OT: Microsoft Windows Longhorn Screenshots

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 1:12 am

martyn wrote:I'm not really a fan of all the whistles and bells sort of stuff, transparent menus, windows that swish around your screen etc, I don't really want to know there's an OS present at all, i just want it to run my apps as well as possible on my choice of hardware. To be honest, I'm so happy with my present setup.

OS's should be as transparent as possible, yes .. but you are happy with what you have??? I am amazed.

It's classic geek-think to say 'I dont care how it looks' , but interface design isnt about making it look pretty - it's about humanizing.

3d windows are often decried as fairy dust, but I live in a 3d world. When I make a cup of tea I do it in 3d with haptic resonse and depth cues all handled very transparently by MY operating system. I look out of a transparent window(no not that kind!) and understand the concept of in here and out there. Its all quite complex concepts that we learn as children (and genetically)

The computer is meant to be interfacing with this, my OS. Not me breaking my back for 12 hours a day labouring over a mouse.

Humans evolved to control their world using depth perception to hunt prey in 3d, we can guage horizontal speeds very well and do great pattern matching and visual alignment.
That is what OS's should aim for using to become truly transparent. Not a 'mouse' and 'keyboard ', but a haptic control area feeding a true 3d representation of a meta-data object system.

as bizare as it sounds that it what we are built for .. not this point and click, typey - type type crap.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 1:31 am

Angstrom wrote: you are happy with what you have??? I am amazed.

To a point of course, I havn't seen anything that makes me want to shell out a couple of grand on anything else just yet. If it runs the apps then thats good enough for me, because for me, it's all about apps, and my modest setup runs the apps I have, laughably well. No glitches or crashes and with a reliable 64 samples buffer (1.5ms).

If you're talking about a complete paradigm shift then that's a different story altogether. A 3d interface that does away with the typewriter and mouse? Bring it on!

Somehow i don't think longhorn is in that ballpark.

The interface out of 'Minority Report' would be nice.

mikHATz · Post by **mikHATz** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 1:54 am

kind of crazy actually. The pictures on this site are of build 5048, which doesnt have any of the "cool" longhorn features, namly Avalon, Aero, Indigo etc.. All these features were scrapped after build 4051 along with the whole code base. So Microsoft started from scratch, using the Windows Server 2003 SP1 code base. The older 4000 builds were based on Win XP SP2. Microsoft felt Longhorn needed to be better componentized from the start, so that the company could more easily add-on the many disparate technologies it was developing.
Theres more info here

I wonder what this means for the endusers like us. Yeah XP is extremely stable but is getting outdated very fast. THe article goes on tho say tthat Microsoft vows to have the Operating system out by the end of 2006, but it seems like they have bigger and better things to worry about like video game console domination. And besides that theres really no competition in the PC market, yeah theres Linux but what app company is going to build programs for a freeware OS. Dont want to get a Macintosh either for reasons im not gonna get into(dont want to start a war). Where can PC users go from here?

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 2:32 am

Machinate wrote:3: Longhorn *will* be a stable OS. No drivers in the kernel means no BSOD. But hey, six million ways to crash - choose 1

What on earth are you talking about? Instable kernel drivers (namely by 3rd parties) are the primary cause of system instability. Especially when it comes to windows. Redesigning the windows kernel isn't going to help system stability; I think that the release of windows XP shows this rather well. The kernel itself is basically finished and stable at this point in time; it's weird hardware and unreliable 3rd party software that has a tendency to take windows out.

And *nod* @ the poster noting that this looks a helluva lot like gnome on linux. I have to say that I'm rather unimpressed, but given the longhorn demos that I've seen, I can't say that I was expecting much. It's really asking too much for MS to redesign their UI at this point in the game. I am glad that they decided to ditch the godawfully-ugly green+red theme, though.

Now, if they'll just get rid of that animated puppy in the system search, I think that windows will almost start to look as good as it did back in win2k.

DJ Precious · Post by **DJ Precious** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 3:24 am

Hideous.

Pure uninspired dreck.

May as well ship with a free copy of Project5.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 6:56 am

sqook wrote:
Machinate wrote:3: Longhorn *will* be a stable OS. No drivers in the kernel means no BSOD. But hey, six million ways to crash - choose 1
What on earth are you talking about? Instable kernel drivers (namely by 3rd parties) are the primary cause of system instability.

That's exactly what I mean, sqook!

gamers would be the first to switch to the new operating system because of one thing… Drivers. Most (if not all) Longhorn drivers have been removed from the kernel, not only making the system super reliable, but making performance better on 3D gaming. Windows XP is reliable, but people still get blue screens. 90% of those blue screens are caused by driver having a problem. Since they’re in the kernel, it causes the system to completely crash. In Longhorn, driver errors will cause the driver to fail and Longhorn will just restart that driver. Most of the time, you won’t even know it happened

but I'm still just regurgitating net-talk, so what do I know...

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 6:56 am

eta: 2026

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:22 am

mikHATz wrote:t yeah theres Linux but what app company is going to build programs for a freeware OS.

Microsoft have done a pretty good job of giving everybody the impression that all software on Linux has to be open source and free.
this is absolutely not the case. There is no other OS so suited to Audio production. Imagine how great it would be to have your live laptop running an OS that was compiled especially to run only what was needed for the gig! there's not a lot of difference in that than using modern hardware with it's own custom OS.

You only have to look at the motion picture industry to see Linux's graphics credentials, The Lord Of The Rings, Pixar, Lucas Films. Why do you think they're using it? Cos it's cheap?

There's just one app keeping me on windows at the moment, I've found highly usable alternatives for every graphics app i need, Firefox and thunderbird I'm already using, office software's an easy one, excellent firewall and a HUGE ammount of steadily growing, really exciting audio software.

I'd just take one of the major companies like Adobe to take the plunge imo and set an example for other software companies. I think LOTS of people would switch in an instant.

amo · Post by **amo** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:51 am

Martyn wrote:
mikHATz wrote:t yeah theres Linux but what app company is going to build programs for a freeware OS.
Microsoft have done a pretty good job of giving everybody the impression that all software on Linux has to be open source and free.
this is absolutely not the case. There is no other OS so suited to Audio production. Imagine how great it would be to have your live laptop running an OS that was compiled especially to run only what was needed for the gig! there's not a lot of difference in that than using modern hardware with it's own custom OS.

You only have to look at the motion picture industry to see Linux's graphics credentials, The Lord Of The Rings, Pixar, Lucas Films. Why do you think they're using it? Cos it's cheap?

There's just one app keeping me on windows at the moment, I've found highly usable alternatives for every graphics app i need, Firefox and thunderbird I'm already using, office software's an easy one, excellent firewall and a HUGE ammount of steadily growing, really exciting audio software.

I'd just take one of the major companies like Adobe to take the plunge imo and set an example for other software companies. I think LOTS of people would switch in an instant.

I would !! Well said mate !

Cheers,
amo

ishimaru · Post by **ishimaru** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:55 am

Longhorn = no more mp3s/DivX/or anything thats not "yours". DRM protection right in the CPU. Hello future of windows. The only thing changing is Big Media's grip on your freedom to Timeshift when you want and how you want to.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:13 am

ishimaru wrote:Longhorn = no more mp3s/DivX/or anything thats not "yours". DRM protection right in the CPU. Hello future of windows. The only thing changing is Big Media's grip on your freedom to Timeshift when you want and how you want to.

That MIGHT actually be a good thing, don't get me wrong, I've done my fair shere of audio, er, sharing

but it has to be said that it's definately altered the way I VALUE music. And as i've said in one of the other threads, I don't enjoy music in the way that i used to, I think itmight be a good thing for everybody in some ways. What i don't agree with is who'll end up OWNING everything, thats what we have to fight againced. This whole european patent thing is the most worrying.

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html

Meffy · Post by **Meffy** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 6:20 pm

Angstrom wrote:Humans evolved to control their world using depth perception to hunt prey in 3d,

First, you won't get 3D using both eyes looking at one display. That takes real binocular vision, with each eye receiving a different image which, when analyzed for parallax and combined into a single perceptual field, become a mental model of a real 3D space.

From a single display you get... well, FAKE 3D. An imitation. It might be cute and cuddly, but that dog won't "hunt" -- not on my machines, anyway.

Second, unless I'm forced to throw rocks and sharp sticks at my prey... sorry, I mean icons and menus... well, I'll do just fine with 2D, thank you very much. :-D

Why? So I can play "oooo, everyone look at me, I'm a big macho uber-geek!"...? Nooo. Because it WORKS, and because I see no advantage in piling CPU-consuming lace and ribbons onto my apps or environment.

Before you ask: yes, I DO use a command-line interface when that's the best way to accomplish a task.

Not because I'm a rough, tough techno-monster. (I'm not.) But because the computer is a tool, not a world in which to live. And I have no intention of using hammers and wrenches made by Lisa Frank. I'll stick with Stanley. And even they get a little silly now and then...

Meffy

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 6:47 pm

Meffy wrote:
Angstrom wrote:Humans evolved to control their world using depth perception to hunt prey in 3d,
First, you won't get 3D using both eyes looking at one display. That takes real binocular vision, with each eye receiving a different image which, when analyzed for parallax and combined into a single perceptual field, become a mental model of a real 3D space.

From a single display you get... well, FAKE 3D. An imitation. It might be cute and cuddly, but that dog won't "hunt" -- not on my machines, anyway.

Second, unless I'm forced to throw rocks and sharp sticks at my prey... sorry, I mean icons and menus... well, I'll do just fine with 2D, thank you very much.

Why? So I can play "oooo, everyone look at me, I'm a big macho uber-geek!"...? Nooo. Because it WORKS, and because I see no advantage in piling CPU-consuming lace and ribbons onto my apps or environment.

Before you ask: yes, I DO use a command-line interface when that's the best way to accomplish a task.

Not because I'm a rough, tough techno-monster. (I'm not.) But because the computer is a tool, not a world in which to live. And I have no intention of using hammers and wrenches made by Lisa Frank. I'll stick with Stanley. And even they get a little silly now and then...

Meffy

I can't believe you posted those links, nice metaphor.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 6:51 pm

Meffy wrote: First, you won't get 3D using both eyes looking at one display. That takes real binocular vision, with each eye receiving a different image which, when analyzed for parallax and combined into a single perceptual field, become a mental model of a real 3D space.

I have a pair of these

shutter glasses, wireless ones. they're pretty good. They dont require the app to have been written for them .. they work with just about anything that does 3d ... Mainly games of course.

http://www.edimensional.com/product_inf ... ucts_id=28

Meffy · Post by **Meffy** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 7:01 pm

@Angstrom: Whoa! =@.@= Your eyes are probably much better than mine. Those things give me a terrible headache.

Of course, if you find 3D to be useful, that's cool. Whatever interface makes people most productive has got to be good... for them. For me, a 3D look just gets in the way most of the time.

Big exception: 3D modeling tools. Loooove my Caligari trueSpace. *hugs software* And of course MS Flight Simulator... Beriev Be-103 rules the skies AND the waves! *sings Russian anthem* But that's just the 3D look. I couldn't do the shutter thing without my poor ol' eyeballs falling out on springs.

@Martyn: ;-)