Microsoft Longhorn: Aero is Ugly

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Cairo: Windows NT 4.0

No. Cairo is definitely not Windows NT4.

[Asher]

It depends on who you ask.

Cairo was the successor to NT 3.5. Many of its features were shelved (such as WinFS) and the product was then redesigned and released.

Some consider NT 4.0 Cairo, others say Cairo never happened.

NT 4.0 was officially called Cairo through development, though, even if it doesn't include all the features MS said would be coming in Cairo.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Spiffor

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.

Wow... great... but well since most of the time you can switch it all off anyway it doesn't matter so much to me.

I understand that a lot of people want to have a playful OS and while I care about looks (I prefer a silverish look and therefor I use WinXP's silver theme and smoke theme for TB and FF) I don't care about that eye candy stuff that is of virtually no use. Translucent for example or useless animations and all such is nice to have in theory, but what to do with it? Some applications already support transparency (trillian comes to my mind), yet I find that this adds nothing.
And the animation is nice in the beginning, but at some point you just don't want to wait for the stupid thing to finish so in the end you'll switch it off.

Things that for example add something are hover states for buttons. I don't know if the old win theme had this, but to me it always shows if an application is responding and ready to accept my click.. as long as the hover state does not appear when I move the mouse over it, I know the application is not ready to receive input.

That said, I don't know why the "Submit Reply" buttons here on the forum look so old block gray instead of using the theme buttons like with the input type="file"

[Agathon]

More Thurrotty goodness:

Here's what happened. At last year's WinHEC 2004, Microsoft showed off its Longhorn OS and made promises about shipping it in late 2005. It showed off hardware advances, such as auxiliary displays for notebooks and Tablet PCs that would let you access email, calendar, digital music, and other services while the machine was closed and powered down. The company touted small-form-factor Tablet PCs that would straddle the increasingly blurred line between PDAs and ultra portable notebook computers.

Flash forward to this year's WinHEC 2005. Longhorn is in complete disarray and in danger of collapsing under its own weight: Since WinHEC 2004, Microsoft hasn't shipped a single public beta release of the product, which is now delayed until late 2006. Now, we get a new build of Longhorn, finally, but it's surprisingly similar to the version we got last year. In fact, it's almost less exciting, because it looks more like the existing Windows version—Windows XP—than the year-ago version did. You can literally see the backtracking.

Microsoft once again showed off auxiliary displays and small-form-factor Tablet PCs. Neither technology is any closer to shipping: They're expected to show up in late 2006—yep, about the same time frame as Longhorn—which means we might be lucky enough to see them again at WinHEC 2006 next spring. You know, if I actually show up for that one.

http://www.connectedhomemag.com/HomeOffice/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=46181&#Comments

With every passing week it becomes clearer that Longhorn will just be a minor upgrade to XP: an upgrade that has OS X like security, OS X like graphics, and OS X like integrated content searching.

Why would you buy it, when you could have bought OS X four years ago?

Microsoft has dropped the ball big time.

[Spiffor]

Why would you buy it, when you could have bought OS X four years ago?

Games.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Originally posted by Agathon
Why would you buy it, when you could have bought OS X four years ago?

Games.

OS X doesn't run on the cheaper i386 hardware

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Why would you buy it, when you could have bought OS X four years ago?

Games.

Games are one big reason but I'd say access to an order of magnitude more of software in general is a better way to put it.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
With every passing week it becomes clearer that Longhorn will just be a minor upgrade to XP: an upgrade that has OS X like security, OS X like graphics, and OS X like integrated content searching.

Why would you buy it, when you could have bought OS X four years ago?

Microsoft has dropped the ball big time.

A minor upgrade with a completely new API?
A minor upgrade with a completely new environment (in .NET instead of C++)?
A minor upgrade with a completely new graphics engine?
A minor upgrade with a completely new document architecture?

One thing to remember is Paul is a journalist, not a software engineer.

In huge projects like this, you get the "back end" and fundamentals done before the touch-up appearance and looks. Look how fundamentally different Windows XP final looks from the betas, for example.

There has been huge reworkings on the internals that are not evident from screenshots and quick demos. For example, Explorer (or the UI...comparable to KDE/Gnome) has been rewritten to use .NET, which is both more flexible and more secure (and portable, curiously). Win32 has been deprecated and recoded in WinFX, which is also more flexible and secure.

Longhorn is a major overhaul of the internals, and that's what's been happening. Spit & polish and things that superficial journalists like Paul (and most Mac users, I'd imagine) would notice come after the basics are done.

You can't add all kinds of functionality to Explorer when it doesn't even exist yet...

[Asher]

MS is asking sites to remove screenshots of the product now, because they never intended the screenshots for public display yet, as they haven't worked on the interface much since the last public build.

Interface work is expected to be done in Beta 2. We're not even done Beta 1.

[Dinner]

So Longhorn gets released in 2006 and then gets replaced in 2010? That seems like a pretty short product cycle compared to Win95 & WinXP.

Then again Longhorn's ship date has slipped so why shouldn't it's replacement? Still, I'd rather have them spend the extra time sorting out the software then rush something to market before it is totally ready. I'll likely buy a new computer when Longhorn comes out as my computer will be reaching that age and it will be nice to get all new software with it.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Oerdin
So Longhorn gets released in 2006 and then gets replaced in 2010? That seems like a pretty short product cycle compared to Win95 & WinXP.

Then again Longhorn's ship date has slipped so why shouldn't it's replacement? Still, I'd rather have them spend the extra time sorting out the software then rush something to market before it is totally ready. I'll likely buy a new computer when Longhorn comes out as my computer will be reaching that age and it will be nice to get all new software with it.

It's not being replaced, Blackcomb will continue building on Longhorn.

[Agathon]

One thing to remember is Paul is a journalist, not a software engineer.

You were quite happy to quote his fulsome praise before.

Games are one big reason but I'd say access to an order of magnitude more of software in general is a better way to put it.

Most of the decent software available for Windows has a Macintosh equivalent, and why are you buying a computer to game on in any case? The future is consoles: as Microsoft themselves have realized with the Xbox, which is a pretty good product other than the way the new one looks.

And if you're going to be a cheapskate about computers, you get what you deserve.

Longhorn is a joke. You've all been promised the earth by Gates and company and now it appears to be a minor upgrade from a user's point of view.

Google is producing more interesting stuff at the moment.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
You were quite happy to quote his fulsome praise before.

Not when he was commenting on software engineering practices. People are right sometimes, people are wrong sometimes. He can talk about things such as ease of use or even business decisions, but he doesn't have the background or knowledge to make adequate comments about software engineering.

The public timeline shows the user interface enhancements being built into beta 2. The current builds aren't even beta 1. Paul and you are making a stink about the lack of visibly different interfaces in this build...

[Agathon]

I reckon that when it comes out it will be a sad joke of an OS.

But we'll see.

[Asher]

Longhorn and laptops: http://news.com.com/Can+Longhorn+imp...?tag=nefd.lede

Yet another Longhorn feature was, in fact, inspired by the cell phone. For years, clamshell-style phones have had a second, smaller screen on the outside so basic information, such as a clock and caller ID, can be viewed without opening the phone. Microsoft, along with Intel, has been working to translate the same capability to the laptop.
special coverage
Show-and-tell for Microsoft
"Black boxes" for Windows, Longhorn for laptops, 64-bit software--and more. Click here for stories from WinHEC.

With Longhorn, Microsoft is adding support for such devices, although the approach is somewhat inelegant. Either the PC will be off, and the calendar or e-mail information on the secondary display risks being out of date, or, when accessing functions such as playing music, the laptop will be fully turned on. Down the road, Mitchell hopes to do the engineering work so information can remain updated with only needed parts of the computer being powered up. The company also hopes laptops will someday even be able to use a nearby watch or cell phone as an additional display.

One thing that remains unclear is just how Microsoft will sell the Tablet PC OS in the Longhorn time frame. More and more, tablet features are being added to mainstream laptops, and Microsoft said the cost difference between a tablet-capable PC and a similarly equipped laptop has declined to about $100, from $250. However, computer makers currently still have to buy Microsoft's higher-priced Tablet PC edition of Windows XP in order to offer those features. Microsoft has not said how it will package Longhorn.
Show-and-tell

IDC's Kay said he anticipates that tablet features will still command a premium price in Longhorn, but he expects the added price to be less in Longhorn than it is in Windows XP. Kay noted that Microsoft has seen a significant increase in sales of Windows XP Media Center Edition since it cut the price premium on that product last fall.

It does appear that consumers may at least be able to combine the features of Microsoft's premium operating systems.

"Our grand goal is to provide as much feature richness as any particular customer segment wants," Mitchell said. "Right now we have arguably artificial separation between things."

Today, for example, consumers can buy a laptop that has either the pen-based abilities of the Tablet PC OS or one with the TV recording abilities of the Media Center OS, but not both. In Longhorn, computer makers may be able to combine the two capabilities.

"There's no reason that you shouldn't be able to do that," Mitchell said.