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Longhorn Preview
itraor writes "PC World has previewed Longhorn, not the first one out I guess. Among the few noted features is that Windows now offers translucent UI, finally catching up with Apple. "
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"PC World has previewed Longhorn, not the first one out i guess. Amoung the few noted features is that Windows now offers transluscent UI, finally catching up with Apple. "
And who said Slashdot doesn't have quality control ?
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Windows has supported hardware alpha blending since Windows 2000. OS X has supported it since about the same time. When will X.org and desktop environments bring this capability to linux?
That interface is more cluttered and garish than go.com, or some other failed late-90s "web portal". I'm used to trying to help users who wind up with some kind of mental block against using the start menu because every time they click on the start menu they're so overwhelmed with confusing options and information they don't understand that it's more than they can hendle. I guess I should preemptively get used to helping users who wind up with a similar mental block against using the windows file browser.
I thought, when I first saw that Mac OS X release, that no one would ever make a clumsier, more overdesigned OS theme. Microsoft seems to be doing their absolute best to prove me wrong with every single release, reaching new heights of gangly ugliness with first "luna", then "avalon"...
Yes, once again its another dupe - why is everyone still so surprised that this happens? The 'editors' barely pay lip service to their title and I doubt very much that they read the comments either. At face value there is no real passion from the creators of the site - its just the same old shit day after day.
To explain further, Slashdot exists for one purpose: to make money for parent company OSDN. There is nothing wrong with that in itself but don't expect a high quality site the way its currently run. The Slashdot business model (if you can call it that) seems to be to provoke reaction from the loyal crowd of slashbots that frequent the site. Inflammatory / trollish stories (e.g here) and dupes cause the page hits (and therefore ad revenue) to go through the roof.
As a result, most of the comments I see on the stories are neither insightful, interesting or informative. There seems to be no real balanced discussion - something I feel is a product of the moderation system which rewards those who conform to the slashbot mindset and censors everything else. This democratic method of editing the comments is terrible - especially where technical issues are concerned, as a lot of nonsense is modded up by people who don't know otherwise.
You are probably wondering why I read Slashdot. Partly morbid curiosity and partly to laugh at both the flame wars which invevitably break out and the well crafted trolls.
To conclude, Slashdot is neither really "News for Nerds" nor is it "Stuff that matters". If you want the former, go to somewhere like arstechnica] or kuroshin and if you want actual stuff that matters: Infoshop
Surely "prettier" is a subjective term. I took one look at the screen shots and blurted out "...what the fuck!"
I guess I just have vastly different aesthetic tastes than the Windows UI designers. Sucks to be me.
The exact same build we've been able to read about on Slashdot a few months back.
Beats me why they suddenly reviewed it super late out of the blue, because it's not really like Slashdot is posting a really old news article either here.
And here I was thinking they were having an early beta 1 review, whose release is due this month.
Reviewing alpha quality software should tell a lot of IT people here about how useful a review like this is. Beta 1 and 2 should be far more interesting in seeing where Longhorn is heading.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
... besides speedier search and better eye candies? If I still continue to file my documents according to my folders and sub-folders and sub-sub-folders, I only search once in a blue moon. What does XP SP2 not have that I needed badly in Longhorn?
And does the eye candies slow the machine down? Or maybe not since Intel and AMD would have spanking new processors by release time (end 2006 or 2007?) and maybe 1GB RAM as minimum for satisfactory performance.
Honestly, now with 512 RAM on a brand new notebook (Pentium M) just bought a month ago running XP SP2, I don't get the snappy feel of the menus. Don't tell me I need to fine-tune it for "max performance" and go back to classic win9x menus.
I wonder if OS 10.5 will arrive before Longhorn? Steve Jobs said that the company plans to release Leopard in late 2006 or early 2007.
Perhaps 2007 will see a 3-"L" competition on x86 -- Longhorn, Leopard, & Linux.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I would like to see some version of the virtual folders like those in Evolution in the GNOME and/or KDE desktops. It looks like that may be one handy feature coming up in Longhorn. If we start work now maybe we can beat the Longhorn release date :).
I realize that if I want all my pictures in one folder I could just put them in one folder instead of scattering them all over the machine, but for me it would be nice to have the virtual folders show files from ALL of my machines at once.
So congratulations Microsoft, I have found a feature that I would like. if I still used Windows. I wouldn't upgrade to get it mind you, but I would at least know there was something I couldn't do on XP that I could on Longhorn.
Insert pithy comment here.
Ok so I read the review, and we can obviously expect a lot of bells and whistles as well as a fair amount of eye candy. It may or may not be good, but it reminds me of cellular phones (mobile phones). All I want is a stable phone that I can use to make calls. But with all the crap they've put into phones recently, that's actually hard to find. And I feel the same way about windows. All I want is a stable OS that I can use to run my applications in.
(And before someone jumps the gun - I use *nix at home, but I'm forced to use Windows at work)
"Right, but what of the new 'features' are gunna make you upgrade to this must have new version?"
For me, it's Longhorn's vector-based approach to the UI. While everybody's busy giggling and snorting at the 'eye-candy' at Longhorn, the reality is you'll be able to use it on monitors with > 3,000 pixels in width without having to use a microscope to read the text. You'll be able to resize windows etc to suit your needs. I also really enjoy the idea of using the system's GPU to offload the graphical stuff. Almost like having another processor in your machine.
I'm amazed that all the M$ bias around here has blinded everybody to this little detail that's going to be a big fucking deal in the not-too-distant future. Certainly Linux is going to have its own implementation of this feature set. Everybody'll be waving their arms and cheering then.
"Derp de derp."
My post:
A APL
'Microsoft likes to make profits. Apple only recently started following that business model.'
Your post:
Yes, Apple has never turned a profit.
You go off on some tangent claiming I said they have NEVER turned a profit. Please learn to read.
Apple's most recent losing year was 2001. They had a couple good years before that. Before that, they were consistent dogs. For reference:
http://www.stockselector.com/earnings.asp?symbol=
So, yes, their recent 3 1/2 year period of profitability is nice. But Microsoft is the king of business, even with an inferior product. So, guess what? My comment about management having their head up their ass is accurate.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I'm going to say this isn't totally true - A failure to meaningfully seperate write and execute permissions on a file can be considered a vulnerability. Modern windows versions do this, but they haven't always. Windows XP is not as vulnerable as 95 (as long as your not running as Admin) which is less vulnerable than DOS/3.1 (which had no meaningful permissions whatsoever).
This has lead to a culture of users, Admins and developers that just assume that users will be running as Admin, and often they are. If I run a virus on my Linux system, guess what happens? Nothing! I'm not root. Theres a couple of user-specific script files it could get at and thats about it. On windows, I'm probably running as Admin adn can infect anything. (Well, _I_ don't, but most people do). On OS X I have to type in my admin password to fubar anything.
Why?
Yet, Apple has been around about as long as Microsoft has. They have persisted while most of their early rivals are long gone: fodder for "ancient history" documetaries on G4 TV. Overall, they have been doing something right.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Well X.org bought you real (as opposed to simulated) translucent windows and soft drop shadows as of 6.8. Getting it to run at a decent speed requires a decent graphics card and preferably an NVidia one as their drivers provide Render and Composite acceleration.
Not that I think that translucency in all windows is a good move - it's just visual clutter. Like fading in and fading out menus, it looks cool but it gets in the way. I disabled that feature in Windows 2000, it is disabled on my Windows XP laptop. Drop shadows on the other hand actually improve the visual cues allowing you to pick important windows and menus out of the mix on the screen and are worth the processor cost and so I have drop shadows on my Ubuntu AMD64 box where I have the GPU required to make it fast. On my other linux boxes (Mandriva desktop and FC3 laptop) I don't bother.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Every few years, MS announces a revolutionary new OS. A complete rewrite. Everything you ever wanted in an OS- an more. Breakthroughs. Security. Ease of use. Your PC will be more helpful than a correctly working NS5 in _I, Robot_. It will bear your children. Etc.
And every time, before shipping, features slowly fall away, the release date slips, and eventually we get... a new GUI to learn and a new set of bugs and security holes. The GUI is usually about all they *can* talk about safely.
But the article discusses other things as well. Such as the new way a user can install drivers without being Administrator and opening up a zillion security holes. Now that's advanced. After all, it's only been possible in *nix for a couple of decades.
Basically Microsoft's strategy is to observe the industry, see what new innovations are going to be profitable, then duplicate them, market the hell out of them, and tie them into as many other MS products as they can.
Seems to work pretty well...
Remember HP Dashboard on Win3.xx? It was a CDE-ish panel for Win and OS/2. They included alot of the HP NewWave object goodies, and WORKING desktop pagers. Borland/Starfish bought this, and now 'tis gone.
I have been trying out "True Launch Bar", which threatens to turn XP's Explorer into Kicker. The nag banner is enough for me to reject it, though.
Also, how about a TASKBAR that can be repositioned INDEPENDANT of the menu/tray? I want this in a band across the top, with Start/systray/clock at the bottom. Longhorn builds are still nowhere in this dept.
Longhorn is now NVidiahorn. All it really offers is candy, with little configuration option.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Not exactly, the only feature that Apple made to run on GPU is Expose. Other rely on CPU and software implementation.
If you don't believe then just make a simple test. And please, before bashing remember that I only dispute the GPU usage (meaning that Apple does not use GPU for visual effects), and not how many users does that in reality (except me and some people who wanted to know if 3D is effective for FX tricks).
Test
Start terminal and then top.
Set dock to maximize on mouse over and start dragging your mouse over the dock. Your system is 100% taken over with window manager. Now to the real test. Open Photoshop with laaaarge picture. Start some filter. Time it. Now do it again, but this time drag mouse over dock. Filter can now take even 8x more time.
Same goes for menus, except that shadows are not so complex as dock. but diff was 5x.
All effects but expose and buffer copy when moving windows are software not hardware
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
I keep on wondering why the OS I was envisioning 10 years ago isnt here now. You know, integrated voice recognition, some basic but workable AI to assist in common repetative tasks, a little high quality speach synthesis as an alternate CHI...instead we have more eye-candy and security updates!! That seems to be all Ive seen from MS since...ooooh 1998....
I know that some of this stuff IS rocket-science (well computer science) and no-one was going to get there over-night but 10 years ago I certainly didnt think that I would have learned to have touch-type before decent voice recognition was integrated into the OS...
It really feels as if the true innovation in IT has stalled...however its much more likely that it has just been strangled to death by patents.
Might I suggest, for more minimalistic needs, Geoshell?
Translucent windows ARE more functional than opaque, or "faked" versions like Gnome and KDE.
One example that I use is tailing a file on a lower window while working on a top one.
Shameless plug for my band's website.
Are they hiring artists or people who barely use PC's to design GUI? These guys clearly don't have systems with 100+ files and folders, because if they had, they wouldn't use those bloody big icons for it. Where's the common sense?
Gnome, Windows, and OS X are fairly similar in their core graphics capabilities: antialiased drawing, translucency, and scalable fonts. So, there is little difference between them in that regard. Furthermore, none of them invented those features--they have been around longer than any of them.
If there is a difference, it's that Gnome and Avalon offer GUI declarations based on XML and that those are widely used. Apple's object serialization approach is cumbersome and outdated in comparison.