The reason there was so much excitement over Windows 95 was because it was an awesome new product with dramatically better capabilities and lots of swell new features. People (me included) lined up at midnight to buy it because it was objectively a great new product.
Fast forward over ten years, to the sad pathetic delusional executives about to launch a ridiculously overdue product with even more ridiculously FEWER significant new features than perhaps any major Windows release. A bit of eye candy graphics (which just annoys a lot of people anyway), a desktop search that will probably not be much better than Google Desktop, and what the hell else? Read their existing marketing blurbs to see exactly how little it offers over XP, which itself was barely warmed-over 2000 (plus Win95 compatibility hacks, which is hardly exciting.)
My theory: MS is desperately trying to generate enthusiasm precisely because there is no reason for there to be any. It is all the execs trying to pretend their company has actually been doing something useful for the last 6-8 years this boondoggle has been in development. The things that were originally trumpeted as so revolutionary, such as WinFS, have been stripped out (and "thank God", I say -- WinFS is the biggest performance-sucking blackhole ever conceived, and is the ultimate in techno-delusional-narcicism -- a massively overengineered bogglingly complex object/relational database schema that would only be useful if every software developer everywhere abandonded their own storage formats and converted to this monstrosity -- HELLO? what about just indexing stuff already in the file system???)
Of course Vista will make it onto lots of newly manufactured PC's. If Microsoft had any guts or smarts, they would pit their existing product versions in competition with newer versions, and let the market decide, and provide hard objective market discipline for their product teams (Corel used to do this with their products, marketing several versions at the same time.)
Microsoft product development strategy and marketing strategy has become almost psychotic since Steve Balmer took over -- it is sad that he is not being evaluated according to a standard of what MS could be, instead of what it is -- hell, he could sit in his office and do nothing and MS would sell billions in OS's and Office. You read these stories of disgruntled product managers who are being ordered to make their products connect to every other MS product, whether there is the slightest logic or market demand for that or not. Do they even do surveys to determine if anyone uses half that nonsense in their products???
.... that MS isn't promising a lot of features with Vista. We're just curious how many of them will actually be in the released version. So far, the Vista feature casualty list is rather impressive.
.... the key question is how many of the promised features will actually make it into the consumer version? There is a long like of feature corpses already left behind by Vista.
Paul Thurrott: "misgivings" over Vista's "OS X look"
This, from one of your own:
"I have certain misgivings about Vista resembling Mac OS X. With its translucent windows, such comparisons are going to be hard to avoid. But Vista's similarity with OS X goes well beyond window dressing. Certain applications, such as Calendar, Sidebar, and Photo Gallery, appear to be directly, ahem, influenced by similar applications in OS X. Microsoft has a response to that claim, which I'll reveal in part 3 of this review, but suffice to say they're going to get eaten alive for these similarities," Thurrott writes.
Original article: <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308.asp" target="_newWindow">http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308.asp</a>
Commentary and related articles: <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8843/" target="_newWindow">http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8843/</a>
that Thurrot, has to whisper his acknowledgement that Vista ***********, and has ripped off everything about OS X. He's the biggest Windows loving Nazi out there, next to monkey-man Ballmer and "runs-like-a-girl" Gates.
"REDMOND, START YOUR PHOTOCOPIERS" was so accurate.
Sorry, Windows is windows is windows. The mere fact that I have to work on it every day makes my morning a dreaded one. I hope my compnay wises up and sees that Vista is just a rip-off, has no true innovation behind it, and about half the features promised have already been taken out. God forbid they pay to upgrade to the next level of crap.
... Although I am not quite familiar with the Mac OS X... I will very much tend to disagree with you in that it is generally believed that the Windows OSes morphed out of the OS/2 Platform and not likely to have been out the Mac OS; and, here are some of the facts/details with regards to Windows XXX development and as per the subject line; "the history of NT" - "In the late 1980's the Windows environment was created to run on the Microsoft DOS operating system. Microsoft and IBM joined forces to create a DOS replacement that would run on the Intel platform that led to the creation of OS/2, and at the same time Microsoft was working on a more powerful operating system that would run on other processor platforms. The idea was that the new OS would be written in a high level language (such as C) so it would be more portable.
Microsoft hired Dave Cutler (who also designed Digital's VMS) to head the team for the New Technology Operating System (NT :-) ). Originally the new OS was to be called OS/2 NT.
In the early 1990's Microsoft released version 3.0 of its windows OS which gained a large user base, and it was at this point that Microsoft and IBM's split started as the two companies disagreed on the future of their OS's. IBM viewed Windows as a stepping stone to the superior OS/2, where as Microsoft wanted to expand Windows to compete with OS/2, so they split, IBM kept OS/2 and Microsoft change OS/2 NT to Windows NT...."; see the links for additional details;
"Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. The architecture complemented versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS until 2001. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are the latest versions of Windows NT, though they are not branded as such for marketing purposes.
and,
When development started in November 1988, Windows NT (using protected mode) was to be known as OS/2 3.0, the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM. In addition to working on three versions of OS/2, Microsoft continued parallel development of the DOS-based and less resource-demanding Windows environment (using real mode). When Windows 3.0 was released in May 1990, it was so successful that Microsoft decided to change the primary application programming interface for the still-unreleased NT OS/2 (as it was then known) from an extended OS/2 API to an extended Windows API. This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM, and the collaboration ultimately fell apart. IBM continued OS/2 development alone, while Microsoft continued work on the newly-renamed Windows NT. Though neither operating system would be as immediately popular as Microsoft's DOS or Windows products, Windows NT would eventually be far more successful than OS/2..."; see link:
You should probably read the next paragraph in the article.
"Of course, Windows Vista is still Windows, and that means you can be far more productive with Vista than is possible with OS X, especially if you're a heavy keyboard user like me..."
As I said to Lib, no one cares what OS you use. Get over it.
If all these Linux people put the time and effort into improving Linux and other OSS projects - rather than bashing Microsoft every few minutes - Linux truly would be a much better product than Windows. But until that happens, I refuse to spend hours on end trying to figure out someone else's bug or how to make something work because they didn't document it - and I'm a software developer myself.
The Linux zealots continue to miss the point - it's not about what you theoretically could do with the OS - it's about what you can actually do in the real world. Make it easy to use and you might actually start getting somewhere.
Hmmm... lets see. DOS 6.22 used roughly 6 MB. Windows 3.1 used another 6 MB with DOS is about 12 MB. Windows 95 used from 70-120 MB. Windows 98 about 300 MB. ME.. no clue, never even saw it but heard it wasn't good. Win 2000 used about 1 GB Win XP uses around 3 GB
Vista? I have no clue but I bet it's going to be a much "bigger" splash than 95 for sure.
Manage updates with the Download App
Fast forward over ten years, to the sad pathetic delusional executives about to launch a ridiculously overdue product with even more ridiculously FEWER significant new features than perhaps any major Windows release. A bit of eye candy graphics (which just annoys a lot of people anyway), a desktop search that will probably not be much better than Google Desktop, and what the hell else? Read their existing marketing blurbs to see exactly how little it offers over XP, which itself was barely warmed-over 2000 (plus Win95 compatibility hacks, which is hardly exciting.)
My theory: MS is desperately trying to generate enthusiasm precisely because there is no reason for there to be any. It is all the execs trying to pretend their company has actually been doing something useful for the last 6-8 years this boondoggle has been in development. The things that were originally trumpeted as so revolutionary, such as WinFS, have been stripped out (and "thank God", I say -- WinFS is the biggest performance-sucking blackhole ever conceived, and is the ultimate in techno-delusional-narcicism -- a massively overengineered bogglingly complex object/relational database schema that would only be useful if every software developer everywhere abandonded their own storage formats and converted to this monstrosity -- HELLO? what about just indexing stuff already in the file system???)
Of course Vista will make it onto lots of newly manufactured PC's. If Microsoft had any guts or smarts, they would pit their existing product versions in competition with newer versions, and let the market decide, and provide hard objective market discipline for their product teams (Corel used to do this with their products, marketing several versions at the same time.)
Microsoft product development strategy and marketing strategy has become almost psychotic since Steve Balmer took over -- it is sad that he is not being evaluated according to a standard of what MS could be, instead of what it is -- hell, he could sit in his office and do nothing and MS would sell billions in OS's and Office. You read these stories of disgruntled product managers who are being ordered to make their products connect to every other MS product, whether there is the slightest logic or market demand for that or not. Do they even do surveys to determine if anyone uses half that nonsense in their products???
The lunatics truly are running the asylum...
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx" target="_newWindow">http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx</a>
Amazing how long you can rant w/o adding any information.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx" target="_newWindow">http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx</a>
Amazing how long you can rant w/o adding any information.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx" target="_newWindow">http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx</a>
Amazing how long you can rant w/o adding any information.
curious how many of them will actually be in the released version.
So far, the Vista feature casualty list is rather impressive.
actually make it into the consumer version? There is a long like of
feature corpses already left behind by Vista.
"I have certain misgivings about Vista resembling Mac OS X. With
its translucent windows, such comparisons are going to be hard
to avoid. But Vista's similarity with OS X goes well beyond
window dressing. Certain applications, such as Calendar,
Sidebar, and Photo Gallery, appear to be directly, ahem,
influenced by similar applications in OS X. Microsoft has a
response to that claim, which I'll reveal in part 3 of this review,
but suffice to say they're going to get eaten alive for these
similarities," Thurrott writes.
Original article:
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308.asp" target="_newWindow">http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308.asp</a>
Commentary and related articles:
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8843/" target="_newWindow">http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8843/</a>
"REDMOND, START YOUR PHOTOCOPIERS" was so accurate.
Sorry, Windows is windows is windows. The mere fact that I have to work on it every day makes my morning a dreaded one. I hope my compnay wises up and sees that Vista is just a rip-off, has no true innovation behind it, and about half the features promised have already been taken out. God forbid they pay to upgrade to the next level of crap.
Microsoft hired Dave Cutler (who also designed Digital's VMS) to head the team for the New Technology Operating System (NT :-) ). Originally the new OS was to be called OS/2 NT.
In the early 1990's Microsoft released version 3.0 of its windows OS which gained a large user base, and it was at this point that Microsoft and IBM's split started as the two companies disagreed on the future of their OS's. IBM viewed Windows as a stepping stone to the superior OS/2, where as Microsoft wanted to expand Windows to compete with OS/2, so they split, IBM kept OS/2 and Microsoft change OS/2 NT to Windows NT...."; see the links for additional details;
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/13464/13464.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/13464/13464.html</a>
Also;
"Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. The architecture complemented versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS until 2001. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are the latest versions of Windows NT, though they are not branded as such for marketing purposes.
and,
When development started in November 1988, Windows NT (using protected mode) was to be known as OS/2 3.0, the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM. In addition to working on three versions of OS/2, Microsoft continued parallel development of the DOS-based and less resource-demanding Windows environment (using real mode). When Windows 3.0 was released in May 1990, it was so successful that Microsoft decided to change the primary application programming interface for the still-unreleased NT OS/2 (as it was then known) from an extended OS/2 API to an extended Windows API. This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM, and the collaboration ultimately fell apart. IBM continued OS/2 development alone, while Microsoft continued work on the newly-renamed Windows NT. Though neither operating system would be as immediately popular as Microsoft's DOS or Windows products, Windows NT would eventually be far more successful than OS/2..."; see link:
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT" target="_newWindow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT</a>
"Of course, Windows Vista is still Windows, and that means you can be far more productive with Vista than is possible with OS X, especially if you're a heavy keyboard user like me..."
As I said to Lib, no one cares what OS you use. Get over it.
The Linux zealots continue to miss the point - it's not about what you theoretically could do with the OS - it's about what you can actually do in the real world. Make it easy to use and you might actually start getting somewhere.
DOS 6.22 used roughly 6 MB.
Windows 3.1 used another 6 MB with DOS is about 12 MB.
Windows 95 used from 70-120 MB.
Windows 98 about 300 MB.
ME.. no clue, never even saw it but heard it wasn't good.
Win 2000 used about 1 GB
Win XP uses around 3 GB
Vista? I have no clue but I bet it's going to be a much "bigger" splash than 95 for sure.