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“I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

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Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#21

Post by wesnerm2 »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #5

I think LH refers to what appeared later as Windows Vista. It's kind of nice to see a Microsoft executive had the same opinion of this product as their customers.

Longhorn was a failed version of Windows after Windows XP and before Windows Vista.

Longhorn was planned to be a dramatic follow-up version of Windows XP in which the Windows shell was rewritten on top of .NET with three main pillars: communication (WCF), presentation (WPF), and data (WinFS). WinFS was a new filesystem based on a relational database engine (SQL Server).

Longhorn was similar to a previous failed Windows release (Cairo). Longhorn was built on .NET whereas Cairo was built on COM. Longhorn used a new filesystem based on SQL whereas Cairo had a new object-oriented file store. Longhorn use Avalon for the shell with concepts for people/contacts whereas the Cairo used Outlook. Before it became an Office application, Outlook started life as the new Cairo shell in which emails, calendars, task were integrated into explorer. You could do advanced grouping, tagging, and filtering on files. In fact, the first version of Outlook, Outlook 97, as an Office application allowed you to view the file system just like emails.

Longhorn was several years late before the Windows release was canceled with no clear end date in sight.

A reset was directed to produced an incremental new release of Windows called Windows Vista. It would be purely native and ship in a year and a half.

The .NET dependency "Bet on .NET" was jettisoned, and all Window's dependencies needed to be fully released rather than works in progressed. WCF, WPF were released independently. WinFS was killed because it was too slow.

See https://longhorn.ms/the-reset/

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#22

Post by sbuk »

speedgoose wrote: post #13
throwaway4good wrote: post #2

So what has changed? You can buy a Mac today even if you are working at Microsoft.

I had an iMac G4 in 2004 and I have a MacBook pro M1 in 2021. I used only PCs running Ubuntu, ArchLinux, and Windows between. When I got the M1, it felt like home. Not much did change over 17 years. If you think about windows only, between windows XP and a recent windows 10, it's very different and much better. It's possible to use the computer while an application is using all available resources now. You also have…

I'm interested in the ' touchscreen support or the Linux integration.' part of your comment. I don't think we'll see touch screen on a Mac in the short-to-middle term because Apple have very defined views on interaction models. Of more interest is the Linux integration part. What Linux 'features' are missing from macOS on the terminal that cannot be installed from either Homebrew, MacPorts or pkgsrc? Genuinely interested...

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#23

Post by tonyedgecombe »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #12

I've read enough of buggy behaviors on MacOS that I'm not sure I'd buy a Mac today. Wasn't their new filesystem a giant mess? Even the shiny new M1 had SSD wear problems in the beginning, hmm, great QA, guys!

Actually I think the rollout of APFS was one of their more impressive technical achievements. They wholesale updated iOS 10.3 to the new filesystem without any issues. The only downside to it is it is probably a bit heavy for traditional drives, it really needs an SSD.

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#24

Post by tonyedgecombe »

hughrr wrote: post #20

I love the backpedalling later about how great Vista is. Which was bollocks.

That's pretty much what you'd expect though, the original email was never meant to become public. Companies are never upfront about their weaknesses.

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#25

Post by pjc50 »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #12

I've read enough of buggy behaviors on MacOS that I'm not sure I'd buy a Mac today. Wasn't their new filesystem a giant mess? Even the shiny new M1 had SSD wear problems in the beginning, hmm, great QA, guys!

Back in the 2004 era Windows was far more notorious for BSODs, but in the intervening time they've put a lot of work into fixing that. Mostly in drivers; things like WHQL, and the amazing subsystem that allows the graphics drivers to crash and recover with only a momentary black screen.

The Longhorn project did include an attempt at doing a fancy new filesystem, more database flavoured; I'm not sure if they ever finalized the feature list, much less got it working, and now everything ships with NTFS which is slow but reliable.

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#26

Post by tasogare »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #16

A friend of mine preferred Apple for hardware and Microsoft for software. About a decade ago he bought a MacBook and installed Windows 7.

I did that too around 2009 for a few years. It always bugged people that my MBP was running Windows.

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#27

Post by Razengan »

zokier wrote: post #7
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #5

I think LH refers to what appeared later as Windows Vista. It's kind of nice to see a Microsoft executive had the same opinion of this product as their customers.

No, that's the opposite, read the followup: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=...

The follow up is basically “oops I shouldn’t have been caught thinking that out loud”

I mean he’s calling Vista a “phenomenal product”, for Fourier’s sake

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#28

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

hughrr wrote: post #20

I love the backpedalling later about how great Vista is. Which was bollocks.

I disagree. Vista did have some problems, but this was because it introduced SuperCache (which worked in a way that did not match everyone's expectations), a new strategy for file copies (that didn't work better in a lot of cases), a new display server, and new driver models for networking, sound, and video in user space. Vista is when we stopped having to reboot for changing the video driver, where a sound driver crashing no longer bluescreened the system, and we got per-application volume controls at the OS level. Additionally, since it was new it was bloated and slow on current gen hardware and manufacturers often slapped "Vista Capable" stickers on computers that were really not ideal for it.

As with most Windows versions, it was pretty solid by Service Pack 1. By 7 pretty much everything had been ironed out and consequently we remember 7 as the highest water mark since the peak, Win2k.

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#29

Post by C19is20 »

basisword wrote: post #4

I think the context of this occurring during Longhorn (LH) development is important. For anyone that doesn't know Longhorn[1] was the precursor to Vista. They tried to do a lot of big things but it dragged on for years before they had to recalibrate, abandon a lot of ideas, and ship Vista. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista

', and ship Vista.' You spelled 'shit' wrong?

Re: “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

#30

Post by Nextgrid »

C19is20 wrote: post #29
basisword wrote: post #4

I think the context of this occurring during Longhorn (LH) development is important. For anyone that doesn't know Longhorn[1] was the precursor to Vista. They tried to do a lot of big things but it dragged on for years before they had to recalibrate, abandon a lot of ideas, and ship Vista. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista

', and ship Vista.' You spelled 'shit' wrong?

Maybe I’m the minority but I’ve only had good things to say about Vista.

Maybe the problem isn’t Vista but trying to run it on underpowered hardware? It ran perfectly fine on a quad-core and 4GB of RAM.

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