“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.
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.