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Microsoft Working On "Post-Windows" Cloud Computing OS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-all-up-there-in-the-clouds-or-something dept.

Barence writes "Microsoft is working on a web-based operating system called Midori, as it looks to life beyond Windows. Midori is expected to be a cloud-computing service, and so not as dependent on hardware as current generations of Windows. It's also expected to run with a virtualization layer between the hardware and the OS, and is expected to be a commercial offshoot of the Singularity research project which Microsoft has been working on since 2003." If this story sounds familiar to you, it probably is.

5 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Do you know what you are talking about? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    so not as dependent on hardware as current generations of Windows. It's also expected to run with a virtualisation layer between the hardware and the OS,

    You mean a kind of, say, Hardware Abstraction Layer?

    Yeah... they've been doing that kind of thing for over ten years.

  2. The meaning of "Midori" by Kupfernigk · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Perhaps a fluent Japanese speaker could confirm or deny, but I have been told that, although it is usually translated as "green", midori does not exactly correlate to the English word. (This is not unusual; the difference between "green" and "blue" is to some extent culturally determined as the two sets of cones in the eye have quite close spectral response peaks and the overlap region is therefore much less well defined than the red-green transition. Even in the British Isles, the word "glas", which is also vaguely cognote to "midori", has different color significance in Irish and Welsh.)

    So: did someone in Microsoft just like the name, or is it a cunning way to express that they themselves don't quite know what this operating system is actually going to be? And is it time for anybody using the word in the US to get in a trademark application, just in case?

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  3. Re:Not as dependent on hardware... by corychristison · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I, personally, think they are digging their own grave with this one.

    There just isn't enough bandwidth everywhere for there to be a totally online OS.

  4. And it will have WinFS... by dpbsmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't tell me, let me guess. It will have all the stuff Microsoft that was going to be in every version of Windows since Windows 95.

    As the release date approaches, Microsoft will suddenly start echoing all the knocks critics have been making on Vista, saying it is insecure, difficult to use, presents a bad user experience and is generally a piece of junk which only fools would ever have purchased... but, fortunately, Midori will solve all these problems, and will include a Web-standards-compliant browser, an animated character that will pop up and give you only helpful advice and only when you actually need it, WinFS, and Duke Nukem Forever.

    And if you believe them, then you'd believe that Lucy will finally let Charlie Brown kick the football.

    --

    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!

  5. Real Innovation, from MS? by zShutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, it's MS, but before jumping completely on the stomp-it-dead bandwagon, I'd say this: We thought Apple was dead once too. If MS can do some real innovation here, and bring a new paradigm to an operating system, we'll be lucky. Innovation never hurt anyone, and it may come when you least expect it. If Apple can pull off a 180, so can Microsoft.