Longhorn set to lose Avalon, for now

[dolphin842]

Found this article on The Register. Looks like OS X will be the 'go-to-GUI' for even longer:

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Avalon faces axe as Microsoft dismembers Longhorn
[...]
Microsoft project managers have demanded that features be jettisoned in order for the next major version of Windows to ship as projected by 2006, and the major loser is the new GUI, codenamed Avalon, according to multiple sources who spoke to The Register on condition of anonymity. Features are being "decoupled", according to current Redmond jargon, meaning they may be introduced at a later date. Or not.
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[Ajmbc]

Wow- at this rate, Longhorn will be just like xp.

Many people here have predicted that this would happen, and frankly, I am not surprised.

 

[AmigoMac]

Neither am I...

Wow- at this rate, Longhorn will be just like xp.

Many people here have predicted that this would happen, and frankly, I am not surprised.

They are having hard times to get the whole thing to work together, maybe they will do it by 2010 or beyond when they can really claim 1TB HD and 2GB RAM ... by then, Linux & Mac will catch a lot of people ...

 

[dolphin842]

Perhaps the bloat is finally catching up with them? Either that or they're having trouble re-writing everything from scratch. It doesn't say much for the closed-source approach when its flagship proponent has to push back releases year after year.

I'm glad I switched this summer, and am looking forward to Tiger come next year.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Found this article on The Register. Looks like OS X will be the 'go-to-GUI' for even longer:

Actually from news.com from what I've read it will be available and available for XP as well.

Avalon and Indigo will be part of Longhorn, but also made available separately for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

MS revams Longshot plans

I trust the register as far as I can throw them. They are about as unbiased as fox news. Those sources could simply be a number of people who decided to send them e-mails saying "hey guys just an FYI Avalon is gone."

What is more interesting is the apparent drop of WinFS from Longshot.

WinFS will be available as a beta when the Longhorn release comes out as a client.

The business world doesn’t give a **** about the GUI. Windows 2000/XP is perfectly fine in fact most environments are downgrading the GUI from XP’s Fisher Price theme to Windows 2000’s because they don’t want to deal with retraining their users on a new GUI. They are more interested in the underpinnings and WinFS was supost to be a MAJOR part of Longshot.

My guess? They spent so much time working on WinXP SP2 that they have fallen behind the timeframe to get these features out and in order of priority:
1. Security (Don't think for a sec that MS doesn't realize how big this release is to businesses. The business world is looking to MS to see if they can clean up their ****. They know that if they drop the ball on security again this time no one is going to pick it up. Companies will take their ball over to Linux.)
2. GUI (Pretty sells.)
3. WinFS (A major feature but they are so far behind on this tech that its not even funny.)
4. Internal bundled apps. (IE update, etc.)

I take it with a grain of salt until I see the news hit major news sites. Sorry dolphin. I think its wishful thinking right now.

 

[SiliconAddict]

PS- How many times was OS X 1 delayed when it first came out? And when it did how many problems did they have and how slow was it and how backwards compatible was it?

Another random thought.
Sorry guys but you aren't ones to talk about OS problems. You are sitting on anywhere from a 2nd revision to a 3rd revision of your OS. (Would anyone really be on 10.1 still?!?!) You are sitting pretty after several years of OS speedbumps that should have happened in version 10.1.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Perhaps Microsoft should just give up and focus on new wallpapers, screen savers, icons, Messenger 7.0, and color schemes and release Longhorn in 2006. They can make it look much more different by replacing the Start button with a little Microsoft Logo at the upper left hand corner.

 

[beefcake]

Any news about the delay of Longhorn is good news. Considering Microsoft's long-standing practice of blinding itself to internet standards and integrating all of its sub-par software into the operating system to squash competition, progress isn't the word that comes to mind when I hear a new OS revision is on the table.

 

[dolphin842]

Actually from news.com from what I've read it will be available and available for XP as well.

I see. In fact, I also just found a Reuters article, confirming that WinFS won't make it, but Avalon will. It also says Microsoft is now committing to a 2006 for a release. No word from there on backporting Avalon to XP, though.

 

[Abstract]

PS- How many times was OS X 1 delayed when it first came out? And when it did how many problems did they have and how slow was it and how backwards compatible was it?

Another random thought.
Sorry guys but you aren't ones to talk about OS problems. You are sitting on anywhere from a 2nd revision to a 3rd revision of your OS. (Would anyone really be on 10.1 still?!?!) You are sitting pretty after several years of OS speedbumps that should have happened in version 10.1.

Agree completely.

I'm sure when Longhorn comes out, it'll STILL be behind OSX and people here will rag it because this is what they do for kicks, but 2 years after it's release, it will be quite close to OSX. I expect Longhorn to be good after a while because unlike their other upgrades and OS iterations, this one isn't a huge mass of previous Windows versions on top of another. This will be different. Whether MS actually is capable of producing something new and good is another question, but it probably will be.

 

[iFaulder]

I would rather them take the time they need to construct it so that way we could really see what MS can do.

 

[DarkNovaMatter]

Hmmm, wonder whats taking soo much time with WinFS- If I remember right it was a wrapper on NTFS. That way everyone wouldn't have to re-initialize thier HD to make use of its features.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Agree completely.

I'm sure when Longhorn comes out, it'll STILL be behind OSX and people here will rag it because this is what they do for kicks, but 2 years after it's release, it will be quite close to OSX. I expect Longhorn to be good after a while because unlike their other upgrades and OS iterations, this one isn't a huge mass of previous Windows versions on top of another. This will be different. Whether MS actually is capable of producing something new and good is another question, but it probably will be.

I for one am looking forward to a showdown between Longhorn and whatever version of Mac OS X is current at the time. Apple will continue improving Mac OS X; will Longhorn ever catch up? Will Longhorn have features that Mac OS X should copy?

 

[apple2991]

I'm sure when Longhorn comes out, it'll STILL be behind OSX and people here will rag it because this is what they do for kicks, but 2 years after it's release, it will be quite close to OSX. I expect Longhorn to be good after a while because unlike their other upgrades and OS iterations, this one isn't a huge mass of previous Windows versions on top of another. This will be different. Whether MS actually is capable of producing something new and good is another question, but it probably will be.

How many years ago was XP released? MS had more time to develop XP
(was released after OSX), it was still worse than the original OSX. Besides that, 3 years later, it still blows.

Besides, you can't compare the OS releases of Apple to MS. Sure, Apple has released several updates to OSX, making it infinitely better than it originally was, but MS could have been doing the same for XP. They haven't, and they probably won't for Longshot. It's amazing that for a company with so many employees and so much power, MS sure doesn't get a lot done (at least for consumer operating systems).

And who knows where OS X will be by the time Longshot is actually usable.

 

[SiliconAddict]

I would rather them take the time they need to construct it so that way we could really see what MS can do.

Heeh and therein lies the problem. We will never see that happen. MS has some brilliant folks working there. But they are being hamstrung by the execs, the need for backwards compatibility, and timeframes. I know for a fact that there are more then a few people at MS that would kill to use an *nix core for Windows. In fact I know 3 people at MS and 2 of which have a secondary computer that is running Linux and the other is BDS. The company is made up of nerds. If the execs let the Windows team run wild they could do some interesting things with Windows. Unfortunately that will never happen.

 

[SiliconAddict]

How many years ago was XP released? MS had more time to develop XP
(was released after OSX), it was still worse than the original OSX.

XP was released October of 01.
Did or did not Apple start work on several next gen OS’s and then drop them in favor of BSD for their core? I remember hearing about a post OS 9 Mac OS back in ’96 I think. They had been floundering on their OS for year until Jobs came back and even then it took a heck of a while to get it out the door and even then some may argue it was released in a beta state. As I said before OS 10.0 sucked. OS 10.1 was better but it still sucked. OS 10.2 was what 10.0 should have been in beta. And now OS 10.3 is what OS 10.0 should have been when it shipped. IMHO Apple used the market as a test guinny pig with 10.0. In fact wasn’t 10.0 free? Or was that 10.1? Something was free because it SUCKED at the time. Don’t deny the history of OS X. In the long run it doesn’t really matter what .0,.1, and .2 were like. 10.3 is here now and is a solid OS.

Besides that, 3 years later, it still blows.

Yah it blows. That’s why finally the corp world is migrating to it. My company of about 11,000 computers will be rolling out XP in the 1st quarter of next year. I used 2000 and XP both of which were stable and fast out of the box when both shipped. My only major complaint with XP is product activation but *coughs* I knows ways to get around that. XP is a solid OS as long as you know how to configure it. As I’ve said in several other threads: I’ve never gotten a virus. I’ve never been infected with adware, I’ve never been hacked. In 2000 and XP I can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve crashed and that is due to me dicking with the drivers in 80% of the time. Uptime for 2K and XP is in the month not days like Windows 9X. Sorry dude but XP is a perfectly fine OS. You just think it sucks because its MS and because its an OS you aren’t use to. Which IMHO isn’t a valid reason.

Besides, you can't compare the OS releases of Apple to MS. Sure, Apple has released several updates to OSX, making it infinitely better than it originally was, but MS could have been doing the same for XP. They haven't, and they probably won't for Longshot. It's amazing that for a company with so many employees and so much power, MS sure doesn't get a lot done (at least for consumer operating systems).

WTH are you talking about!??! I sure CAN compare OS’s. Apple has released several OS’s in rapid succession because there was a NEED to do so. As I said before 10.0 sucked. 10.1 sucked less. 10.2 was just OK. And 10.3 is the real deal. People keep wondering why Apple has been on a bender to release one OS per year. It’s because they had to. If they had stopped at 10.2 there is a strong possibility that market share would have eroded faster then it has.
MS has released 2 service packs for XP, 4 for Windows 2000 Pro and Server and will be releasing service pack 1 for Windows 2003 Server next summer. IMHO I think that is enough. You DO realize that currently MS is supporting ’98 (To be discontinued soon.) , NT 4.0 Server (Supposedly being dropped this fall.), Windows 2000 Pro, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP Home/Professional.) Its not like they have one OS they are supporting here. Apple’s base OS for OS X is predominantly the same across the board. So support for one OS is the same, for the most part, for all.

As for MS not getting a lot done. Look at the various features of 10.0-10.3 and the upcoming 10.4. Hardly revolutionary. Apple has the benefit, the only one IMHO, of having a 3% market share in where their OS isn’t being use in the enterprise. Their OS isn’t being used, for the most part, in a military or government facility. You don’t own a 90% market share and ship a new OS every year. In fact doing so would be a good way of killing that market share. And might I ask how many people are still on 10.2? I’ve read about more then a few who see no need to upgrade to 10.3 because their isn’t really anything all that compelling in 10.3. Great. So you want MS to put out an OS once a year that people won’t buy because they already purchased last year’s OS. Keep in mind not everyone, actually most people, aren’t willing to shell out $100-$150 a year on a new OS.

And who knows where OS X will be by the time Longshot is actually usable.

Most likely OS X will be preparing to gold code status their next OS after Tiger. Frankly I’m hoping for a major release when it does ship. Something to take the spotlight off of Longshot. OS X’s GUI is getting a little long in the tooth at this point. By the time tiger ships it will be 5 years old. It would be nice to see Apple revamp the GUI at least a little. I think we are seeing the groundwork for this being released in core image. I think that will be the groundwork for a revamped GUI in 10.5. Apple will have an easy migration path to whatever GUI they introduce because the core API’s will already be in place to take advantage of it. I'm betting there will be additional API's in Core Image 2.0 that utilize the 3D capabilities of the GPU.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Hmmm, wonder whats taking soo much time with WinFS- If I remember right it was a wrapper on NTFS. That way everyone wouldn't have to re-initialize thier HD to make use of its features.

WinFS first and foremost utilizes a slimmed down version of MS’s next version of their SQL server call Yukon.
WinFS extends beyond just the desktop in that Longhorn server and their full blown SQL Server was supost to be able to query the entire network for data. This was supost to go beyond even that in that it integrates into MS’s Active Directory. So say my manager in Chicago want to track down everything related to a server rollout project here in Minneapolis. He knows that there are 16 team members involved in this rollout nationwide in several different categories. Security, network connectivity, local deployment, hardware configuration, etc. He then queries the people’s names on the network and asks for all relevant data for this project which would come back with e-mails, contact information, spreadsheets, word docs, PowerPoints, acrobat files just about anything that is associated with this project from not only the servers (Mail/SQL/etc) on the network but thanks to having a real database structure and slimmed down server on the desktop it can query any files on the user’s local box as well.
It’s a bold idea and it appears was overly ambitious. Apple’s metadata search abilities really are primitive compared to Longshots. The thing is Apple was going for the easy field goal and MS was going for the two point conversion and apparently fumbled the ball.

PS- Does anyone know HOW Apple is implementing their metadata searches in Tiger? I've looked at Apple's site but their overview of Tiger is somewhat detailless. I'm interested in HOW they are storing and indexing their data because this is a major point in how fast, easy, and robust searches will be.
Right now as it stands I'm not overly impressed with iTunes for Windows search abilities. It seems slow with only close to 6,000 tracks. I seriously hope Apple is implementing a DBase type structure vs. iTunes cleartext files search. Maybe a MySQL partnership?
Hmm how cool would that be? Every version of OS X Tiger ships with MySQL. The possibilities are staggering.

 

[slughead]

PS- How many times was OS X 1 delayed when it first came out? And when it did how many problems did they have and how slow was it and how backwards compatible was it?

Another random thought.
Sorry guys but you aren't ones to talk about OS problems. You are sitting on anywhere from a 2nd revision to a 3rd revision of your OS. (Would anyone really be on 10.1 still?!?!) You are sitting pretty after several years of OS speedbumps that should have happened in version 10.1.

Totally.

Not to mention that Apple had the luxury of stealing from 2 OSs (NeXT and FreeBSD)..

Christ, all OS 10.0 was was a port of those two OSs to PPC. MS can't use Unix or anything else because there IS nothing else.

If I were running MS, I would BUY Apple, port OS X to x86, and be happy for another 10 years.

 

[AliensAreFuzzy]

Totally.

Not to mention that Apple had the luxury of stealing from 2 OSs (NeXT and FreeBSD)..

Christ, all OS 10.0 was was a port of those two OSs to PPC. MS can't use Unix or anything else because there IS nothing else.

If I were running MS, I would BUY Apple, port OS X to x86, and be happy for another 10 years.

And then you would be destroyed when thousands of angry Mac users come to M$ headquarters demanding that you be killed for ruining such a great thing.

 

[Fukui]

The business world doesn’t give a **** about the GUI. Windows 2000/XP is perfectly fine in fact most environments are downgrading the GUI from XP’s Fisher Price theme to Windows 2000’s because they don’t want to deal with retraining their users on a new GUI.

The only part, in the short term that matters to businesses, really, is probably Indigo, built in web services are something that would enable more windows only applications, and this is what matters most to them, Avalon is more useless eye-candy (win2000 was still thier best OS in terms of looks IMO), and WinFS is nice, but only one implementation of a multitude of possible answers to the "where's my files syndrome." (Which could be fixed if those stupid CIS classes actualy taught file management/origanization along with Office)

 

[Fukui]

Longhorn to be good after a while because unlike their other upgrades and OS iterations, this one isn't a huge mass of previous Windows versions on top of another

Um, yes it is. Jim Allchin said they just now decided on the code base for Longhorn: Windows Server 2003.

 

[jobutex]

Micro$oft Longhorn is fast becoming the new software package known as Micro$oft Steer.

Long live OS X, the real innovation in the personal computer industry!

 

[JFreak]

As I said before OS 10.0 sucked. OS 10.1 was better but it still sucked. OS 10.2 was what 10.0 should have been in beta. And now OS 10.3 is what OS 10.0 should have been when it shipped. IMHO Apple used the market as a test guinny pig with 10.0. In fact wasn’t 10.0 free? Or was that 10.1? Something was free because it SUCKED at the time. Don’t deny the history of OS X. In the long run it doesn’t really matter what .0,.1, and .2 were like. 10.3 is here now and is a solid OS.

you have to see the bigger picture here - apple was fully behind the classic OS until 10.3 was out, so that tells us that pre-panther OSX versions have been a migration project where some users have chosen to test/use the new system and some users have chosen to keep using the best supported platform (which now is the osx). apple had to do it this way because having a new generation OS released was the only way to get software companies to develop software to such new unix-based beast - which is a bit more complicated than supporting a new windows version after another.

and, i have to disagree slightly... IMHO 10.1 was usable. it offered nothing new compared to os9, but it was usable. typical first version software. it worked and was slow. and, really, EVERYONE who installed a beta osx, or a zero-version, must have known that it's still an experimental system where not everything works as it should. from that point of view it is pointless to blame apple for letting people experiment with the next big thing, as it must be understood that apple even wasn't encouraging people to switch to osx at that time - when 10.1 came preinstalled with new systems people had a good look at it but still mostly booted into classic as the osx one didn't offer anything new but was just slower than the good-old-classic. but on the other hand, at that time, everyone must have known that osx is the thing to come; anyway, it was only panther when apple themselves said that classic os is dead, which IMHO is the point where osx-era truly began...

or...

do you want to talk about windows versions one and two? i have used them both and while they worked, they were LESS usable than dos at that time - it was only third windows version that actually offered something, as at that time software companies were releasing software for it leaving dos behind.

 

[SeaFox]

Hmmmm, lets use some logic!

Totally.

Not to mention that Apple had the luxury of stealing from 2 OSs (NeXT and FreeBSD)..

People seem to love to use the word 'steal' when it comes to Apple and the changes they make in their OS's, completely ignoring what the word actually means.

steal
1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission.

Let's see, Next was owned by Steve Jobs. Apple took over NeXT (or NeXT took over Apple, but that's another arguement). That means that everything that was NeXT is now a part of Apple. Apple owns all of NeXT's code and other I.P. All of this happened before OSX.

So tell me how does one steal from themselves?

Then there's BSD. A open source operating system (that means anyone can have it, they have permission, get it)? Apple uses BSD to make Darwin, Darwin is released back as an open source to everyone else, exactly as OS projects are supposed to be. Apple doesn't sell Darwin. They sell OSX, OSX takes Darwin and adds a proprietary windows management system on top of it. Improvements made to the underlying Darwin in the process of making OSX are released back to the free Darwin OS available (with it's source) from Apple.

Please tell me what part of this was done without the owner's permission? Seem to me Apple has followed the rules pretty well. Yeah, they aren't releasing Quartz and Co. to the Open Source community, but then again, those are Apple projects, not open source ones.

Christ, all OS 10.0 was was a port of those two OSs to PPC.
MS can't use Unix or anything else because there IS nothing else.

<chortle> Yeah, cause it's not like there's Linux or BSD available for Intel processors!

No seriously, why not? I mean, there used to be ONE MacOS, and Apple managed to make a new OS (and they did it by porting an entire operating system over from another archetecture, which you seem to dismiss as easy for some stupid reason), why can't Microsoft do it instead of insisting their way is the only...

Oops. I just let the cat out of the bag! Adopting Linux or something similar as the new understructure for Windows would be the equivilent of admitting defeat to the Open Source way. Microsoft's shop just couldn't cut it and had to turn to a bunch of geeks, many of whom did not spend thousands of dollars to learn to code, for thier OS!

If I were running MS, I would BUY Apple, port OS X to x86, and be happy for another 10 years.

Because, after all, it's not like you have to port applications over! Adobe Photoshop for MacOSX will work exactly the same on an AMD as a PowerPC.

Really? Did you even think before you posted?

 

[Vanilla]

This is the BBC website's version of the story: BBC