“WinFS has had a turbulent history. Originally announced as one of the three ‘pillars’ of Windows Vista—the other two being the new Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code-named ‘Avalon’) user interface layer and the Windows Communication Foundation (formerly code-named ‘Indigo’) web services layer—WinFS was to revolutionize how users and developers interacted with the files on their computers. In late 2004, Microsoft announced that Vista, then code-named Longhorn, would ship without WinFS,” Jeremy Reimer reports for Ars Technica.
“Later it was admitted that WinFS would be delayed even beyond Vista Server, but would be released as a free separate download for both Vista and Windows XP. Beta 1 of WinFS hit MSDN last August, and looked promising. However, Microsoft dropped a hammer on WinFS fans this weekend by revealing that WinFS Beta 2 has been canceled, and the technology behind WinFS is now scheduled to be rolled into the next release of Microsoft’s SQL Server product, rather than a standalone release,” Reimer reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The “three pillars” of Microsoft Albatross, er… Vista. That’s one mangled tripod. Looks like a Tiger got a hold of it; or a Leopard or something. Does anyone actually do anything at Microsoft anymore? Redmond’s robber barons must award extra towels for gross ineptitude; double for pure incompetence. Moo.
Here’s what the drill looks like to us: Microsoft announces something and “boy, it’ll be ‘super!'” Then they slip the ship date, then slip some more, shed a feature or two, then announce some meaningless restructuring plan, then slip some more, then throw some chairs/drop some f-bombs, dump a major underlying technology “pillar,” slip a little more, kill some more features, and then they finally just cancel the vapor altogether. Lather, rinse, repeat. Oh, sorry, they did get Origami out the door…
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Ouch, another dropped technology.
Yikes.
Maybe they should just go back to the C: prompt. They did that well….
Vista looks shaky with only two pillars left. It will fall for sure.
Microsoft couldnt cook shit on a stick.
and developing vista is really the shit on the stick.
Well… I have to say – for 95% of MS Windows buyers out there – they don’t care and it won’t matter. MS counts on that and banks on it.
Ignorance has become a MS marketable commodity.
The only way that these people would stop buying Windows is if the company shut the doors. And that is doubtful anytime soon – but who knows – it could happen sooner than I imagine.
Dr Mongo: “Maybe they should just go back to the C: prompt. They did that well….”
No MS did not come up with C: prompt. , that was Seatle Computers (Quick and Dirty Operating System, QDOS), who stoled it from Digital Research (CP/M). I probably got the company names wrong.
Mr. Cheney Sir,
Agreed!
Microsoft manufactures mediocrity for the masses and the masses swarm. What makes anyone thing this will ever change?
If people conform with and monitarily suppor mediocrity why would they want more . . . . ever?
Vista got chewed on bad by a Cheetah (OS X 10.0) Not to mention a Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and yes, Tiger and Leopard.
i don’t care what you all say. i’m going to buy Vista because Microsoft says it’s going to be great. and if Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
oops, sorry. got some of my drool on my keyboard.
s, what exactly is “stoled”?
Let’s start taking bets on when it will be dropped from SQL Server. I guess 2 months!
Is there a list or something of kind, which can tell us or me rather, what MS said that will come in Longhorn/Vista, but has been drop or delayed?
Drunk Cheney-The only way that these people would stop buying Windows is if the company shut the doors.
I thought a majority of the people in the world were not buying (i.e. stealing) it already.
I find it amusing that the word from Redmond is akin to the word of the Church: It didn’t exist before we made it,… the next coming will make everything better,… everything else is evil,… and everyone “buys” it.
That being said, the people are not really buying it, like I said. What’s more, corporations are not buying it either. Major Universities and hospitals and companies that care are not even using XP. Many are still upgrading to Win 2000. They are not suckered into the new problems. They’ll let the new guy at Best Buy beta test it for a few years (like 6) before they put it into anything mission critical.
Microsoft has the word, and people on “the Street” (double entendre intended) listen to them, but I don’t think it will be enough to save them.
If anyone else, in any work environment, let their assignment slip as Microsoft has done, they would have been fired long ago.
Why aren’t people firing them, rather than just accepting their BS?
I would be really embarrassed if I worked for Microsoft…
..and if I was a manager responsible for ‘running’ Microsoft I would have to have committed hari-kiri by now.
The secret internal code name was WinnieFS the Pooh.
Moving WinFS to SQL Server is a fairly lame attempt to avoid the embarrasment of cancelling it altogether. While SQL Server is a very well-known backend database, it’s mostly mature technology and not a place for innovation that is going to affect the lives of everyday users. This announcement marks the total failure of WinFS to achieve its goals, and makes one wonder whether Microsoft is capable of developing new paradigms at all. If Microsoft’s software is to be same-old same-old for the next 5 years, the future of the corporation is in doubt.
It’s pretty clear that Apple has never failed with any product, except perhaps the Apple III, the Lisa, the Newton, The QuickTake camera, Taligent, Copeland, Gershwin, (3 tries at operating systems from Apple), the choice of PowerPC and 68k processors, The Mac Mini and overheating MacBooks. That’s a SHORT summary of Apple screw-ups.
Apple has been in the position of needing to correct historical mistakes continually for the last few decades.
Apple screws up so often it’s a wonder they release ANY successful products at all.
And given that Mac OS X has nothing like WinFS,a nd obviously from the posts above an operating system without WinFS like functionality is doomed to failure, Mac OS X must be doomed to failure too.
Failure aid: “Apple screws up so often it’s a wonder they release ANY successful products at all.”
Interesting isn’t it, that in the history of the world, people have acknowledged learning more from their mistakes than their success. Of course, it requires understanding that there are great lessons in mistakes.
M$ is like Dull, there successes are really all in marketing. there’s no innovation or brilliance in the commoditized product.
Unfortunately, we all bemoan Apple’s poor record at marketing when we should be celebrating their prowess in creating insanely great product. Oh wait, we do!
“It’s pretty clear that Apple has never failed with any product, except perhaps the Apple III, the Lisa, the Newton, The QuickTake camera, Taligent, Copeland, Gershwin, (3 tries at operating systems from Apple), the choice of PowerPC and 68k processors, The Mac Mini and overheating MacBooks. That’s a SHORT summary of Apple screw-ups.”
First of all, at least the Apple III, Lisa, Newton, QuickTake, Mac mini, and MacBooks made it to market. Out of all the products MS has announced, close to as many have remained vapor as have shipped.
Second, out of everything you listed as examples of failure, the only ones I’d agree with are Apple III, Taligent, and Gerschwin. Those last two were both products of a very unfocused Apple badly in need of good leadership. They have that now.
Lisa: Not a great seller but very important to the evolution of computers all the same.
Newton: see above
QuickTake: see above
Mac mini: huh? I know several people who have them and they love them. How is it a failure?
MacBooks: version one always has some issues. It’s a given in anything mass-produced and can hardly be seen as a failure.
The choice of PowerPC and 68K processors: again, huh? How are these failures? They served Apple well for 15 years. Much of that time they outperformed x86 chips running at faster speeds. Hardly a failure. Keep in mind that Apple probably would not have switched to Intel if they were still pushing Pentiums. The switch was the result of a “Perfect Storm” in the processor industry.
I’d say that the biggest failure you exposed was your own argument.
Mac mini a failure? How is that? Do you have stats?
And quote: “Apple screws up so often it’s a wonder they release ANY successful products at all.”
Sniff…Sniff
I smell a Troll. Phew!
they shoud bring back DOS…fits on a floppy disk too
PC’s still ship with a floppy drive dont they?
Oh, where to begin…
“It’s pretty clear that Apple has never failed with any product, except perhaps the Apple III, the Lisa, the Newton, The QuickTake camera, […] the choice of PowerPC and 68k processors, The Mac Mini and overheating MacBooks. That’s a SHORT summary of Apple screw-ups.”
Apple III, I’ll give you. Blame Jobs for that one–he didn’t want a fan in there.
Lisa begat Macintosh, so that’s a tricky call. You’re right that Lisa didn’t sell well. But you could arguably drag Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0 into that equation, too, to add to Microsoft’s failures.
Regarding the QuickTake, Apple was the world-wide market leader in digital camera sales. The QuickTake was among the first digital cameras available. The Newton defined the PDA.
So when you consider the Lisa, QuickTake, and Newton led the market, I’m willing to forgive Apple their “failures.”
I’m a little lost about your comment about the “screw-up” of the 68K or PowerPC. Back in 1984, all that Intel had was 80286–a 16-bit processor running at 6MHz. This is compared with the Macintosh’s 16/32-bit processor running at 8MHz. The switch to PowerPC gave Apple better performance than Intel machines of the day and, arguably, it’s only within the past few years that Intel has managed to catch up with PowerPC.
I’ll give you overheating MacBooks, though I’d point out that MacBooks don’t run significantly hotter than PC laptops, which is to be expected. I’m not sure where you figure that the Mac mini is a failure…
“And given that Mac OS X has nothing like WinFS,a nd obviously from the posts above an operating system without WinFS like functionality is doomed to failure, Mac OS X must be doomed to failure too.”
Arguably, Spotlight provides WinFS functionality, at least at a simplistic level.
Has everyone forgotten the cracking-up Cube? Serious heat issues there too.
On a different note: Shouldn’t a comparable list of “screw-ups” from Apple focus on OS-specific features? Can someone help me with a list of software/OS features that Apple has dropped/extended/changed/made unsubstantial in the past years?
Keep ’em comming
My Cube just keeps on working. No cracks there. Works better today than the day I bought it thanks to OS upgrades.