After months of speculation, Microsoft plans to give developers their first hard look at the next version of Windows in October,” reports Ina Fried for CNET News.com. “The Redmond, Wash., company expects to release a ‘developers preview’ of the new operating system, code-named Longhorn, at its professional developers conference in Los Angeles.”
Fried reports, “As for the new user interface, it’s unclear just how much of the design, code-named Aero, will be shown. Microsoft did preview some user interface features at its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in May. One concern is that if the look and feel is revealed too soon, it could be copied by others well before Microsoft ever ships Longhorn.” Full article here.
Here are some QuickTime movies of the “Aero” UI preview from ExtremeTech.com – you’ll have to let them download fully before they will play:
Windows wave (3.6 MB)
Stars Wars rotate (3.5 MB)
Aero dizzy (7.1 MB)
MacDailyNews Take: Whoops! Longhorn’s “Aero” UI look and feel has already been copied due to a dastardly act by Apple Computer, Inc. The Cupertino Mac maker seems to have employed some nefarious method of time travel; jumping forward to 2005 to steal Longhorn’s “Aero” UI look and feel, then jumping back to March 2001 to release a copy known by the unoriginal (and obviously Aero-inspired) name “Aqua” and employing a so-called technology named “Quartz.” See the results of this obvious act of copying via time travel here. Apple also seems to be intent on building upon the copied “Aero” look and feel with their own “innovations,” including Expos
Oh… my… God. They’ve really lost it in Redmond. Bill Gates will be in a Vegas hotel room with fifteen inch fingernails soon.
Do you think they actually do believe this crap they spout, or are they pre-emptively rewriting history again?
They can’t really be serious about someone trying to copy that garbage….. right?
This looks like a seriously huge lawsuit in the making; millions of windows users will want money for damages due to Longhorn’s “windows-effect” makes them cock-eyed.
“Aero”!!!! Amazing!!! Of course, XP was pure coincidence too!! I wonder if Bill Gates has a poster of Steve Jobs up in his bedroom.
Oh God! I’d rather not think about it!
John Davis
I believe Microsoft’s concerns are directed more towards the developers of Gnome and KDE GUIs that provide front ends for Linux. They are heavily Windows inspired in their current incarnations. It is not unreasonable to think that future versions of these projects would continue to borrow heavily from Windows.
Right now Microsoft pays far mor attention to Linux as a threat than to Apple and OS X.
Irregardless, Microsoft has perfected the art of copying the work of others. They copyrighted that claim way back in 1985 with Windows 1.0 anyway. It doesn’t matter if they are referring to Linux GUIs or not, it isn’t “copying Longhorn” when they themselves copied heavily from Apple first long before Longhorn ever went into development. It would be a case of Linux copying from Apple via Microsoft is all…
What is MS slogan for that mess?
“Catch the Windows’ wave” with Max Headroom advertising MS?
I would not be surprised after seeing how original MS is…
MS has always taken a good idea and bastardizes it with 5-6 upgrades/patches to make it half as good as the original.
I find it amusing that (In Europe at least) “Aero” is a chocolate candy bar that’s full of holes! :>)
Copy M$? Yeah right and Bill Clinton said “I did not have sex with that woman”. Well since Bill G. and his gang have the courts in thier pockets they will probable get by with ripping Apple off agin. The first time was back in the mid 90’s when they came out with the first Windoz 90 something. Looked a lot like Apple’s System 7, and they got by with it because at time Apple and the great Steve had parted ways and Apple was so broke from bad management that they couldn’t afford a lawsuite. I know because I was working for them at the time. Times have changed and now Apple has a lot of bucks and Steve is back. I hope that Apple screws Bill big time if M$ rips them off again.
Apple won’t sue, mainly because the Office-killer isn’t here yet. And with OpenOffice delaying their version until 2005 or 2006, we’ll be even more dependent on M$ for an office suite for a while.
Regardless. What does “irregardless” mean?
Oh someone might steal the “look and Feel” of Longhorn the way M$ STOLE that from Apple for Windows 3.0 and everything after it ??
BTW – they did the same thing a 5-6 years ago with 10,000 lines of code from Apple’s QT.
Tell me something credible, M$ should worry about OTHERS stealing from them??
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LOL. Do you think OpenOffice for mac wasn’t delayed for no reason. It was put on the back burner because another corporation is already using the OpenOffice source as a basis for a Mac version. They will re-contribute back to the community their modifications ala Safari. Can you guess who?
“Irregardless” – the second most mispronounced word in the English language behind “mute” (e.g. It’s a mute point). Is moot that hard to remember?
Thanks for the info Stingerman. It all makes sense now. I guess I’ll shut my hole and not complain about OO being delayed.
first irregardless/regardless and now double negatives. what da hell???
Stingerman: “wasn’t delayed for no reason”???
I’m guessing you’re referring to StarOffice and the MadHatter project from SUN? Hopefully you’re not referring to Apple ’cause Safari is a hack of the Mozilla codebase; I was under the impression that when you “contribute back to the community” that you improve, not make it unstable.
They really don’t get it. They think that what makes the Mac special is the eye candy. Like usual, Microsoft thinks that they can copy the look and forget the feel. The Mac effects add to the visual concept of the interface. The Genie effect makes you get the feeling that the programs are being placed on and removed from the dock – improving the users understanding. The fact that it is cool looking is just a classing implementation of a good concept. How do these effects help a windows user get a better understanding of what is happening with his computer? The answer is it doesn’t. When Microsoft copied the mac to make windows, they did the same thing – they gave it a GUI – a difficult one to manage, but it was a GUI. Unfortunatly, the masses will blindly buy into it.
Man, there’s a lot of misinformed people out there:
From tthomcarl: “The first time was back in the mid 90’s when they came out with the first Windoz 90 something. Looked a lot like Apple’s System 7, and they got by with it because at time Apple and the great Steve had parted ways and Apple was so broke from bad management that they couldn’t afford a lawsuite”.
Wrong. Apple was not so broke that they couldn’t defend themselves. Two things happened depending on which rip-off you’re talking about. First, in an original software development between Apple and Microsoft circa 1982, Apple inadvertently gave them permission to use the Mac OS to develop software, even their own OS, which they did. The second time was for Windows 95 and Sculley caved because Bill threatened to kill Office for the Mac. They did actually sue MS and lost. Apple: Great technological innovators, lousy businessmen.
Second, from grammer: “Hopefully you’re not referring to Apple ’cause Safari is a hack of the Mozilla codebase;”
Wrong. Safari was built from Konqueror, not Mozilla. The Mozilla group was pissed that they didn’t use Mozilla.
Fast User switching on a Mac first… spare me (XP first). Windowed interfaces first… again spare me (Xerox did it). Mac GUI is pretty, but a far cry from a Windows Interface. Aero looks and feels nothing like OSX, so why bother saying that it was ‘stolen’?
Only Mac zealots would actually look at Aero and see anything Mac-like on it. They would also say something like – ‘irregardless’.
Well thats a switch. They can’t steal from themselves so I guess they are worried that what they have been doing for years will happen to them.
“Mac GUI is pretty, but a far cry from a Windows Interface.”
One more thing to be thankful for!
BTW, I use both.
RP – You’re right on the Fast User Switching. Steve said so himself. He openly admits that this is something that windows does much better and that they’re copying it. That’s one thing.
The wondowed interface was a Xerox thing, but it wasn’t stolen. Zerox was an R&D facility and one of the things Jobs saw there was a little winsow/mouse thing. Xerox weren’t actually going to do anything with it. They created the concept, bt it was fully developed by Apple.
So in 1984, the Mac is released. In 1993, when I bought a Win 3.1 system (because it was affordable and I mistakenly thought it was like the mac that I couldn’t afford), PC using friends used to really take the mickey becasue I wasn’t using command line DOS (A real man’s OS, according to them). That’s NINE YEARS LATER and microsoft was only just starting to catch up.
I think windows has come a long way, but in terms of a user interface, it’s still behind and in terms of the stuff under the hood, I just don’t trust it. Just look at how you uninstall something on windows and compare it to the same thing on a mac (i.e.simple drag to the trash). No DLLs! The equivalent to DLLs are kept local to an application package and only Apple updates system level library stuff. And it can keep multiple versions too, so if an app needs an older version, it can run that one instead.
I use Win2KPro at work, and i have to say, it’s really stable, but it’s maintained by professionals and is a standard hardware and software configuration. Even so, it’s less stable than my 3 year old mac that has really not been looked after particularly well.
RP
I am so sick of people bringing up the Xerox connection. Yes, for heavens sake, Apple used ideas from Xeroxs original GUI, but did not copy it. On top of that, they received the rights to use the ideas explicitely from Xerox, they did not steal it.
Microsoft lifted not only the ideas but directly copied many features, in the process violating copyright laws. Microsoft and Apple were in an extended court battle, with Microsoft using their ONLY ORIGINAL THOUGHT to wear down companies in extended court battles until either their competitor goes bankrupt, can no longer afford the court battles and settles out of court(which Apple did)
Oh, wait a minute. This tactic isn’t Microsoft’s ORIGINAL THOUGHT, they stole it from other ethicly corrupt corporations and have refined to state of the art.
By the way, I’m not a Mac zealot nor am I a Microsoft apologist or TROLL.
Complain all you want y’all. These videos have nothing to do with Aero – this is Avalon (the new graphics subsystem). None of you have even seen Aero yet. Until then, your comments only show prejudgement.
The ONLY usefulness that I think these effects can serve is as a screensaver. They use too many resources to be useful, and would cause any user to freak-out if they looked at these effects too long.