“The first day of WinHEC 2004 (the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) in Seattle had, as expected, a major track on Longhorn. It focused on the new user interface and what Microsoft is planning for its next-generation operating system,” Richard Fisco writes for PC Magazine in his article, “Longhorn Tastes the Apple.”
“Demonstrations of the new GUI showed it to be much more animated than Windows XP. 3D effects, animations of icons, and test boxes that can vary from transparent to opaque will all make for a livelier user interface,” Fisco reports. “Microsoft’s demonstrations were interesting and somehow familiar. After looking at some images and icons that grew bigger or flipped when chosen, I couldn’t help but think of the dock on Apple’s OS X. There’s more to Longhorn, of course, than just that dock. Microsoft is looking to have applications add useful, related information in bars alongside open documents, like upcoming appointments and related cases if you’re in a law program, or favorite-show information if you’re in a TV search tool. Overall, though, Longhorn still had an Apple look to it. I suppose imitation is a form of flattery, after all. It’ll be years before Longhorn launches, but it should be fun to watch it develop.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We expected nothing less from Microsoft. Same old, same old. Moo.
ten ipod articles since the last mac article. sigh.
Joe, iPod is like cherries…
MDN, I couldn’t have put it better myself.
The word ‘Bloatware’ springs to mind. I can’t wait to see Longhorn, cause it’ll never happen.
M$ has been copying Apple’s OS for years – no surprise. I’m sure half the stuff they want to add to Wronghorn will be dropped just to meet the 2006 release date. By then we’ll have 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 ? and anticipating XI?
Joe, there are actually 11 ipod/itunes articles sandwiched between two Longhorn articles.
Come on Apple, give us something newsworthy on the Mac front.
If only Apple would let more of the world know about their awesome OS, then maybe it would help people see even more how much of a copycat MS is. MS could not come up with an original design of anything if it hit them in the head.
LongShot requires 4-6 GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 1 Terabyte of HDD!! This is absurd!!! We use to be able to do word processing and office documents with just 25 MHz chip,64 K RAM and 20 MB HDD!!! Why would anyone waste this kind of hardware resource on doing just daily office work? Typical M$ mentality and sadly, the IT herd will follow!!!
By the time LongShot hits the Windoze world – Tiger will have been replaced twice. Whatever LongShot looks like – it still won’t be stable and secure.
I’d like to introduce a new word to the English language…
to ‘Imivate’
as in: Microsoft’s core philosophy is imivation, imivation, imivation.
The vast majority of people don’t know or care about the OS, they just care about cheap/compatible/easily available hardware. In fact the average ignorant consumer doesn’t even know they’re using Windows. The fact that Windows 3.1 had 80% market share says it all about whether the OS matters.
Imivate – I like it
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Micro$oft – Innovation thru Imitation
The system requirements are simply absurd. 4-6Ghz! Why 1TB? Does this mean that Longhorn is gonna take up half a terrabyte? How many billion lines of code are there? This is gonna be so funny, watching Longhorn crumble into yet another version of MS-DOS XP Reloaded, Rebooted, Repackaged v3.0.2
Twenty Benson LOL!!!! Joe Mc, your back! Missed you during all the news about Sasser….
Take a look at the screen shot of IE for Longhorn…
http://www.only4gurus.com/v2/longhorn/pages/longhorn_4051_108_jpg.asp
It is styled like safari, well at least the skin is brushed metal; however, everything else looks like XP and XP looks just like 2000 only with some poorly chosen primary colors.
Does M$ have any designers in house or am I missing something here. When will they create something new let alone something that looks good.
Or are we all being set up and sometime in early 2005 Longhorn will be released take the entire world by strong and cause a huge rally in the shares of our GreatProvider�.
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word processing with a 20mb HDD, and a 25 mhz damn that is a lot of power. It also doesn’t make sense. when processors hit 25 mhz you got a 486 with 200mb hDD and win 3.1
I used to do word processing on a TI99/4A 8 mhz processor 32k ram on a 150 KB 5.25 floppy disc, and I had to swap out the disk to run the program. I used that machine for all my school reports until the 9 ninth grade. T
Even though wronghorn (Japanese pronunciation) is supposed to “fix” the Swiss Cheese Security of M$, the world will continue to afflicted by its insecure mediocrity for years and years since wronghorn will require a major power boost in hardware to run. We all know how much Joe Sixpack Pee Sea User hates to part with a buck.
As for M$ copying the Mac, since when have they done anything else??? What was that quote by Bill Gates? Something like “One area where apple is leading is in color. I don’t think it will take us long to catch up in that!!”
Can anybody tell me what all the wasted space on the right of the screen is for? One word – disgusting.
one requirement baffles me though: 1 Gig ethernet. What is going on? Is Microsoft foreseen weekly security patches of 500MB each till next major release of Windows (code named MadCow)
moo.
Get over it. The only reason I allow Apple to live is for their R&D value.
I noticed that Longhorn sports the QNX-like sidebar on the desktop. I knew QNX had something to offer beyond its RTOS physique .
twelveightyone: I completely agree with you. Writing “phrases” on the side-bar requires a larger width, and it is mostly useless.
I still haven’t seen anything nice other than the user interface itself. For example, one of the nice things that Apple has in Mac OS X is that you can cut and paste graphics as you please across applications. I always do that between OmniGraffle and Keynote. The cool thing is that it copies as PDF (I think) and the resolution is not affected irrespective of how much I increase the image. Does Microsoft even have this basic thing in it?
Why is all this fuss about a 3-D looking UI? It should inherently allow for something nice and in my opinion, MS hasn’t shown how somthings that users wanted can be done using their latest developments which cannot be done using windows XP UI.
MacOS: Aqua GUI
Longhorn: Aero GUI (hot air?) How innovative! And WTF is Aero Glass supposed to mean?
Wow, somebody really had a brainstorming session to come up with those names.
How much do you want to bet that MS will totally over-do the animation, etc. in Logjam? They’ve always copied Apple, but never well. Pogue said of Sonny Connect, “The whole thing feels put together by accountants, not music lovers.” Windows GUI has always looked to me like it was put together by blind programmers, while the Mac was designed by the descendants of DaVinci, Michangelo, & Van Gogh (and maybe a touch of Dali).
Question: Can Apple actually sue Microsoft for copying their OS? If it is so blatantly obvious, can they? I’ve only been a Mac addict for 2 years now, so I’m not familiar with what the Apple Vs. Microsoft case from years ago was about.
I just hate it when Apple Innovates and Microsoft (and the rest of the world, Dell, Gateway, etc…) copies….
I meant: and the rest of the world, Dell, Gateway, etc…) imivates….sorry twenty.
Don’t forget the MS implementation of “Sparkle” – the self-proclaimed Flash-killer that’s being rolled into Bonghorn. No one is immune from MS’ “embrace and extend.”
Am I the only ones who thought the banner ad served up by Google for this page was funny? Ads for cattle farms. You know, I come here for the Mac news, but now I’m kinda in the mood to buy some cows.
Maybe I’m too easily amused.
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please don’t forget: MS has been successful in part because of its grandiose hardware requirements. what’s the point of putting out software upgrades that don’t require hardware upgrades? all the chip and computer makes won’t make any money! MS is not alone in this. it’s the whole mafia of software + hardware makers who feed off each other. by setting the requirements for Longhorn high, or artificially high, people will be induced to upgrade … to a point, then they will maybe really upgrade – to Apple! the thing with having small market share is you have to make sure you can’t alienate too many of the established user base by releasing unoptimized software or feature bloats that require hardware upgrades. thank goodness for Apple yet again.
I don’t understand why some people are so up in arms about the hardware requirements. Just 5 short years ago I bought my first PC with a 500mhz processor. Now there are processors running almost 7 times that. In two or three years, when Longhorn is projected to be released, who in here doubts that 4-6ghz processors won’t be the norm? Maybe even faster.
So what if the computer you bought two years ago won’t be able to run Longhorn. My 500mhz couldn’t handle XP. Get over it. You’ll have found the $500 to buy a new computer by then anyways.
Apple should do a take on the old Wendy’s commercial, “Where’s the Beef” but showing two old lady’s waiting on line at a burger shop showing the date 2004, then finally they get their burgers with the date showing 2007 and one lady says to the other, “Hmmm, taste like yesteryear’s apples”.
TagLine: Why wait to buy the cow tomorrow when you can have an apple today”
” In two or three years, when Longhorn is projected to be released, who in here doubts that 4-6ghz processors won’t be the norm? Maybe even faster.” – chris
Don’t be so sure. What is the clock speed increase from Intel compared to last year? Intel is hard pressed to churn out faster clock speed chips because of the power requirement. There is a reason why Intel moves to numbering their chips instead of identifying it by clock speed. It is possible that Intel gets to 4GHz next year, but 6GHz is very unlikey.
Whatever you say, though, 4GHz-6GHz won’t be “average”.
Here’s another one, “An Apple today Keeps the Worms away”!” Protect your enterprise with Apple’s new xServe G5 powered by the solid foundation of Unix. These Apple’s Don’t Have Worms!
Jayplus: Apple did sue Microsloth for copying Apple’s GUI in the early 90s. Apple won (pyrrhic as the victory was), Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple and promised to make Office for the Mac.
chris,
You’re missing the point about the hardware requirements. It doesn’t matter that computers will continue to get faster, after a certain point you won’t notice the difference in the performance between a 2Ghz and a 6Ghz CPU if all you’re doing is surfing the Web or sending email, which is why the overwhelming majority of PC users have computers. The question is how bloated will Longhorn be if it needs this kind of hardware? And how will they secure something that bloated given their failure to secure much less bloated predecessor systems?
Hey Chris, I am proposing that you got to have 5000 hp for your car, navi system running Longhorn 2004 OS which is coming out 2009, anti gravity device sucking up 5 GWatts of electricity to go from point A to point B. You have to use my special M$ gas formulated just for the year 2004 to 2006 at $15 per gallon. If you car cannot do that, tough luck and go buy a new one every two years or so and you cannot buy used cars because they won’t work with the latest gas that M$ offers!! Duhhh!!! And people, who drive SUVs and paid the gas-guzzler tax when they bought it, are complaining gas prices are too high!!!!
Hey Chris, I am proposing that you got to have 5000 hp for your car, navi system running Longhorn 2004 OS which is coming out 2009, anti gravity device sucking up 5 GWatts of electricity to go from point A to point B. You have to use my special M$ gas formulated just for the year 2004 to 2006 at $15 per gallon. If you car cannot do that, tough luck and go buy a new one every two years or so and you cannot buy used cars because they won’t work with the latest gas that M$ offers!! Duhhh!!! And people, who drive SUVs and paid the gas-guzzler tax when they bought it, are complaining gas prices are too high!!!!
I hope apple has patented all it’s innovations is OS X (the dock, expose etc) because otherwise microshit will copy everything.
If longporn has any of OS X’s features Apple should sue the bastards at microshit!
I was was running Apple I would patent and copyright every aspect of every product we produced – so that sony and microshit can’t make money on apple’s r+d.
Yeah, by the time Longshot is spawned by M$ that average system requirement will be ancient.
Don’t forget Longshot’s “current projected” release date is for the later part of this decade. Given M$’ release history this may even end up much much later (if that is even possible).
Zac
my teacher at school said that when windows got all the good things mac was comin of a steam power, well now, by the time longhorn arrives, that will be a steam power, because by then apple will have a far superrior system to microshit.
Pete,
You should be put in charge of Apple Legal. A bright guy like you with such innovative legal strategies would turn the world on its ear…
Thanks rogozhin!
Well if Apple need me they know my .mac email address!
If they offered me a job I wouldn’t hesitate to accept it (as long as the money was enough!!)
In today’s IT climate a hardward or software developer’s assets are it’s patents and copyrights.
If Apple hasn’t patented any of its latest innovations then they might as well throw in the towel now and take their R+D team over to Redmond!
I just LOVE the language Micro$oft uses in its’ setup process:
“Thanks! Your computer will restart in a moment to begin the next part of setup. Feel free to leave or do something else while Setup finishes. Just come back in about 10 minutes.”
Why thank you My Computer. I think I’ll go and have a 3 course meal followed by a feature length film, then a night on the beer. Maybe it’ll have restarted and completed by then. After all, I have got a 6Ghz PC with a 4TB drive and 12GB of RAM.
Sad thing is, naughty people have worked out how to restart Windows without the user or My Computer pressing a single button. God Bless Sasser.
bah! those windows guys already love the mac interface…
what i don’t get is why they think having ultra-transparent windows looks good..
(think floating stickies that are transparent)..it’s actually slightly irritating to not be able to see the window
in case anyone was wondering..
MS really likes the iTunes layout… they’ve tried to use it in almost every window.. see.. they even tried to get the search filter in there.. (on the left though)
egads!! no mac os X skins required here people
thurrott will not argue with us on this one..but say, “IT’S 3D”
Mike, even the recycle bin looks more like a trash can. Even more imivation from the company that pioneered imivation.
Artiom, is english your first language? You are doing really good if it ain’t and really bad if it is.
Tommy Boy:
>”Jayplus: Apple did sue Microsloth for copying Apple’s GUI in the early 90s. >Apple won (pyrrhic as the victory was), Microsoft invested $150 million in >Apple and promised to make Office for the Mac.”
Errrr….. No.
Appe sued M$ over the GUI earlier than that (and lost, unforunantely). The 150M$ (non-voting stock) was regarding a pure and simple theft of QuickTime code etc (it never went to court, guess why?). The deal SJ made with M$ was the right thing to at the time (probably IE and Office development, as you say, among others was in the deal). However, Apple does not show signs of slowing down, so whenever the next incarnation of Win shows up, OSX will still be in the lead by – what? 5 to 7 years?
WOAH! That’s one f*cking ugly screen shot! Apple fans can only be so lucky as to have Microsoft actually release anything that looks like this! And I’m sure it requires a 4Ghz processor to make that analog clock in the bottom-right corner tick-tick-tick and still have the computer be responsive to user requests
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The top of the open window is huge and has hardly anything in it! And yes, it is “3d”, but it the window doesn’t have a shadow like the Mac does.
While Longhorn was running the “Longhorn Driver Model” video demo, they claimed it was a success because it ran 6 videos simultaneously.
Take a look at this image from the actual demo…
First these all seem to be 400×299 in size, and look close at the video in the upper-left corner. It is running at the blazing speed of 5.38 FRAMES PER SECOND!!!
For a moment I was worried that Microsoft redefined their idea of success to be closer to reality, but apparently their OWN definition success as being “success = barely usable” seems perfectly intact.
Also note in their new interface (
) they have managed to maintain their typical Microsoft interface of…
– multiple menus on the same screen
– non-intuitive buttons all sizes from large and obnoxious to microscopic
– lots of extraneous text in tiny fonts to try to explain the confusing functions
– many menu items and icons under that obnoxiously large sidebar.
Actually, I think they give “the Mac look” a bad name. People will think that Macs are just as difficult to use.
All these Longhorn shots people are posting are hilarious. There is soooo much screen space wasted in these new ugly windows and sidebars! What crap.
Longhorn is just the vinyl siding covering a termite infested house.
The vinyl looks good, but it’s not the real thing; underneath it lies a host of problems that’s only solved by buldozing the whole house and starting over.
Holy crap! Shlonghorn looks like it takes all the worst design cues from the horrific Windows Media Player and then adds some of its own.
Redmond really is just full of a bunch of tasteless nerds, eh? Pathetic.
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
They should have patented that dock (cough) behavior.
>Microsoft is looking to have applications add useful, related information in bars alongside open documents
Glad to know that M$ is sticking to its philosophy… what next? “When you last viewed this document you started a search for [url=http://www.xxx]http://www.xxx[/url] — shall I pull up those results again?”
Hey, I didn’t mean for that link to go active… someone take it down… I guess it’s just MDN being “helpful.”
Hate to say it, guys, but what will happen when Longhorn comes out, current Windows users will think it is great, compared to what they have to look at now.
Why? Because they, even then, will probably not know OSX exists because no one will have told them it exists.
Hate to sound like a broken record (sorry, old technology analogy)
but until Apple tells them what they can have in OSX, little will change.
You won’t compare something to something you don’t know exists, and you really cannot be blamed for not knowing about something you have not been exposed to.
Longhorn’s GUI has more in common with Sun’s project Looking Glass:
http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/
But c’mon guys, none of this is truly innovative–its the expected evolution of the modern GUI.
Plus the UI Design community is so small that frequently the designers jump from Sun to MS to Apple, and they take all the R&D and trends with them. Everyone has the same ideas…the question is who will produce and market the ideas?
PS: To say that MS is ripping off Apples dock is ignorant. We all know that the dock/task-tray concept was first seen in Windows 95, and a famous example of Apple actually ripping off MS.
“We all know that the dock/task-tray concept was first seen in Windows 95, and a famous example of Apple actually ripping off MS.”
I don’t agree at all. The Windows tray shows programs that are running – it’s not a launching pad for your favorite applications. Instead, as well know, Windows has the nightmarish Start menu…
Correction for “cg”:
Notwithstanding the obvious differences between the Win Taskbar and OSX Dock, the Dock was taken from NeXT’s OS, which first appeared in the late 80s or early 90s.
Guess who bought NeXT and all associated technologies?
So speaking from a legal perspective (though I’m not a lawyer), since all assets transferred from NeXT to Apple, if anything MS once again ripped off Apple, albeit after the fact.
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Correct, the dock/taskbar was first featured in NeXTSTeP so MS actually ripped off NeXT in that instance.
yes english is my 2nd language
This is really funny, courtesy of C/Net:
“Longhorn is also expected to add a number of laptop-specific features designed to make portable machines both more powerful and at the same time as easy to use […]. Other possible enhancements include improved support for multiple displays and the ability to create ad hoc wireless networks. […] Longhorn still at least two years away”
ROFLMAO: do people realize these portables are already available and are called Powerbooks running OS X?
Micros**t: what a bunch or retarded (literally, two years at least)
FAO MOSSMAN…
“Correction for “cg”:
Notwithstanding the obvious differences between the Win Taskbar and OSX Dock, the Dock was taken from NeXT’s OS, which first appeared in the late 80s or early 90s.
Guess who bought NeXT and all associated technologies?
So speaking from a legal perspective (though I’m not a lawyer), since all assets transferred from NeXT to Apple, if anything MS once again ripped off Apple, albeit after the fact.
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AND GUESS WHO CREATED THE NEXT COMPANY IN THE 70’s!!! – ‘STEVE JOBS’!
Umm. Longhorn doesn’t look like any Apples I know. Must be variety of fruit from Chernobyl
The makers of ‘Longshot’ and Sun’s ‘glass’ OS (or whatever it’s called) will be very happy to learn that Apple has patented the translucency effect and “other features”.
http://www.macobserver.com/columns/devilsadvocate/2004/20030513.shtml
I’m glad I’m using a Mac…I love staying 5 years ahead of the herd, I mean curve.