Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
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Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#2I wonder if the project name for win10 was shoehorn.
Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#3In case you ever wondered where the codename "Longhorn" came from, Windows XP was codenamed Whistler, and the follow-up version was codenamed Blackcomb, after the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains at the popular, eponymous Whistler Blackcomb ski resort in British Columbia a few hours away from Seattle.
The Blackcomb release of Windows started slipping, so an interim release was planned. It was codenamed Longhorn, after the Longhorn Saloon and Grill at Whistler Blackcomb: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g154948-d70639...
Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#4Good memories. I remember leeching longhorn builds from some guy on an irc channel on efnet through xdcc transfers. Every two-three weeks there was a new longhorn build that I would burn on a cd and use to format the family pc. I would've been a great beta tester!
Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#5This is really fascinating, though I have no idea why. That said, I'd love to read a series of articles about the development of Longhorn and why it failed rather than a tech dive into the components developed. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#6I would like to know about what happened with the Windows Future Storage (WinFS)
Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#7[deleted]
Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#8Vista was not a very well-received release, but I remember using 64-bit Vista way back when. Maybe my memory is failing me a little, but I don't really recall Vista being that bad or unstable. UAC, of course, was a little annoying then, but 7 felt a little more unstable and crash-prone than Vista.
My dad still uses a Vista desktop regularly (a 2007 install) and as far as I can tell it still works perfectly fine for him. I suppose he's probably leaving far too much to chance, but still.
Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#9I would like to know about what happened with the Windows Future Storage (WinFS)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
http://superuser.com/questions/11346/what-happened-to-winfs
Apparently it was canceled and part of it was added to Microsoft SQL-Server 2008, and Windows 7 and other software.
I think WinFS sort of was replaced with Cloud Storage and all of the Websites that allow you to store files in the Cloud. It is why Microsoft bought out Skydrive renamed as Onedrive.
Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
#10This is really fascinating, though I have no idea why. That said, I'd love to read a series of articles about the development of Longhorn and why it failed rather than a tech dive into the components developed. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Raymond Chen writes a great blog called the OldNewThing that has some good stories. I think asking why it failed is rather hard to explain and I suspect different people who were on the project would have different explanations.
I worked on XP and a little bit of Longhorn. In my opinion one of the reasons was that much of the product direction and leadership shifted. The MSN app team merged with the shell team after XP shipped and JoeB, who was running the shell/UX team moved to a new team.
I wouldn't categorize Longhorn as a failure, but a step in a larger pattern of large release: 95, XP, Win7 and then, typically shorter releases in between that are managed differently: 98, ME, Vista.