“Security concerns are slowing things down at Microsoft, but the company is still chugging along with its more ambitious projects including Windows Longhorn, a company executive said on Tuesday,” Ina Fried reports for CNET News. “The need to make its current software more resilient to attack is part of the reason that several projects have fallen behind schedule, Senior Vice President Bob Muglia said in an interview.”
“‘It’s absolutely slowed things down,’ Muglia said at the Microsoft Management Seminar here. ‘This work is making our software come out not as quickly.’ Meanwhile, CEO Steve Ballmer, who was slated to address the crowd tomorrow, will now not attend the show. Ballmer was in Europe meeting with regulators in an effort to settle antitrust charges,” Fried reports.
Full article here.
So extrapolating from the evidence, it looks as if Longhorn may not actually ship until after the end of time. Great news for Apple.
First it was delayed until late 2006, now some speculate it might even be 2008. Like you said Dave, it may not be until the end of time at this rate. LOL
What a pile of BS!
Let me translate: we made our systems too monolithic and didn’t exercise any substantive quality assurance. And because new operating systems are our revenue lifeblood – as that’s how we force people to upgrade everything else – we’ve never put the same effort into developing the capacity to fix our somewhat sub-standard programming as we have into developing new operating systems that frighten the bejesus out of 90% of our customers.
Still, at least Paul Thurrott thinks the Avalon user interface in Longhorn is better than Apple’s Aqua/Quartz which is probably a good thing as he’s probably already hard at work on the books to promote an operating system that may never arrive.
Whoopsee freakin’ do! You are forgetting XP Reloaded. The “sequel” to XP….I think its mostly refferring to the part where Neo is in “Limbo” (The subway part with the kid) “Stuck in the Process”.
MCCFR
Ha! I reckon Thurrott will have to update the Q&A section on his site:
Q. When will Longhorn be released?
A. Ermmm… sometime soon.
Patheticrosoft. These two words belong together
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Guys let me give you an alternate translation: “We’re planning on releasing parts of our source code and blame it on hackers, so others can do our security patches for us. After that we will be ripping off more Apple software in order to increase our rediculous bank balance and ‘catch up’ on work in Longhorn, which is due sometime next decade.”
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. After securing a monopoly with its shitty software, instead of securing it, they release crappier version Bs and blame “attacks” and security breaches for their lack on innovation to its monopolistic OS. This ship will start to sink faster now…hopefully.
XP Reloaded!
Most PC users already own a copy of XP, they will have all had to reload it onto their machine at least once due to viruses/worms etc., so surely they already own a copy of XP ‘Reloaded’
As a web developer (and a machead), I’m thrilled. The fewer platforms we have to build for, the better.
hahaha @ twelveightyone
Whats even more disturbing is that the constant push-back in product releases is KILLING businesses. They buy into the MS licensing program and pay maintenance fees so that any updates that come out in their 1/2/3 year period are obtained free of charge. Everytime MS pushes back a product release, some business goes “DAMN” and has to re-up on their contract in order to get the (delayed) update.
This is starting to cost businesses a lot of money. I bet they are beginning to wonder whether paying MS for maintenance contracts is really worth it. Once this mindset becomes prevelant in corporate IT, say goodbye to a big chunk of MS’s revenue.
SO yeah, keep pushing your updates back MS… the mac and OOS crowd will be laughing.
just to clarify:
If a business buys a volume license of WindowsXP today and decides to pay for a three year maintenance fee, they are entitled to free upgrades during the period of 2004-2007.
If they do not renew the maintenance contract in 2007, they are not entitled to free upgrades.
If they decide that they want an upgrade to Longhorn in 2008, MS makes them pay the maintenance fee from 2007-2008 AND to renew for at least one year. This gets worse if Longhorn is pushes back to ’08 or ’09.
Can you say “UGH” ??
To be fair though, the above model is the de facto standard in the software industry. What makes this case special is that MS enticed businesses into paying for maintenance contracts with pretty screenshots of the “coming soon” Longhorn upgrade, and then pushed the release back so far that the businesses will have to renew contracts. Not very nice MS. Perhaps the businesses will be happy on macs or linux. yay!
Does anyone notice that Ina Fried’s article reads like a PR mouthpiece from Microsoft? Sure, the subject is the slowing down of MS’s pace, but with much less negativity reserved for Apple. Furthermore, almost every paragraph is based on or quotes from Senior VP Muglia. Remove that byline and you’ll think that it comes straight from MS PR office.
jeff,
You are forgetting that many companies are not getting significant upgrades for the current period. That could potentially make 3 periods of maintenance fee for one big upgrade. You see, MS can make money without providing anything tangible to their consumers. Why BBB or Doj or whoever concerns has not done anything is beyond me. You can argue that the companies signed contracts, but morally, I think it is a scam.
umm, Nobody, you just basically restated what I did… haha. Was there a question or a response in there?
Sorry, I interpreted your post as one upgrade in 2004-2007 and 2007-2010 periods. I just wanted to pointed out that the companies get nothing for the current period too (or maybe a service pack renamed to XP Reloaded).
You know, when Longhorn finally does get released, only the most advanced gaming machines available today will have the graphics chips and horsepower needed to run it. Almost everyone will have to upgrade their machines and software. Widespread distribution won’t hapen until 2010 or later. Moooo.
Longhorn Vaporware? Yes, it is vaporware. But it is very SECURE vaporware.
“Longhorn Vaporware? Yes, it is vaporware. But it is very SECURE vaporware.” – Jack A
Wanna bet? I am pretty sure that 1337 hackers can come up with vaporware worms and vaporware hacks to take Longhorn VW apart.
MS has traditionally shipped it’s higher end OS when it was done rather than when the deadline arrived. And that’s the best way to do it. Windows 2003 is just out and it works great. Everybody will be happy with that for years. I think most IT people didn’t buy into the upgrade protection program. A newly installed computer today is probably going to stay with the current OS for three years even if an upgrade was available.
My perfectly good PC sits idly waiting for me to install new games… the only thing I will trust it with.
The secure version of windows is the one that omits all network code. Keep you wintel boxes unplugged!