NYT: Will the Next Version of Windows Be Worth the Wait? (Longhorn)

[DeepModem Mom]

Will the Next Version of Windows Be Worth the Wait?
By RANDALL STROSS

Published: April 10, 2005


TEN years ago, Microsoft unveiled Windows 95 in a way that suggested that the product's arrival was no less momentous than when humans stood upright for the first time. The company spent about $200 million introducing the operating system. That paid for festivities on the Microsoft campus (with Jay Leno as M.C.), rights to use the Rolling Stones song "Start Me Up" in a global advertising campaign and permission to bathe the Empire State Building at night with the Windows logo. It also loaded The Times of London with Windows 95 advertising that day, making the newspaper a one-day freebie, a first in its 307 years.

What was remarkable about the Windows 95 introduction was the acquiescence of customers, who participated so willingly in the spectacle. Microsoft arranged for retail outlets to open at midnight on the day the system would first be available, a stunt that proved as irresistible as klieg lights at a Hollywood premiere. One chain counted some 50,000 people lined up at its stores across the country....

***

These people were chasing an operating system, of all things - plumbing that serves a necessary function, to be sure, but of no more intrinsic interest than the pipes that snake below the floorboards of a house....Windows XP, introduced in 2001, could not match Windows 95's remarkable debut. We can hope that XP's successor, which has the code name "Longhorn" and is scheduled for release next year, will appear quietly, bringing us closer to the day when users need know no more about a PC's operating system than they do of the embedded software in a cellphone....

***

Windows XP may prove to be a tenacious paterfamilias, unwilling to move aside for the next generation. Security holes notwithstanding, it is the most stable version of Windows to date. That very stability will make it difficult for the company to market Longhorn as a release more important than XP itself, a prediction that Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, made in 2003....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/business/yourmoney/10digi.html

[wtmusic]

1. Of course not, just like the other ones

People who value their time run anything but that bug-ridden POS.

[MrModerate]

13. I have to laugh at the Mac bigots . . .

Who always come out when Microsoft products are mentioned. The Mac OS is harder to use than XP, lots buggier, requires a box that's anywhere from 25%-50% more expensive (for less power), and delivers minimal added value outside of zealot-appeal.

I have nothing against people who are willing to pay for zealot-appeal. I'm just not one of them and I'm glad that over 90% of the people I compute with also aren't.

It's true that MS products are subject to more attacks from spyware and malware than Macs. It's also true that Mac are far from immune to such attacks. The primary difference is that MS products, by their very ubiquity, are a more attractive target to your average Latvian teenager with some coding knowledge and too much time on his hands. Why attack a million machines when you can go for a billion?

And as to the Win95 rollout campaign, while Win95 was a bit on the cruddy side, the marketing campaign was sheer.fucking.genius. And let's not kid ourselves. Getting your OS on so many machines requires much more than just a good product: you have to capture hearts and minds and wallets. Just churning out good code don't mean squat if no one uses it. MS knows that marketing, engineering, and distribution are equally crucial. Apple has never really gotten a grip on all three at once, and frankly if it weren't for the Ipod -- another product only slightly better than its competitors, but which sells for twice as much -- they'd be history. (Well, of course having someone as brilliant and tenacious and Steve Jobs does help.)

Now the question that started the thread, whether Longhorn is worth waiting for . . . well that's another matter. Certainly jumping on it on day 1 is not going to be worth your while, but over time most Windows users will go for it.

[da_chimperor]

15. Bah.

Sure, they're more expensive, but my G4 hasn't crashed since OS 10.1. I worked as a graphic designer at Kinkos during high school, and the POS Win95 machines would crash after no more that 2 hours of operation. You have no idea how many problems that fucking OS caused me and my colleagues. That job made me despise Windows, and the innumerable inexplicable little problems that I'd always had with windows (what? why isn't my sound card working? . . . that kind of thing) pushed me over the edge and I got a mac.

I may wish all sorts of nasty bad things on bill gates for coming up with windows, but Microsoft does make some good software. I don't consider myself a bigot, I just consider a Mac superior for most computing needs. :P

[bpilgrim]

22. lol ----------> XvsXP.com

http://XvsXP.com

for the most detailed comparison of the 2 OS's on the web

peace

[onehandle]

55. The price difference has come way down.

And the cost of upkeep/problems makes Macs cheaper in the long run.

Your opinion is from ten years ago. Except this part:

"It's true that MS products are subject to more attacks from spyware and malware than Macs. It's also true that Mac are far from immune to such attacks. The primary difference is that MS products, by their very ubiquity, are a more attractive target to your average Latvian teenager with some coding knowledge and too much time on his hands. Why attack a million machines when you can go for a billion?"

You're exactly right there. Buy a Mac.

And Steve Jobs is a Democrat to boot.

[DS1]

57. The GUI controls on a MAC are in-fucking-credibly bad

I HATE having to use MACs, they are idiot-proofed to the point of innefficiency - and you can forget any sort of useable drag and drag functionality.

[drdtroit]

2. Powermac G5! n/t

[Art_from_Ark]

54. Powerbook G5 with OS 10.3.5

There's nothing microsoft makes that can hold a candle to that

[drdtroit]

56. Word!!!

[onehandle]

3. No. Get a Mac. nt

[Godai Kyoko]

4. Nope

still a memory pig, stil buggy, still full of security holes, still a playground for Malware of all types.

People keep on telling me I should get with the standard. "I took the path less traveled by" and I don't have a computer that can't start up becasue of all the spyware on it. I don't have a computer that makes it easier for crooks to steal information off it than is for me to access my information, I have a compuer that I can use with confidence that it won't totally crash and need a re format every six weeks or so. I have never had to do a clean install once I have my machine set up.

[donco6]

5. I'll get it when I have to, I suppose.

But I don't really care about it that much. The plumbing example is accurate, IMO.

[merwin]

44. Why know anything about politics then? Just vote for the party that

looks flashier!

99% of the problems that users experience in an operating system are caused by the user's own ineptness. Also, I would say that about 99% of the so called 'viruses' that come out can ONLY be installed on your computer if YOU choose to install them. Those are called Trojans.

I personally laugh at people who see the ads that say 'Free weather on your desktop!!!' and don't bother to read the fine print. Would you take a credit card offer in your mail if they said it was zero interest forever, without reading the fine print?

The simple fact is that your computer is only as secure as the owner wants it to be. If you know nothing about how computers and how to not click on every popup window that you get, and don't want to know anything about the operating system, then you deserve whatever you get.

MacOS is no more secure than Windows... There are plenty of vulnerabilities out there for it. Compare mac usage to windows usage around the world, and you will understand why there are less attacks on Macs. Think about it... why do pickpockets target large cities? More people, who don't know anything about how to keep their wallet secure. Exponentially more people to target.

[China_cat]

6. I have always hated Win95

Its release date was the day my husband's company here in Charleston closed its doors, making his 22 year contribution worthless and necessitating the next 7 years of our life being lived in separate bedrooms.

His was in Jacksonville where he worked, mine was here in Charleston because we couldn't afford to sell this house and try to buy a new one there.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. That's awful, China --

:-(

[CAMANY]

41. How can you compare Longhorn to Win95

when they do not share a single line of code? I trust you are aware the NT series is an entirely different line of code base?

The 9x code base entirely died and was discontinued after Windows ME.

[dArKeR]

8. Get a Mac you fools! The software price would come down big time

too with more users! I wonder if there is some correlation between people with open minds/objective/investigative... and Mac and the other side, the Dark Side of the Force.

If you don't get Apples pricey flat pannel and go for a used, (not "pre-owned"), 19" CRT for $50 or the new Costco Envision CRT for $110, it's not too expensive.

[alfredo]

21. Most of the Mac software I use is free. Photoshop is one of the few

commercial products I had to buy for my computer. I run a lot of UNIX software under X11.

[grytpype]

9. Screw the corporations, get Linux.

http://debian.org

[dArKeR]

11. That's something I want to look into as soon as I get the yard planted

[Jose Diablo]

10. IMO, the improvements we have seen in PC technology

have been due to hardware improvements. Even Microsoft had a hard time gobbling the extra memory with the bloated code, barely able to keep-up with the vast increase in memory storage and microprocessor speed.

Also, from what I have seen, Microsoft's best ability centered around their uncanny ability to take other companies ideas and make them their own. Everything I have seen seems to have been invented someplace else, other that Microsoft, yet strangely they were able to package these ideas as their own and the court more or less let them walk.

I doubt Microsoft will ever be truly innovative. Even Microsoft's first effort, DOS, was little more than a reverse engineered theft of DR-DOS from the Digital Research company. What I have read indicates a huge bureaucracy with an incredibly split-up development team. From what I have experienced, innovation seldom thrives in an large environment like Microsoft.

Edit: I might add, I think Gates real talent is in marketing. How Microsoft was able to capture downstream customers into exclusive arrangements for Microsofts operating system is an amazing exersize in anti-competitive (and illegal) domination of a market. Yes, Bill Gates is a used car saleman par excellent (not to insult those few honest used car salesmen, or is this a oxymoron).

[Renew Deal]

26. Windows XP was a worthwhile upgrade over 2000/NT/98.

Would you agree? I think XP was a major step forward. I don't see that from Longhorn yet. Here are some screenshots of Longhorn. It doesn't tell the whole story, but it's an important part, because it's hard to believe that Longhorn will be more stable.

http://www.aci.com.pl/mwichary/guidebook/interfaces/windows/longhorn

[CAMANY]

42. I trust you are aware

beta and alpha screen shots from pirated leaked versions of software almost always do NOT represent the final product especially when it is a few years off?

[Renew Deal]

45. Of course

And I know there will be some cool new features, but I don't think there is a dispute on the itnerface which seems to be unchanged.

[CAMANY]

49. Word is

the GUI will be massively overhauled. The screen shots you are looking at are literally years from RTM. It's like looking at a car in construction with only the frame in place and assuming that's what the final product will look like.

[entanglement]

51. The old joke about Microsoft:

They have more lawyers than programmers.

[wakeme2008]

12. Last I heard the processor and memory requirements were large

and most home users machines today will not work with it. CNET had an article sub-titled "What if you had a release and nobody came".

[Massacure]

14. Of course the processor requirement is large. It will run 64 bit.

64 bit has huge potential versus 32 bit processing, and is just screaming USE ME!!! The only problem is the chicken and the egg scenario. No programmer wants to make a program which people can't use, and no hardware designer wants to build a 64 bit processor if nothing takes advantage of it.

Windows timeline for introducing a 64 bit operating system serves as a guide for both sides of the fence to introduce 64 bit at the same time.

[CAMANY]

40. 64-bit AMD solutions

are already dirt cheap. An Athlon 64 2800 socket 939 is already sub $200. An Nforce 3 or 4 chipset based board is also dirt cheap. $50-$70 unless you want to go all out.

Considering Longhorn won't be out for a few years 64 bit chips will be insanely cheap.

BTW - Longhorn will be released in both 32 and 64 bit versions, just like XP 64 which went RTM the other day.

[tavalon]

50. Yep

One of my partners works at AMD, one works at Microsoft. One was/is working on the 64-bit AMD boards and the other is working on Longhorn. Needless to say, when we three get in one room, they have to be very careful about shop talk. But having heard aspects from both sides, it will be a good marriage.

[Renew Deal]

28. For what?

XP or Longhorn? XPs not bad.

[pdurod1]

16. I'm done with MS Windows

Went to the rollout, saw Leno in the mousecar on closed curcuit TV. I've been using Linux at home and in datacenters for the last 8-10 years. I think its a better product for servers. Handles multiple CPU's better, scales better, much more stable. Mac OSX is bsd unix, very impressive from what I've seen. Don't know whats going to happen. MS office seems to have a stranglehold on the desktop arena. People know it, programmers love visual studio.

[qazplm]

17. going to be getting a nice

souped up computer when i get back from Iraq this fall, I gotta admit, I thought Win98 was ok, but it got real bad after a year or so, but XP has been very stable thus far and have not had a single crash in the 2 years I have had it on my computer.

I also have no trouble with spyware, plenty of free, effective virus guards and spyware blockers out there.

[DeepModem Mom]

19. Be careful over there, qazplm!

:grouphug:

[Conservativesux]

18. Nope, just more buggy software that has more holes in it then swiss cheese

EOM

[BattyDem]

20. This one wasn't ... why would the next one be?

:shrug:

Wouldn't it be nice if they perfected an operating system (no security holes, no bugs, etc.) BEFORE they moved on to the next one?

[Renew Deal]

27. It's impossible and cost prohibitive.

It's just not possible. There is way too much code. It would be almost impossible to release a system "perfectly" without "holes and bugs." The development would never end. BTW, Linux distro's and Apple OS's 8, 9, X are buggy and have issues. It just doesn't make sense.

[BattyDem]

46. I know it's impossible ...

but it seems like Gates doesn't even try. I remember ... before Windows XP was even released, Steve Gibson at Gibson Research Corporation (www.grc.com) reported some major security holes that he found in the beta version - and he notified Microsoft ... but they released XP with the holes anyway. Those holes weren't plugged until news of them got into the MSM, which was months later.

Microsoft releases a security patch for Internet Explorer and a week later, they have to release another one because they didn't get the first one right. They're more interested in speed than accuracy.

I know that no software can be 100% bug-free and 100% secure. But I get pissed off because Microsoft doesn't really care one way or the other. If the media didn't report the security flaws and/or major business weren't hurt by them, I doubt they'd ever fix them. Microsoft treats home users like crap. We don't have enough money or power for them to care - but when businesses start switching to Linux (and many already have switched to Linux servers), Microsoft is going to have to start competing again, which means they're going to have to care about the quality of their product again. I doubt that will happen by the time Longhorn is released. :-(


Hopefully, it won't matter to me one way or the other because by the time Longhorn is released, I'd like to be free of my need for Windows, except for a few games. As the Linux.org web site says:

"Free Software and Open Source, with Linux as its most visible symbol, is all about a new way: software as a service. It's just like being a new car buyer, really. Everybody expects that the tires are going to be on the car - they don't have to be purchased or paid for separately. Software is now seen as a value added on to computers when they are sold, not as a separate commodity, or worse, as a tax, such as Microsoft's OEM racket." :-)

[Conservativesux]

33. It would be nice if Gates supplied some Vaseline with each new Win OS..

...system he releases.

That way it wouldnt hurt so much when he screws us again! :)

[BattyDem]

47. ROFL!

:rofl:


That's good. I'll have to remember that one the next time I'm bitching about Windows with my friends! :toast:

[area51]

23. Windows.

Unix (and Linux) rules, Windows drools. :evilgrin:

[Placebo]

24. Get a Mac.

www.apple.com/hardware

Please.

For your mental health's sake.

[Renew Deal]

25. Windows 95 was a big deal.

It was the first mainstream GUI system for the PC. It chnaged everything about computing. It was the first major interface upgrade for Microsoft in many years. It was also a major addition to the industry as a hole. It made PC's easier to use and more intuitive. How is Microsoft going to beat that? OS X is way ahead of the game. Are they going to just copy it? That's cool, but not cool enough. XP is as the article described, buggy, but stable. It works and Microsoft is not going to offer much.

[nine30]

29. You can't fool all of the people all of the time

..Win 95 fooled (nearly) all of the people for some of the time, some people are always fooled all of the time, but Win LH ..gimme a break.
I have been fooled enough by MicroSoft.

Win XP (without SP2) Pro is probably the worst I have ever used in terms of stability, win 2k was so so.. Win ME a truly disgraceful product from Microsoft, Win NT 4.x was ok and win 95 was all about festivity and fanfare.

I am all set to go RedHat the day Longhorn is launched.

[CAMANY]

35. The Win9x series

Is ENTIRELY different than the NT series.

Comparing the two is like apples and oranges.

XP is ridiculously more stable than any of the 9x series. ME was the last of the 9x series, and that ENTIRE code base died a couple years ago. No new windows product is based on it.

If you haven't used the NT series then, frankly, you are in no position to make a comparison.

[cureautismnow]

30. Isn't XP still sitting on top of DOS?

I know the 90s versions of Windoze were.

[rukkyg]

31. No.

[cureautismnow]

32. Then how come you can still get c: prompt in XP?

Dos "emulation"?

[dethl]

36. Its a DOS virtual machine that runs when you get a C: prompt

[CAMANY]

38. The command prompt

is NOT DOS. It is NOT command.com.

If you try to run the true DOS command prompt (command.com) on Windows XP it will NOT run. It will error out and close. Try to download a DOS or Windows 9x boot disk image, run command.com and see what happens.

The command prompt in windows XP is purely for text based NT commands like "Tasklist" "taskkill" "net" etc. If you run Linux you will also have a command prompt. That doesn't mean your running on DOS.

Windows XP has no config.sys, no autoexec.bat, it does not parse any DOS commands on boot. There is not a single line of DOS code.

Some DOS applications can run in Windows XP purely because you are still using X86 hardware architecture. However, many DOS programs that use sound hardware (for example) will have huge problems running correctly, or won't do so at all simply because DOS pre-requisites (like config.sys loading of sound drivers) doesn't exist.

[CAMANY]

34. No of course not

XP like 2000 is based off of the NT core. Thus like NT it is NOT on top of DOS. NT was pure 32-bit code, and thus so is XP (and now 64-bit XP just went RTM the other day)

[DeepModem Mom]

48. Welcome to DU, CAMANY!

[dethl]

37. Given the huge system requirements for Longhorn

I doubt many consumers will be able to upgrade even if they wanted to. I'm happy with WinXP SP2 on my PC and am waiting very excitely for Tiger to release so I can put it on my G5.

[CAMANY]

39. What "huge hardware requirements"?

Todays hardware will run it fine, and considering Longhorn won't be out for a few years todays hardware will be considerably dated (and cheap) by then.

If you let your self be ripped off by system manufacturers selling overprices and out dated hardware instead of buying OEM components that reflect new tech and reasonable prices then it's your own fault.

[DS1]

58. Last time I read something about Longhorn, it was a 4ghz processor

and at least 2 gigs of ram. Ridiculous.

[CAMANY]

43. It's nice to have different products on the market

But computer operating systems are the exception to the rule.

It is totally impracticle to have a myriad of operating systems purely for compatibility sake alone. (and that's only one of the larger issues)

First you have to take in to account hardware. It's not practicle to produce 20 video cards (for instance) on the same generation each modified to run on a different architecture.

Even if you're talking about the same architecture, you can't expect driver availability for tons of operating systems.

Then you have software compatibility. You can't re-write code for tons of different operating systems. Well, you can, but not if you expect to make a profit. Not to mention how many years it would take just to port everything over.

Then you have operating system compatibility. In which case it all comes together. No operating system would be able to support all hardware, architectures, and software.

So let's say you have an Athlon 64, running BE OS. You want to run X software? Oh what's that? It doesn't support your OS. Guess you're shit out of luck.

What's that? You have the correct OS but no drivers for the video card you need to run X software with? Ooops too bad.

Oh what's that? You have the correct OS and software, but the hardware you need isn't compatible with the architecture you are using? Oh gee too bad.

Then you have to account for user friendliness and the learning curve. Some of the operating systems would obviously be more difficult for end users. Hell, even some linux distros are almost totally unusable for end users simply because they don't have sufficient knowledge to opearte them with out a nice GUI. Can you imagine end users having to use an OS that doesn't have a pretty GUI that let's them click on pretty little buttons for everything they need to do? Most people can't even use a TUI, and many smaller OS's absolutely require that.

It just isn't practical people. The costs would be enormous, and functionality would be destroyed across the board. It's easy to sit around saying you need multiple viable operating system on the market, but unless you have a solid understanding of software development, operating systems, hardware, and the architecture of said hardware you have NO idea how impractical what you want is.

[derby378]

52. Just when I was getting used to XP...

But if he can't plug the security holes, Bill Gates will be doing Linux a huge favor.

Besides, I love that little penguin.

[jpgray]

53. I miss MSDOS

I could make it do exactly what I wanted every time. It's too difficult to get under the hood of some of these OSes.