71–80 of 112 posts
I would like to know about what happened with the Windows Future Storage (WinFS)
> The project, however, failed completely and development had to reset. More than three years late Microsoft released Windows Code Name 'Longhorn' as Windows Vista... ...the project, however, failed completely...
It did fail completely. Microsoft started from scratch, using the same codename.
Good 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!
Dude, I have a strong feeling this was me.
Or were those legally shared images? :)
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WinFS wasn't a filesystem, but implemented upon NTFS as filesystem filter driver and dotNet based service, the files were stored in a hidden directory (SQL Server Compact and raw files with generated filenames in sub folders). The dotNet service was just very slow. The original vision of "information at your fingertip" was behind the Cairo project. And Cairo had an object stored in the NTFS filesystem driver. WinNT4…
I think Longhorn was in large where we have now finally got with Windows 8 and onwards (not 7). An OS with core apps written in .NET, an object oriented data management system in Powershell. PS unites e.g Windows Registry and common files under the same umbrella. Windows 10 also completes the vision of a shared OS for all appliances. Unfprtunately I think it took MS too long to get here. Other vendors got to the home…
The original implementation was based on COM, the idea to implement CLR instead came afterwards.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net...
So, WinRT is nothing more than COM+ Runtime brought back to life, with some of the lessons learned in all those CLR years.
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There was a in-depth article from Vanity Fair from 2012, "Microsoft’s Lost Decade" which tries to put together what happened. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lo... Some excerpts: By 2002 the by-product of bureaucracy—brutal corporate politics—had reared its head at Microsoft. And, current and former executives said, each year the intensity and destructiveness of the game playing grew worse a…
>no more using C# So what did they use instead? C++ ?
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net...
Using COM and AOT compilation, instead of the CLR and JIT.
That is why Windows 8 eventually introduced the WinRT, which is basically the COM+ Runtime of Ext-VOS, but using .NET metadata instead of COM type libraries.
The C++/CLI syntax was re-purposed for C++/CX and Windows Runtime Library became the ATL replacement for this new improved COM.
.NET got improved AOT compilation story instead of NGEN, and COW was improved so that .NET could have a good story for writing and consuming WinRT components.
EDIT: It isn't COW, rather RCW and CCW.
Vista 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 h…
After a couple of months, we made the complete switch (deinstall the email client on windows and create more gmail accounts).
Now, I boot on windows less than once per year. I have to thank the driver problems of vista 64 (and the other minor defects of Vista 64) for making this migration possible (it is difficult to leave a system we are used to).
My only problem now is that I would like to buy a new computer and I am worried about the full support of all my future hardware.
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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…
JoeB? That wouldn't happen to be Joe Belfiore by any chance, would it?
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Well now I'm curious, please upload them to imgur :)
IIRC, Neptune was basically XP's Longhorn. It was designed to be the new consumer version of windows, a successor to Windows 98. Built on Windows 2000, it had quite a few new features that were new to consumers. However, the relevant work was eventually merged with the new business version of Windows to form what would become Windows XP. There's plenty of screenshots you can already find online, you can even find ISO…