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Windows Operating Systems Software Microsoft

More Insight On Longhorn's Avalon And Aero Design 316

Posted by timothy from the all-on-paper dept.
Lispy writes "While monitoring the Xorg mailinglist I came across this set of WinHEC PPT-presentations (work fine in OOorg) that cover some interesting details on the underlying architecture of Aero, Aero Glass and future font rendering in Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn OS. What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?" (KPresenter works fine, too, btw.)
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More Insight On Longhorn's Avalon And Aero Design More

More Insight On Longhorn's Avalon And Aero Design

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  • left text cutoff (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nycsubway ( 79012 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:32PM (#9232360) Homepage
    When certain fonts are displayed in Windows, certain characters are cut off on the left. It seems when the bounding box of text is calculated, it is incorrect, allowing some text to be cut off when displayed. I've noticed this is IE and Word especially.

    Hopefuly they can fix this in the new fonts.

  • Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by metlin ( 258108 ) * on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:34PM (#9232376) Journal
    Joe Beda had said that Avalon is going to be more of an advanced UI/Visualization toolkit, while Dx will continue to contain all the other serious stuff.

    Now, it looks like Avalon can do 3d on it's own and maybe more too -- what's the idea behind this anyway?

    Are they trying to get a fresh new API or something? It seems unlikely, since I remember Joe and Scobles saying that they will probably be using Dx for serious graphics and game development. The redundancy seems strange.

    From the presentation --

    Avalon 3-D are not a replacement for Direct3D
    You will find Avalon 3-D useful if:
    - You want to integrate 3-D seamlessly into an Avalon app that also contains 2-D content, controls, etc.
    - Platform features like Remote Desktop and multimon are high priorities for you
    - You want to easily add 3-D functionality without quickly without needing to learn how the graphics hardware works

    You will find DirectX useful if:
    - You want access to all of the features provided by the graphics hardware
    - You want to have full control over how your scene is stored and managed in memory
    - Plan for interop between Direct3D and Avalon
    Render Direct3D in a HWND and host within Avalon

    So basically it seems to help ease the creation of bells and whistles, more than anything. Weird.

    And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

    • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nasarius ( 593729 )
      And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

      Trademark issues, I believe. The software package is technically called "OpenOffice.org", because something else was already named OpenOffice.

    • Your OT question could be trivially answered by visiting www.openoffice.org [openoffice.org]... "OpenOffice.org is both an open-source application and project. It is free. The product is a multi-platform office productivity suite compatible with all major file formats." The product is actually called OpenOffice.org. That's sort of like calling your really fancy version of hack "nethack" because it was developed in collaboration via the internet - it has no networking features, why is it nethack? It's not a domain, why is it

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)

      by Distinguished Hero ( 618385 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:45PM (#9232444) Homepage
      And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

      "The name is "OpenOffice.org" and not "OpenOffice", because someone else already had the trademark. The name should be used as an adjective: "OpenOffice.org Application", "OpenOffice.org Community" and so on..." Link [everything2.com]
    • I was gonna reply by pasting some text from the PPT, but I see you've already got that... it seems to me (very much not a developer, nor an XWindows user) that they're reorganizing things more along the lines of XWindows; a 3D API (DirectX) for low level 3D stuff, and a window manager (Avalon) for, well, window management.

      As a Mac user, you could also look at it is Avalon kinda sorta equals Quartz, but I don't think it's as 1:1 as the XWindows analogy.

      (The *nix developers and more knowledgeable XWindows u
    • i believe the full name of open office (oo) is open office.org (OO.o)

      I think it was a marketing decision to always let people know were to get the latest and all. I'm, guessing on that though.
    • And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

      Because the name of the program is "OpenOffice.org." See www.openoffice.org for the reason why this is so (something about another project called OpenOffice).

      Hence the abbreviation, OO.org.

    • OOo (Score:4, Informative)

      by swusr ( 689597 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:01PM (#9232561)
      And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?

      From Logos, Trademark, and OpenOffice.org in a Nutshell [openoffice.org]:

      Trademark

      Because of trademark issues, OpenOffice.org must insist that all public communications refer to the project and software as "OpenOffice.org" or "OpenOffice.org 1.0," and not "OpenOffice" or "Open Office."

    • Re:Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

      by iammaxus ( 683241 )
      I think it pretty clearly states in the ppt that Avalon will be a layer on top of DirectX utilizing DirectX for all the actual rendering. Avalon just provides this convenient (will it's supposed to be...) "visual tree" to make window management more powerful and easier.
      • Exactly my point.

        With LH flaunting out as having only managed code, are they looking at Avalon to be a new fresh/clean API over Dx, or what?

        Right now -- they say that use Dx if you want complex stuff, but Dx is not managed code. But Avalon is -- so are they looking at making Avalon the new standard or something?
    • I remember reading an "Avalon is nothing like Quartz Extreme" article recently. Well, the powerpoint application says this:

      "Window client areas are each represented by a single large texture"

      The PPT pres makes Avalon look exactly like QE. Compositing within the app in software, with single, large client bitmaps composited in hardware.

      • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

        by EddWo ( 180780 )
        Except the difference with Avalon is it uses hardware to render the individual windows to their own textures, and then uses hardware again to composite the textures on the desktop. Everything that can be done in hardware will be, vectors, gradient fills, antialiased text, etc. with software fallback available only for features the hardware doesn't support.
        You can use hardware to render a texture too you know.
    • Looks like Avalon3D will be some simplified wrapper around a subset of DX to extend/replace the GDI. I'm a little puzzled, though, about its use for Remote Desktop - there's no need to have 3D there. Does this mean that MS wants to do something like XWindows with RD, sending over a bunch of DX-like draw commands that wil be executed locally by Avalon3D?

  • Preparing for the release date (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:36PM (#9232390)
    Apparently an Aero testing suite will be released at least 18 months before Longhorn's release. Is this demo yet available? It's interesting to note that if this message is right, Longhorn will not be available until 2006.

    Will MS publicly announce this Aero test, so that we can anticipate a real release date for Longhorn?

  • Silly question... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gogo Dodo ( 129808 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:37PM (#9232395)
    What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?

    This is /. and you're asking about how they will like a Microsoft technology? Of course, they'll hate it. Microsoft could come out with something that that's the coolest thing since Linux and /. will still hate it.

    • Yup (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Even if Microsoft does a good job with Aero/Aero Glass, let's not forget that it's nothing but a ripoff of Mac OS X's Quartz/Quartz Extreme-- which by the time Longhorn comes out will be even more advanced.

      I think the reason that MS is showing so little of Aero is that its design will be the last thing they do before kicking Longhorn out the door. They'll need to wait to see what they'll want to copy from whatever the latest version of OS X is at the time.

    • Re:Silly question... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:09PM (#9232611) Journal
      I think the technology is OK, but overbuffed beyond recognition. Comon : they have a screenshot of a 3D bar graph behind some semi-transparent buttons. Cool maybe, but then they boast having done it in 2-3 days.

      duh ? I don't know how many whistles are behind it, but putting a rotating 3D object in an app can be done right now with a few clicks and a few lines code adding an ActiveX control to an ordinary MFC app. Putting transparent shit on it is supposed to be OS-level, so that should take 2 minutes once the OS supports it. What were they doing 3 days ? It can be done TODAY in less time. On Windows. On a P3 with 64MB ram.

      that's what I hate the most about these presentations. They fart in a bottle and present it as the new coming of Christ. And everyone buys it.


      Note : I'm NOT saying that avalon isn't cool and so, but the stuff they demonstrate is nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Yet it makes the headlines. Bah
    • I love having a notebook with about 3-4 hours of battery life. In fact if I could get 7-8 hours that would be fabulous. Because of the advantages of having a notebook with long battery live my habits change. For example I will for extended period of times sit in a cafe, work, AND talk with people. I will not worry that I will run out of juice. It is a truly amazing ability.

      Imagine you had a notebook with the following specifications:
      - 12 hours of battery life,
      - Wifi, GPRS/3G
      - 1440x900 screen
      - about th
    • Xbox & Xbox Live.

      It's fun to go check out the Slashdot posts when Xbox and Live was announced. They were about as wrong as it gets.

  • peeerty (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:42PM (#9232421)
    Peeeerrrrty

    Look at those two screen shots. If Longhorn wan't an OS I would bang her 4 times a day.

    Then again, I would get a virus, like MSclap

    =)
  • Icons with reflection and depth

    While I have to admit it sounds cool, I can't really think of a real need for this.
    • I have a really good reason for eye candy, actually. If the icons do shit when the mouse passes over them it's easier to figure out where the mouse is - not just its position in space but what it will do if you click. It doesn't need to be taken to this extent but your video card is mostly idle while you're using the desktop, why not do it?
      • Eye candy is fine, and making things look as good as is possible is one thing.

        But take a look at the candy on offer in XP - Sliding and scrolling and rolling menus windows etc - they all slow me up - I get the same amount of frustration when using a cordless mouse - the fractional delay induced is just annoying as hell.

        If they can make the effects instant and seamless it will be nice.
        • I don't notice cordless delay, but visual effects that require time are incredibly annoying. The slow to-appear time for the Start Menu under Windows is also very annoying.
        • Presumably they will just be sending geometry for windows (or other objects) and occasional texture data, so the amount of information going to the screen will actually be reduced. Frequently-displayed menus can be based on cached textures so displaying them or not is a case of sending minimal information to the video card.

          The faster your video card, the faster your display will be.

        • different types of "eye candy" (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Onan ( 25162 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @08:40PM (#9234168)
          This is an important distinction, and one I remember noticing when seeing other people use Windows 2000 (I think) after I'd been using osx for a while.

          Windows's idea of eye candy was that menus (and submenus) would all slowly fade in. The process of navigating deep into hierarchical menus was maddeningly slow--at least until everyone turned it off.

          In osx, menus appear immediately, and then fade out after you select something. This is not only pretty, but functional: it gives you visual confirmation that you've selected a menu item, which can be helpful if whatever you've asked for doesn't produce obvious or instant results.

          Microsoft's cargo cult [wikipedia.org] design process often leads them to such mistakes. They manage to take the wrong lessons from other people's work, and conclude that what people want is snazzy looking things which tax hardware. The real lesson is that people want visual continuity and feedback in order to speed up their use. But Microsoft never seems to get as far as understanding the point of anyone else's design, just the appearance.

    • Re:If you think OS X has too much eye candy... (Score:5, Funny)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) * on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:57PM (#9232527) Journal
      While I have to admit it sounds cool, I can't really think of a real need for this.

      And while you are at it, I think I speak for everyone when I say I can't think of a real need for Longhorn either ;-)
    • I disagree completely, sir! Eye-candy is EXTREMELY important! Computers should be works of art as much as possible -- this should not necessarily mean at the expense of functionality of course.

      Look at the world of cars. Look at BMW, for example.
    • I can think of a need for it - I spend somewhere in the region of 10-12 hours a day staring at my monitor (7-8 of them due to work). Given that I'm spending that long looking at it, what I'm looking at had better be pleasing to my eye.

      That's part of the reason why I switched from Mandrake to XP - after a month or so of using XP, 'drake just looked plain and flat in comparison. A small thing, but important to me, all other things being pretty-much equal.

  • change the name (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:49PM (#9232482)
    call it longshot

  • "Patient Blood Sugar Tracker" (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:50PM (#9232485) Journal
    What would Edward Tufte make of this plot? Ah well, perhaps the multidimensional rotating bar graph will be of some use, should the presenter want to conceal some data.

    It's somewhat disappointing that the presenter chose not to include a lens flare, though.

  • Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rosyna ( 80334 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:56PM (#9232525) Homepage
    No, not hot.

    But reading Avalon's text support it seems that Longhorn will FINALLY be able to have the same deep text support that OS X has had since at least 10.0. Yes, all the APIs are marked AVAILABLE_MAC_OS_X_VERSION_10_0_AND_LATER with most of them having support in CarbonLib 1.0, ATSUnicodeLib 8.5 (Mac OS 8.5). Nice to see longhorn might finally be catching up.

    The only thing that longhorn claims it will have that ATSUI doesn't have yet is the graphics card rendering support. Ever wonder why resizing a window is so slow on OS X? ATSUI is the reason.

  • New font engine? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:57PM (#9232536)
    In what way, if any, is this different from Apple's Quartz techniques?

    • Re:New font engine? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bwoodring ( 101515 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:18PM (#9232650)

      If you are interested in learning more about Avalon, consider reading this article and especially the comments at the end. The author discusses Avalon vs. Quartz in the comments.

      Graphical Composition in Avalon [ondotnet.com]

      • Or save yourself the effort. The article takes two pages to say that Avalon has proper transparency support for sub-elements and uses double buffering to prevent flicker/animation artifacts.

        • You didn't read into the comments (Score:4, Informative)

          by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Monday May 24, 2004 @12:43AM (#9235183)
          The real meat of the whole thing starts here [oreillynet.com].

          A really, really long chain of postings between the guy who wrote the article and a guy who seems to know OSX rendering pretty well.

          My take on this is that OSX has tacked a lot of issues with making vector display practical, and trying to maintain a good balance between "everything is a vector and you all need new computers to run the OS" and "everything is a bitmap and you can run this on a 286". Personally I think a lot of graphic designers will be aghast at the limitations an all-vector approach will impose for things like icons - you can see guys spending days tweaking pixels. You may think you've done them a favor by taking that options away, but these are the guys that make your interfaces look good! Treat them nice, I say.

          I would also say each is holding his own pretty well in this argument, it did not get too far into name calling and the like (gets more technical as you progress - my link takes you pretty much to the point wher ethey drop the childish bits). I do think the Avalon guy is a little more ignorant of what is going on in OS X rendering-wise than the OS X is of Avalon - the OS X guy for a while was unwilling to believe that anyone would actually take an approach with only vectors, but understood fully that aspect later on.

          The Avalon guy has a good point that it's cheaper to send a lot of vectors to the GPU than to calculate very high DPI images for display... but I think the OS X guy has a good point that you can't have the GPU do everything.

          Here's a simply summary from my read (not comprehensive):

          Article guy: Maintains the vector retained model is the only scalable UI solution. UI's should only be collections of vectors (including all icons and the like) with everything, even text, being rendered by a GPU on your video card.

          Also maintains that parts of OSX are not really PDF/DPS based, and therefore will not scale.

          Has not yet answered if he thinks it's a good idea for the GPU to be doing typography (like kerning).

          Longhorn will require new GPU's for sure, from everyone.

          Avalon target is display showing about 10,000 primitives.

          Avalon targeting high (300dpi+) displays, only path to good performance is feeding vectors to a video card.

          OSX Guy: OSX does use PDF/DPS model correctly, elements will scale - renderer can be set to any DPI. To use the GPU for all drawing operations is madness - OS X has quick operations for things like video, and slower but much more exact operations for things like 2D operations. To use GPU for all operations is going to be a disaster as they cannot handle quality 2D operations (like exact text rendering) all that well.

          Showed how saving a window as PDF yields scalable elements (not just a raw bitmap).

          Maintains that OS X can support high DPI displays, you just change the rendering target.

          Can rotate window contents in real time.

          Expose is not supposed to be an exact vector resizing as such an operation should be very fast, not exact.

  • running behind again (Score:5, Funny)

    by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:57PM (#9232540) Journal
    from the 2nd presentation (in huge capitals, orange text on blue background to make your eyes bleed. So far for userfriendlyness)

    "64-bit is the future !!"


    Doh. MS is missing the ball by a few 100 miles again : Billy, 64-bit is THE PRESENT. 128bit or nanocomputing is the future.

  • Power Comsumption? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Graemee ( 524726 )
    What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?"

    With the specs to run Longhorn What kind a laptop. From the previous slashdot story. 'Microsoft is expected to recommend that the 'average' Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than thos

    • Those weren't MS recommendations, nor were they based on any information from MS. Those requirements were from some reporter pulling numbers out of his ass.

  • "Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use." (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RotJ ( 771744 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:14PM (#9232642) Journal
    According to Raymond Chen [asp.net], during usability studies people remarked that XP's Luna would be a great UI for their dad, employees, etc., but didn't want it for themselves. Now, when they look at Aero, it's "Wow, this would be a great UI for me to use." Most of the people participating in these studies are probably not part of the Slashdot crowd, though. And Raymond Chen works for Microsoft, so he's obviously the Boogeyman. So take his post as you will.

    Windows seems to be going down the road of "show fewer things but with bigger pictures", which may be great for regular folkum. Advanced users will just scrap the bells and whistles anyway for a basic, functional setup. "Dumbing down" through simplification isn't always a bad thing though. I actually like the new WinXP start menu a lot better than the classic one, albeit with small icons instead of the huge default setting. Silver Luna isn't too bad either, as long as I reduce the size of the titlebars and buttons to classic size. Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

    • Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons?

      Try running XP with 1600x1200 with 20.1" diagonal (my flat panel) or 1400x1050 with 14.1" diagonal (my laptop). Anything smaller than the "huge" icons is quite tiny.

    • Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

      Fitt's Law: "The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target." asktog.com [asktog.com]

      This means that big icons and buttons are faster. I sometimes really don't understand why Power Users want small icons -- its actually faster to work with bigger icons!!

    • Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

      It seems to be a welcome appearance for people like my parents and uncles, who surf the Internet with absolutely huge fonts and low resolutions. My dad doesn't even have bad eyesight either; he doesn't wear glasses while I do. Large is easier to read and work with when all you're doing is surfing and emailing. Plus some of my relatives don't have really good co

    • Again, what's the deal with Microsoft and huge buttons and icons? Are they trying to cater to the bad eyesight but too cool to wear glasses crowd?

      Agreed. I keep asking myself that same question every time I see screenshots of Longhorn. I look at Aero and think, "Wow, that sure is pretty, but look at all of that desktop space that is wasted with the bells and whistles." I'm the guy who still has to switch to classic menus on XP whenever I use a machine. I find that even Luna is harder for me to use tha

  • after looking at ppt files... (Score:4, Funny)

    by neko9 ( 743554 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:46PM (#9232812)
    are they creating video game or operating system?

  • Nice article summary! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:53PM (#9232853) Journal
    What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?

    At least the submitter understand there's no use asking for its upsides here. :-P
    • Sure. Actually I was posting the story with FDO Xserver in mind and I think it's wise to look at the downsides of a heavily 3D environment. No need to make the same mistakes. ;-)

  • Where does X stand? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:56PM (#9232868)
    I noted with quite a bit of interest that near the end of the Longhorn Text presentation, they claim that 1,000,000 sub-pixel antialiased (cleartype) characters can be rendered per second (8 to 11 point type, on a 96dpi LCD).

    Does anyone have any similar performance figures for sub-pixel AA font performance on Linux? I have a sinking feeling it might be closer to 10,000/second :(

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @05:55PM (#9233234)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Shouldn't we be talking about... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:08PM (#9233314) Homepage Journal
    I know that foghorn is going to have a high wow-factor, but do we really want to be gaping with awe and amazement at every little tip of the veil of a system that won't be out till at least 2006?

    My take is that our time is much better spent improving our prefered (open!) system, exploiting the great features that Hans Reiser has given us (which I personally find much more interesting than all the eye candy that serves to addict, distract and slow down my friends and their computers).

    Extended attributes are here today. So is OpenGL. Where are the applications that exploit them? Where are the BeOS-like filesystem queries on Linux? Where are the Baldur's Gate clones? And, most of all, where is the stuff that, once and for all, asserts the superiority of the open source community, the proof that we can invent, rather than wait for the corporations to do it for us?

  • Thoughts on LongHorn: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:38PM (#9233500) Journal
    In the immortal words of Colonel Kurtz, "You must make a FRIEND of the horror".

    What horror, you ask? A major Microsoft upgrade. We cal look forward to the following exciting experiences in the coming Longhorn apocalypse ("I love the smell of burning CPU in the morning... It smells like... Job Security!"):

    1. Indigo, the new .Net secret sauce coming with Longhorn, will no longer use Remoting "over the wire". Everything is going to be SOAP and web services. Sounds wonderful, right? I think so too. BUT, many consultants are busy writing all your company's apps using remoting between servers! Guess what THAT means?

    2. All your computers are going to be landfill fodder, because Longhorn's hardware requirements are going to SMOKE 'em. Ah, well, we didn't need those 20,000 PCs anyway. And, the budget looks so much better cratered. It's like a big empty swimming pool. Makes me think of summer.

    3. Performance? The users are asking about performance? Um... HUSH! Look at the pretty screens, children! Ooh, transparency!

    4. Filesystem? We don't need no stinkin' filesystem. Let's put everything in a DATABASE!!!
    Ok, they might not get this into Longhorn, but it's coming. All your apps that touch the filesystem? Kiss 'em goodbye.

    5. More DRM. What's that? the users didn't ask for it? Let's surprise 'em; they'll be so happy!

    6. A new, different and strange iteration of IE to worry about. Sigh; better set up resources for the recoding of all your web pages, just in case.

    Ah, well. It should be exciting! And, who knows? Maybe the Indians will find it all just too ugly to work with and offshore all the work back here ("Oh, this is just too UGLY, you may take it back, please... No, really. No, I must insist. Oh, you are too kind, sir, but NO, I REALLY must insist... Oh you are making me very ANGRY sir, do not make me go medaeval on your unruly buttocks in the manner of Marcellus!").
    • 1. Indigo, the new .Net secret sauce coming with Longhorn, will no longer use Remoting "over the wire". Everything is going to be SOAP and web services. Sounds wonderful, right? I think so too. BUT, many consultants are busy writing all your company's apps using remoting between servers! Guess what THAT means?

      Oh my gosh, you are so right! A vague description of unnamed "consultants" who are busy writing my company's apps using remoting between servers! You have convinced me with your facts, sir.

      2. All

  • Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NeuroManson ( 214835 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:29PM (#9233792) Homepage
    I believe this should, mind you, SHOULD raise the heat under the open source movement.

    Do your OS of choice under the following:

    Make it so it runs on anything from legacy hardware through current hardware.

    Don't engineer it specifically as how YOU would want it done, engineer it as how you think Joe Sixpack would like it to be done. Do you know how MS keeps its market share? By making adaptive shifts to their new setups as small and painless as possible. Stop assuming everyone who wants to try Linux already knows every manual and howto available.

    Screw the DMCA, reverse engineer everything (do it the old fashioned way, get 50 coders to examine 1/50th a part of the driver code, then compile accordingly, that's how it was done with IBM). That way everything can be supported.

    If you want to be mainstream, start acting like you ARE mainstream. This "Lookit me, I'm a rebel!" illusion is just that. That's how Apple did it, that's how Microsoft did it. And look at them now. The rebel theme is only good as long as you expect to lose money.

    I'm a MS user myself, but the DRM crap and all makes me WANT to go Linux, but the fact that not every Linux dev doesn't support EVERYTHING I want to do or use, means I'm stuck with MS until they realize this.

    It's like wanting to escape from prison, while everyone else is debating the best kind of file, and what kind of cake to bake it in.

    • Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Informative)

      by HerbanLegend ( 758842 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @11:24PM (#9234858) Homepage
      This parent is spot-on. I run 3 WindowsXP machines and a linux PDC and fileserver in my house. I would switch to Linux for the other computers, too - but there just isn't the support for applications and hardware. I would have to spend thousands to "upgrade" to a free os that supports my hardware.

      Linux asks you to learn a tremendous amount in order to use it. Fine - but you can't expect to sell a product with such a steep learning curve to people who barely made it out of High School.

      Oh, and a reality check: millions of people in America alone are functionally illiterate. They are NOT going to rewrite their .confs.

      Microsoft, at this point, is damn near unstoppable because it plays to the crowd - the REAL crowd. The Slashdot Community is a tiny niche in a tiny minority. Let's all work together to write linux apps that are actually easier to use than their microsoft equivalents?
  • while somewhat offtopic this has to do with longhorn. i have a friend who has friends on the longhorn development team. I hear they are having to re-write some of it because they invested to much in inter-threading processes. It appears that a Windows XP 2 will come out becaues longhorn is taking so long.

  • Here we go again (Score:4, Insightful)

    by taradfong ( 311185 ) * on Sunday May 23, 2004 @09:13PM (#9234319) Homepage Journal
    The text rendering technology impressed me. The new APIs did not.

    When will Microsoft learn...developers don't want great big heaps of their grand designs. There's just too much of an investment to learn their way of doing things, there are too many cages around the good bits, and everything breaks when you go off the beaten path.

    Example: few 'real' apps use MFC - and certainly none of Microsoft's. They expose 'Fisher Price' versions of their tools which they hand code in good old SDK.

    I mean, does anyone *really* use DCOM? I guess COM has held on bascially because there isn't that much that is 'Microsoft' about it and it basically works. But what happened to ATL? DDE? ActiveX? In fact, the only useful Microsoft software tends to be the stuff they acquire (Visio, SQL Server)

    Now I have not used one iota of Avalon, but I remain unconvinced it will be anything other than their typical developer traps with a bit of 'hello world' cute app as bait.

    Meanwhile, Linux hacks change the world with Perl scripts. Go figure.

  • If Apple continues to patent its UI elements..... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rspress ( 623984 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @01:06AM (#9235276) Homepage
    If Apple continues to patent its UI elements Microsoft is going to be in a lot of trouble and will be doing a lot of redesign or groveling at Apple.

    Much of what I have seen in the way of screen shots and videos, makes Avalon and Aero look as they are "borrowing" an awful lot of MacOS X's look and feel as well as many UI elements. Even the window widgets are gaining Mac like colors!

    This makes Longhorn look very nice but if Apple continues to patent their "look and feel", and they should, it would provided them with a nice bit of leverage with MS. Microsoft might even have to stop "borrowing" features and stop calling them "New and Ground breaking Microsoft developments".

    This could become very interesting!

  • Longhorn and cross-platform applications. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by master_p ( 608214 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @03:40AM (#9235757)
    Microsoft is very clever. They are upgrading their technology to the point that applications written in native APIs would be much better (at least visually) than applications written with a cross-platform library. Some presentation says that "GDI apps will be software-rendered off to a texture, then use the 3d hardware to map this texture to the display. It will be slower but acceptable due to related performance of CPUs".

    Avalon would give a significant advantage to Microsoft, and at the same time spell an end to really successful cross-platform libraries like Qt and WxWindows. Well, not really an end, but it will seem that Qt or WxWindows or GTK developed-apps will be a product of the stone ages when comparing them with Avalon apps. The Microsoft APIs will be totally managed, which means "goodbye C++": either use the managed APIs, develop on Windows only, be fast and smooth, or develop with a cross-platform library, but be slow, and be ugly.

    I think that if the Unix world does not move fast and embrace the new technologies quickly, make a new X-Windows system or something similar, Linux has even less chances of getting a respectable share of the desktop market.

    The Microsoft model also shows that it has an advantage that the open source model does not have: the ability to follow technology quickly. This is partially because of the ties of Microsoft with hardware vendors, but also partially with technology being driven by economics rather than good willing of people.

    Another thought: what will happen to Java ? Swing is already slow and ugly. Imagine putting an Avalon app side to side with a Swing app! the Java app will be like coming from the stone ages.

    Does the world really need Avalon ? I think not...we already have good text support, good interfaces etc. But it will be one of those things that nobody thought it would make a difference, but when it comes out, everybody will like it, and everybody will "need" it.

    And a final thought: Avalon will make remote desktop very easy to do, since computers on the network will exchange 3d data and not bitmaps. This particular capability may be the final nail in the X-Windows system coffin.

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