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kanaloa
John C. Derrick |
 Posted:
Thu Apr 28, 2005 4:16 pm |
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Founder
Joined: 09 Mar 2002
Posts: 43413
Location: Columbia, SC
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 There are times to sit quiet and smile and there are times to seriously ask the hardball questions. This is the time for the latter.
Longhorn, to be or not to be? That truly is the question.
I've been reading a lot of things around the tech world the last few days, some of it from our site and our own user experiences with the most recent builds of Longhorn, and most of it elsewhere (some of the folks who are in the big leagues of the tech world.) And quite frankly... I'm a little worried in regards to Longhorn.
Apple just released Tiger, and in a year we once expected to see Longhorn... no, wait, that was last year; but anyway, where exactly IS Longhorn? Longhorn seems to be delayed more and more often, and it seems no one can really figure out why, not even Microsoft.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about what I see in Longhorn so far, I think some of the new technology is great, but the speed at which it's coming is, well, horrible. In the fast paced world today you have to be quick on your toes and constantly have the "latest and greatest" to stay alive. Windows XP was a huge mile-stone for Microsoft, but that was in 2001!! Looking at Microsoft's competition, like the Mac, well... Apple is and has been way ahead of the game in regards to "new" technology. Sure, not a lot of people are changing over, yet... but if things keep at this rate, that might change.
PC vendors and software makers are going to want a top of the line OS to run their programs. If Microsoft fails to produce what they need, then those companies are going to turn to Linux or Apple; and if that happens, the entire industry could turn too. And it almost goes without saying, 'If you start down that road... C-ya Microsoft.'
Companies like Google are proof that modern technology and consistent "new" ideas are going to win in the market place. MSN is a great search engine, I love it, I really do... but how many of you are using it for your homepage? I'm not. Why? Because I still realize that the majority of my users utilize Google for their queries, and so, I design my sites with Google in mind. Microsoft hasn't reached out and scooped up anyone, or at least not enough to convince me to "make the switch."
And I sense a trend here. I'm a huge Microsoft fan... I mean, this site's a testament to that. But I'm also incredibly disappointed in what I'm seeing come out of Redmond. I heard a lot of good things from winHEC, but then again, I also heard a lot of complaints.
Paul Thurrott even said, and I quote, "On Tuesday, I noted that 'this (Longhorn) has the makings of a train wreck.' I wasn't referring specifically to build 5048, which is a developer build only, and doesn't show off the final UI. Instead, I was referring to the Longhorn project itself, which is careening so wildly out of control that it may never successfully come to a conclusion."
Paul, well... I agree with you. Where exactly IS all this going? I mean, even the IE7 debut was a flop and never took place. What's going on here? One of the biggest and smartest companies in the world seems to be losing their edge. What's the deal?
So I end this blurb where I started... Longhorn, to be or not to be? I realize fully that Longhorn is in development stages, and I realize it's not a final product, so no, I can't completely and accurately judge what I'm seeing in Build 5048 as a final product. But the very FACT that I'm still seeing Alpha builds, a year after the original and apparently very theoretical release date of 2004 has come and gone... yes, I am getting slightly concerned. We may see Beta by this summer... but we might not. Rumors are flying out of control that Beta won't even come out until the Winter 2005 or later. And even if we do see Beta this summer... will we see a release in 2006? Who knows... I'll keep my fingers crossed.
But others might not... they might head to the Apple store they've passed a few hundreds times to work but never gone into, or they might pick up a version of Linux and say, "What the hell?"
It's a ticking clock Microsoft... where's the Beef, err... Longhorn?
 
John C. Derrick
Chairman of the Board
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D3LM3L
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Posted:
Sat Apr 30, 2005 2:06 pm |
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PRO Level 10
Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 424
Location: Bergen County, NJ
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Also, LH is quite a copy of Tiger... for example, if any Mac users would watch the keynote/demo of LH, they'd see many copied features liek the sidebar-feature-thing in explorer (on the right)- that's been in Mac OS X since October 2003. Although it may have a feature or two more than Mac OS X's Finder, it's still a copy of Apple's original creation.
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imnuts
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Posted:
Sat Apr 30, 2005 2:09 pm |
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Moderator
Support Team
Joined: 24 Mar 2004
Posts: 14574
Location: Boothwyn, Pennsylvania
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there's no longer a sidebar  and just through testing, WinFS is faster than spotlight at searching for items  overall, i'd say that at this point in time, Longhorn is on par with 'Tiger' except for the fact that one has been released and the other is a year away. |
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D3LM3L
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Posted:
Sat Apr 30, 2005 2:11 pm |
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PRO Level 10
Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 424
Location: Bergen County, NJ
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That's quite the problem.... Mac OS X 10.5 will be in the middle of its development by the time LH is released.
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imnuts
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Posted:
Sat Apr 30, 2005 2:15 pm |
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Moderator
Support Team
Joined: 24 Mar 2004
Posts: 14574
Location: Boothwyn, Pennsylvania
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but then again, there is still a years worth of work to be done on LH, and in that time, a lot will change and i'm sure that improvements are going to be made on both sides. Windows has finally caught up to mac in a graphical sense, now if they'd work on the security problems more and keep up the GUI, they'll have a winner.
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D3LM3L
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Posted:
Sat Apr 30, 2005 2:17 pm |
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PRO Level 10
Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 424
Location: Bergen County, NJ
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Mac doesn't need any security improvements.
Also, by the time Windows totally "catches up" with LH, Apple will have already been ahead.
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kanaloa
John C. Derrick |
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Posted:
Sat Apr 30, 2005 3:47 pm |
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Founder
Joined: 09 Mar 2002
Posts: 43413
Location: Columbia, SC
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I won't say MS can't catch up... but I surely have to admit at this point it's a long road.
Their OS, their browser, their email service, and other things have a lot of "catching up" to do.
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Neuromancer
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Posted:
Sat Apr 30, 2005 3:53 pm |
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PRO ELITE
Joined: 28 Mar 2004
Posts: 10641
Location: West Virginia
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If microsoft started building their own computers perhaps in a decade the could come to par with Apple.
However sincee they are already undergoing lawsuits for being a monopoly and such I do not see that happeneing.
However I think it would be really great to have more systems like apple available in which the software was specifically designed to maximize the hardware 
(Of course with the number of PC vendors, that would lead to a hundred different version of Windows  ) |
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Infinityeye
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Posted:
Sat Apr 30, 2005 4:32 pm |
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Respected Member
of PROnetworks
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 3216
Location: The Netherlands
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When you think of it, it is actually a bit stupid, Everyone is using Windows, while it is the most insecure OS there probably is...
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b_a88
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Posted:
Sun May 01, 2005 3:30 am |
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PRO PLATINUM
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Posts: 6146
Location: New Hampshire
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| InfinityEye wrote: |
| When you think of it, it is actually a bit stupid, Everyone is using Windows, while it is the most insecure OS there probably is... |
I think that part of that is because it is the most used so it is the most targeted.
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