn.
How interesting. Last week, there was an image of a white dialog box with the user account's picture and a message text that explained that you needed to enter the administrator password. Below the entry box, there was a classic Microsoft "Why do I need to enter this password?" help link. This graphic was embedded in the text of the article.
It appears Paul Thurrot has removed it from the page. Since he's in close contact with sources at Microsoft, I wonder if they requested that he remove the image. Nonetheless, I have it saved on my hard drive. It looks very much like OS X's.
Looking at the article, it seems there were three images removed. Here they are for all to see:
Microsoft has an Indigo/Avalon release for the general public that is now available, if you're running either XP or 2003:
Avalon and Indigo Community Technology Preview - March 2005
I don't know but ive seen rumors all the time about Longhorn coming out 64bit. If Windows XP is coming out 64bit next month will longhorn.
:)
Don't want this 64bit chip to goto waste
Solosoft.org - Your Online Resource to Nothing
Although Linux was very similar to Windows in look and feel, even as far back as 2001, many people said that it was too different, that the learning curve was too steep; things were in different places than expected, and that there were too many options.
That was one of the main reasons why people said they wouldn't consider using Linux. It was one of the main reasons many people wouldn't use Open Office.
Could it be that upon the release of Longhorn, people may find Linux to be more familiar?
I've heard many consultants say that businesses (mostly small businesses) won't switch from Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office, even though alternatives would definitely suffice, purely because their employees (or at least some of them) can't handle change.
Many people still use insecure Microsoft solutions, because they feel overwhelmed when presented with something even slightly different. Look at the hassle getting people to switch to the more secure Firefox Web browser!
I guess that the new look and feel of Longhorn is either going to cause people to postpone upgrading as long as possible, or even give people more incentive to try out Linux. I mean, if you're going to have to get used to something new anyway, why not put Linux in the mix?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
1
2
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Last week when I submitted this story, there were three other images embedded in the text of the article. It appears they are gone now.
Here they are:
OS X-alike password request for program installation
New "not responding" message and blurry translucent window borders
Sync manager
I always find the the easiest way to convince people to use the Plain Jane Windows interface, is not patiently explaining that the new look makes it slow, but simply saying: Shall I fix the Teletubbies Look?
Oh well, what the hell...
"But Mommmmm! You promised not to throw out my posters of Linus if I stopped using old pizza boxes as a mattress!"
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I love Slashdot moderation. I'm gonna try this same one for the next Apple article.
Clearly its time for an Open source based desktop UI and the name is clear: Pyro! with the flaming red color scheme or Terro!: the earth tone goddess desktop
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
...who aren't actually graphic designers.
I dunno about you, but to be honest, every time I see a screenshot of Longhorn, it keeps looking uglier and uglier. I think it's the whole "hey, let's make everything BLUE and other FLURO COLOURS!" mentality that seems to have taken over Redmond recently. At this rate, I won't be able to use Longhorn without needing either sunglasses or a bucket. Maybe both.
I mean, if they're going to copy Apple in so many respects, can't they at least copy their sense of style? Making the UI look like it was designed by a three year old with nothing but glitter pens is just ludicrous...
We're geeks... We're the sorcerers of the modern-day world. --
Microsoft really named their answer to Apple's Aqua UI "Aero"? Isn't that a little transparent as ripoffs go?
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
One of the files listed in the screenshot is "Adventures on the Mississippi Delta"...Oh, my imagination is running wild!
Ok, I agree with some of the indifference out there on the UI. I mean, why do Microsoft and Apple (whom I like better than MS) think that just because they make a few audacious UI changes that it constitutes a "new OS". If they were remotely with the program, they'd realize how trivial themes are in the sense that most of us can change our themes just by yawning (on linux of course).
and noticed that the back/forward buttons in those screenshots look exactly the same as the ones on my browser and the rest of KDE...just a darker shade of blue
Achieved by requiring the users to buy faster HDs. Longhorn is by default incompatible with older HDs.
The document stacks look an awful lot like Apple's piles That search dialog (not just the search box in the upper right) looks like Apple's search dialog from before os 8. Although I must say that those Shorthorn( tm) screen shots do not look as bad as XP.
That's why the UI is getting button-bloat. When you see wmp 6.x, it's so minimalistic it could be anything. When you see wmp 10, there's no doubt you're looking at wmp 10 from Microsoft. Branding is far more important that usability.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Spotlight technology first appeared in the other iApps like iTunes (smart playlists) and iPhoto (smart albums).
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I know that search on Windows has been terrible for years, but what exactly is major difference between this and, say, the instantaneous hash-based searching of OS9? Is it just that the search is now fuzzy? Is it the find-in-files ability that has been around for years in 3rd party apps? Is it the stacking?
I'm just trying to understand why this is suddenly revolutionary, on either platform.
And, what is that "reference number" that appears in all of the Longhorn screenshots? And please tell me that Aero design is stand-in... While XP was a big step forward in terms of appearance and a small step forward in terms of usability, so far those screenshots look like a step backwards in both.
The ______ Agenda
But it doesn't look anywhere near as gay as you.
Apple Spotlight Patent Reveals 3-Year Head Start on Microsoft
Apple Spotlight patent predates Microsoft's Longhorn announcement by three years
Frankly, I think the Longhorn eye candy is pathetic, compared to what is available today from Stardock for Windows XP, 2000, and even 98/ME. Of course, *anything* is better than XP's default Fisher-Price interface.
The other big feature of Longhorn, File Searching, doesn't interest me, either. I'm smart enough to put my files in their place, so I don't have to go searching for them. It's my machine, after all, and if I put things in random places, I have no one to blame but myself.
All I'll get with Longhorn is the need to re-purchase all my programs and utilities because the ones I'm happy with right now on XP won't work. Not to mention the fact that you'll need a workstation-class machine (3 Ghz Pentium with a half-gig of memory? Sheesh!) to even run the thing!
And to top it all off, Microsoft wants to give the local machine the same Swiss Cheese security model that IE gives the Internet. Oh, joy! I can't wait.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Mmmmh...
Longhorn...
MS search presents the results in such a similar way I can't help but call it "inspiration." And look at the date in Apple's filename.
Do you realize how many patents are thrown around each year by these two giants? Tons. Having the patent for something is in no way indicating that it will be used in future products. To be honest I would highly doubt MS goes through all of Apple's patents, picks out a random one that hits its fancy and decides to make that the flagship feature of it's new OS.
Longhorn Starter Edition Longhorn Home Edition Longhorn Media Center Edition Longhorn Professional Edition Longhorn Small Business Edition Longhorn Mobility/Tablet PC Edition Longhorn Premium Edition As the author indicated, there are too many SKU's. Each version will likely have a marginal improvement or lack one key component that will make the user wish he had chosen a different Longhorn version. I am interested to find out what features Microsoft plans to remove from Longhorn Professional to justify the upgrade and higher price of Longhorn Small Business Edition.
Wow. Looks like Aqua to me.
The winsupersite mentions that Microsoft announced in 2003 new search capabilities in Longhorn, but that's 3 years later than Apple Clamed a patent on the same thing:
l
"A patent granted to Apple January 25th, 2005 appears to reveal that Apple had a multiyear head start on Microsoft for Spotlight, the Apple search technology that will be released later this year in Tiger. Many had seen Spotlight as a quickly developed, me-too technology intended to compete with Microsoft's long-delayed Longhorn update to Windows, but the patent application shows that Apple began working on the technology in January of 2000, years before Longhorn was announced."
source: http://macobserver.com/article/2005/01/27.10.shtm
They are apparently feeling the squeeze of Apple. This is good; the monopoly finally has something to compete with.
These screenshots actually look useful *and* beautiful - there's definitely been a serious effort to make things more consistent from place to place (instead of a holdover from Windows 3.1). All good news.
[. . .] before they had them fancy html interpreters they just looked at the text and IMAGINED its formatting.
That's OK, Vicsun. I don't even see the code anymore. I just see blonde, brunette, redhead . . .
blog
thats all that maters for me
/me looks at the "Recycle Bin" on his Windows desktop and shakes his head at the obviousness of its origin...and the rest of the operating system...
Today, all modern OS's are very stable. Stability can no longer be cited as an advantage of one OS over other OS's. BSD, Linux, WindowsXP -- none of them crash often.
nope dear... Apple PowerBook... ;-)))) love it....
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Especially at work where I start a new directory for a new project in an easy to reach location. I want *MY* documents and *MY* images and *MY* code or whatever colocated in the project directory and its subdirectories.
Sadly, Apple has picked up that bad habit, with many apps on the Mac defaulting to the "Movies" or "Documents" folders in the user's home directory.Honestly, I don't know a single user, power or otherwise, who works like that.
I happen to disagree. To a pro user knowing what does what, everything technical was hidden deeper in the user interface in Windows XP, compared to Windows 2000. This makes me as a tech-savy user lose control.
In fact, these changes made me not install Windows XP until I had to. That is until I needed USB2.0 support, as Microsoft made sure never functioned properly in Windows 2000. First thing I did after upgrading to Windows XP, was in fact to turn everything I could back to the way things worked in Windows 2000. Let me make my statement as clear as possible: I only upgraded to Windows XP because Microsoft's intentional lack of support for Windows 2000.
And as far as I can see, what made not want to upgrade to Windows XP is taken even further in Longhorn. With all the crucial technology (Avalon & Indigo and so on) being backported to Windows XP, what incentive do I have to make this upgrade?
This upgrade, as far as I can see, is merely a new themed UI with even less contact or control of what actually happens on the computer. I don't like it, and if it is possible, I will do everything in my power to avoid this "upgrade".
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
The graphics seem to have jumped from nice and shiny XP graphics to better hope you have an ATI or nVIDIA card graphics. I'm afraid if I try to run this latest verison, my computer will overload from the insane amount of pixels. I'm afraid to think what Blackcomb will look like!
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
Holy Fuzzy Fonts, Batman!
Geeze they look bad. People complain about AA fonts in general, I wonder what they'll say about that screenshot...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Actually, Spotlight isn't new for Tiger anyway. It's existed in the Finder since Panther and in the iApps for even longer. The only difference is that now it's a framework for the entire operating system to use, and it's now even more powerful.
Moof.
I need to take a diet from looking at those screenshots... anybody who has used Windows on a budget or mid-level PC and doesn't want to crawl around... they change performance to "best" ... disabling all the ugly looking "graphical enhancement" crap. Now it seems those graphical enhancements are EVERYWHERE. I hope for the sake of Windows users it can be turned off everywhere in Longhorn, or prepare to feel the bloat.
The Peanut Gallery, Ubergeek, Biblically Sober
NCAAbbs.com: Thousands of fans, Hundreds of teams, Just one place
or is M$ begining to take much bigget strides in their pace towards a Windows ever similar in look and feel to the Mac OS?
Can some Microsoft advocate tell me something MS has done that isn't a rip off of someone else's ideas?
=>jd
The only difference is that now it's a framework for the entire operating system to use, and it's now even more powerful.
Find By Content is only part of Spotlight. The metadata index, plugin architecture, and the automatic import triggering are what makes it shine. Saying that it's existed in Panther is misleading, as it was functionally very, very, different.
That wasn't the point of the post, if I'm not mistaken.
The point of the post is that Apple did NOT copy Microsoft as Thurrott has alleged.
And actually, yes, I DO believe that Microsoft would indeed go through the patents files and cherry-pick ones they want to implem^H^H^H^H^H^H "embrace and extend and extinguish".
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
No chance.
Google mindshare is WAY too big to be overtaken by something embedded in Longhorn. The Netscape case doesn't even compare.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Yes, the statusbar is bigger than ever, and probably enabled by default. And yes, all it does is redundantly display the same information that is allready in the list. This is definetely worthy of screen space.
Now, lets switch our viewpoint two seconds. Our new subject is Internet Explorer. Here the statusbar is disabled by default, and the information it does show if enabled is not redundant, but informative as to what you are about to visit. For security reasons, not knowing this makes me insane. But for unknown reasons presenting this information to the user is not considered worthy of screen space.
Yes, I see, Microsoft clearly have their priorities right and Windows is moving even further in a good direction.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
While working for a MS consultant I spent weeks combing through patents related to optical mouse technology, including finding and collecting all referenced publications.
MS keeps a very close eye on patent filings and yes, they inform their business decisions.
For a taste of their style, read "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates," particularly the section related to Pen Windows. An entire OS branch was instigated by one demo by a potential competitor who was looking to do a deal with them.
XP Pro is hilarious. It forbade me from downloading the GIMP windows version, as well as a diagnostic tool recommended by a fellow Slashdotter. Why? Because they are open source apps. I realised there is a thin yellow strip at the top of the browser (I just installed XP the other day, so I'm still learning) that I have to click on to override the default security and actually download what I want.
I assume Longhorn will continue this prejudice against open source development.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Linux, run it does but yeah.
The MS search icon is identical to the Finder and Safari ones (and in the same place wrt the "address" bar and double arrow buttons) but mirrored.
/me looks at the "Recycle Bin" on his Windows desktop and shakes his head at the obviousness of its origin...and the rest of the operating system...
I hope you're not stupid enough to think that Apple was the origin of that concept.
Note the wastebasket, bottom right.
This is on a Xerox Star system.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Is it me, or does each revision of Longhorn look more and more like OSX ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Both systems have had some search capabilities for quite some time, this is just a natural extension.
NetNewsWire into Yojimbo!
Who in their right mind would ever have dropdown menus for directory names and filetypes? They'd end up being massive!
Remember, these are listing potential filetypes on the system and directories under the parent - even on a low use machine, they're going to be unmanageable in such a control.
Methinks it's fake or has a considerable way to go. And in any case, I'd vote for the former because the MS codebase is always forked from the current OS, so how'd you lose functionality that's so basic?
A good operating system should automate any and all repetitous grunt work we've all done a thousand times before. Take for instance the whole driver rigamarole: searching, file retrieval and installing drivers should be done with nary a prompt, except for possibly a comfirmation (and even that should be optional). I'll also add highly configurable user/guest accounts to my list, and a streamlined, lo-tech version you can choose for that ancient PII system that most people have hiding in the cellar. Too much flash and polish can be off-putting too.
Guess what operating system best fits the description? Linux. The automated hardware identification and driver loading during installation on most distros is way underrated. XP Pro has a cool system restore feature (for when registry hacks go horribly awry... Linux could really use one of these) and it seems relatively stable (crashed a few times already) but Fedora Core had me off and running way faster.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Oh, and they also brought us (or at least popularized the use of) the scroll wheel. Nice. Not having a Scroll Wheen (such as right now...) drives me nuts, scroll Wheels rock.
... pretty soon I realize I've scrolled through a long document doing scroll-reset-scroll-reset-scroll-reset with my finger and it actually took *longer* than if I'd just used the scrollbar. (Note this is not possible with Canon's or Apple's wheels: they're always faster than any other way.)
No, scroll wheels on mice kind of suck. You just appreciate them because Microsoft has previously screwed up scrolling so bad.
Maximize a window. Now slam your mouse to the right, and drag the scrollbar thumb. On every Windows machine I've ever used, there's dead space there. Similarly, if you do "full screen mode" in most of their apps, it puts the menubar along the very top (like the Mac), but leaves a dead row of pixels along the top so you get no benefit from it. Dumb dumb dumb.
Now, I don't know that any other recent operating system is a lot better at scrolling, but Microsoft actually had the opportunity to do it right (MS Windows encourages maximizing, and they have control over the OS and many common apps), but didn't. They decided to solve a software problem in hardware.
And on the hardware side, scroll wheels on mice simply aren't that good. You scroll a few lines, and then your finger runs out of wheel. Look at Apple's Click Wheel or Canon's Quick Control Dial -- they're continuous, so they're much faster than my scroll wheel (I own one device with each, and use them every day). They're also easier on my finger.
Scrolling one line is quicker with the scroll wheel than without, but scrolling through a long webpage is slower. So I'll scroll down a little bit with the wheel, then a little more, then a little more
Praising Microsoft for the scroll wheel is like praising McDonald's for offering a bad salad: I guess it's better than not offering anything green at all, but it doesn't make them a health food store. "Is marginally less sucky" is quite distinct from "good".
I use Linux and Windows both. They're suited best for different tasks, different people. But I'm definitely not so much a Windows guy. Here's why:
Linux can be very stripped-down if you want it to be (word to the Gentoo-ers -- yeah!). I can arrange my personal directories exactly how I want them, and I can get to everything I need very quickly, thanks to the omnipotence of the command line. Basically, Linux has the feel of a complex math equation that has been totally factored down to its optimal simplicity.
But Windows seeks to acheive a similar feeling of simplicity not through elegant design, but through showmanship: a veneer of simplicity acheived through even more underlying complexity. It throws all these abstraction layers over your files and your tasks, so that you have to rely on more software to do your stuff.
If there's one thing programming has taught me, it's that software is one of the most unreliable things humans have ever made. If the same task can be accomplished with less code, then you have better code -- always (unless less code results in horrible machine efficiency or lack of modularity).
If I want to get to all my stuff on my Linux partition, I just click up /garage.
If I want my stuff on Windows, I click into D:\. Not too bad, but wait -- all those abstraction layers in Windows constantly insist that I keep my files in C:\Documents and Settings\alucinor\My Documents. But what if I don't want to keep my music files in C:\Documents and Settings\alucinor\My Documents\My Music? Just set an option, right?
Heh ... I do that, and it ~would~ normally work. But since there's so many abstractions, so much software, I often will find crap getting stuck in the My Music folder yet again later, sometimes by the same program.
What I don't like about the Windows design philosophy is that they want to take your computer use into their hands, and they do it acting as though those hands of theirs are perfect. But when they're less than perfect, it just gets annoying, and their hands get in your way.
"Quit auto-archiving my media files, Media Player! Just show me a directory structure instead of artist/album breakdowns of what's in the My Music folder! I just want to burn a cd, dammit!"
Yeah. Looks like WinFS is just going to throw even more sediments of imperfect software in the way of what I want to do. "They're features!"
Advice to OS makers: let the OS stay in the background. Too bad that's impossible for a company that ~has~ to make the OS seem important.
When I use Linux I don't think about using Linux. I just use it.
When I use Windows I'm constantly reminded that I'm using Windows. That's bad design. But I suppose it's necessary when your business is the OS.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
1. (Summer 2005) get Mac OS Tiger
2. copy relevant functions
3. reverse engineer Spotlight to finally be able to build WinFS (which will be part of Longhorn SP2)
4. Profit!
I can only speak for myself here, but I've been using USB2.0 in Win2k since 2002 on one of my main systems. By no means does it work "out of the box" but I've never had any problems getting my USB2.0 drivers to work with 2 different motherboards, under both SP3 and SP4. All of my USB2.0 devices work great.
Otherwise, I'm with you guys. I like Win2k and can't stand XP.
Apple filed for a patent covering Spotlight back in January 2000 , which was awarded this year.
Apple didn't copy Longhorn at all.
Why does the shots of shorthorn look more and more like vaporware as we GO RigHT ALONG ???
I know gui's exist , but never have i seen ones that i totaly can not understand within it's context ?
Linux boxs have been up for years as well but the uptime keeps on reseting after so many days.
That does not cause a system crash just means netcraft gets wrong facts for the os. Ie uptime resets it must have crashed. Opps sorry that is a linux box doing it uptime reset.
Yep this bug is not classed as critical. Ie it does not crash anything. Just when it gets fix you will find linux systems stay up just as long as BSD.
Findutils also ripped them off.. http://freshmeat.net/projects/findutils/
Supposing one gave them the benefit of the doubt... "smart search inside documents using the metadata in popular file formats, and natural language content parsing" is really something of an obvious next step, given the state of the art. As is prebuilding the indexes and using them for type-ahead find. It's quite possible they both invented it.
(Sarcasm)But hey, if you cant beat them... cheat them.(/sarcasm)
Who do you think is being "cheated"? Desktop search applications have been around long before either Microsoft or Apple decided to bundle them with the OS.
In fact, I think it's bad that both companies seem to try to outdo each other in bundling ever more functionality with the OS. Apple is even worse in that regard than Microsoft.
Bill Gates was correctly observing that Apple was copying Microsoft's strategy; the underlying technology predates both Apple and Microsoft by many years, so neither copied from the other.
Still, it is perhaps good that Microsoft is getting a taste of their own medicine: after all, copying other companies' strategies and beating them to market with features is what Microsoft has been doing for so long.
Is Longhorn going to end up being a "must-buy" operating system or is this going to be a niche OS for specific purposes like NT? I really am not convinced either way I'm going to really NEED this, other than that game developers may end up making games whose minimal OS requirement is Longhorn.
Spotlight technology first appeared in the other iApps like iTunes (smart playlists) and iPhoto (smart albums).
But Apple didn't invent that technology, they copied it from other applications on other platforms. They just happened to implement it in their iApps and gave it a catchy name. Why is it OK with people like you when Apple goes pilfering other people's ideas, but it's not OK when Microsoft does it?
the Parent posting is not redundant. Go after the modders.
That kind of "universal interface" has been the goal of researchers for many years, long before Apple ever got into this space. The patent doesn't demonstrate innovation, it demonstrates that Apple is doing just like what Microsoft is doing: filing more and more bogus patents.
The loser isn't Microsoft (since Apple and Microsoft are in bed with one another), the loser is open source: these kinds of bogus patents threaten the availability of core desktop functionality on other platforms.
Great going, Apple: keep working towards a duopoly, with Microsoft as Dr. Evil and Apple as Mini Me.
How did u manage to take this screenshot ? And can u tell us what version of Longhorn Build is this ?
I only knoe thw latest version build is 4074 !
That's OK, Vicsun. I don't even see the code anymore. I just see blonde, brunette, redhead . . .
The links were actually for searching tools, I think you need a trip to the eye doctor!
When he's finished have him give me a call so I can find out how to have the same condition.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The user is searching for "report"
Take a look at the bottom of this screenshot.
Two pictures...
H.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
old news. in fact, its several weeks old too. i posted this to /. several times and it was rejected every time.
WinFS wont be in longhorn. to add to that, WinFS is a microsoft idea from the 1990s :P
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
3) Unlike sudo in longhorn, the system actually uses lowest priviledge, as in even if you are logged in as an admin, your applications lauch with lower priviledges, unless you authorize them.
What are you trying to say here? That most processes are not run sudo? Why would we think they were? Well, I guess we might think that since Windows is sort of like that now.
In OS X all processes by default run as the user, only when they request special (essentially sudo) privlidges does the dialoge come up. It seems pretty obvious that Longhorn would work the same way. After all, it's what they're stealing from in the first place.
I think you might be thinking of how when you use "sudo" a number of things you do after that do not require a re-athentication. But OS X's GUI "sudo" requires an authentication for every app that requests privledges, there is no concept of a "lingering sudo" in that domain (the shell sudo of course behaves as you'd expect).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The 6085 came out in 1985. Now I don't know if earlier versions had the trash, but the Macintosh in 1984 did.
Maybe I'm strange, but I consider that a feature, not a bug. I like being able to change the perceived file type without having to edit the file contents or metadata or whatever.
Yes, I like to be able to do that too. But as the top-level poster pointed out, the fact that you can do this AND they do not show you the file extension used means that your Jpg can suddenly become a very nasty executable. And that's not good.
I also happen to think that while you can alter the type, the OS should have some way (especially for new users) to say "hey, that file you're trying to load should really be loaded by this other app. Should I really obey the extension?", obviosuly much simplified but you get the idea.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just like XP, since when Longhorn is released XP will then be "classic"...
Man I'd love to see the look on your face when the UI changes from Longhorn to... default colorful XP! Ha Ha Ha Ha!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Betcha he is, just like a vast majority of the other Slashbots who couldn't find logic with both hands and a shovel.
:-)
I hate to break this to you, but if you're using two hands and a shovel you're going to be finding very little logic - perhaps some old coins though. So perhaps you'll come out ahead after all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The dark side of that is that you may grow quite a huge thumbs.db file over time that needs purging someday, or it slows system performance for all folders...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Spotlight is more like Apple's find feature on steroids. It's a natural progression.
Albuquerque PC
This looks like an ugly version of KDE to me.
The only pilfering they've done from Microsoft was fast user switching in 10.3, and Steve Jobs credited MS during his Panther keynote. Desktop searching is soemthing Apple has been working on for more than a decade. They put it into the iApps first because it is easy to implement for media libraries and of obvious utility.
The actual Spotlight implementation in 10.4 will owe much more to BeOS than to anything Microsoft has done. This is due to two things: First, Be had very sophisticated metadata in the filesystem years ago, and secondly they hired the guy who wrote Be's software to develop Spotlight. That's not stealing, that's hiring the guy who did it once before.
Lastly, through XP the local search facilities on any Microsoft OS have been mediocre at best. Up to 10.2 the Find command in the Finder did a very fast job of searching in it's own window. In 10.3 you can search from the toolbar in any Finder window (unless you've customised it out for some reason). In 10.4 saved searches will act like folders and will index all your email, music and other stuff.
Apple has been continually improving their desktop search facilties for years and Spotlight is just a logical next step. If anything it looks (vaguely) like Microsoft was trying to beat the features in Panther, and just didn't aim high enough.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I have been working with Macs and PCs for years now in an integrated environment, and let me tell you Mac creator codes from the os 8.6 days(when i started working with macs) have been nothing but trouble. This file cannot be opened because the application it was created with cannot be found. UGH sooo annoying, I have to drag the damn word files into office, thankgod OS X made a combination of the two(extentions and creator codes) but still why some Files labeled .html open in IE when i clearely many times said to use Firefox i dont know.
Honestly does any of this make the activities of using your computer to help you use it better, easier more efficiently and more elegant or trouble-free? Of course it doesn't. It's happy trash with more better bigger boobs.
But hey, you got upmodded for it. Congratulations on being rewarded for misinformation.
The wastebasket was in the version of the OS that Apple saw on their "visit" to Xerox's HQ. They took it out before the Star's launch.
From someone who worked at Xerox:
(I worked at Xerox on Star/Viewpoint from early '83 to '89.)
This was true of the first version of Star, but this problem was recognized very early, perhaps even before the first shipment of Star. A new project, known internally as Phoenix (although spelled "fnx") was designed to solve this problem. It drew from the Mesa Development Environment (known informally as Tajo) which originated on the Alto (I think first release was in 1977). The result was an open toolkit known as BasicWorkstation (desktop) and a compound document editor which had a "generic frame" mechanism. The Viewpoint Document Editor (as it was known) continued to use much of the Star code (including Traits), but reworked.
It was "closed" in that Mesa wasn't widely used in industry, although we gave several universities grants of hardware and software, the Xerox Development Environment (public brand of Tajo). Mesa was very similiar to Modula-3, and like any system with a large number of libraries (e.g. Smalltalk-80) it took months of learning before a programmer could be productive.
Interesting note about the wastebasket. When Macintosh came out Xerox bought a couple. I remember people being annoyed about this. I was told that an early design of Star included a trashcan, but it was decided that it was unnecessary in the version that was shipped. In Viewpoint (1985) we added a trashcan, but felt that we should use a "wastebasket" icon.
The document centric model (not knowing about applications, no quit) came from Star. In Viewpoint you had control over apps launching, but once launched they didn't quit. Most apps were launched at boot time -- hence the 3+ minute boot! As a result of this painfully long boot, a colleague (Makota Mita) invented a sleep/quick restart feature that took about 30 seconds to put the sytem to sleep and awake again after poweroff.
Star had "stationary" as well, although it didn't have the double-click-to-tear-off UI. Instead, users would open the Prototypes container (see icon in lower right of this image)
This prototypes container (labeled OSBU here because the photo was taken of someone's workstation who worked in the OSBU network) had one copy of every object available to the user -- blank compound docs, compound doc with lots of graphics examples, folders, networks (where you found printers, file servers, mail servers, address book/directory server), small database (aka record file), etc.
Note: I'm not saying that Xerox invented everything. I think Lisa and Mac introduced several ideas (e.g. the suspend/resume for each file in Lisa is a GREAT idea) that we didn't do, but there are more similarities than people sometimes think.
Dave
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Its Gnome 2.0!
MS has stollen Gnome 2.0, and repackaged it as
Longhorn.
I hope Gates gets an infection when he takes
the medal the Queene Mum gave him and
sticks it up his ass for safe keeping.
Toodles!
Fix xp before breaking a whole new version.. They already have plans for sp1?? geez
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
OS X looks for a creator code first, and then for an extension. That's why some files, which have creator codes, don't open up with the program you set as default.
Each program has a different creator code. This means that you can have two different files of any type, like JPEG pictures, which open with different programs.
Say you had a bunch of JPEGs that you wanted to look at and not edit. Those files could be set to open with Preview, while a different bunch of JPEGs, which you edited a lot, could be opened with Photoshop.
Apple sets things this way because it offers more flexibility than Windows offers. Imagine you were a movie editor, and you had some movies you wanted to edit, and some you just wanted to view. Because of creator codes, you could set some to open with MPlayer, and some to open with Final Cut Pro. It wouldn't be nice to have every movie open in Final Cut Pro by default.
You can change or erase creator codes in Mac OS 9 or in classic using Resedit. You can change or delete creator codes in OS X using several different programs. I use one called xFiles. xFiles can also batch-change file attributes. If there's no creator code, OS X will choose the program based on the extension.
Albuquerque PC
Kind of like how KDE copied the start menu from Windows? Oh, I forgot, we never talk about stuff like that here.
Uhmm, you do know that all this 'fast searching' was announced way back when WinFS was first announced, sorry no link for ya, but it was much much earlier than you ever heard about tigers, spotlights, or google desktop searching.
Yeah, they stole it from BeOS, but you don't hear anyone complaining about that do you. Mind you, how do you really call a 'logical next step' stealing. It's as if Henry Ford was complaining that some other car company decided to use round wheels instead of square slabs of rock.
Im.
The folders are gone, the file type column has been replaced with an 11 digit random number column, and there's no more help menu because it was never useful in the first place. They even found a way to do without window title bars. What will they think of next?
"may i ask why you need that amount of ram to begin with other then just to have it? i find even a gig of ram too much in most cases except when your runing a virtual pc or somthing similar."
I'm not the OP, but I've found that potrace needs LOTS of ram when doing a complicated, or very big picture.
For an example, try tracing the High-res Pascal.jpg posted last year.
http://www.pascal-central.com/pascal-syntax.html
How could having a web browser bundled with the OS be a selling point when they're already out on the market?
Peace.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
The difference is that Xerox let Apple use their ideas, in exchange for Apple stock.
Microsoft still likes to pretend they're not copying Apple. They certainly don't pay Apple for the ideas they use.
...with really fancy cameras on the lids, and have some sort of YUV video underlay thing for the wallpaper, and have dynamically updated wallpaper just like this.. The only thing is, is that it'd suck because the perspective effect couldn't be done, as well as getting a magical lens for the camera.. Still, it'd be like totally worthless active cammo for your laptop :) MWHAahahah
The difference is that Xerox let Apple use their ideas, in exchange for Apple stock.
And later sued Apple for stealing their ideas. Apple then paid them more money to settle a number of lawsuits that Xerox brought. Read "Bringers of Lightning" if you want to know more about that, sparky.
Microsoft still likes to pretend they're not copying Apple. They certainly don't pay Apple for the ideas they use.
Funny... Mac users claim that all the time, but forget that Microsoft also paid Xerox to use their ideas.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The Xerox "Star" (aka the 8010) with the wastebasket on the desktop came out in 1981. (The prototype, which had mouse, windows, and icons, was called the "Alto", and dates from 1973 (I used the Alto little bit around 1980; I don't recall it having a true desktop, though.) It's amazing that anyone commenting on this stuff would be unaware of the well-documented history of these innovations, how Apple got them from Xerox, etc. There have even been PBS television specials about it!
"et. al." has one too many periods. I leave it to you to find out which.
Traditional file managers have got me set in my ways. For all I know, this new approach might be millions of times more productive than the established one, but there's no way I'm going to go back and climb the learning curve again. The only time I ever use file search facilities is when I lose a file because the application saving it has outguessed me about where I want it to go. Otherwise I'm orderly enough to be able to find any file I want quite quickly. That's good enough for me.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
ShoeHorn
What do these "reference" numbers in the explorer-like app mean? Looks like Inode numbers to me... But it's a good thing they still hide file extensions as those are just too confusing for the casual user, uh-huh.
Note what ist says on the site where the image is linked from:
"In 1985 Xerox revamped the Xerox Star. The Xerox 6085, codename Daybreak, included a faster processor and an improved version of the Star application software, now called ViewPoint. [...] ViewPoint greatly improves upon the original star software."
http://toastytech.com/guis/star3.html
This guy is a KNOWN TROLL!
What is WinFS going to do for Windows? It thought it was going to add database like support in the filesystem but apparently it looks like from the screen shots that it already has it.
Benjamin Arai http://www.benjaminarai.com
gaaaay
Apple has used metadata extensively in their operating system to a degree that nothing on Windows has ever come close to:
The world didn't begin with either Apple or Microsoft. Neither Apple nor Microsoft invented this technology. Apple is just a bit louder about pretending they did.
The only pilfering they've done from Microsoft was fast user switching in 10.3 [...] The actual Spotlight implementation in 10.4 will owe much more to BeOS than to anything Microsoft has done.
Who cares about pilfering from Microsoft or Be? Neither Microsoft nor Be invented metadata or database file systems, or search. This stuff is based long-standing research in academia and lots of other commercial research labs.
(At least Microsoft is spending some money on research these days, Apple spends no money on research at all as far as I can tell.)
I guess you missed my joke. It wasn't the greatest, but i thought it was pretty good... and it played of the Matrix reference (which I did see thanks).
Nothing worse than an uptight geek, I always say.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm talking about programmatic change of the files, not users accidentially doing this in explorer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What I want to know is why are they so fucking fuzzy? That would give me a headache. Is it just an artefact of the jpeg compression? Are they trying for some kind of antialiasing record?
Come to that, what idiot uses jpeg for screenshots? I know MS and png aren't totally on speaking terms, but they could have used gifs...
The xerox system was later ported over to the Windows 3.1 environment. It was called GlobalView. Amazing operating system. It had the trash can.
Nothing touched this operating system. It was ahead of it's time.
Blew the shit out of Windows v3.1.
...when it was called KDE
"He was a wise man who invented beer." - Plato