Microsoft’s Windows ‘Longhorn’ preview elicits long yawns

“When Bill Gates can’t show unmitigated glee over a Microsoft Corp. product, the world’s largest software company has a problem,” Joseph Menn reports for The Los Angeles Times. “Last week, after watching a demonstration of the most important version of Windows in a decade, not even the preternaturally enthusiastic Gates could hide his frustration with a project that’s years behind schedule. ‘It would be super,’ he said dryly, ‘to get that out in the hands of our customers.'”

MacDailyNews Take: Gates really has to purge the “super” adjective from his vocabulary. He sounds like Big Gay Alnot that there’s anything wrong with that.

Menn continues, “Gates is the most important of thousands of technologists growing restless with the recent pace of innovation at the company he co-founded in 1975. Few endeavors highlight that feeling better than the company’s latest iteration of its flagship Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn… As the company released a preview edition of Longhorn at a Seattle conference, many of the Microsoft loyalists in attendance found themselves shrugging their shoulders… the lack of enthusiasm inside and outside Microsoft over Longhorn is feeding a cycle that is lowering morale and encouraging departures to faster-growing tech companies, thereby slowing improvements to the firm’s key products even more.”

“Because Longhorn’s leap forward now appears more of a hop, Gartner Inc. predicts that the system will run just 36% of PCs by 2008, compared with 56% still using Windows XP,” Menn reports.

Full article here.

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64 Comments

  1. EXCELLENT!

    STILLBORN = DEAD AT BIRTH.

    With this and the fact that Firefox browser is ripping market share from internet explorer thing have never looked so bad at M$.

    Face it Bill, M$ is too big and too slow to be competitive in today’s fast moving IT industry!

  2. It’s almost painful to read the lackluster reviews showing up in the press about Longhorn. There is a certain amount of glee that comes with the realization that the press is waking up to the mediocrity of Windows, and is finally expressing their dissappointment with Microsoft. But to hear that even Gates can’t muster enthusiasm for his own company’s OS…that’s harsh, man.

  3. It has been fun to watch the Apple crowd attempt to convince the “real IT world” that there new OS is worthy of use in an enterprise environment let alone as a desktop OS. The truth is nobody uses OS 10.x (less then 2% of all computers). The Apple platform is dead.

    The future is in the hands of the developers at Microsoft and we have imbraced the cutting-edge technology of .NET and Longhorn. The very soon to be release Longhorn will change the world of computing forever.

    Just a side note Apple still doesn’t have a 64 bit OS. Windows has a production version of there XP Pro available now, once again Apple is using fancy marketing to manipulate the masses into believing that Tiger is better then XP.

    ©

  4. Enderle: I don’t care!!! As long as I get my pay check from Bill, I’ll spread lies and disinformation from my Enderle Group, which consists of me, myself, I and my wife. We work very hard in our basement, you know, to earn a living writing bias craps, FUD to promote Swindle XP and LongYawn! Oh, I play games at my spare time when I am not responding emails defending MicroS#@t and I am proud to be a gamer!!!! I’ll wait diligently for LongYawn as long as I can play my games on Swindle XP for now and keep upgrading my “brand name” PS. Go Bill go! Go Ballmer go!

  5. Sputnik, I’ll take Apple’s “dead” platform over MS’s XP or non-existant Longhorn any day. If you feel that makes me worthy of ridicule, enjoy yourself friend.

    Oh, by the way, you’re a turd (had to feed the troll a little bit).

  6. Sputnik,

    Seems like all you geeks clinging onto the M$ sinking ship only have “market share” as your reasoning for using such an antiquated platform. Even the “no applications” excuse is begging to falter.

    I have to work in a .NET environment everyday for my job (mainly C# and SQL server), what can I say, it pays the bills. Hammering out C# and transact SQL code all day is the farthest thing from being creative. I can’t wait to go home and do “real” creative work on my Mac running 10.4 (iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, GarageBand, etc…). No PCs are allowed in my house, Macs only.

    By the way, have fun with latest Sober.P worm.

  7. Sizewell,

    Sputnik doesn’t have OS level spellcheck that can be accessed by any application, such as Safari, like we do in OS X, so he’s stuck with copying and pasting into MS Word on his PeeCee to check his spelling. Using XP is like driving in the dark with no headlights.

  8. Sputnik,

    Are you actually FROM Russia? It’s clear that you’re in a very big hurry to “poo-poo” OS X Tiger, but please slow down and PROOFREAD your comments!

    “There” does not equal “their,” “then” does not equal “than,” “imbraced” does not equal “embraced,” “release” does not equal “released,” and comma spices do not equal well-constructed, rationally formulated sentences.

    Your embarrassingly poor command of the English language is as pathetic as your understanding of computer technology. (I’d wager that you are, in fact, a disgruntled teenager–developmentally if not chronologically–who craves attention of any kind, especially from those who despise you. How very sad for you.)

  9. It’s time for journalists to start using “beleaguered” when referring to Microsoft. Too bad the DOJ didn’t split them up. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue laugh” style=”border:0;” />

  10. Apple’s operating systems (10.3 and 10.4) are light years ahead of Microsoft’s aging platform. Having made that point it reminds of a story when Windows 95 was released. An ederly lady came into a store and asked for Windows 95, even though she didn’t know what it was and she had never owned a computer.

    My point is this if Microsoft wants to ship it’s second rate software it has the money and the marketing muscle to do it and convince people it’s God’s gift to the computing world.

    They’ll advertise on placards, in train stations, on radio and tv. They’ll might even advertise on toilet seats (which is pretty close to truth in advertising).

    In A’stralia I haven’t seen one advertisement for Tiger. Apple’s had some great press…and Has Apple capitalised on this with it’s own advertising campaign? Are they doing an iPod blitz with Tiger? Hell no!

    Write Redmond off at your peril; they’ve got the bucks and they’ll spend it.

    A real concern for Microsoft is that by 2008 the Democrats will be back in the Whitehouse and they won’t be able to rely on their predatory practices when that happens. (Background: Gates contributes to the Republicans and the Bush administration responded by gutting the Justice Department’s response to M’Soft’s anti-competitive practices).

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