“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.