Microsoft Longhorn: Aero is Ugly

[Agathon]

I suppose you could buy Longhorn at the end of next year and finally get the standard of graphics that mac users have been enjoying since 2001.

But why bother. You could buy a mac mini with Tiger this Friday and it will be better than Longhorn will be and you won't have to wait 18 months.

Microsoft has dropped the ball. Even Paul Thurrott is starting to get tetchy.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Oerdin
So when is Longhorn going to be released? 2006?

That's when it's scheduled, with a beta this year.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
I suppose you could buy Longhorn at the end of next year and finally get the standard of graphics that mac users have been enjoying since 2001.

But why bother. You could buy a mac mini with Tiger this Friday and it will be better than Longhorn will be and you won't have to wait 18 months.

Microsoft has dropped the ball. Even Paul Thurrott is starting to get tetchy.

The quotes above are from Paul Thurrott. You know, with words like "unsurpassed," etc.

And people are more than welcome to buy a Mac Mini, with the 1.25GHz G4 and a bloaty OS X Tiger, but it won't be in the same league as Longhorn.

As reviews have said, OS X Tiger is a minor, incremental upgrade that is more akin to a service pack for Windows that you get for free from MS. It's $129US from Apple.

Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features for end users (though developers will be interested in some of the low-level work Apple has done with Core Image, Core Audio, and other technologies. That won't stop Apple fans from flocking to Apple Stores on April 29 and standing in line to buy it, even at its inflated $129 price.

Apple still doesn't get the concept of inductive user interfaces, either.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_task-based_ui.asp

[Agathon]

The quotes above are from Paul Thurrott. You know, with words like "unsurpassed," etc.

This Paul Thurrott, quoted this very day

Though the Longhorn demonstrations Gates and his minions provided were interesting, they were visually unimpressive, falling short of the graphical excellence found today in Apple's Mac OS X. However, various Microsoft representatives told me that the Aero Glass user interface demonstrated during the keynote was not the final user experience and would instead by dramatically nicer looking in later beta releases. The Aero Glass interface that Gates demonstrated did support OS X-like transparencies, translucencies, animations, and other effects, however. Gates also showed off application scaling, which will help legacy applications display correctly on the high DPI displays of the future, and a sample media-oriented sample application that takes advantage of Longhorn's display features.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/46173/windowspaulthurrott_46173.html

But more galling...

I hate mornings. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is. It's especially true after an excruciatingly long day followed by not enough sleep. In the cold light of morning, I'm reflecting a bit on Longhorn 5048. My thoughts are not positive, not positive at all. This is a painful build to have to deal with after a year of waiting, a step back in some ways. I hope Microsoft has surprises up their sleeves. This has the makings of a train wreck. I'll have more on that later.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/46175/windowspaulthurrott_46175.html

[Atahualpa]

Though the Longhorn demonstrations Gates and his minions provided were interesting, they were visually unimpressive, falling short of the graphical excellence found today in Apple's Mac OS X. However, various Microsoft representatives told me that the Aero Glass user interface demonstrated during the keynote was not the final user experience and would instead by dramatically nicer looking in later beta releases. The Aero Glass interface that Gates demonstrated did support OS X-like transparencies, translucencies, animations, and other effects, however. Gates also showed off application scaling, which will help legacy applications display correctly on the high DPI displays of the future, and a sample media-oriented sample application that takes advantage of Longhorn's display features.

Bah nobody needs this stuff anyway... they should focus less on eye-candy which is useless in every way.
The best looking interface is still Mac OS 8. Perfect for working, nothing that distracts. All these animations are completely useless and unecessary.

[Dinner]

I suppose at the end of 2006 I will be due for a new computer since I bought mine at the begining of 2003. It would be nice to wait and get the new copy of windows and since my 1.6Ghz machine still seems to run everything just fine I guess it won't be to hard to hold out.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by Asher
The dropshadows that I see are black...is your monitor calibrated correctly?

I am referring to the halo around the username in the Star Menu and the purple titlebar titles.

Cairo: Windows NT 4.0
(No codename): Windows 2000

I think you have those two reversed.

Apple still doesn't get the concept of inductive user interfaces, either.
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...k-based_ui.asp

Gods preserve us from Vikings, Magyars, and inductive user interfaces. Computers aren't made better by turning chess into rock-paper-scissors.

I don't want to edit pictures. I want to run Paint Shop Pro, open a few pictures in it, compare them, juggle around values, duplicate windows, and so on.

I don't want to browse the web. I want to open Opera with my last workspace already in place.

Microsoft Word has an awful interface, if only because I have to create decent heading and body styles before I start writing anything.

And Mac OS X is easier to use. There is a difference between "ease of use" and "ease of learning". One would think that a strategy gamer would know it. Doom is easy to learn. Total Annihilation^[0] is easy to use.

^[0] Civ2 has a pretty crappy interface compared to cEvo or even FreeCiv, so I can't really give it as an example. Warlords Battlecry III and maybe Kohan II have surpassed Total Annihilation in the interface department, but they are a bit more obscure.

And third parties can extend the shell with their own options too, though curiously few do it (I guess they're too busy complaining how evil Microsoft is).

Probably because programmers disable n00b crap like autorun and task panes, and so don't think of customizing them.

[Asher]

Originally posted by St Leo

Gods preserve us from Vikings, Magyars, and inductive user interfaces. Computers aren't made better by turning chess into rock-paper-scissors.

I don't want to edit pictures. I want to run Paint Shop Pro, open a few pictures in it, compare them, juggle around values, duplicate windows, and so on.

I don't want to browse the web. I want to open Opera with my last workspace already in place.

Microsoft Word has an awful interface, if only because I have to create decent heading and body styles before I start writing anything.

And Mac OS X is easier to use. There is a difference between "ease of use" and "ease of learning". One would think that a strategy gamer would know it. Doom is easy to learn. Total Annihilation^[0] is easy to use.

^[0] Civ2 has a pretty crappy interface compared to cEvo or even FreeCiv, so I can't really give it as an example. Warlords Battlecry III and maybe Kohan II have surpassed Total Annihilation in the interface department, but they are a bit more obscure.

The point is -- you can do both in Windows. You have the inductive task-based interface and the deductive program/document-based interfaces. The latter are better for "power users", the former is better for novice/"average" users.

I consider Mac OS X awkwardly inbetween ease of learning and ease of use. The Dock is the most heinous of all user interface innovations -- mixing running programs with non-running programs and without any description other than an icon, for instance.

Probably because programmers disable n00b crap like autorun and task panes, and so don't think of customizing them.

This is the exact kind of mindset that prevents people from making computers readily accessible to most people. You don't understand and are seemingly incapable of entering the mindset of other users and how they perceive the computer, and how they want to drive interaction.

A grandma goes to her computer and says "I want to send an email". Is it obvious that the first step to do this is open Outlook?

What if she wants to print pictures she downloaded from the internet? She's looking at the pictures, what now? With task-based, you have a task pane on the left that'll say stuff like "Print picture..." and "Order prints online". It then becomes an inductive process, accelerating the learning process and thus becoming easier to use for her and people like her.

Then for people like you, arguably more competent with computers , can still open PSP to print your pictures first. No one stops you.

[Asher]

Avalon has been unlocked:




Also, search can be integrated on the Start menu:

[Lawrence of Arabia]

longhorn is better because it has more bugs then an ant colony.

[ixnay]

That can't be Longhorn; I don't see an analog clock that takes up a quarter of the screen

[Spiffor]

In Longhorn, Microsoft will introduce the new least privileged user account (LUA), which is basically a secure code compartment in which most application code will typically run. When trusted applications need administrator-level access, they can temporarily run in Protected Admin mode. This feature will help sidestep most of the problems home users now face with Limited User accounts, but administrators in businesses can turn it off.

[Verto]

I don't see anything impressive about it.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
All these animations are completely useless and unecessary.

As much as it pains me to say, WinXP's puppy is extremely useful. It helps computer illiterate people not to feel afraid of their computer, and thus they can actually do stuff with it.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Asher
Also, search can be integrated on the Start menu:

Now this is the kind of feature I like
If the search feature is as fast as they flaunt, I'll use it very often. Heck, I often use the WinXP search feature already, despite it being slooooow