RSSLonghorn Pushed to 2004, .NET Server to Debut 2003
By Nate Mook | Published April 17, 2002, 11:56 PM
While this week's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference has been host to exciting new product announcements and upcoming technologies, Microsoft executives delivered disappointing news to Windows enthusiasts. In his keynote address, group vice president Jim Allchin disclosed that Longhorn, the next major version of Windows originally scheduled for 2003, would not ship before 2004. Windows .NET Server will not meet its timeline either, due in part to delays Microsoft attributes to the massive security review that took place in February.
What was once slated to be a relatively minor update to Windows XP, Longhorn will instead represent quite a significant jump from its predecessor. Microsoft has been working hard to perfect a completely new file system based on Yukon, the next release of SQL Server. Longhorn will also sport next generation three dimensional graphics with DirectX 9, enabling the company to potentially deliver a completely new 3-D user interface.
"We want to make it a very significant release, and we are going to have a reasonable development cycle for this version," Allchin told eWeek in an interview Tuesday. "Often times we try to spin things too fast and spend all our time getting beta feedback and not enough innovation as I would have wanted."
Mike Toutonghi, vice president of the Windows eHome Division, stated that Longhorn will ship in the second half of 2004. "It will deliver the next generation of communications and collaboration experiences, streaming audio/video [A/V] functionality, integrated device connectivity, simplified networking, and tools to help Microsoft deliver on our promise of the connected home," he said.
Windows .NET, the server counterpart to Windows XP, has also been pushed back and will not hit store shelves until early 2003. Initially on a concurrent release track with Windows XP, Windows .NET was to ship at the end of 2001, but RTM was moved to early 2002 when Microsoft found itself far behind schedule. Release to manufacturing is now set for the end of this year with the first release candidate expected this summer.
In the meantime, Microsoft is working hard to complete the first service pack for Windows XP and recently sent beta invitations to top XP testers. SP 1 is scheduled for release later this year, along with Freestyle and the first Tablet PC devices. Allchin at WinHEC denied reports that Microsoft would issue a Windows XP refresh, dubbed Second Edition, before Longhorn.
3D interface on a flat monitor...sorry they don't sit well together.
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|Just wondering if this is a corporate setback of a lot of software. Now where is that Windows 2000 SP3? :)
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|Does anybody have a clue what apple is up to with Mac OS XI? After reading what Bill said today, I'm about to make the switch...
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|you just need os x. trust me... hehe, if microsoft made an operating system based on BSD then... well we wouldn't have as many service packs as we did now... haha
~daNi~
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|A lot of stuff in Win2k was ripped from BSD, albeit not the kernel, which matters most
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|You really don't want to switch. OS X is really pretty, but it just doesn't perform and won't until they get some 2D acceleration and dump Classic Mode.
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|Look around your office or the place where you perform most of your work. Are your documents and tools hanging off of the walls? Probably not. Most likely everything is piled on your desk. My point is that when people are finished with an object that they are working with, usually they don't put it back where it came from - they leave it in an unordered pile.
If we could simply say the name of the object and it appeared in our hands, that would be utmost convenient. Developers should perfect voice recognition technology.
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|Whilst I completely agree with you, it's not that simple to perfect speech recognition. As an english example, how is the computer supposed to differentiate between you saying "to", "two" and "too". My experience with Dragon Dictate, Naturally Speaking and IBM's speech recognition software is that it takes far too long to 'train' them to even the lowest acceptable level.
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|Microsoft was supposed to have this ready for inclusion in Windows 2000 but ran into the problems described by our esteemed collegue below. If you want to see the latest technology by Microsoft with speech recognition, go here:
http://www.microsoft.com/speech/
and download the Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1. This SDK is what Dragon uses as a codebase. I would expect this to eventually be included in a MS OS. They already have Narrator included since Windows 2000, which is a scaled down screen reader. Anyways, check out the Speech SDK, it has a few sample apps which allow voice command of your PC and they work quite well after you go through the 15 min. training session.
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|I've tried, and like, the speech recognition capabilities of Windows and Office XP. While I don't think they are ready for dictation, they recognize and execute commands fairly well. My only gripe is that Internet Explorer does not respond to WinXP speech recognition, at least, not since I last played with it. Does anyone know if there is a way to use WinXP SR with IE? Thanks.
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|Hi people. The 3D interface might just be possible for the next issue of Windows - check out the following site and download the movie clip to see what you think (this was made in 1999).
http://research.microsof...i/TaskGallery/index.htm
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|fewt said:
They keep talking about it, however some are actually doing it (on other platforms).
http://www.3dwm.org/
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Next time do more research, seems that microsoft was years ahead of those people, back in 1999.
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|Hmm, does MS have a product that's on the shelf today? :-P
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|True, but by the time those other people bring something decent out, ms will prolly have something on the market.
To be comepletely honest with you, i think both interfaces suck ;)
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|I really doubt it, there isn't all that much interest in 3D windowing. I think that sort of interface would be cool, but not very practicle except in specialized nich areas. MS doesn't really cater to nich env's (imho of course).
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|Why does that remind me of "Microsoft Bob"? I have a feeling this will be about as big a flop as it was if they really try to do something like this.
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|First off improving security in MS Windows means more then just patching a few unchecked buffers. Most of Windoow's APIs are completely security-ignorant (meaning they make no provision for security issues; if denied they just fail.) To plumb pervasive security into Windows will be a massive job, one that will require MS re-architect how many of it's mechanisms work and interact, likely break much existng software (including their own MS Ofice which seems to go out of it's way to be insecure) etc.
Delayed a year or two - sure. Besides which when has MS *ever* released an OS on their originial schedule? By their own projections we should be runing an object-oriented OS with revolutioniary interfaces five years ago, not hearing yet more promises.
Besides which swapping the filesystem for a database is another significent & pervasive change. MS won't be the first, Be came out with a database-like filesystem (hedging 'cause folks can quibble about it) years ago and their are several shipping for Linux & other unix OS's that can do db-like things. However this will be a big jump into new waters for MS and their population of application developers, legacy of code & programs, etc.
As to any "3D GUI" - I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah every weenie dreams of it; they're soon disabused when they actually get close to one. Monitors are 2D. Mice are 2D. The "Desktop" metaphor is only 3D insofar as overlapping, no significent depth. Keyboards are 1D capable of interacting with n-D but we're talking full GUI here, not command-line-&-visual-interface.
3D means more then putting more beveled & bubbled chrome with elaborate shadows into the interface: It means that depth is important and when used results in issues like occlusion and backsides and navigation & getting lost. This is in a world where most folks can't remember to use accelerator-keys to perform common functions like copy & paste.
Nobody has yet figured out how to make a 3D interface that is easy to work with. Waving your arms about is just plain *tiring*. This is what kills touch-screens every time they get hyped again - it is called "Gorilla Arm". Gestures take a lot of energy and big ones are comparatively slow. Small gestures require lots of (just as tiring) precision - no resting your hand on the "mouse" unless you want to go plunging through yuor space!
Trying to interact with a 3D environment via a 2D rendering is annoying and full of compromises. Yes many games have tried to pull it off but they're still clunky and awkward and they're usually just trying to model meat-space, not some abstracted metaphor. To ask folks to go through all of that extra complexity instead of their comfortable 2D GUI, well I just don't see it happening (several hundred geeks with nothing better to do with their day aside.)
Lets see some alternative ways of interpreting the filesystem & resources first before we go into full 3D. Cams & motion (check out MacOS X's bouncing icons for a first step in that direction), piles and rich objects, not a half-assed cyberspace.
Lastly, this is intended as the post .NET OS. It'll include .NET, heck it'll be based on .NET and require .NET. I dunno about you but while there are some very sexy aspects to .NET there are also *LOTS* of aspects that are very disturbing. I'm not so sure consumers or corporate administrators are going to be so excited about a distributed architecture; MS is gonna have an uphill battle convincing folks that this "solution" is one we all want.
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|I would be willing to bet that M$ will be able to pull off the 3D OS. 3 of my colleagues and I have been working on a 3D operating system which would just be a shell for Linux. There are ways to do this but it takes a lot of time and effort. With the ammount of resources they have I am SURE they will be able to pull of what every geek dreams of. Hopefully my dev team wont get sued for stealing "their" idea even though we have been working on it for over a year now.
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|It will be the same 2-D desktop metaphor that is rendered using 3-D elements. Right now, the GUI is made to look 3d-ish, using certain effects like drop shadowing, curving and lighting effects, etc... Longhorn will be using DirectX to render the UI making it true 3D while still maintaning the simplicity of a 2D environment.
Second, .NET IS a whole new API architecture for Windows. Right now we have Win32 and .NET, later on it will be just .NET with a Win32 subsystem (much like we have a 16-bit subsystem right now). .NET has addressed MANY security issues throughout the entire platform, which covers more than just API's. And there is more to .NET than web services.
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|Working on it for over a year now? I'm afraid that doesn't make you "first" after all.
MS did a pilot project of this with Intel, Dell, whoever owns Dragon Naturally Speaking, and a few others about 5 years ago. (The conclusion at the time was the CPU speeds, Graphics processors, Memory prices, voice recognition software, and a few other areas all needed a lot more work before this was a viable pursuit....though the demo was pretty cool. 3D environment with a voice controlled, voice response avatar. Probably a few people around here who got to see it.)
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|MSR has a demo of a vocal UI on their webpage. The kind of thing that is like Star Trek's computers where you might say, "I want to listen to all my songs by The Beetles, wait, scratch that, I want to listen to my U2 music." The demo actually works farely well (although the graphical part of it is quite childish at the moment, but it's still just a proof of concept design)
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|"Nobody has yet figured out how to make a 3D interface that is easy to work with."
Well I guarantee you if its possible it will be Microsoft that does it.
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|PFFFT... Please kid, the rest world does not revolve around MS just because you think it does.
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|There aren't any other computer software companies who entire budgets equal that of Microsoft's R&D spending.
Its just common sense that they will most likely be the ones to make such an innovation
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|You don't say? I wonder what IBM's been doing all these years then. IBM's R&D last I heard was valued higher than MS as a whole. Just because their R&D may be large, that doesn't mean they will actually turn out a good app with it, just look at BOB how much you think they spent on that "innovation"? Quit posting kid if you want to keep any of your pride.
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|Actually, IBM's R&D spending is more than MS and Intel combined.
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|Why the hell are you people so pessimistic? Why bash on MS, they're at least attempting something that could be revolutionary.
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|Like they innovated OS/2 err WinNT? haha I'm optimistic, very optimistic infact. The judge will put a stop to their "need" to break the law I'm sure. :-)
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|Where were you trying to go with the OS/2 and NT reference?
Yes. Microsoft innovated with both of them.
(Remember, OS/2 was developed by Microsoft, then abandoned and sold to IBM. Microsoft then fixed what they saw as the problems with OS/2 and released it as Windows NT)
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|It was the one time they truly innovated IMHO. They however stuck a knife in IBM's back, cleaned up OS/2 and released it as Windows NT.
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|Differing in opinions is not sticking a knife in their back... but oh yeah, everything is MS's fault.
The simple fact is, IBM doesn't know jack squat about how to market to the consumer, and in fact, every single venture into the modern consumer market has both been pathetic and has failed. IBM is horrible for anything but business related products.
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|This falls in line with what I believe to be the correct timeline. Yes, it was Microsoft's decision so I feel it's safe to say that it was "their fault".
" Microsoft's internal project name for the new OS was OS/2 NT, because Microsoft's intention was for the new OS to succeed OS/2 yet retain the OS/2 API as its primary interface. The success of Windows 3.0 in April 1990 altered Microsoft's thinking and its relationship with IBM. Six weeks after Microsoft released Windows 3.0, Microsoft renamed OS/2 NT as Windows NT, and designated the Win32 API (a 32-bit evolution of Windows 3.0's 16-bit API) NT's official API. Gates decided that compatibility with the 16-bit Windows API and the ability to run Windows 3.x applications unmodified were NT's paramount goals, in addition to support for portions of the DOS, OS/2, and POSIX APIs. From 1990 to NT's public release in August 1993, Cutler's team was in a mad dash to complete NT, and the project grew to involve more than 200 engineers and testers. Figure 1 shows a timeline of the major events in the history of NT." - http://www.win2000mag.co...D=97&ArticleID=4494
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|dont write off ms bob yet, I mean the dog survived, it wouldnt surprise me if a few other ms bob ideas re-appeared in the future.
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|I hate that stupid dog, especially since wheny ou turn it off, it takes it's time animating it so it walks off into nothingness... grrr... really irritating.
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|They want to see just how much damage the Anti-Trust crowd will deliver to them...M$ has NEVER care about security...just think a word processor that can run executables...an os that "integrates to the internet (so long as it's MSN)...the problem is that they will probably be better off if the government forces them to strip the os down...then they can secure it...
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|I think it is a good thing that the NG versions of Windows are being delayed mainly because of security. As everyone knows Microsoft hasnt had much luck with seucirty in the past and their new approach is an excellent one. I would like to see what then mean by a 3-D interface. Are they talking about the "Task Gallery" from the Microsoft Research website? I can see it possible but what about BlackComb? i see no mention of BlackComb anywhere, yet apparently it is going to be Microsoft's next big OS, not LongHorn?!? I am looking forward to seeing screenshots and video of this new interface as the Task gallery video is a little dated being from 1999! For Windows XP SP1 i have heard it is going to be HUGE, apparently it is going to fix (well we hope so!) nearly all of the majro problems Windows XP had upon release. Personally i think Windows XP was let out of the box a little too early,l i good 3 or 4 months testing would have been a good option to get some of the more major bugs out which Microsoft was awear of but did nothing about until after release, mainly the cd burning problems (i still say they should have ask ahead (nero) to develop the software as InCD works great in XP. I am hoping LongHorn will be a strong, reliable and secure release for Microsoft when it comes out in 2004. I do not think it is that far away, it is only 3 years after Windows XP, and it will stop the windows haters from moaning saying "you buy one version then 6 months later another version is out etc etc" :)
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|hmmm it really will have to be a "significant release" though because Im sure linux, especially KDE will also have made huge steps forward in the next 12-18 months. I guess it has to be done though, the security definitely needed time putting into it and a lot of other ideas required serious work lower down deep inside NT like the yukon code.
I dont think the 3d interface will ever happen. Thats what they were looking at years ago, but they are too focused on the web based/integrated interfaces as seen in the blackcomb mockup video - I cant see how they can bring the two together really.
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|Remember that nowadays graphics chipsets are for more advanced and even your economy PC comes with a nice nVidia card. You're right, this has been something Microsoft Research has been working on for years, but it hasn't really been possibly until recently - and even more so in 2004 I'm sure.
Chromeffects and other 3D efforts have bit the dust however, so who knows whether we will see much of an interface upgrade. But if this is something they are focued on, it definitely is possible. If they do keep the UI conservative, I hope they open the DirectX-enabled shell APIs so other applications (from Stardock, etc.) can take advantage of the technology.
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|Are you somehow implying that by the time Longhorn comes out that Linux will be better than XP?
Give me a second while I laugh my a** off.
OK I'm done.
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|In many ways it already is, just as in many many ways XP is better than Linux.
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|very true.
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|wait until you see the 2001 video of the task gallery! you will be surprised at how much it has advanced since 1999. It isnt that similar to the task gallery as you are now in a "floating" environment however it works the same with physical movements represented like you saw in teh task gallery.
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|They keep talking about it, however some are actually doing it (on other platforms).
http://www.3dwm.org/
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|Maybe Nero would be good for YOU, but I get nothing but buffer underruns in Nero.
Secondly, Microsoft does NOT ship the OS with major known bugs. There are things that may seem major do to media hype (pretty much everything that is found), but no known major bugs are shipped with the OS.
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|It's seems your computer has a lot of problems....
If nero fails, let me tell you it's time to change your PC...
I've been using nero win WinXP, 'cause my ****ing linux doesn't let me burn. Never a problem with nero either winxp.
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|And the fact that it works in your particular unique combination of hardware, software, and OS somehow means that it has no bugs and will automatically work 100% for everybody?
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|Ok i agree with you that major bugs are fixed and alot of it is due to media hype and linux lovers, windows haters. but you have to admit windows xp was released with a hell of alot of pretty serious and annoying bugs mainly UPnP and the cd burning software built into explorer
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|Well I use Nero and Win XP also and it works perfectly.Yes NERO incedently slows down on starting on A XP System.This is probably because of the conflict between the CD burning software built in XP which is always running as a service.
I personnally stopped that service and Nero works just fine.
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|The CD burning software works fine for me.
UPnP didn't have a bug, but rather a security flaw, and sometimes these things only come out once it's put out into the wild (pretty much the same thing with bugs too). Simply, you can't find everything. There were 750,000 of us beating the product to death, and then Microsoft in their own labs have what they call a RaidDatabase, which basically, you the software up against a bunch of machines on a rack and beat the crap out of the system to find bugs and squash them (hence, Raid, as in the bug killer)
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|Well I could say the same about Easy CD Creator, it works flawlessly on my system... however I'm not that ignorant.
Different products work differently on different setups, it's a fact of life.
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|Ok, so you are now saying that security flaws aren't bugs? (LOL!)
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|No, I'm saying that it's very hard to find some security bugs until it's out in the open.
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|Uhh no, what you said was "UPnP didn't have a bug, but rather a security flaw". That sure looks to me like you are claiming security flaws aren't bugs! ;-)
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|"Secondly, Microsoft does NOT ship the OS with major known bugs."
Yes they do. There are any number of known bugs that have made it through multiple versions of Windows. Not little spelling-error-in-a-dialog bugs but real, serious, nasty gotcha! bugs.
Spend time talking with developers, or follow BugTraq, they're there, many have been there a long time, and yes some are major.
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|Major bugs are known as "showstoppers", the OS does not ship with any KNOWN showstoppers.
Sure, it ships with known bugs, heck, a few of my submitted bugs for WinXp still haven't been closed out yet, but that doesn't mean that it is shipped with known major bugs.
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|dood. dont bash nero. its probably your hardware. go get yourself a new burner with seamless link. you'll never have a problem with that again. that or stop running cpu intensive apps while you're burning cds.
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|Dude, you should try Lycoris just to see what it looks like:
http://www.lycoris.com/
I am an MS loyalist to the core but they should be very affraid of Lycoris. It's as easy to install as Windows and almost as easy to understand as Windows once it's installed. Think of it as Linux with an XP interface.
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|Longhorn will bind DX9 and the GDI - eventually merging the two in a later version. This will allow for 3D rendered elements in the UI - buttons & bevels, all rendered with an accurate light source, when they light up, the'll Really light up, click it and it really depresses, instead of requiring 15 different images - etc.
And it gives devs more freedom in the UI. OH NO!
Facts: The delay of Windows is a good thing. It is absolutely a result of the increased security reviews. .NET has to be more secure than any other OS on the market simply due to its immense exposure. MS spends more time, money, and resources on security on their OSs than any other entity.
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|"reviews. .NET has to be more secure than any other OS on the market simply due to its immense exposure." uhh no..
http://www.openbsd.org
That's secure..
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