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Microsoft Ponders Windows Successor
InfoWorldMike writes "Before Vista is even out of the gates, a Microsoft exec was talking Wednesday about Windows' replacement at a VC conference. Speaking at The Venture Forum conference, Microsoft's Bryan Barnett, a program manager for external research programs in the Microsoft Research group, said multicore architectures are of particular interest when weighing what to put in future operating systems at the company. "Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today," Barnett said. Well, with Vista in the pipeline as long as it has been, you must admit it is not surprising Microsoft is taking the long-term view. And it won't be built overnight: There is no timetable for a Windows successor right now. But early work on this effort has not yet been organized, with five or six small projects afoot in various places throughout the company, Barnett said."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU
Meanwhile the Mac lovers will call it a cheap ripoff of Mac OS X (which it probably is) and the Linux users will say you can get that stuff for free (watch the demo of Novell Linux 10 with xgl, it demonstrates all the cool windows effects MS is saying will be in Vista, and then some). The difference between Xgl and Avalon in Vista is not its performance, or rollerdex Windows or transparent Windows. The difference is in how easily these are accessible to application developers. Avalon apps run all that graphics goodness with a simple XML derivative called XAML, and well supported by a Photoshop like designer (Called Expression) to actually design the UI. This tool again generates XAML layouts and eye-candy, which is fully compatible with the Visual Studio IDE. Conveniently forget this difference, and there lies one reason why Windows is so popular.
Life is a conviction.