Longhorn Beta is Disappointing

bonch writes "Well, Longhorn beta 5048 was released a day before the start of WinHEC 2005, suggestive of the fact that it is not terribly impressive. Paul Thurrott (a Windows writer whose previously reported review of Mac OS X Tiger was updated after user feedback) confirmed this today in day two of his blog from WinHEC. Microsoft needed something big to kill the hype of competitors, but screenshots show minor visual updates from the last beta, and to quote Thurrot: 'This has the makings of a train wreck.'"

Comments

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[ackthpt]

'This has the makings of a train wreck.'"

What? How many killed and injured? An unfortunate choice of words, considering what happened in Japan. I think that's a bit colored anyway from someone who hates mornings and is undoubtably in a less than spritely mood.

I thought the bit about "Longhorn will run fine on a 1GHz computer with 256 MB of RAM" being good (This is good news for today's PC users, some of whom are concerned that they won't have the PC muscle needed to run the next Windows.) rather disturbing. Sounds like the thing is going to be an absolute pig, like XP and 95 before it. (Remember when they said you could run 95 in 8MB? We found you realistically needed 24MB) Even though RAM is cheap, I'm not fond of loading 1GB into a box and then seeing about 1/3 of it taken up by stuff 'I may need and would be really neat if already loaded in memory so IE and other apps would appear to load quickly.' A bit like asking if someone has a pen knife and they hand you one of those swiss army knives with the works, when all you need is just a small sharp blade for 5 seconds (you spend 30 seconds trying to find the actal knife blade in the Victorinox monster.) A PC is a hole in your desktop into which you continually shovel money. With Longhorn you'd better get a bigger shovel

Lovely screen shots. What about the operating system are they supposed to convey, other than it looks more annoying than even XP (I don't do icons in Explorer windows, I do Details.)

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[rpozz]

Longhorn will run fine on a 1GHz computer with 256 MB of RAM

Following on from what you said, considering that the system requirements for XP Pro state a 300MHz CPU and 128MB of RAM, the real requirements for this thing could be huge. I'm sure many of you would strongly disagree with the idea that XP can run acceptably with 128MB of RAM.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[Loki_1929]

"I'm sure many of you would strongly disagree with the idea that XP can run acceptably with 128MB of RAM."

Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM. The problem comes when you try to install or run applications which require any memory whatsoever.

But Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[As Seen On TV]

Calling something disastrous "a train wreck" is a long-established idiom that isn't going to just go away because a train wrecks. And frankly, I think calling it "an unfortunate choice of words" is just a big, steaming load of language-police bull crap.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[macslut]

I would expect the system requirements of Longhaul to be significantly *less* than XP. Microsoft has already cut so many promised features, it will actually be a downgrade by the time it launches. Of course you'll still need like 1GB of video RAM if you want that spectacular icon preview feature that is all that is Longhaul.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM. The problem comes when you try to install or run applications which require any memory whatsoever.

Office 2003 on my Sony N505VE (333MHz Celeron w/128MB RAM) runs reasonably well under Windows XP.

But Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM.

That's better than what can be said of many Linux distributions (I'm thinking Fedora Core 3 here). Same with OS X (I'm thinking Mac Mini here).

Seems to me that Windows is less resource intensive than its closest competition.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[ackthpt]

Why MS ever come up with the concept that an OS was suuposed to be anything but a platform on which to run apps. I do not give a rat's ass about the OS. The OS doe not do any real "work." When it get in the way of apps, it is no longer of any value.

It probably helps to think of Windows in two different terms. 1) the Operating System 2) The environment. The OS probably changes very little from major release to major release. The environment, however, with all those background tasks, DLLs, pretty widgets and sounds are what seems to gobble up the majority of resources.

MS keeps bloating the OS, making apps ever less convenient and usable. MS seems hell-bent on "developing" itself out of business.

On the contrary, I think they've got some people who don't give a rat's patoot about hardware or kernel particulars, but just want a warm fuzzy computing experience and that is what they target. That and making sure there's always some incremental improvement which keeps you coming back every couple years and upgrading Windows or Office.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[rpozz]

Check you aren't running the 'nv' NVidia driver or standard SVGA driver if you have an NVidia card. That will make the graphics 'slow', as you describe. A 533MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM should be more than enough. Services that are just sitting there will 'sleep' if they aren't being used, so they shouldn't have too much effect.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[Digital Pizza]

Back in the day I decided to challenge Microsoft's 4MB RAM minimum for Win95, so I took out the 16MB stick of RAM from my system at the time (AMD 486DX4/120, normally 20MB RAM - funky board with four 30-pin slots and two 72-pin slots), leaving 4MB.

The only way I could get it to even boot was to disable the Soundblaster 16 driver. The drive didn't take a break at all from swapping until I shut down.

Technically, it ran. I'm not looking forward to Longhorn.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[vacuum_tuber]

This has the makings of a train wreck.

An unfortunate choice of words, considering what happened in Japan...

You're right. Let's begin using more sensitive terms for such things and then we won't have to check the news every day for disasters before we open our thoughtless mouths.

"Train wreck" could be "rail transport guidance mishap (RTGM)"

"Plane crash" could be "aeronautic ground avoidance exception (AGAE)"

"Tsunami" could be "exceptional aquatic waveform event (EAWE)"

"Earthquake" could be "sudden geological tension release event (SGTRE)"

"Flood" could be "unexpected hydrological intrusion (UHI)"

"Fire" could be "unwanted thermological surge cause by excessively rapid oxdidation of ambient combustibles (UTSCBEROOAC or UTSCEROAC)"

"Atomic attack" coule be "aggressive chain reaction event unfortunately proximate to valuable life or property (ACREUPTVLOP or ACREUPVLP)"

"Heart attack" could be "biogenic oxidant supply chain problem resulting in catastrophic system pump failure (BOSCPRICSPF)"

"Vomit" could be "retrograde migration of partially processed biological fuel mixture (RMOPPBFM or RMPPBFM)"

By using the abbreviations we could all pretend that nothing ugly happens or exists. "Hey, be careful with that! You could have a BOSCPRICSPF!" "What the fuck did you call me, pissbrain?"

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[strider44]

I have been in a train wreck where people were crushed and killed less than a metre in front of me (no more taking front carriage for me). Even in that light I find nothing wrong with someone using that expression.

Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None

[Handpaper]

The reason the Windows GUI appears 'snappier' is because it runs with the highest priority in the system. Microsoft did this to make its OS appear fast and, probably, because that's what many users want - a system that 'feels' quick. The X Windowing System on Linux runs (by default) with priority 0 (zero), where 20 is lowest and -19 is highest, and thus competes equally for system resources with web browsers, word processors and the like. Resource- and time- sensitive stuff like CD/DVD burning, music and video playback, and system processes typically run with higher priorities, but most of these are user- (or root-) tunable.

Train wreck indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even uglier than XP, which is no small feat.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[NatteringNabob]

I haven't been able to look at the screenshots as the site appears to be slashdoted, but I find it impossible to believe that any UI could be uglier than XP. My major complaint with XP isn't really the look though, it is the incredible amount of screen space it wastes in favor of eye candy. The first thing I do with an XP machine is set it back to Win95 mode and pick the classic skin for media player (which is truly an abomination with the default skin). Of course, these days I hardly run Windows at all since Fedora Core 3 does everything that I need a computer to do, and does it better and for less money than any version of Windows. I doubt Longhorn will be a train wreck as there are millions of people that will upgrade no matter how good or bad it is, and Microsoft will spend billions persuading them it is the best thing to do. It is amazing that people never catch on to the old wine in a new bottle trick. Of course, in the case of Windows, we aren't just talking about any old wine, we talking about vintage 30 year old Gallo Hearty Burgundy.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

God..Why can't - after 2000, XP and 3 years in development - the HORRID ancient bitmap artwork for "Control Panel" icon, etc. go away!

This is exactly the lack of focus on essential detail that will make LH a sad, second-level retread of W2K for users. Yeah, it's got an improved driver and development model. Yeah, web services are integrated throughout. It drives like a tank.

UI is artless and amature. Better work is seen on DeviantArt.com

Re:Train wreck indeed

[John Seminal]

It's even uglier than XP, which is no small feat

I agree, I don't like the look of XP, that is why when I use a XP machine I change the look back to windows classic. One I do that, it looks and feels exactly like my windows 2000 machine.

And what do those screenshots tell us anyways? I did not see anything new, something to make me excited about the new windows.

Maybe Microsoft is stuck in their 1998 way of thinking, when the new "version" of windows had people lining up outside of CompUSA at 5am to get a good space in line to be the first to own the new version. That will not happen again. Windows 2000 can do just about anything a user wants, it can play DVD movies, surf the web, play games. Why do we need a new version of Windows?

I would like to see Micrsoft do 2 things they won't. 1) I want greater control of my PC, but with the push for more DRM, I will get less control of my machine. And related to #1, I want to have tools work my way, I want to opt-in rather than opt-out, I want most services turned off unless I turn them on. 2) I would like Windows to come with some more software than just solitare. I'd love to see Windows come loaded with OpenOffice and Mozilla, and a ton of Open Source software. It would be a great sign of stregnth, to give away those products and then tell people "You have Open Office which is good, but for something really great come and buy Office".

I doubt Windows will do any of those things.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[MightyMartian]

Maybe Microsoft is stuck in their 1998 way of thinking, when the new "version" of windows had people lining up outside of CompUSA at 5am to get a good space in line to be the first to own the new version. That will not happen again. Windows 2000 can do just about anything a user wants, it can play DVD movies, surf the web, play games. Why do we need a new version of Windows?

Because at some point Microsoft will force the upgrade by sabotaging existing Win2k installs. No more service packs, patches or support. Doubtless WMP-Longhorn will get some delightful codecs that will not work on Win2k.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[Phillup]

God..Why can't - after 2000, XP and 3 years in development - the HORRID ancient bitmap artwork for "Control Panel" icon, etc. go away!

Because Apple doesn't have a control panel icon for them to use?

(yeah, yeah... I know. System Preferences. It was a JOKE!)

Re:Train wreck indeed

[charstar]

Doubtless WMP-Longhorn will get some delightful codecs that will not work on Win2k.

Or anywhere else for that matter. I still can't play many .wmv files on my 'amd64' build of Gentoo.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[avalys]

"For example, XP had the desert dunes wallpaper as default in the beta but switched to the grassy hills wallpaper for the release."

Uh huh. Quite the paradigm shift, there.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[PabloJones]

"they just need to add new features"

Not just new features... they have to add features that people actually want. Apple does this.

For example, Expose was the big hit of Panther, and now Spotlight and Dashboard are going to be the big hits of Tiger. Sure, the performance and GUI enhancements are nice (except for perhaps the Finder), but they are a sideshow.

Microsoft needs to add something that will make people actually want to upgrade. They can say they will improve security, but that isn't something the average user will notice right away. In fact, it should be something the user doesn't notice at all since the OS should protect them in the first place. Microsoft needs to have something that has a tangible effect on the end user.

If people can't tell between XP (or 2000, or ME for that matter), they are in for trouble. Then they won't bother purchasing it. But if they see that there is a good reason to upgrade, they will.

Jaguar and Panther could both play DVDs, surf the web and play games... but Apple came out with features in Panther that made people able to do those things easier and/or better than before.

My point is that most new features are mostly marketing fluff, and if M$ wants really pull this off, they have to offer something truly innovative and useful.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[nick8325]

One thing that never ceases to amuse me is the font folder.

Try bringing up c:\windows\fonts or Control Panel->Fonts.

Then File->Install New Font.

What appears? A genuine Windows 3.x dialog box. I kid you not. One with 16-colour icons and separate controls for choosing the drive and the directory. One which looked old in Windows 95 and is still in Windows 2003.

There's a picture of it in action at http://www.ascendercorp.com/fonthelp/fonthelp_wind ows.html

These sorts of problems are really sloppy.

Re:Train wreck indeed

[loconet]

Because the Control Panel is tightly integrated into the OS and thus the icon cannot and MUST NOT be changed. You cannot change the icon colours without changing the way the calc.exe does addition, if you change calc.exe, Windows Explorer will change to a maroon colour which then will result in kernel32.dll not being found which is needed by notepad.exe and thus it will not start-up and if notepad doesn't start, Internet Explorer will need to work "Offline" and we know what happens when Internet Explorer is "Offline", you cannot login to MSN Messenger!

Shut Do!

[American AC in Paris]

"Shut Do..."? What the heck is that? Have they decided to bring Microsoft Bob back as a plucky caveman named "Shut" or something?

(On a serious note, it'd probably be a good idea to fix that--otherwise, grandma's gonna have a hard time figuring out what the "Shu..." button does on her large-text setup...)

Re:Shut Do!

[fizban]

That's the Homer mode you see there. "Shut.. Doh!"

Re:Shut Do!

[Storlek]

grandma's gonna have a hard time figuring out what the "Shu..." button does on her large-text setup
It starts a game of shuffleboard, of course.

What I'd like to know is, have they done anything to make the actual shutdown dialog more useful? The button icons completely fail to depict what they're supposed to be. I had to use a Spanish computer one time and couldn't figure out how to turn it off. I'd never used Windows XP before, and those buttons are absolutely meaningless without the text underneath them.

Re:Shut Do!

[Clueless Moron]

Standard? I do recognize the broken circle with a line through its circumference as a "power" button, because I have many devices with that.

But note: when a device is off, and I press the button with that icon, it turns on. Conversely, if the device is already on, pressing it turns it off.

So, now here I am presented with what seems to be a power button, on a device that is currently on. So pressing it should logically turn it OFF.

Except, hey, WTF, why is it yellow? And what's that weird red thing next to it? I have searched through my entire house, and I haven't found a single device with that icon on it. On the other hand, I've found paired on/off buttons where a single line (|) means on, and a circle (o) means off. I've always understood those to be switches dedicated to on or off, and the combined broken circle one to be a toggle.

So hell, now I don't know what to do. Well, that happy looking green thing looks to me like it must be a lively "just keep things on please" button, so I'll consider that a cancel button and press that.

Whoops.

Re:Shut Do!

[Storlek]

No, sorry. You've very likely seen the text and therefore know what the buttons mean. It has nothing to do with your brain.

And: name one device with a button that has a bunch of lines organized in a circle meaning "restart". A better icon for restart might have been something like a web browser's reload button, or maybe the "recycle" logo.

I couldn't figure out the difference between the red and yellow buttons. The icons are nearly identical, and with my experience with 'nix window managers, I figured that perhaps one of the buttons saved what programs were running before logging out, and the other one didn't... but then what would the green lines-in-a-circle mean? I couldn't think of reasonable meanings for all three buttons, so how could I be sure that any interpretation I had for one or two of them was correct?

Consider another common association: red means "incorrect" and green means "correct." So maybe the green button means "yes, I want to shut down the computer" and the red one means "never mind"? There's just way too much room for ambiguity, and besides, if the icons are so poorly designed that the only way to tell the buttons apart is by the color, they fail to be useful.

Pre beta review

[Joe U]

Wow, a pre-beta release that isn't feature complete has 'the makings a train wreck'.

Give me a break, it's not even considered beta 1.

It's like complaining about interior design of an unbuilt house.

'OMG, I didn't want open walls and exposed wires! I wanted green wallpaper.'

Re:Pre beta review

[Rodness]

On the other hand, since they seem to have be pushing most of the important bits forward to release them for XP because of the delays in the Longhorn schedule, I'm just not at all surprised that their screenshots look like XP with a new coat of paint.

I really don't know what else they can do that's going to be terrifically revolutionary other than under the hood improvements. And they're being very tight lipped about those (what a shock).

I'm just glad that I heard somewhere (I think it was a cnet article in the last couple weeks) that they're going to improve the ability for laptops to be members of multiple domains. That's a big plus...

But the graphical crap? Most people are going to disable it to try(!) to minimize the resources that windows sucks so that they might actually have cpu cycles for tasks instead of eye candy.

Re:Pre beta review

[Joe U]

I would be very suprised if the shell was a high priority in beta 1, especially when they are changing the graphics subsystem and parts of the file system.

You can't go and toss up a new shell using new technology that hasn't been designed yet. Wait till RC1 to review.

Re:Pre beta review

[BandwidthHog]

I've never used a virus scanner/firewall with Windows XP/Windows 2000.

And that's why I just sent those pictures you took after school last Tuesday to your parents. I thought sending them from your Gmail account was a nice touch, didn't you, Bob? Only time will tell if your sister ever forgives you for stealing her panties.

Re:Pre beta review

[daviddennis]

It does seem interesting that they've been shedding features, seemingly backing off from most of the things that were supposed to make Longhorn special. In the mean time, Apple's powering along and giving Mac users exactly what was promised in versions of MacOS X. I think that's a bad sign by any standard.

Another bad sign is that they claimed that it would be finished in mid-2006 and now it's "holiday" 2006. So in theory they might release December 24th now.

As I remember them, betas of MacOS X were feature-complete but very slow, and then speeds improved as the release got closer. I wouldn't expect enough changes in the interface to make it less than disappointing to these reviewers.

Those indications make me feel the Longhorn project is in deep trouble.

*

I worked in a job when I had to support mainstream (non-computer people) with Windows systems.

Most of them seemed to like the Windows XP interface better because it was more cheerful. In fact, a few of them even liked Hotbar and didn't appreciate my suggestion to improve their slug-like performance by removing it. It was, after all, pretty.

So don't expect that everyone acts like a geek and removes it. I'm a pretty hardcore geek myself and even I prefer XP's interface to Windows 2000's gray Depression City.

Of course I prefer MacOS X to either, but you get the idea.

D

Re:Pre beta review

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a pre-beta release that isn't feature complete has 'the makings a train wreck'.

If Microsoft want to compare OS 10.4 with Longhorn as if Longhorn is a finished product, can you really blame everyone else for treating it the same way?

Re:Pre beta review

[diegocgteleline.es]

Paul has been following the Longhorn evolution for a couple of years. When he says "the makings a train wreck" he means that there has been basically ZERO evolution since the 2004 winhec.

Not a surprise, it's know that 90% or more of the windows division spent its time working on SP2 until SP2 got released.

Re:Pre beta review

[BandwidthHog]

Those indications make me feel the Longhorn project is in deep trouble.

I'm starting to think that they're at the same point Apple was at in the 90s: every attempt to build a modern successor to OS 9 from scratch crashed and burned horribly. They finally climbed up out of their grave by purchasing NeXT and turning NeXTstep into Mac OS X.

How will MS tear themselves out of this cycle?

Re:Pre beta review

[Total_Wimp]

I'm just glad that I heard somewhere (I think it was a cnet article in the last couple weeks) that they're going to improve the ability for laptops to be members of multiple domains. That's a big plus...

...only if it's easy to disable. The last thing I need is my users joining to another domain and getting a)the other domain's domain admins have Administrator rights over the laptop and b)all the logon scripts and group policy of the other domain are convieniently applied to their computer. Translation for all you Unix and NetWare admins out there:it's like hopping over to a client site and giving root on your laptop to their admins. Why would you want to do that?

I have actually had end users join their laptops to the domains at client sites for one reason or another and my head started spinning around and smoke came shooting out of my ears. If they make this any easier I'll start doing flips in mid-air, I'm sure.

Like I said, easy to turn off then no problem. Easier to turn on and I will cry.

Re:Pre beta review

[Phillup]

How will MS tear themselves out of this cycle?

They'll buy the remnants of Amiga and fsck it up so badly that not even the most rabid fan would ever touch it again.

Then when they've had a good laugh, they'll get back to work and add another 128MB to the memory requirements.

Why am I not surprised?

[CrackedButter]

The first screen shot is in monochrome, the original Macintosh had more shades of grey than this! :)

sarcasm

[DarkHelmet]

What is he talking about?

No more Super Mario Land default theme! I'd say that's a step forward.

Re:sarcasm

[Planesdragon]

By, oh, ignoring the theme and focusing on the work?

If you judge someone by their theme, then you really shouldn't be in IT.

Re:sarcasm

[As Seen On TV]

I don't want to make an enemy here, but you've hit on one of my personal hot buttons.

The core vision of the company I work for is to make IT as you know it obsolete.

Seriously. Right now, computers fucking suck. Seriously. All of them, even the ones we make. Computers are absurdly unreliable, and ridiculously hard to operate. The mere fact that we've raised an entire generation of people who think that IT is a valid career choice is testament to how we've dropped the ball for the past forty years.

We're just now -- literally, just this week -- starting to get to the point where computers are beginning to understand two vital things: inference and implication. If I e-mail a document to somebody in my address book, my computer can now infer that that document is related to that person; when I search for that person, I get that document, or vice versa. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Servers should be entirely self-configuring, entirely self-adapting. Can you believe that just a couple of years ago, people had to sit down in front of servers and key in lists of IP addresses to enable things like print services? You had to actually sit down and tell your computer about the printer sitting next to it.

No more. Now, with Bonjour (née Rendezvous, and please don't ask) computers and services are auto-configuring. This is, again, just the tip of the iceberg.

You're probably going to hate me for saying this, but IT employees contribute absolutely nothing to an organization. They produce nothing, they transport nothing, they collect nothing. They're an expense. One we hope to render completely obsolete.

Will we still need computer repair men? Sure! We need air-conditioner repair men. We need electricians. We need plumbers. But the idea that a small business should be expected to keep an air-conditioner repair man or an electrician or a plumber on staff full time is absurd. Someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, the idea that a small business should have its own computer repair man will be equally absurd.

That's our goal. That's where we think we're headed.

Re:sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what, other Apple employees read this board. And if you really are an Apple employee, you might want to watch your language, if you don't want to have management try to figure out who you are by what you know.

Regardless of your passion, your language does not reflect well on Apple. I'd almost think you were some 15 year old with a student developer account on ADC or paid the regular price to get access to Tiger seeds, so you know what's in the software.

People on this board are Apple customers or potential Apple customers. Insulting them is unbecoming. If you really are a Tiger engineer, perhaps you need some time off away from the computer before you post more.

What's more, some people like posting to boards like this without thinking that the corporate mothership is watching their every move. Why not let people discover Tiger for themselves and speculate about it? It builds more excitement about it if they learn just how cool stuff is on their own.

It's like you want to stifle discussion or something. I don't really think you're an employee, because you'd post anonymously.

Or maybe you're actually from the competition, trying to leave a bad taste in people's mouths.

Which is not to say that what you say is necessarily untrue or in some cases unfunny, just, not said with Apple elegance, and thus, should not be said with the Apple 'we.'

Re:sarcasm

[vadim_t]

On the contrary. The problem is that the general population had been fed a pipe dream to them, and now are finding it wasn't true. You are right now describing this dream.

I don't need IT people myself. Computers are easy to fix and service. IMHO, the largest problem ironically is with all the usability improvements that have been made.

Try with a comparison:
Not so long ago, at a company that sells stuff the computers would run DOS. The disk would be nearly blank, the only thing running on it constantly would be the selling terminal application. It would be efficiently handled with only the keyboard.

Then there would be a big server somewhere handled by a few people without much trouble.

These days, the same computer runs Windows. It faces viruses and worms due to stupidities committed in the name of ease of use. The same application is now a GUI, which makes it really pretty, but adds extra workload in the terms of interface programming, which increases the possible failure mode, and makes automated testing harder.

The whole system is managed by an army of often poorly educated people, who run around the company removing viruses, reinstalling systems, and bitterly complaining that people can't just get into their head that life would be much easier without Outlook.

Not saying that the UI hasn't improved, but I'm pretty sure that for commercial purposes the DOS version of all this stuff was working better.

Re:sarcasm

[Just Some Guy]

I don't want to make an enemy here, but you've hit on one of my personal hot buttons.

I generally like your posts, but this one was kind of dumb. Look, we've been hearing this promise for about 30 years now, and I don't think it's any more true today than it was then. The fact is that companies staff all of their mission-critical business functions and probably always will.

Examples? My company is not a shipper, but we have a full-time employee that handles shipping arrangements, puts incoming parcels where the belong, and has outgoing boxes ready when FedEx gets here. We're also not a staffing company, but we have an HR person. Neither are we a construction company, but we have a maintenance guy who also remodels our building as needed. Finally, we're not an IT consultant, but we have IT people on staff.

IT people will go away whenever companies no longer use IT. Until then, every place that depends on their services for daily operation will have employees that run them, just as they also have shipping, HR, and maintenance workers. I like your company (and would like them even more if you sent some free stuff my way, hint-hint), but you've done an excellent job of advancing the state of the art of the computers on the average employee's desk. That's just the tip of the iceburg for a lot of us, and no amount of CUPS-style printer autoconfiguration will change it.

Screenshots?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

He's complaining that the screenshots aren't very different? I thought the point of Longhorn was primarily the changes within the OS internals.
I could pop a Ferrari engine into a Pinto, and this guy would complain about the air freshener hanging from the mirror.

--
get a free laptop

Re:Screenshots?

[American AC in Paris]

I could pop a Ferrari engine into a Pinto, and this guy would complain about the air freshener hanging from the mirror.

...see, I'd be complaining about how the Pinto suddenly started flipping itself with its own torque...

Re:Screenshots?

[mrchaotica]

No, it wouldn't flip itself -- as soon as the rear bumper touched the ground it would blow up!

Re:Screenshots?

[pavon]

He's complaining that the screenshots aren't very different?

Where did you get that? I read all the links and a couple other of his blog entries and didn't see anything that mentioned why he disliked it at all - just that he was disapointed, and he will have "more about that later". Which makes it a fairly pointless story to discuss, but ... :)

If I were to complain about this release it would not be because it was not different, but because many of the changes are bad. Scrollbars in a menu? That isn't an issue with lack of polish leading up to the beta release - that is a stupid idea that should have never made it past the design stage. There are a few other bugs shown - look at the column headers in a non-column view of the new file explorer, but those can be written of as pre-beta problems. The visual theme also needs alot more polish which is understandable for a prebeta, but I like the direction they are taking it.

But really there isn't much to say until someone that has tried it actally writes about it unlike this story.

ME?

[shamowfski]

Train Wreck nothing. If we are going to refer to unreleased software as a trainwreck, then what the hell are we going to call Windows ME?

The build for WinHec is a build for driver makers

[km790816]

It was made very clear that the build for WinHec was soley provided as a platform to test driver compatability. MS still has a couple of months until it releases Beta 1.

Please hold your flame till then.

Train wreck?

[winkydink]

As long as they don't totally fvck up what they already have, I can't see a train wreck.

Windows ME. Now that was a train wreck.

Re:Redmond

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

"Redmond speed-up the copies."

We get signal!

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

--
get a free laptop

Screenshots

[FriedTurkey]

I actually like the new look. It is 20 times better than the default XP theme. I have to switch every XP work machine to "Classic" because I hate the "Fisher-Price" coloring scheme of XP. Computers should look professional and not like "My First Computer".

Beta 5048?

[commodoresloat]

Is 5048 the expected release date?

The WinHec demo seemed ok to me

[bmajik]

I watched the 1hr45min keynote from WinHec that included a number of longhorn demos. I haven't personally been playing with LH builds so seeing the stuff demoed was new to me. I thought it was nice. The desktop search capabilities that will be in LH client inspite of not having a real WinFS underneath are surprising.

I'm not interested in getting in a comparative argument with some other eye-candy oeprating system that apparently ships this month; i'm only speaking about longhorn in terms of what i saw demoed and comparing it to what windows xp does today.

One interesting thing i noticed is that i thought some of the demos would be a bit.. "cooler". The underlying possibilities with the new frameworks that are going in should really have some growing room in them that the demos really didn't convey.. or so i'd think.

The Metro format was a surprise to me as well. I'd be curious to see some sort of technical analysis of it. Note also that from a cursory glance it seems like a royalty free format that wouldn't necessarily shut out F/OSS implementations.

Black boxes...

[MisterLawyer]

"This has the makings of a train wreck."

Shouldn't that say plane wreck now that Microsoft is using black boxes?

It's JUST an OS.

[Junior J. Junior III]

What's so exciting about an OS? Isn't it the apps that we really care about? As long as the OS is secure, doesn't crash, and runs what I want it to run well on the hardware I choose to run it on, isn't that what counts?

(And tack on "and is open source" as well for the perhaps 3% of the world who really understands why that matters...?)

Fester...

[Stanistani]

>to quote Thurrot: 'This has the makings of a train wreck.'

*Dons engineer cap and lights cigar*

Just call me Gomez Addams!

Re:Opinions on GUI.

[j14ast]

yes.
looks at apple. (see's the sexiness that is osx)
looks at linux. (see's the shear glee of wobbly windows, and enlightenment)
looks at 2k. (see's something that looks worse than os7, never mind x, and looks shlocky compared to any linux wm short of kde1)
looks at xp and goes blind.

*cough* BULLSHIT *cough*

[DroopyStonx]

NOTHING from Microsoft is disappointing.

I call shenanigans.

Wow

[Pike]

The commenters on Paul's site are even more juvenile than we are.

Shadows in the shadow world

[magarity]

The Recycle Bin icon casts a shadow to the left. All the other shadows, including RB's own text, casts shadows to the right. Is it because the RB is itself in a shadow world halfway between here and oblivion??? Such subtle metaphysical goings-on in Longhorn!

Re:Shadows in the shadow world

[As Seen On TV]

I'm glad somebody else pointed this out. This made the rounds internally under the headline "What's wrong with this picture?"

Look, I'm not gonna criticize Microsoft for showing early, very rough code and having it look ...well, early and very rough. If you go back and look at the Mac OS X public beta, or even the 2004 WWDC demo of Tiger, you'll find that our early builds differ significantly from the final releases of our products.

But the thing is...every single one of us, to a man, would be ashamed to show something like that in public. Seriously, we'd hang our heads in embarrassment.

Microsoft's position, of course, is, "Don't look at the icons or the controls. They're not important. We're demoing underlying technology." Which is fine. But that's not how we do things. If you're going to take the time to put a UI on a demo product at all, take the time to do it right. Don't just slap something on there and say, "Oh, this'll all come out before we ship." That's not fair to your product or your customers.

It's just another sign of the difference between our philosophy and Microsoft's philosophy. I don't think either one is objectively right or wrong, but I won't hesitate to tell you which one I think is better.

Re:Shadows in the shadow world

[pragone]

Steve... is that you???!!!

Re:Shadows in the shadow world

[As Seen On TV]

I just checked each of these on my machine.

Activate Dashboard, the iChat/Volume/Battery/Clock menus in the menu bar still work and pop up over the Dashboard layer.

Not correct. A click outside a widget dismisses Dashboard.

Open a .pdf in Preview, activate Dashboard, and the cursor will change to a hand as it floats over the (dimmed and unclickable) document.

Not correct. Outside widgets, the cursor is an arrow regardless of context.

Dashboard Translation widget, click the 'swap' button several times and the focus ring will flicker madly

I wasn't able to reproduce this. I don't know what you meant by "several." I clicked it 20 times. No error.

Finder, start renaming a file and the insertion caret will flicker twice on each keystroke until the name wraps to the second line

That was an occasional bug in 8A425. Are you using a pirated copy?

System Preferences/Mail, now showing the third major window style on the system (Aqua, Metal, and now Plastic)

No, that's Aqua.

Spotlight, randomly fails to index non-boot-drive partitions

Obviously not reproducible. Spotlight will not index a volume if there's insufficient free space available. We look for about 1/10th of one percent, if I remember correctly.

Your response may be "oh well, they're all minor"

No, my response is "Please stop using pirated copies of Tiger that you download off the Internet and then complaining about them."

Re:Shadows in the shadow world

[As Seen On TV]

Yes, that explains why companies like Apple, and even Microsoft in their own, glacial way, are innovating on a fundamental level while Linux is ...you know. Not.

I'm being totally serious now: Linux is easily twenty years behind Apple. Seriously. Think about where all the attention is going: Human-user interface design. That was Apple in 1985. Today, Apple is doing no-shit innovation.

Even little things make a huge difference. Linux, being almost a file-by-file clone of Unix, is crippled by a vast and interdependent web of system watchdog services. There's init, there's inetd, there's watchdogd, there's cron, all separate and overlapping services whose job it is to start services. All complex, all in need of configuration. What did we do? We scrapped it all, replacing the whole mess with launchd. A single service with XML (meaning self-checking) configuration files.

Do you know what happens on a Unix machine if your inittab file contains garbage data? The system refuses to boot! With XML configuration files, a config file that fails to validate will simply be ignored. The system will run in a degraded state until the file is corrected.

It's stuff like that. Yes, we're doing big-time flashy innovation with things like Core Data and Spotlight. Those are no-shit world-changing things. But we're not just glomming new services onto old infrastructure. We're evolving the operating system, replacing things that are dumb with things that make more sense.

So tell me again, oh please, how Mac OS X is a 20th-century concept.

Re:Shadows in the shadow world

[Knytefall]

Activate Dashboard, the iChat/Volume/Battery/Clock menus in the menu bar still work and pop up over the Dashboard layer.

Not correct. A click outside a widget dismisses Dashboard.

It's a subtle bug (and I am using a legit final copy of 8A428):
1. Activate Dashboard
2. Move a widget (I tried a sticky and the weather widget) over the Menu Extras area (i.e. iChat/Volume/Clock)
3. Release the mouse button.
4. Click AND HOLD on the widget over where a Menu Extra would appear (i.e. click on the widget where the menu bar clock would be).
5. Drag the mouse. The Menu Extra's menu is revealed.

This does not affect the any of the 'standard' menu items, nor the Apple or Spotlight Menus. It is also possible to initially position the widget over any location in the menu bar, click and hold the widget such that the mouse pointer is over the menu bar, then drag the widget over the menu extras and see the same error.

It's not a big deal. But the problem is still there. =) I accidentally encountered this problem last night.

Re:Shadows in the shadow world

[As Seen On TV]

Kerning is supported in X font renderers. Stop spreading false informations.

I'm sure that's true. But it ain't workin'. Go look for yourself. Type Wo or Ya or Tu and tell me that they look right to you. Get somebody to fix it and I will happily stop spreading false informations.

I removed the /etc/rcX directories completely

That's fine. I was talking about /etc/rc, though, not the scripts under /etc/rc.d. When you typed "/etc/rcX," I was confused about what you meant. Sorry about that.

If you hose /etc/rc or /etc/inittab, your system will not boot. Jacking with init scripts like /etc/rc.d and /etc/init.d and other service config files like /etc/crontab will result in other run-time errors, but they probably won't be system-fatal.

That's quite different from "being harrassed by lawyers".

So if it were just the torch-and-pitchfork-waving Internet mob and not Moglen and his cadre of fanatics, that would somehow be okay with you?

I am also sure you'll find websites like http://i18n.kde.org/ worth reading.

Yes, I certainly did. The lesson? You have a very, very long way to go. I mean come on. Environment variables? And four different ones at that?

In order to localize, you have to adapt not just the UI language, but the number and currency formats, date and time formats, the system calendar and measurement units. For example, if you pick up your computer and move it to Tel Aviv, you have to switch the language to Hebrew and the writing system to right-to-left. You have to use the Hebrew calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar. You have to use 24-hour time instead of 12-hour time. You do get to continue to use the ###,###.## number format, but you have to switch currency units to the new sheqel and units of measurement to metric.

That's localization. Linux can't even approximate it yet.

Network autoconfiguration tools existed for a long time before Rendezvous.

You know we're not talking about DHCP here, right? We're talking about the fact that the routing table dynamically reconfigures itself based on available interfaces via configd. We're talking about the fact that if you're currently using your AirPort card and you plug in to an Ethernet port, all your services will invisibly move over to the new port instantly without interruption.

Beyond that, yes, we have Bonjour. Which, incidentally, we give away for free in a POSIX-compliant reference implementation on our Web site.

The goal of ZeroConf was to provide a way to do it (for network services) without the need of a server.

And that would have been really cool, had anybody actually done anything about it. Nobody did until we came along. We took the Zeroconf spec and turned it into Rendezvous, which thanks to a trademark settlement is now Bonjour. In the process, we built it into everything, created a compliance logo program for it, and distributed reference implementations to vendors. Now Bonjour is built into every network printer ... thanks to us.

Quoting the same article again: When a file does appear in that directory, cron automatically starts running.

I've lost track of which article you're quoting. But believe me, okay? I'm sitting in front of a computer with Tiger right this very second. The cron daemon is not running.

See for example http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Accessibility-HOWTO/

How is a blind person supposed to read a lengthy tutorial? Aside from that, the document you refer to consists of a lengthy list of third-party work-arounds for services that should be a core part of the operating system. Should be? No, in this case, they have to be. It's a bootstrap probl

To be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has been working on Longhorn even longer than they worked on Windows 95. So its appropriate to comment on the state of the beta after billions of dollars of work over a long period of time.

After 4 years, if this is all they can show, then I'm buying stock in Apple, because if MS attempts to "lock down" digital "rights", then people will be sprinting towards the Mac platform just as fast as they can to get away from this abortion of an OS.

Re:To be fair

[Tim C]

if MS attempts to "lock down" digital "rights", then people will be sprinting towards the Mac platform just as fast as they can

Sure - sprinting to buy a whole new computer, new set of applications, new games, etc just so something that they don't understand or even know about isn't part of their OS.

Re:To be fair

[killjoe]

You never know. IF they can't play the music they already paid for or watch the movies they already paid for or play some cute foreign commercial their friend sent them, then it could happen.

Disappointing is subjective

[Twillerror]

The slogan is very subject and so incomplete.

John Smith calls Longhorn disappointing would have been better.

Essentially slashdot turned a story that should have been called "New longhorn build/screenshots" into major flaimbait.

I seriously think that Slashdot should allow their subscribers to "vote" on the new stories that most people don't see...or a subset..if to many people think it is bad it gets red flagged for Taco to stare at or something.

Re:ummmm

[Storlek]

Considering the fact that the original betas of Mac OS X still looked quite a bit like a mixture of NeXT Rhapsody and the OS 8/9 style, and that changing the look of the UI is generally not all that difficult (heck, 3rd party apps can do it without even having any access to the source code) I wouldn't be surprised if the final version looks completely different from any current screenshots. Besides, they pulled a trick like that when XP came out; IIRC, all the beta screenshots just looked like Win2K.

It Just Works!(tm)

[SamMichaels]

Looks exactly like XP using an OS X theme...but remember kids, It Just Works!(tm)

Although I'm glad they've decided to use technology created in the late 60s (which SCO owns and Al Gore invented) as well as a lovely new password scheme guaranteed to create jobs in the IT support workforce from all the clueless office lemmings. Not to mention how IE7 won't be exclusive to Longhorn nor will WinFS be included.

So like I said...we're paying $299 for XP with an OS X theme.

Re:They can't ever do the "right" thing.

[FLAGGR]

Have you seen that start menu? More usable? It's got a motherfucking scrollbar inside of a fucking menu.

Whats next, a row of ugly windows tabs, with some hidden, or even better multiple rows of tabs?

Re:The build for WinHec is a build for driver make

[scotlewis]

He's not commenting on the objective quality of the OS; he's commenting on the quality of it relative to the last Longhorn release:

This is a painful build to have to deal with after a year of waiting, a step back in some ways. I hope Microsoft has surprises up their sleeves.

In other words, the OS is trending from promising towards disappointing. The whole point of the big screen dog and pony show is to build excitement about the coming OS (yes, even at the developer shows). By bringing out a version that seems worse than the last one MS is killing enthusiasm for Longhorn.

try "successor to OS 5"

[Heisenbug]

I'm starting to think that they're at the same point Apple was at in the 90s: every attempt to build a modern successor to OS 9 from scratch crashed and burned horribly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent

It seems that Apple was working on "an object-oriented OS on top of a new microkernel" in C++ since *1988*, following System *5.0*. They finally gave up on it in 1996, when they bought NeXT, which had many of the same concepts and was released as part of OS X in 2001 ...

It's a lot like reading the history of the space program, isn't it? First you've got airplanes that can go into space being ready any day now, and Mars by 1980, and now we're just happy if we can get satellites into orbit ...

Re:The buttons make perfect sense

[Fred Foobar]

"Go" doesn't in any way mean "restart" to me. How on earth did you get that association (besides looking at the text below the button)?

Re:Bwahahaha

[xsspd2004]

Seven floppies, six where meaningful. DOS came on 3. Yes, I've been at this too long.

Re:Scroll bar in menu

[clem]

I believe the scroll bar is temporary until the "menu slide show" functionality is completed. Once that's implemented, the menu will show you one animated icon at a time with marquee-style text prompting you with, "Is this the application you wish to run?" After a two second delay the next menu-item is displayed.

Don't worry though if this sounds tedious. A set of slide show controls nested within the menu will allow you to skip forward, backward, and set the delay time between slides. Who would of thought such a rich user interface could be imbedded into a menu?

Wow! Longhorn will do what Linux distros do now!

[xtracto]

So, for example, the icon for a Word document in Longhorn displays a miniature version of the first page of that document and a Microsoft PowerPoint slide show icon displays the first slide

Sorry but, don't KDE have this feature now?? and frome quite some time? Again, I think MS is just copying features from other platforms and selling them as Great Inovation(tm)

Re:The buttons make perfect sense

[drew]

yeah, except red (stop) could be meaningfully used to convey all three, and yellow (how do you come up with an automatic association between yellow with "stand by"; if anything, it would be "caution" or "prepare to stop") and green (go) don't really apply to any of the three.

as far as the icons on numerous home appliances, i think the 'power' icons they use for shut down and stand by tend to be used fairly interchangeably, and i've never seen the 'tentacle' icon anywhere that i can remember.

at any rate, my personal pet peeve regarding the shutdown dialog, as someone who tends to use keyboard shortcuts far more often than the mouse, is that it is not clear which one is currently selected and which one will be activated when i hit enter. i usually hit the left/right arrow keys a couple of times and watch for the annoyingly subtle change in color to know which icon is currently highlighted before i hit enter.

Re:The buttons make perfect sense

[sevinkey]

Next time I see a green light I'm gonna shut off the engine in my car and turn it back on again :)

Re:They can't ever do the "right" thing.

[Dynedain]

Do you pick the color of paint before the foundation of your house has been laid?

Obviously you have never built your own home or even seriously thought about architecture. Yes of course you pick the paint before you start the foundation. You don't want to be designing while in final production do you? That would be stupid.

Not a beta!

[JonXP]

This is a preview build for hardware makers to test their hardware and drivers. It is NOT a beta, it's more of an alpha. NOT feature complete, and NOT meant to show off the capabilities of Longhorn.

Sheesh, people.

At least have the intelligence to tell the diffrence between a beta and a preview build.