Reader Comments

I hate mornings. I do to they make me yawn!

Out here in screenshot land - it doesn't look as if much has changed in Longhorn from previous build's at all - but thats a user interface perspective, and as you've allready mentioned from your day one blog, it's not the final UI. What about 'under the hood' as you've also mentioned this is a 'developer preview', so what's new in the nuts and bolts of Windows in this build?

While the Chief Theifetecht of Micro$oftopoly has been getting 'Knighted' and all that other BS, Apple has been burning the midnight oil on many different fronts. M$ blogs show a very unhappy bunch of campers up in Redmond, and many of their best and brightest have left or are giving it considerable thought. IMHO, Ballmer is to M$ what Sculley was to Apple- an empty corporate 'pimp' who drank his own PR Kool-Aid and fiddled while Rome is burned. M$ made it's big growth while Apple was under the 'leadership' of a Soda Pop Exec- not Steve Jobs. Now the former P&G suit is running up against the real thing.

Patchers, patchers, patchers . . . come on! Even the brown-nosers like Thurrott can see the writing on the wall -- Microsoft has begun its long overdue death spiral. And to his credit, Thurrott is even starting to write about it. Face it, the cat is out of the bag: And that's TIGER, by the way. Unless there's a ripple in time and Gates comes back from a trip to the future after stealing Mac OS XXI, then it's 'Game Over, Man!' for Windows. Ahhhhh, I KNEW the air was smelling sweeter today.

I agree, the new Longhorn build doesn't look like anything special from the screenshots. Just looks like a redressed Windows XP for now. Heck even the Beta1 expectations are looking bleak for now. Currently, the hype is pretty much dead.

Paul, when you speak with the "folks from Dell", can you ask them why they haven't addressed the design flaw that affects every Inspiron 5150 they made and causes the motherboard to break after 6-14 months of use?

Proper Engrish would be: "I do TOO, they make me yawn". Or, "I do ALSO, they make me yawn". Stupid dumbass....

Oh, I forgot to ask--Paul, I've been hearing rumors that Longhorn may in fact be delayed to early 2007 after all. If your impressions of the beta are that disappointing, do you think it's really possible that the next Windows is indeed three years away? Surely Microsoft wouldn't be holding things back at that point because they'd want to kill the hype for their competitors (i.e., OS X Tiger) by blowing people away with an amazing Longhorn beta.

"This has the makings of a train wreck." - Paul Thurrot on Longhorn beta And you Windows kids are STILL defending Microsoft?

Hey, I know this may sound like another "Mac fanatic" post, but I just tried OS X Tiger last night, and wow. It feels five years ahead of everything else out there. Microsoft definitely has a lot of catching up to do with Longhorn. It's hard for me to go back to my old Windows XP laptop at work now. All I've heard is that Longhorn will apparently "visualizie and organize" search results differently, whatever that means.

Hey, don't leave us hanging. Why "not positive, not positive at all"? What makes you say it is a train wreck? I don't have a beta but I viewed the keynote. It didn't seem that bad although most of it was about things where MS was doing their own version of a "feature" that could be found elsewhere (Linux, Tiger, Adobe) in order to build a more solid and interconnected Windows platform (graphics, metro, etc) for others to build and run apps on. As it should be, it was focused on developers. Just like much of Tiger is focused on developers and building foundations for the future.

Who are you and what have you done with Paul? The real P.T. would heap praises on MS no matter what kind of crap they produced.

You know they've been working on longhorn for 3 or 4 years now and this UI actually made it out the door to a customer? Do they have a clue? You know making an ugly ui have transparency doesn't improve it.

Longhorn: It's not just crap . . . It's CRAP-tastic!

Why Microsoft is winning - http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/?page_id=17&page=1

Will the Apple fans PLEASE try to keep in mind the product they are bashing is nowhere near finished - it's not even beta 1 yet and you're allready talking about it as if this is the finished design. If what we are seeing now was the finished design, then I'd be amongst the first to bash Microsoft on how crap it is. As for the delay in getting there - everyone who has been awake for the last 18 months knows that Microsoft have hardly been doing nothing. They stopped work on Longhorn to develop XP SP2.

Why Microsoft is losing -- http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/5220/

Apple idiots, go get a life.

The WinHEC Demos (Build 5060) did look really nice with the resize on the fly of the different calculator Windows. But comparing this build to the one presented at PDC 2003 by Hillel, build 5060 and buil 5048 looks like a big downgrade to me. Interesting bit though about the fill out the form at the conference for beta 1. I think thats unfair.

Yeah, you MS basher/Apple lovers have no life. To go and constantly troll a site you hate about a product you hate... is just sad. Sad and pathetic. What a waste of a life. Go out and do something. Try and be more positive about life instead of wasting it. In other words, get a life.

^^ "Will the Apple fans PLEASE try to keep in mind the product they are bashing is nowhere near finished - it's not even beta 1 yet and you're allready talking about it as if this is the finished design." WHAAAAA!!! Let me call the WHAAAAAAMMBULANCE for you!! It's not "Apple fans" who are talking about Longchoke as though it's a finished product -- it's MICROSOFT! They're the ones who are touting it as "coming soon" (laugh) and "breakthrough" (snort) and "superior" (rolls on floor and laughs so hard he cries). And you're damn right they were working on SP2. They kind of, ya know, have a frickin' DUTY to FIX THE F*$#)%IN' MISTAKES that they created!!!! And then their FIX ended up BREAKING millions of systems that it was designed to HELP!!! Gimme a break.

I am clevar man because I use the "$" in M$ to show that all Microsoft cares about is money! Apple ruLez0rZ!!! Oh yeah, and M$ sux0rz! And Bill Gate$ 0wnz you!

I hope the comments on this board are as entertaining as the ones from day 1. I read each and every one while having my lunch today. I can't wait until snack time later this afternoon. Keep those posts, however inane, inarticulate and ignoramical; coming. Why should eagles care what pigs think of the sky.

"Microsoft has begun its long overdue death spiral" Joking, right? Does anyone have any idea how big of a company that Microsoft is? A death spiral is certainly poetic, but is hardly true. The various back and forth comments are fun to read. I used to get at time angry, now I know to chuckle. Arguing on the Internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. No matter who wins, you are both still retarded!

Hey turdasss, here is a list from M$ themselves detailing what apps (they know of) that DON'T WORK with SP2. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=884130&product=windowsxpsp2 I can't believe there are still people in this world who drink the M$ Kool-Aid and think it tastes good. Wake up and face the fact that M$ are going down in flames. Long Live Apple. ®

"And then their FIX ended up BREAKING millions of systems that it was designed to HELP!!!" Really? Where was the report on that? Or is it just another sad, pathetic Apple troll making things up again?

Yeah, you MS basher/Apple lovers have no life. To go and constantly troll a site you hate about a product you hate... is just sad. Sad and pathetic. What a waste of a life. Go out and do something. Try and be more positive about life instead of wasting it. In other words, get a life.

The Search and launch on top of the start bar is awesome... Don't remember seeing a feeature like that on a mac.

mooo ha ha ha >>>>>Yeah, you MS basher/Apple lovers have no life. To go and constantly troll a site you hate about a product you hate... is just sad. Sad and pathetic. What a waste of a life. Go out and do something. Try and be more positive about life instead of wasting it. In other words, get a life.<<<<< we have YOURS

>>>>> That was just brilliant. Can't do any better than that? Sad little troll. I'm sorry, I'd love to sit and chat ... but I'm working on WinXP and I had to install another patch ... and reboot ... twice ... Can't you do anything better than that? pooooo

Prolly the same guy who yawns every morning.. Just ignore him...

"Will the Apple fans PLEASE try to keep in mind the product they are bashing is nowhere near finished - it's not even beta 1 yet and you're allready talking about it as if this is the finished design." Uh, Microsoft's Jim Allchin is the one referring to Longhorn in the present tense. Meanwhile, I already got Tiger, and it ROCKS. Five years ahead of every OS out there. Keep on waitin' for 2007... "The Search and launch on top of the start bar is awesome... Don't remember seeing a feeature like that on a mac." Uh, why would I need that? Spotlight is on the upper-right of the menu, and I launch from my Dock. The "Start menu" is one of the worst interface designs ever invented.

Microsoft is obviously having some problems getting Longhorn into (out of?) the corral. They will eventually get something to market and it will likely be mediocre, again. Will people buy it? You bet. Will many people switch to Macintosh? Plenty will, but it certainly won't be enough to put MS out of business anytime soon. It would be nice if Apple could get to 30% of the market, but it'll be a helluva long time coming because no one but Apple makes the hardware. The Mac is superior and arguably less expensive, but the Windows "industry" won't adopt Macs until they can make money from it as profitably as they can from providing Windows products/services.

"we have YOURS" That was just brilliant. Can't do any better than that? Sad little troll.

I just got Tiger, and Spotlight is AWESOME...hard to go back to Windows XP now. I did some searches on my 120GB external USB drive, and they were instant. Thumbnail images, document previews...it was amazing. When is WinFS coming out for Longhorn? Oh, that's right, it's not! Delayed for a later release date. Haha...

Way to go Paul. Instead of hearing about Longhorn, we get to listen to you moan about how all the eye candy isn't there yet and how you couldn't get it to install in an emulated environment. I find it sad that YOU, of all people, need to be reminded that this is a developer preview build and not the finished, boxed, retail product. If anyone is interested in an ACTUAL review of the new longhorn build, you can go here: http://www.winbeta.org/articles.php?action=show&id=15&perpage=1&pagenum=1

I haven't seen Longhorn or Tiger, so I will just have to take all your brilliant assessments of each under advisement. One thing about Apple that you should all take into consideration: their best product and literally their biggest means to stay afloat is a MUSIC PLAYER. No doubt they took their proceeds from this much needed invention and poured it into Tiger. They better hope it pays off and they get a little higher then the 5% market share they have. I wouldn't doubt that Microsoft sells more copies of Windows in Iceland than Apple sells in Macs and thier fearsome OS world wide.

10 years a Windows user. Hated Apple. Heard about Tiger and went to mall's Apple store. Walked out with a PowerBook. I'll never go back to Windows. Windows-only users have no idea whatsoever what they are missing. I love Apple Mac now. Innovation, real innovation, is a lovely thing. My copy of Tiger is due to arrive Thursday!!!

I am a longtime Apple customer and agree that it seems unbelievable that Microsoft is 3+ years into Longhorn and the basic user interface is still not nailed down in demos. This underscores one of the biggest big problem with all Microsoft software that many potential customers eventually come to grips with — the user interface always seems to be secondary to the code. With Apple, it is readily apparent that the two are developed hand-in-hand, and that they are equal tools that together provide the intuitive user experience. Apple's OS design, use of color and navigation are not bolted on after the fact as decorative touches, which to me, always seemed to be the case with Windows. The state of the Longhorn user interface also underscores Microsoft's other vexing problem. Like it or not, the perception is that the company is once again chasing Apple, and when Longhorn finally arrives, it will be at least five years behind OS X, which continues to be a moving target — and the real Longhorn beta.

"The state of the Longhorn user interface also underscores Microsoft's other vexing problem. Like it or not, the perception is that the company is once again chasing Apple, and when Longhorn finally arrives, it will be at least five years behind OS X, which continues to be a moving target — and the real Longhorn beta." You forgot perhaps the worst part--by the time Longhorn actually ships, the next OS X will be talked up by Steve Jobs, if not already ready to ship out the door. What happened at Microsoft? They have masssive, massive developer resources, yet putting out updated versions of Windows seems to be harder than pulling teeth. How did Apple breeze by Microsoft with five OS X releases in the past five years? OS X has become an incredible operating system.

click start, type in the program you want to use... Lets say I type in "no" notepad, and anything else that would qualify under those search criteria automatically appear. If you have a bunch of programs, this is really useful. Windows is a task based UI, and it has clear advantages over the MAC. I see that OSX if following suit with things like slideshow on the task pane when you are browsing a folder with pictures... This all gets down to two things. Both companies are influenced by each other, and third parties. Apple, is better at keep up with design when it comes to how nice things look. And windows and apple are maybe the same with functionality, I say this because it's debatable. Microsoft it turns out, is the only thing that really matters though, as less than 2 percent of the over 1 billion computers are macs.

Hey, look, even though I'm a big Apple fan, I wouldn't want them to have 95% of the market like Microsoft has. The software market would be so much healthier if it was 50/50, or even 20/80. Never underestimate the power of a monopoly when it comes to bad software. That's why it's usually such a revelation when people sit down in front of a Mac for the first time--"Wow, computing can be easy and fun."

> How did Apple breeze by Microsoft with five OS X releases in the past five years? A tiny install base of rabid wackos who suck up anything that Apple puts out regardless of the cost? 200 new features indeed. Barnum would love you guys. I haven't spent a penny for OS software since XP came out, and it still runs perfectly fine. I don't need to shell out $130 for numerous .X releases.

"How did Apple breeze by Microsoft with five OS X releases in the past five years?" And how much did you sad little trolls spend on all those releases? $300? $400? More?

Regardless of the comparison to Tiger, I'm interested in Paul's impressions of Longhorn 5048. Longhorn represents the future of computing for the vast majority of the world, by momentum and market share if nothing else, and we should know what to expect, what's good, what's bad, and what's missing. Paul is most definitely a Windows/MS supporter [in most things], but that doesn't diminish the value of his observations. I personally use a fairly even mixture of WinXP, Windows Server 2003, FreeBSD, MacOS, Solaris (8 -- soon 10), and RHEL, depending on the platform and task at hand. All have their good and bad points; each has innovated, each has copied. Windows doesn't get me *excited*, but at the same time it's a tool and environment I use every day, so it's important personally and professionally to understand what's coming. Paul has seen fit to keep the comments open on his forum; any chance of scaling back on the smack-talk and keeping the discussion somewhat relevant and adult?

And how much did you sad little trolls spend on all those releases? $300? $400? More? Actually they have spent over half a grand.

"When is WinFS coming out for Longhorn? Oh, that's right, it's not! Delayed for a later release date. Haha... " If you had any clue at all, you sad little troll, you would have realized that instant search in Longhorn is not dependant on WinFS. Sad how you little trolls will make things up, ignore the truth, or continue on in ignorance all in an effort to make MS look bad.

"click start, type in the program you want to use... Lets say I type in "no" notepad, and anything else that would qualify under those search criteria automatically appear. If you have a bunch of programs, this is really useful." An app launcher makes Windows superior? Ahahaha. Guess you've never heard of Quicksilver for OS X. Of course, most users would just drag their text editor to the Dock and click it, never having to open a "Run" dialog ever again. For some reason, Windows users love to have way more clicks and typing to do things than necessary. I love it. Being able to type "no" into a Run dialog makes Windows "task-centric." Ahahahahaha...

Real changes in Longhorn will be showed in BETA 2

I have to admit, if I was a windows fan boy and windows was only installed on less than 2 percent of computers, I'd be quite upset and jealous too!

"I have to admit, if I was a windows fan boy and windows was only installed on less than 2 percent of computers, I'd be quite upset and jealous too!" Except that Macs are installed on way more than 2 percent of computers. Oh, that's right, you were thinking of annual marketshare numbers, which are generated from annual sales of computers. Because PC users are caught up in a scam of yearly upgrades (therefore making PCs way more expensive than Macs in the long run), their marketshare numbers appear higher. Macs have a nice install base, and because Mac users keep their computers for much longer, and OS X continues to get faster on older hardware unlike your beloved Longhorn will use 3GHZ for christ's sake, you can't believe Paul Thurrot's skewed market number arguments. I know, it must suck to be using a crappy OS that always runs in administrator account privileges, gets broken into every month, and just shamelessly copies Apple's latest releases, but hey, that's life!

I agree with some of the Windows folks comments here - we (the Apple crowd) seem to be getting all worked up over Tiger like it is some NEW OS when it is not - it is a friggng point release. It is still Panther but with new features. It most certainly is NOT a huge leap forward, as was the OS X over 9 or XP over Win98. I shelled out $129 for Panther in November 2003 and I am NOT going to shell out another $129 1 1/2 years later for what should essentially be a FREE upgrade to Panther. I don't blame the Windows crowd for telling us to shut up. Some of you pro-Mac folks sound like blithering idiots - and childish ones at that. On the other hand, I will say that I was not too impressed with the screenshots I saw on CNET today. I was expecting a "cooler" looking interface. So far, it still looks about the same as XP, but with a new "theme".

Windows--for playing videogames, like The Sims. Macs--for getting your real work done.

I could drag a notpad into windows office dock and launch it if I wanted too! So what... I love launching everythign from a command prompt.. I use keyboard shortcuts, and with the new design, I'll be able to launch any program, as quick as I can think about it, which is faster than any mac user will be able to launch a program. How many programs can you put in the MAC doc, before finding each and every rarely used program you need to use, is more cumbersome?

Well, I see a rather wasteful use of nice (pretty)web-space here. I think I will seek information elsewhere. BTW-- it certainly does not take much for an operating systems end-user to create the kind of content I see here. I think OS X, or whatever you use, is probably overkill for what you ranters and rave-kiddies actually need a computer for.

You people really have no idea what you're even criticizing... If Longhorn was even close to being released, why wouldn't they slap a label on it and ship it out? There is still a lot of work to do. The major improvements in these builds are all core improvements that they are going to build upon in the upcoming months! At least Microsoft ALLOWS most people to get a copy of the software much before it is released so that developers, IT people, support people, OEMs, etc can get their hands on it and test it out BEFORE it is released. If we were 2 months away from Longhorn being released, and this is what it looked like, yes, criticize all you like. At this point it is NOT going to be pretty because that is not what the focus is on. I would rather say "that's a solid backend that has great potential" than say "ohh the windows can slide down into the start menu" I would not expect a major change in the UI either. Why do you think Apple stuck with basically the same UI in tiger as in 10.3? It works for them, why change it. Most people are accustomed to how windows works and how to get around in it, why change it? There will definately be usability changes to help people get around faster, however, I do have to say that using both Mac and PC everyday (I have both sitting right next to me as I type this), I am not a big fan of the dock and many other ways that Apple chooses to organize windows and things. (THIS IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE A DEBATE). It is simply a preference on how I organize things.

When Longhorn beta 1 is released on MSDN, within a month there will be more Longhorn installs than OS X Tiger installs. This is the OS X last hurrah. The shareholders will force Jobs to quit wasting money on desktop PC's to focus on the iPod.

Macs--for getting your real work done. Yeah, if designing a new dress is what you do.

No, you can drag and drop docs on a subject field, which adds that metadata to that doc.. Very well thought out.

"Macs--for getting your real work done. Yeah, if designing a new dress is what you do." Tell me, which operating system, Windows or Mac, comes with a UNIX subsystem underneath? Can you fire up a bash shell on your Windows? Thought so. That's why universities all use Macs now. Even groups like NASA use Mac. It must suck being jealous of Mac users who get to use features right now that Microsoft will take another three years to get out the door. Have fun with your "start menu" and "taskbar," haha! Poor interface design at its finest.

Maybe it was just speculation, but I have heard that in order to use Longhorns search function, one has to tag the documents with keywords, meaning manually enter keywords into the meta data field. Is that right, or am I wrong here?

guess you completely ignored Quicksilver because you know it destroys your argument! Please stay on subject, we are talking about OSes.... Is quicksilver standard on Tiger? No, but if it gets popular enough, Mac will copy it, and effectively run it's software design company in this case Blacktree design company out of business, or if they want to make realy money, as in the case with Konfabulator, they will abandon the mac platform and design for windows. Thanks for your irrelvant arguments. I take them with a grain of salt as you are a jealous and angry mac fan.

Meta data in longhorn starts when you go to save the document... And yes, from the start, it will make sense to start adding some meta data to them... If you watch teh WINHEC conference on microsofts webiste, you will see just how easy this is. Mac fans will have to look for things, windows users will never lose it in the first place. I am sure Mac will put it in before long horn comes out and then you will have steve jobs talking about how windows is copying... Expected from that drug addict.

"I could drag a notpad into windows office dock and launch it if I wanted too! So what..." So you admit your argue falls flat. "I love launching everythign from a command prompt.." Me too! Tell me, which OS, Windows or OS X, comes with a UNIX shell built in? I'll give you three guesses... "I use keyboard shortcuts, and with the new design, I'll be able to launch any program, as quick as I can think about it, which is faster than any mac user will be able to launch a program." I guess you completely ignored Quicksilver because you know it destroys your argument! "How many programs can you put in the MAC doc, before finding each and every rarely used program you need to use, is more cumbersome?" How many programs can you put on the Start menu before it because a massive, slowly scrolling mess? But there's nothing you can do on Windows other than resort to the "Run" dialog (snicker). Mac users can use Spotlight, Quicksilver, or even have their own "Start menu" by right-clicking the Applications folder on the Dock. Sounds like you're jealous that you're still forced to run in administrator privileges in 2005, your OS gets exploited monthly, and you're chasing Mac users' tails. Have fun waiting for 2007 to get the features I'm enjoying right now, haha!

Windows--for playing warezed first-person shooters. Macs--for doing UNIX design work, scientific research, 3D visualization, graphic arts, writing, recording, film editing, and so on. AND for playing first-person shooters.

"I dont see why members of the mac cult even look at "windows" IT pro. I mean, I thought they didnt care less about the 'crap' windows platform? Funny, really." Because Paul Thurrot trolls the Mac Observer forums under the name "Reality check."

I dont see why members of the mac cult even look at "windows" IT pro. I mean, I thought they didnt care less about the 'crap' windows platform? Funny, really.

"And how much did you sad little trolls spend on all those releases? $300? $400? More?" $75. Next! How much will Windows Longhorn cost? $120 bucks like XP did.

"AND for playing first-person shooters." Really? Is Max Payne 2 or the fantastic Half Life 2 out on the Mac yet? No. Are any games actually written specifically for the mac? No. What does this mean? Poor selection and badly ported games with bad performance on the mac.

--"On the other hand, I will say that I was not too impressed with the screenshots I saw on CNET today."-- This glas interface seems like "Hey, look what we can do, we even have distortion behind the glas!". It looks really cool, but I don't think that much transparancy will do anything for usability. Mac OS X in the Beta had more transparency to the menus than it did in the final release cause they realized it was stupid. --"but I have heard that in order to use Longhorns search function, one has to tag the documents with keywords, meaning manually enter keywords into the meta data field."-- I guess metadata will be extracted from the file where available. You cannot get any metadata like author from a simple textfile or xml, that would have to be attached manually to the file.

Let's follow the mindset of a typical Windows fanboy arguing with Mac users. "I prefer the Start menu! I can type my programs to launch in the Run dialog!" After snickering, the Mac user points out Quicksilver and the various ways to launch apps using the Dock or Spotlight. "Well, Macs are only good for designing dresses!" The Mac user points out the UNIX work done at universities, the scientific computing, the major graphics work Macs do (for instance at Pixar), the programming work, and so on. "But, uh, you pay too much for it!" Mac user points out it costs no more than your typical Windows release, and student discounts drive it down anyway. Mac minis are $499 a pop now. "Well...uh..." Yeah. Have fun waiting until 2007 for what I'm using right now, and paying $1500 to upgrade your computer to run Longhorn. Suckers. Microsoft has you by the balls.

So, Windows fans--can you justify why your Windows is still running as an administrator account in this day and age of 2005? Can you justify the monthly security holes, even after "Trusted Computing?" Can you justify the horrible interface that usability studies have proven slows users down? Can you justify the yearly upgrade cycle, where Microsoft is forcing you to upgrade to at least 2Ghz just to boot Longhorn (yeah, nice optimization work there)? Can you justify Microsoft adding in every feature OS X has? Desktop search, hardware-acceleration, desktop widgets, a "shiny" interface, and the list goes on... Mac and Linux users see you guys and just laugh and laugh and laugh. You're just a bunch of gamers who get mad when your beloved gaming console is criticized, but you follow whatever Microsoft gives you because it's a monopoly platform. Just buy a game console; that's what they're for. Then sell your PC and go get a real computer. I don't even have to set up networking when I start up OS X, it just works. Windows requires several "wizards" to do it, and it still browses Windows network shares slower than OS X does. Lame.

"Is Max Payne 2 or the fantastic Half Life 2 out on the Mac yet? No." So you admit that Windows is only good for videogames. Let's judge the quality of our OS by whether Max Payne 2 is available for it! Ahahahahaha. Why don't you just sell your PC and buy an X-Box since you admit Windows is good for nothing more than first person shooters? "Are any games actually written specifically for the mac? No." Yes, from The Sims (Maxis has always written for Mac) to World of Warcraft (oh, you forgot that one, eh?) to all the other games that ship for Mac. "What does this mean? Poor selection and badly ported games with bad performance on the mac." It means you're a Windows fanboy who spends $1500 every twelve months to upgrade to the yearly Wintel scam cycle. Have fun running admin privileges in your exploited OS every month, waiting for 2007 to come to get features Mac users are using right now. Microsoft, always copying. Windows--for videogames, nothing more. It may as well be an X-Box sitting on your desk, running in admin privileges and ready to play the latest warezed game you downloaded off eMule. I'm glad to see you admit that Windows is good for nothing more than first person shooter games. Macs--for getting the real work done. And when you're done, playing all the ported Windows games anyway.

"Meta data in longhorn starts when you go to save the document... And yes, from the start, it will make sense to start adding some meta data to them..." I don't want to be a flameboy or anything like that, but shouldn't the search look inside the document for the search variable, instead of the meta data attached to the doc? What if I enter keywords into the meta data field for a doc, but later forget what they were? I would not like to spend any additional time typing in keywords, when the OS could index the content of the doc, hence making it easier for the user to retrieve files later on. I think it would make more sense this way. What if I want to search a doc repository of a corporation. Every human is different, hence keywords entered into the doc meta data would be just as different (aside from the obvious).

I don't know for sure, but meta data that can be determined before hand will be things like type, author and such. It will pull this from the author of the file. It empowers users to take back the content the way they want to... What else is going to be in windows? RSS Feed search built right in to your search. Other PC's you have access to, results from that. Longhorn server search.. Much more. Quicksilver is not a MAC product, it's not made by mac, and thus has nothing to do with this conversation, which because of jealous mac fans, has turned a Longhorn discussion into microsoft vs apple.

I commented on the video games aspect, where did I say that Windows was only good for games? Why the idiocy? Perhaps you prefer macs, thats your preference, it doesnt mean that you can go around making things up to try and make your platform look better.

"Quicksilver is not a MAC product, it's not made by mac, and thus has nothing to do with this conversation, which because of jealous mac fans, has turned a Longhorn discussion into microsoft vs apple." Uh, it's you Windows users who are actually arguing that the "Run" dialog is some sort of innovative interface for launching apps *snicker* You guys MAKE yourselves look idiotic.

"I commented on the video games aspect, where did I say that Windows was only good for games? " You didn't, it was the way it was your only argument. Your only argument was games. Because that's all Windows has going for it. Videogames. Videogames are what I have a console for, thank you very much. "Perhaps you prefer macs, thats your preference, it doesnt mean that you can go around making things up to try and make your platform look better." What am I making up? Windows is good for videogames. Macs do so much more. It's the reason Macs are used in the media, print, and scientific industries. Windows is used...on the X-Box.

1.7 percent... That's denial...

How does it feel to be irrelevant?

You don't even know what feature I am talking about... It's search built in, where the run used to be... Sheesh.. Why are you here? Go back to your mac land...

"Quicksilver is not a MAC product, it's not made by mac, and thus has nothing to do with this conversation, which because of jealous mac fans, has turned a Longhorn discussion into microsoft vs apple." Uh, what are Mac fans jealous of? Running in admin accounts and getting exploited monthly? Crashes and reboots every day? Even Paul is disappointed with this Longhorn beta release. Windows users are the ones waiting for 2007 to get features Mac fans have enjoyed for going on five years now. Denial, denial.

"1.7 percent... That's denial..." Britney Spears sells more CDs than Mozart. Besides, the market share number has already been blown away. Mac users keep their machines longer because they're not caught in the yearly Wintel upgrade scam like you are. Market share numbers are calculate from yearly sales. Is that SERIOUSLY all you Windows users have? "Uh, Windows has a bigger market share!" Oh my god, you guys are even dumber than I imagined.

Will the future direction of computers, operating systems, and devices, be dictated by the buying power of young morons who seem to think that playing with their shiney new toy is what life is all about? Be careful what you people wish for! We may ALL get your wish! I for one, would rather my tools perform much more sophisticated tasks, instead of creating moronic, and valueless, web-posts. I guess what the buying public wants to do with their computers is up to each individual. You know, little-kiddie went to the hardware store yesterday--in comparing the X2L9000 hammer to the Z175, "I find the Z175 shiney and cool." He said. "Who needs to build anything with it, when just looking at it invites masterbation. Perhaps I'll post a blog about it." Perhaps the manufacturer will make it more masterbation friendly, in the next design. The future is what you want it to be.

Hey Windoze users, how does it feel to have to wait a year and half to use what's already out for Mac? Seems like a bit of a trend for you guys.

This one is for Karel Donk on why "Microsoft is winning" (according to him). You're probably Dutch so I'll say this in Dutch: wat heb jij een flut website en leuk dat je geen commentaar duldt op je website dus daarom doe ik het maar zo. Als je echt denkt dat het goed is om binnen een markt die technologie van de toekomst moet gaan voorstellen door 1 enkele aanbieder te laten domineeren dan ben je echt niet intelligent, maar goed waarschijnlijk is je loonstrook een verlengstuk van je loyalitiet. Sterkte met die gedachte. Translated in english it comes down to this: wake up joker!

"How does it feel to be irrelevant?" So irrelevant that Microsoft felt the need to mention Apple at the WinHEC and copy their features for Longhorn? :) Windows users never stop making me laugh. Go on enjoying the bully monopoly you've been brainwashed into accepting by handtied OEMs. Ignore better operating systems and the business tactics of Microsoft. History has already made its judgement on who the innovator is. By the way, see that "Recycle Bin" in the corner of your Windows desktop? See your file icons? Your pulldown menus? Can you guess who invented all that and where Microsoft took it from? No, it wasn't XEROX...

My God. I came here, as an Apple user, to try and get some real information on the current state of Longhorn. The only thing I got was a semantically empty posting from the author and a long series of Apple fanbois and Microsoft fanbois screaming at each other. What a freaking waste of my time. Can we just rope off a part of the internet for these idiots so that the rest of use looking for actual useful information can get on wityh it? Please - to all the people who use Windows: the morons you see posting on this board ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF MAC USERS. Mac users are people who - just like you - have a job to do and just happen to have chosen a different OS. Most of us prefer it to the alternatives because of the unique type of work we do or the idiosincracies of the way we prefer to work. We don't automatically assume that ours is the "best" or only way to do work. And we certainly don't give much of a crap of what's happening in Redmond - not to the point of getting involved in opintless flame wars over who has more games on their OS. God damn this stuff annoys me. So can anyone point me to a factual review of what was shown in the Longhorn Demo? We have some buying decisions to make, and I'd like some facts before I make a recommendation.

Many of you seem to get off on ranting. I would like a few of you to tell me what you do with your computers besides that. Then maybe you can intelligently hold a useful conversation about the benefits of using one system over another. There is no overall "best" computer system, or "best" company, or "best" mp3 player, or "best" application, or "best" interface, of any kind-- it's all about what many people are doing with computers in many different situations. It is good to have Microsoft and Apple, and all the others around to create a diversity of options, would you not agree? Are we not more capable as a group with these options available to us?

"Mac fans will have to look for things, windows users will never lose it in the first place." Uh, do you know what Spotlight is and how it works? Have fun waiting another two years for Longhorn. Guess what I'll be using tonight? Longhorn's feature set. And next month, when Paul gives you more news about the upcoming Longhorn, I'll be using...Tiger. When the next month rolls around and you hear more about Longhorn's desktop search, I'll still already be using...Tiger. When next January comes and you're all excited because some new screenshots have been posted of Sidebar widgets...I'll already be using Tiger. When summer rolls around and the Longhorn betas are out with desktop search, widgets, and more...I'll already have been using Tiger for over a year. When Longhorn inevitably gets delayed to early 2007 as with every Microsoft release, and you're cursing and frustrated and waiting and waiting...I'll still be using Tiger. When Longhorn finally gets released in early 2007, guess what I'll already be using? And guess what will be announced by then, if not already shipping? A new version of OS X for Microsoft to copy all over again. The cycle begins anew. Have fun enjoying the agony of waiting every day for two entire years, stuck with the horribly aging Windows XP. I'll be using Tiger now.

"Except that Macs are installed on way more than 2 percent of computers." I'd be interested to see how one can install a Mac on a computer.

Bag of shite is Windows. Bag of shite.

Looks like the Windoze users have backed down in defeat. Microsoft loves having you guys to defend its monopoly. More money for them, more bully tactics to keep their machines on OEMs. You guys just blindly ignore it because Paul Thurrott made Longhorn sound so exciting! You guys are holding back computing. There are operating systems out there five years ahead of what Microsoft's cooking up, and you're to ignorant to take a look because it doesn't have "Max Payne 2?" Humanity sucks.

Yeah, it must really suck for Microsoft fans to have to sit and wait everyday as new OS X release come and go, blowing by them with Windows vaporware featuresets. When is WinFS coming out again? Oh, that's right, it was cancelled for Longhorn... Why do you guys stick with Windows? God, you'd be so much happier and faster with OS X. Seriously, you'd enjoy it. And you wouldn't have to wait two years for stuff that's out already and working.

"Meta data in longhorn starts when you go to save the document... And yes, from the start, it will make sense to start adding some meta data to them... If you watch teh WINHEC conference on microsofts webiste, you will see just how easy this is." Easy, yes. Tedious, yes. Unnecessary in OSX, yes. "Mac fans will have to look for things, windows users will never lose it in the first place." Ever heard of the Unix function "grep"? That's what OSX Spotlight is based on. It actually finds the keywords that already exist within your document. No marking files with meta-data, no trying to recall tags, no lost files, period. "I am sure Mac will put it in before long horn comes out and then you will have steve jobs talking about how windows is copying... Expected from that drug addict." Your ignorance is showing.

Face it. You're going to be buying a new machine to run Longhorn. And a pretty high powered machine by the looks of it. So when it comes time for the cash outlay, that's when people will make the decision, not today, not in Beta at least. And when that time comes, take an honest look at the two OS'es and make a choice.

"I'd be interested to see how one can install a Mac on a computer." It's called installbase. I'll wait while you look it up.

Yeah, if you eliminate most of the flaming idiots from these posts, you are left with not much but a very few interesting points-- not enough to justify hanging around here any longer.

Sad little Apple trolls on a Windows site. It really is pathetic. Go ahead waste your lives trolling the competition. If that's all you have to do, then so be it.

"Face it. You're going to be buying a new machine to run Longhorn. And a pretty high powered machine by the looks of it." Not me. OS X gets faster on older hardware. Microsoft has you Windoze users by the balls, making money for Intel, and you don't even fight it. It's sad. "In the end OSX will be the inferior product." Sorry, kid, Windows is already the inferior product. That's why Microsoft is copying it for Longhorn. "Just like quick time is." Better ask all those millions and millions of iTunes users--the majority of which are on Windows. :D Apple's technology affects everything.

So, have you Windows users justified running as an admin account in 2005 yet? Justified the lack of hardware acceleration that OS X had since the 10.2 days? Justified the endless crashes, reboots, and exploits? Still waiting. It ain't gonna happen...Windows is for videogames.

In the end OSX will be the inferior product. Just like quick time is. I am proud to say that as an image owner at my work (a fortune 50 company) I am responsible for removing and blocking access to Quicktime on almost 100,000 PCs. Somtimes (rarely) I love my job.

yes OSX is great. no, nobody besides a few nut heads will ever buy it. now stop mentioning it. it doesn't matter what apple does. MS will always take the market in the end because they develop for a wider market whereas apple develops for a few photoshop freaks and video editors and a very narrow audience of people with no real needs for anything other than a pretty UI and disk space. apple's technologies are not tailored to deliver the scale MS targets. Just windows growth alone surpasses the entire mac fanbase on a yearly basis. Apple's tini minded approaches just wouldn't work. MS is after being at the center of the market in web services, RDBMS systems, cross application communication, wide scale solutions. Longhown is just a part of MS's vision.

"Microsoft Idiots! Go get an OS!!" That's brilliant, can't do any better than that? Sad little Mac troll.

If you ranters are so happy with your computers (whatever they are) what makes you so upset with other people? Why this need to bash others? What is it about yourselves that drives you do post these insane arguments? Are you just using these tactics to even a score-- do you feel you are doing your cause a service?

Microsoft Idiots! Go get an OS!!

"When is WinFS coming out again? Oh, that's right, it was cancelled for Longhorn... " Another stupid sad little Mac troll who doesn't know his a$$ from a hole in the ground. Did you hear? Instant search in Longhorn doesn't REQUIRE WinFS. Might as well leave, you are making your smarter Mac bretheren look bad. Sad little troll.

It's just that time is catching up on the kid wonder. Now that windows need a clean coding to rebuild the OS, it's hard to come up with an original when just copying is not enough.

All you Windows apologists now saying that Macs are only good for "artists" and not "real" computing...are the sons and daughters of the people who said that GUIs and the mouse were "toys" and not for "real" computing...cycle continues... innovators and explorers vs. the screaming masses and followers.

"Yeah, if you eliminate most of the flaming idiots from these posts, you are left with not much but a very few interesting points-- not enough to justify hanging around here any longer." That's what the sad little Mac trolls want. To destroy a popular Windows site. They can't stand that there is another more popular operating system, nor can they stand any dissension from the party line. It really is sad the lengths these sad little trolls will go to, in order to spew their venom and hatred. And the fact that they have such hatred for an OS and it's users itself is just a sad state of affairs. How pathetic.

These rants remind me of the hate between other groups in our society-- a sad commentary on how far we have come.

"So, have you Windows users justified running as an admin account in 2005 yet? Justified the lack of hardware acceleration that OS X had since the 10.2 days? Justified the endless crashes, reboots, and exploits? " So how many years did you justify the lack of pre-emptive multitasking and the like? Huh? How many other features did Apple "copy" (as you sad little trolls like to say) from other modern OSes, including Windows?

lol apple develops for photoshop users. wow that's a great OS. So great no serious developer would be nutz to do anything serious on it aside from giving so called "artists" yet another version of xyz illustrator, or mmm freehand. MS develops for the world, it's two completely different worlds and one in which MS will alway shave the upper hand when it comes down to adoption of new technologies at a global scale.

It takes up disk space and is inferior to windows media player. So it got yanked.

I would say just wait and see. I know microsoft will have a much better OS by the time that longhorn releases. No amount of gabbing by apple fans will ever change my mind on that. Microsoft has by far the best and most useable operating system on the planet. I just hope that all you apple fans out there will quit going into windows message boards and sites and putting the OS down. You must have much more to do then just sit there and make fun of things that you feel aren't right. I say again GET A LIFE, Microsoft will never fall.

"I am proud to say that as an image owner at my work (a fortune 50 company) I am responsible for removing and blocking access to Quicktime on almost 100,000 PCs." And exactly why would anyone want to do that?

This site is marginally entertaining.

What everyone is missing with what Longhorn is is that it's a new OPERATING SYSTEM! Tiger, OX-X, whatever you want to call it is UNIX, a very, very old operating system. A user interface is NOT the operating. Apple no longer makes oeprating systems - the get an old free one then put a pretty face on it. That is the single biggest advantage that MS has over UNIX, Linux, and the other braindead OSes out there - they can reinvent it whenever the market demands. UNIX and Linux can do minor add-on features where MS can rewrite the whole thing and make it do what today's computing envirnments demand. The longhorn interface will change from what you superficial UI people care about when it finally releases. It's what's under the hood that matters for getting computing done that I care about. And longhorn blows everyone else out of the water for what it does under the hood.

I suggest to anyone who is viewing this blog, to Google "winhec"-- there are quite a few excellent sites providing serious information to visitors. Do not waste your time here, unless you just want a good laugh.

I believe in what I see it and that's 2 years away, maybe. My kid will start to talk and walk by then.

Yeah, you MS basher/Apple lovers have no life. To go and constantly troll a site you hate about a product you hate... is just sad. Sad and pathetic. What a waste of a life. Go out and do something. Try and be more positive about life instead of wasting it. In other words, get a life.

apple is so innovative it took them this long to add a second mouse button standard because they really thought you'd never want more than one. that's the kind of closed minded approach that has made the platform totally futureless outside the realm of it's ever decaying userbase.

For the record, DOS and Windows exist because until recently PCs didn't have enough capacity or speed to run Unix. A Unix OS on a PC is a 30 year dream that Apple has fulfilled. Unix has been the bullet-proof, industrial grade OS for 40 years for a reason. Until Windows is totally re-written to include a Unix base it will remain irrelevant, which is what it became with the first release of OSX.

Obviously none of you apple users have real knowledge of how application development works. Features and Functionality are the first and foremost priorities followed by the look and feel of the software application. Do some more research on programming instead of griping and completely disrespecting microsoft. They are working as hard as they can to make this release occur. GET A LIFE

Did Microsoft copy this too? SO many advancements in computing OSX copies from. http://www.geekcoffee.net/archives/2005/04/samsung_demos_h.html

"You didn't, it was the way it was your only argument. Your only argument was games. Because that's all Windows has going for it. Videogames. Videogames are what I have a console for, thank you very much. What am I making up? " I'll decide what I mean, thank you very much. Its your opinion that video games are the only thing going for it. Its like me saying that macs only have video editing going for it

"What everyone is missing with what Longhorn is is that it's a new OPERATING SYSTEM! Tiger, OX-X, whatever you want to call it is UNIX, a very, very old operating system." And an extremely solid, robust and scalable one at that! Funny that you'd actually beieve that an old OS core is a bad thing...Just because MS can't get it right doesn't mean it hasn't been done. "That is the single biggest advantage that MS has over UNIX, Linux, and the other braindead OSes out there - they can reinvent it whenever the market demands." You serious?!? "braindead" OS's? and I thought Applefans were the ones drinking the coolaid. The only reason the maret "demands" a new Microsoft OS is because the old one is shite and RIDDLED with holes. the shift started probably a year ago...and it is rapidly becoming more and more of an enterprise liability every single day...MS is fully aware of this...so watch the monster spin roil and show its big scary teeth.

>>>>> ..... Do not waste your time here, unless you just want a good laugh. <<<<< Excuse me ... I DID want a good laugh, and I had several in reading this board. In truth, I'm embarrassed and humored by both the Mac and Win zealotry, pigheadedness and even stupidity. But before I get high and mighty on my soapbox I must remember I came here for a laugh, not necessarily an informed exchange of ideas. Kindly resume aforementioned head bashing freely and uninhibitedly. We'll all feel better. Why should eagles care what pigs think of the sky.

"I suggest to anyone who is viewing this blog, to Google "winhec"-- there are quite a few excellent sites providing serious information to visitors. Do not waste your time here, unless you just want a good laugh." That's what the sad little Mac trolls want. To destroy a popular Windows site. They can't stand that there is another more popular operating system, nor can they stand any dissension from the party line. It really is sad the lengths these sad little trolls will go to, in order to spew their venom and hatred. And the fact that they have such hatred for an OS and it's users itself is just a sad state of affairs. How pathetic.

Pathetic is right, well hell, Kid wonders has 2 more years to get it right since XP came out 3 years ago. Gotta see it to believe it. And it better work better than what I've got. Till that time folks, keep harping and walk the walk and talk the talk cause that's what it is...face it. It's check mate!

Hold on.....I am a MAC user and a Windows user. Just exactly what "constant crashes and reboots" are you talking? XP DOES NOT constantly crash or need a reboot. Obviously, you don't use a PC with XP or you would know how idiotic you sound. You MACdickheads make me embarassed to call my self an Apple fan. All of your comments are lame and uninformed. For Gods sake, just stfu - no wonder some PC users will never try a MAC. You guys alienate them before they even have a chance. To all the SERIOUS Windows users - the MAC is a pretty cool platform. If you haven't tried one before, go into an Appple store and putz around on one for a while and you will probably enjoy it. Please don't let these frigging zealots make up your mind for you.

I second the idea for Windows users to go into an Apple store and simply see for yourself. You may even find out that "Mac" is a contraction, not an acronym, and thus is not spelled in all capital letters.

Yeah, you MS basher/Apple lovers have no life. To go and constantly troll a site you hate about a product you hate... is just sad. Sad and pathetic. What a waste of a life. Go out and do something. Try and be more positive about life instead of wasting it. In other words, get a life.

Would the 3 posters on this board stop posting! I can tell from your IP addresses all these comments are from 3 posters.

I wish I could still run my original copy of "Fool's Errand". But it was made for the 1984 Mac.

Yeah, you MS basher/Apple lovers have no life. To go and constantly troll a site you hate about a product you hate... is just sad. Sad and pathetic. What a waste of a life. Go out and do something. Try and be more positive about life instead of wasting it. In other words, get a life.

Many of these post are nothing but attempts to render the site useless to those who would like to find valuable information here, during WinHEC. Try posting some useful facts, rather than being suckered into joining the rant. Maybe, they will then go somewhere else. At least, after WinHEC they'll go away.

Whats the deal with all the Mac obsessives hanging around on a Windows site? Why don't you guys go off and do something more productive like learn to use a two buttoned mouse.

20 years ago there was 16-bit, then a decade later 32-bit, now we are introduced into the new era of 64-bit mainstream computing. This is an historical leap in computing power, now to be available to the average user. This will cause improvements to be made on all systems-- a great leap forward across the board. I welcome these next innovations. We'll see capabilities appear in devices that were not practical before. All computer savy people, especially consumers, should be excited at the realizations of new technology being announced at WinHEC today.

Wow, even Apple's stock is outperforming Microsoft's. :) Microsoft really is on a downward spiral. It doesn't matter if most people are using Windows--the company itself has bloated and stagnated.

"That's what the sad little Mac trolls want. To destroy a popular Windows site. They can't stand that there is another more popular operating system, nor can they stand any dissension from the party line. " Hey, it's the Windows users telling Mac users to go away, calling them "zealots" and "fanatics." You guys are so insecure about Longhorn, it's funny. Have fun waiting...and waiting. Another two years. A new OS X will be out by then, for pete's sake. Microsoft is down the tubes.

Paul, please remove comments. They don't do anyone any good and they just slow down the page load.

Holy crap I've never read so many rubbish comments in my entire life. You Apple benders need to take a couple of pills and lighten up. 90% of Mac owners are petty nobodys pretending to be classy film makers and graphic designers when all they're doing really is waiting for the fantastic Doom 3 to be PORTED to the Mac platform. Or waiting for Max Payne to be PORTED to the Mac platform. Or wishing they woke up next to Steve Jobs the next morning. Or wishing they had a right mouse button. Or wishing that their precious Apple OS actually mattered. Bunch of goons! Stick your yearly $120 service pack up your Firewire port.

Posters should stick to the main topic, as is usually the case at other monitored sites.

Then again, who cares about Pauls daily routine? I would rather he give us some valuable information about what he is finding out at the conference.

The comments would be more valuable if they were monitored.

At Apple's annual meeting last week, CEO Steve Jobs said Microsoft was "shamelessly" copying OS X, The Associated Press reported. "They can't even copy fast," Jobs said. But Microsoft's Allchin yesterday said it was Apple that "became fixated on Longhorn" after Microsoft showed some of its early work on file-searching capabilities at a software development event in October 2003. Allchin described Apple as "a very innovative company." However, he said, "in this particular case, I think they saw something that we were doing that was pretty cool." He called file searching "only one little piece of what's in Longhorn." He added, "There is a question of how much we should show, so that they can try to copy again." Yeah, windows is really copying.. Steve jobs and all of his followers try to re-write history, but the fact is, there is much less to worry about with Tiger, being only 2 percent of people use it, and they copy microsoft whenever they can.

Give your visitors valuable information about what is going on at the conference, it might help limit the number of pathetic rants. Valuable information can be more easily commented on intelligently.

Longhorn is still just a project in the works, I care more about the new x64 version of XP, and the move to 64-bit computing. How committed are the vendors to creating/porting existing periferals and software to 64-bit? Paul? I hear the availability of device drivers is still skant. When will manufacturers have them available for the early adoptors.

Who cares about most of this?

I am a windows user on XP since the day it shipped. I have to admit that it is the best version of Windows I have ever used. I moved from ME (a dog) and wouldn't look back. But that was almost 5 years ago. What is taking so long to come up with the next OS? I mean come on, 5 years and all we have are a couple screenshots. Even if you are the most rabid Microsoft supporter you must think they are either hiding the good stuff or something’s wrong. It’s still almost 2 years before a hopeful release. I’d think they could start fresh today and deliver a solid replacement for XP in 2 years. At least a solid upgrade, let alone working on this thing for 3 or four years and only having some screenshots and dancing dialog boxes. Stardock has software that makes XP do that today. I only have 3 complaints about XP. One is the constant patching and security, I hope they resolve those issues. Other than that XP has been very stable for me. Second, I wish they would simplify the install\uninstall of software. I know it’s easy to add\remove, but why must the process spread program code all over the registry? And when I uninstall, why won’t it remove it all? That does make XP less stable overtime. The other is aesthetics. This one is easy enough thanks to the skinning community. But who came up with that Fisher Price look in the first place. It’s like they couldn’t make the software easy enough for beginners so they made it just look as though a toddler could use it.

Apple will not be out with a new operating system in a year before longhorn. Apple will be out with a new user inteface. Apple stopped doing OSes because they COULDN'T! MS on the other hand will be out with a new operating systen and a new user interface at the same time. If you Mac morons like UNIX so much why not buy a Sun box. They've been doing UNIX far longer than Apple. Tiger, etc. is not an operating system - it is a user interface. Your operating system is UNIX, and UNIX lost the fight years ago - as did Mac 9.x

Nvidia has their new device driver out supporting 64-bit. How about printer drivers for x64? Epson? HP? Has anybody checked their sites for 64-bit drivers?

it looks like a$$...

This is not a chat site is it.

PLEASE TURN OFF THE COMMENT FEATURE! This page takes longer to load because of some morons that don't belong here. How hard is it to understand that this is pre beta software and is not fully complete? Especially visually. That means screenshots will not reflect the final product.

Longhorn is only one thing to comment on from what news can be gathered from WinHEC 2005. The news on Longhorn: slightly more information on the final look and feel; a bit on file handling; info on a new security implimentation-- perhaps involving a hardware chip; it will be offered in 32-bit and 64-bit versions; what else..? I think the big news, worth a few comments here, is x64 and 64-bit computing.

You Mac f4ggots, fukk you

Lord of The Rings is so much better than the new Star Wars is going to be it is no contest. I haven't actually seen the movie because its not out yet but I saw the trailer for the new Star Wars it looked totally lame, so all you Star Wars fans can go lick my balls!!!

ooooh, I'm so scared - Windows is 'dieing' I think not - Apple don't have the muster to do much beyond the client platform. Where is it's presence in the server world? Practically non-existant. What have they got? OSX server? Don't make me laugh - anything else? Anything to rival Exchange? Terminal Services? Anything? NO! Hence through a combination of continued business, home, developer and manufacturer interest, Windows is going to stick around for a long time to come, and the main rival will continue to be Linux.

Paul, I do not know you, but I would have to say there is not much here. I suppose you are having fun there at WinHEC, I have been looking for some evidence of your activities there on day two-- can not seem to get any useful information off your site. However it does seem that there are some people hanging around here, wasting time, including myself. Have fun. I will try to gather useful information from another site. Thanks.

Lord of the Rings rules!!!! Star Wars sucks!!!

Serious Mac users obviously are in a different realm of computing environment and usage then Serious Windows users. Apples and Oranges to me, coming from the Enterprise Class server world. So, let the Graphic designers and meteorologists have "their" OS, it seems to work well in that world, while here in Enterprise Computing there is no place for Macintosh, as they have no offering for Enterprise applications to compete with UX, Sun, Windows, Linux etc. Most of you are arguing your points to the wrong crowd - focus and ignore the trolls.

fukk you, Star Wars 0wnz lord of the rings. aragorn is a pu$$y compared to dath vader.

and the Mac lamerz can all go hang with their butt buddies and gawk at their jelly bean buttons their window title bars. fukk Macs!

"Jim Allchin, vice president of Microsoft Platforms Group, has publicly predicted Longhorn is to be only 1/3 feature complete at the time of Beta 1" The build released today isn't even beta 1 yet. Besides this is a HARDWARE conference, 5048 is only intended to give engineers a basis for writing drivers – If you were Microsoft and knew that the new interface was the most visible and desirable part of longhorn to consumers. Would you give the thousands of Linux geeks desperate to copy the look and feel a 14-18 month head start?

I've seldom seen as immature bickering and outright bigotry as I have reading through these comments. I don't exactly agree with everything that Paul has to say, but I wouldn't wish people attributing these comments to one's own writing on my worst enemy. Judging a pre-beta version as if it was the final version is unfair and clueless. That said, what Microsoft showed was progress, but at least on the surface it looks like too little too late. This could either be because they really haven't done that much, or because what they have been working on isn't what's being focused on in this build. I think the latter is the case, and that people should wait until Beta 1 turns up to judge Longhorn.

I love Windoze users. "OS X costs $120" Uh, yeah, it comes with a ton of stuff Windows doesn't offer at $100. For instance, let me know when Windows ships with a fully-featured compiler and IDE for free...

"Another stupid sad little Mac troll who doesn't know his a$$ from a hole in the ground. Did you hear? Instant search in Longhorn doesn't REQUIRE WinFS. Might as well leave, you are making your smarter Mac bretheren look bad. Sad little troll." Have fun waiting for two years to get that "desktop search," Windows fanboy! Microsoft has brainwashed you into accepting inferior software just because everyone else has it. It's called "network effect." Read up on it sometime. WinFS was supposed to be the snazzy new API service that took advantage of desktop search. So that's ANOTHER advantage Spotlight has over WinFS--I can develop with Spotlight RIGHT NOW. You'll have to not only wait two years for Longhorn, but another two years through betas before a final version comes out! Ahahahaha

"Apple will not be out with a new operating system in a year before longhorn. Apple will be out with a new user inteface. Apple stopped doing OSes because they COULDN'T!" Microsoft never had a new OS, they bought DOS and hacked onto that until the year 2000. "MS on the other hand will be out with a new operating systen and a new user interface at the same time. " What's new about Longhorn's operating system and interface? It's the same NT kernel with a revised Luna theme. Next. "If you Mac morons like UNIX so much why not buy a Sun box. They've been doing UNIX far longer than Apple." Solaris is based on BSD like OS X, dummy. "Tiger, etc. is not an operating system - it is a user interface. Your operating system is UNIX, and UNIX lost the fight years ago - as did Mac 9.x" You've clearly never used Tiger. It's more than a user interface change. Have fun waiting 2 years for features that Tiger users have now! Mac users continue to laugh at you lame Windows fanboys every year, always chasing our tails.

Sad their are so many who need to put down M$ and uplift Apple. If people really wanted to use apple they would. Tiger is GREAT but the hardware for it is too expensive and that is why Windows is ruling the world. Longhorn will be GREAT also and will have some ideas ripped from TIGER but some will be it's very own.

"I think not - Apple don't have the muster to do much beyond the client platform. Where is it's presence in the server world? Practically non-existant. What have they got? OSX server? Don't make me laugh - anything else? Anything to rival Exchange? Terminal Services? Anything?" Ahahaha...is that why the second fastest supercomputer in the world is built using XServes? People use UNIX for servers. Face it, accept it. OS X is UNIX. Windows is VMS with a Win32 shell. Congratulations on your videogame playing operating system. Why not just replace it with an X-Box and call it a day?

"Just as Windows users have become accustomed to 140,000 viruses, Apple users have become accustomed to none." http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/319 I'll stick with OS X thank you very much!

"Holy crap I've never read so many rubbish comments in my entire life. You Apple benders need to take a couple of pills and lighten up. 90% of Mac owners are petty nobodys pretending to be classy film makers and graphic designers when all they're doing really is waiting for the fantastic Doom 3 to be PORTED to the Mac platform. Or waiting for Max Payne to be PORTED to the Mac platform. Or wishing they woke up next to Steve Jobs the next morning. Or wishing they had a right mouse button. Or wishing that their precious Apple OS actually mattered. Bunch of goons! Stick your yearly $120 service pack up your Firewire port." You PC users sit and wait for X-Box games to be PORTED. Another Windows user admits Windows is just for videogames. Windows--for playing videogames, like the Sims or Max Payne. Macs--for when you need to get some real work done.

"20 years ago there was 16-bit, then a decade later 32-bit, now we are introduced into the new era of 64-bit mainstream computing. This is an historical leap in computing power, now to be available to the average user. This will cause improvements to be made on all systems-- a great leap forward across the board. I welcome these next innovations. We'll see capabilities appear in devices that were not practical before. All computer savy people, especially consumers, should be excited at the realizations of new technology being announced at WinHEC today." The only problem is that Apple introduced 64 bit processing with the first G5 CPU. Let's clarify something. I've been around since the very early days of computing. I've written and licensed commercial software. From day one of the PC era the dream was to be able to run Unix on a PC. That was impractical if not impossible in 1982, and in 1990. Today's machines are capable of running Unix and addressing a significant amount of memory at sufficient speeds to allow applications we haven't been able to run before. Microsoft's problem is that they have hung onto the make-do solution, DOS/Windows for far too long. Even Longhorn will still be an extension of that technology and that mind-set. Unix and Unix-like OS's are the future. By that I mean systems designed from the ground up as multi-user, secure systems with protected memory and true multi-tasking. Microsoft isn't there yet and won't be for several years. Apple made the correct decision in going to OSX. Yes, it's simply an interface to Unix. So what? It makes seamless integration of all kinds of devices possible (i.e. iPods) without the need to develop add-on drivers. I've used every OS you can name, from CP/M to Unix to MSDOS to Win 3.1 to Win 2000 Pro to OSX. I've progammed for many of them. In my professional opinion, Apple is headed in the right direction and Microsoft is not. Microsoft will not dry up and blow away. Inertia and indifference will keep them in business, but they will not be a growth stock. Who knows where Apple will end up? The future is wide open for them, succeed or fail. So far I've made a ton of money investing in Apple based solely on their decision to adopt Unix as their underlying OS. I think there's more to come.

This is hilarious. I've never seen such a sensitive, defensive group of Windows users before. I had no idea rampant Microsoft defenders still existed in 2005. You guys actually believe Windows is a superior operating system because it plays your computer games? Get back to me on the next Patch Tuesday...I'll be using a Mac, which has ZERO viruses. A simple question for Windows users--does Windows have ZERO VIRUSES?

"Sad their are so many who need to put down M$ and uplift Apple. If people really wanted to use apple they would." Not when Microsoft hamstrings OEMs to bundle Windows no matter what. "Tiger is GREAT but the hardware for it is too expensive and that is why Windows is ruling the world." Oh, yeah, $499 is sooo expensive compared to the $1500 Dell gaming machines that Windows users by every six months just to keep up with the Wintel upgrade scam. FOR THE LAST TIME, PCS ARE MORE EXPENSIVE BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO UPGRADE THEM EVERY YEAR. OS X gets faster on older hardware. Unlike 3ghz Longhorn... "Longhorn will be GREAT also and will have some ideas ripped from TIGER but some will be it's very own." Such as...? I haven't heard a single original idea coming from Windows Longwait.

Hey Windows monkeys, if Tiger sucks so much and Longhorn is so great, why is Paul Thurrott doing a daily "Tiger Feature Of The Day" over at Internet-Nexus? The writing is on the wall. Windows is a plague. You guys have been brainwashed by a company to accept their poor software "just because."

That is the single biggest advantage that MS has over UNIX, Linux, and the other braindead OSes out there - they can reinvent it whenever the market demands. UNIX and Linux can do minor add-on features where MS can rewrite the whole thing and make it do what today's computing envirnments demand. ------------------------------------------------- You said it: MS has to re-invent the OS when they need to because it is so poorly written to begin with. There is no need to re-invent UNIX. It was written right the first time. Too bad that MS has you all by the balls.

As safe as OS X? We have no viruses or spyware remember?

OS X more secure, bah! I configured my Win XP machine before making my first connection to the internet, I download all the Tuesday updates from Microsoft, I bought Norton Antivirus and keep it running, I run Ad-Aware and Spybot after everytime I browse the internet and keep them updated, I have a firewall and keep it updated, I downloaded Microsoft/Giant Antispyware beta and keep it running, and even though running all those aps slows down my computer a little when I’m running them on top of my normal programs, I know I’m as safe as any OS X user out there. I think…maybe. Am I?

"I think not - Apple don't have the muster to do much beyond the client platform. Where is it's presence in the server world? Practically non-existant." Uh, less than a year ago they were #3 fastest SUPER Computer in the world. Granted now that VTech Super Computer has fallen to around #17 of late... BUT of the 16 ahead of BigMac NOT ONE is running your "superior" Windows. And Apple has only been in this server business for 1.5 years. How long has Microsoft been at it? You Microsoft fanboys make me laugh. Go back to your trailerparks and subdivisions, close the doors, put on your headphones and play your video games (don't forget your ritalin!) Cuz as long as youze alls remain ignant youz gonna keep feelin' superior..ain't you? and dat makes youz feels good, huh?

A simple question for Windows users--does Windows have ZERO VIRUSES? yeah they do. i think i found a file called zero.backdoor.c somewhere....

lol you guys are fighting about apple or microsoft? microsoft is for the average person and apple is for people who really know their sh*t. their done bye

Installing in Windows--click, click, click. Make sure registry entries don't get borked. To remove the program, click, click, click through uninstall process. Hope the appname doesn't get stuck in the "Add/Remove" dialog. Installing in Mac--drag-and-drop. To remove app, drag to the Trash. Installing a new version of Windows--because upgrading from a previous version almost always produces an unstable system, back up all your data, format the drive, install the new Windows, reinstall all your applications and copy over your files. Installing a new version of OS X--just select "Archive and Install" which copies your system to a "Previous Systems" directory and installs the new OS completely clean. It copies your apps and home folder back and lets you go through the old system folder to copy over any customizations, then delete. OS X: 1, Windows: 0.

"and the Mac lamerz can all go hang with their butt buddies and gawk at their jelly bean buttons their window title bars. fukk Macs!" Have fun with your Fisher Price interface Windows XP. haha

So even your fearless leader thinks Longhorn is a "train wreck" and shows up to the event with an Apple Powerbook? Can you goofballs see the bigger picture yet?

What are all these crashes and reboots everyone keeps typing about? I have 3 windows xp boxes. 2 desktop, one laptop...I honestly can't tell you the last time any of them crashed. My work desktop is used 8-10 hours a day (and I never turn it off at night -- haven't rebooted it since I've owned it) My home desktop hasn't been turned off in weeks. And my laptop is a work horse! I use it 15+ hours a day. It's by my side at work and at home. I must be doing something wrong, my computers just don't crash as much as some Apple users would lead me to believe it should...or perhaps this is one of those situations where: "When you point a finger..."

What are all these crashes and reboots everyone keeps typing about? I have 3 windows xp boxes. 2 desktop, one laptop...I honestly can't tell you the last time any of them crashed. My work desktop is used 8-10 hours a day (and I never turn it off at night -- haven't rebooted it since I've owned it) My home desktop hasn't been turned off in weeks. And my laptop is a work horse! I use it 15+ hours a day. It's by my side at work and at home. I must be doing something wrong, my computers just don't crash as much as some Apple users would lead me to believe it should...or perhaps this is one of those situations where: "When you point a finger..."

Ive just watched the Gates Keynote. Obviously the GUI is not fully implemented, nor will it be for a long while yet, but obviously you have to lay a foundation for the 3D environment to work. I must say, the DWM does look impressive, however looks are not the most important thing in an OS. What is important, (and many people have failed to consider) is whether the computer does the job that you want it to do. Microsoft and Apple have chosen very different strategies. Apple likes to introduce a new version of X every year, and builds up much hype and publicity, whereas Microsoft will have changed Windows so much, by the time it releases, that it will contain 10x the number of new features Tiger has to Panther than Longhorn will have to XP. I Study a PHD in Computer Science, and I must tell you all, I use both a Windows XP PC and a Macintosh. I truly believe that flaming one others Operating System is just childish and immature. ### ____Mac users are people who - just like you - have a job to do and just happen to have chosen a different OS. Most of us prefer it to the alternatives because of the unique type of work we do or the idiosincracies of the way we prefer to work. We don't automatically assume that ours is the "best" or only way to do work. And we certainly don't give much of a crap of what's happening in Redmond - not to the point of getting involved in opintless flame wars over who has more games on their OS. God damn this stuff annoys me. ____### I totally agree with this comment. We all have work to do or a purpose for using a computer. It all comes down to personal preference, and myself, personally, I like both Windows and OSX equally. They both have a sense and purpose for me, and I will not run into any petty debate about which one is better. Its like comparing Skimmed Milk to Full cream Milk and saying that one is better than the other for drinking with coffee. Absolutely pointless...it will get you nowhere

How many modern games can you play on a Mac? Why does Longhorn look just like XP? Mac dock / Windows quick launch .. difference? What does Longhorn offer, apart from flashier graphics and better search? Why are Macs so expensive? (Of course you're not just paying for a name, are you? ;) Why worry about paying for Longhorn? I've activated OEM XP on 5 machines, and the call-centre in India don't seem to care. Thank god for Slashdot?! (And why don't Macs have a right mouse button? Because those key-combos are so much easier?!)

haha!! just like the school playground-my genesis is better than your SNES. grow up!

Attention Mac users: Play nice or move along.

"So even your fearless leader thinks Longhorn is a "train wreck" and shows up to the event with an Apple Powerbook? Can you goofballs see the bigger picture yet?" Ahahahaha...

"haha!! just like the school playground-my genesis is better than your SNES. grow up!" Indeed, it makes you wonder if the people trolling are just kids.

"Longhorn Beta 1 is currently scheduled for June 30, 2005." So in other words, the first beta is officially out a month from now. Think they can fix all the glaring issues in time? All you "this is only pre-beta!" users should take note. It's over. Longhorn is steeping to be a massive flop, more so than I previously thought.

"One thing about Apple that you should all take into consideration: their best product and literally their biggest means to stay afloat is a MUSIC PLAYER." LOL...Yeah, something the AMAZING MICROSOFT with all their resources still can't get right. *chortle*

"Holy crap I've never read so many rubbish comments in my entire life. " Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle. "You Apple benders need to take a couple of pills and lighten up." I'll take some of whatever they're having in Redmond these days, then. Five years since the introduction of XP, and we have...oh, wait...nothing, basically. Those must be some gooood drugs. Lovely progress, that. "90% of Mac owners are petty nobodys pretending to be classy film makers and graphic designers when all they're doing really is waiting for the fantastic Doom 3 to be PORTED to the Mac platform." No, 90% of us are working too hard to care about playing video games on Windows Toy Machines, or searching for the "Boss" button on our keyboard while we screw around at work on our PCs. People that waste away their time on video games on ANY platform are the very definition of "petty nobodies". "Or waiting for Max Payne to be PORTED to the Mac platform." *yawn* "Or wishing they woke up next to Steve Jobs the next morning." Only so I could steal his checkbook. "Or wishing they had a right mouse button." I have a multi-button mouse with scroll wheel attached to my Mac. And a graphics tablet. WTF are you talking about? Oh, and that multibutton scrollwheel mouse? It says "Microsoft" on it. Oh, and to use it on my Dell, I had to download drivers. On my Mac, it worked the instant I plugged it in. Huh. Go figure. "Or wishing that their precious Apple OS actually mattered." LOL...it's the ONLY OS that matters when I want to work without fear of spyware, viruses, trojan horses, adware...of course, if you don't want to hook it up to the Internet, it makes a fine gaming console. But you can pick one of those up for 99 bucks at Circuit City, so what's the point? "Bunch of goons! Stick your yearly $120 service pack up your Firewire port." Yes. FireWire. Another Apple invention. Used by those same silly Video Editors and Graphic Designers that laughed the day away as PC users discovered that USB was faster than their parallel port. Honest to God, go back to your cave, won't you?

Just a comment to all you Mac fan boys and girls. . even if MS is on a downward spiral (which based on the huge pile of cash they're sitting on is HIGHLY unlikely) you still have to remember that while Windows may suck in your eyes, your own precious "Tiger" and Apple's market share is about to be surpassed even by Linux. If Microsoft does die (at which time pigs will fly through the frozen wastelands of Hell) what group of users will you flame next. . the Linux or BSD communities?

Buying a new PC every year: $1500 Buying Longhorn in 2007: $300 Antivirus and Spyware Protection: $100 Sitting here writing this on a MAC while you're being invaded by viruses and spyware: PRICELESS

Just as a matter of marketing strategy, if a competitor named its system after a fast cat, why would you name yours after a cow? If it's just a code name, Microsoft is not doing a good job of keeping it secret. Did they have low hopes for this thing from the beginning? Self-fulfilling prophecy?

RE: "Your operating system is UNIX, and UNIX lost the fight years ago " Tell that to some of the largest financial institutions and telecommunication providers in the world. Like it or not, UNIX is the backbone and OS of choice to safeguard the most sensitive data in mission critical environments. Personally, I am awed that the same power & security are available to me in a laptop. I guess that's why I have months of uptime on my Powerbook. I've rebooted, maybe 7 times in the past 3 years, it just sleeps when not in use or traveling. Within two seconds of opening the lid, it's at the desktop and attached to the wireless network. You'll NEVER have that with Windows. Not to mention most apps drag to the trash as a self contained package leaving no residue behind. I have a 3 year old OS X build running as fast as the day I got it. There's obviously no registry or DLL hell to deal with. It's a clean & elegant operating system.

FYI microsoft names all of its betas after places relating to or near Redmond, Washington. Longhorn is a bar, close to the whistler mountain

Not even sure if anyone will comment on this but: I'm desperate to know if users that have a PCI card (a good PCI card, if there is such a thing ... 128-bit, 256MB RAM, GeForce 5xxx or ATI 9xxx) instead of AGP PCIe, BUT with everything else shipshape (e.g. Processor at least 2.8Ghz and above if Intel, 1GB RAM or more, etc.etc.) will be able to run an Aero and/or Aero Glass experience. I keep on hearing (amidst the ever-changing system requirements) this ominous warning that there must be an AGP/PCIe channel to run the two upper tier 'experiences'. This will absolutely kill me (and so many lower end Dell users lol! damn the Dimension 2400 and 3000). I can't for the life of me understand how MS is saying that such a PC as above-described, while capable of running the most graphic intensive games, won't be able to handle a 3D OS interface, even if it is all fancy and such. Any comments? Good news? Bad news? Predictions?

"FYI microsoft names all of its betas after places relating to or near Redmond, Washington. Longhorn is a bar, close to the whistler mountain" Mac users don't care. They're simply looking for one more way to insult Microsoft, which last time I checked was not hurting the Mac community in any way. They feel that by running their OS and their hardware, that they are better than the rest of the world. Quite pretentious really. It seems to me that Mac users exist only to annoy the rest of the world.

As a previous member of Microsoft's Developer Network (MDSN) and now a current Microsoft Partner, I've had Longhorn installed via Virtual PC since it was first available. Despite my association with Microsoft, I often find myself harboring love-hate feelings for them. I love how Microsoft has enabled me to keep my income at six-figures. I hate the poor decisions which they make. I do believe that Longhorn is a step in the right direction for Microsoft. However, based on the look-and-feel, and the overall user experience, I feel Longhorn is disappointing. On the other hand, Microsoft undoubtedly has an entirely different UI under wraps for the final release. Under the hood, Longhorn makes greater strides in moving forward. However, it keeps loosing great features (reverse scope-creep) which could have made it unique and ahead of it’s time. In addition, Longhorn still sits on top of the creaky WinAPI. I realize they did this to continue backwards compatibility. Even so, they could have emulated the legacy systems (à la OS/2). Personally, I feel that Microsoft should have started from scratch when they began Longhorn. They could've done things the right way. Maybe something like the old Taligent OS which never saw the light of day? Or perhaps they should have purchased BeOS instead of Palm? In any event, we're stuck with what we have... A potentially good OS which keeps loosing features, built on top of the old API. Originally, Microsoft came up with some very intriguing ideas for Longhorn. Treating the file-system like a database in WinFS was one of them. I felt the idea was intuitive albeit a little overdue. I was disappointed when I heard it was one of the features that would be cut in order to meet a slipping deadline. As a technophile at heart, each time I hear about the deadline slipping I just have to sigh. December 2006 will most likely equate to first quarter 2007. I like having the latest-and-greatest, but why do I have to constantly hear about something which is years away, keeps slipping, and has a moving-target feature list? Its things like that which compels me to investigate the competition: Mac OS X. As an end-user, I find Mac OS X to be beautiful. As a software architect/engineer though, I cringe when I think of its archaic Unix foundation, and it’s obfuscated Objective-C (a through-back from NextStep). Isn’t this the 21st century? Can’t someone develop an operation system from the ground up without basing it on 20 year old technologies? Regardless of my aforementioned ruminations, I’ll digress a bit… Do I think Mac OS X looks great? Yes. Do I think the juggernaut that is Microsoft will be successful with Longhorn? Yes. Do I think either system is as good as they can be? No.

> Does anyone have any idea how big of a company that Microsoft is? The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Look at Microsoft's financials, their previous growth rate (10-30%), their current Windows & Office market share (~90%) and ask: how do they keep their growth rates going at a rate that won't punish their stock? One answer is to raise prices - well, they're doing that and creating even stronger blackmarkets than before and making Linux look *even more* attractive. Another is to move into new markets - well, other than Windows and Office, pretty much every product attempt has been a financial failure and growth ain't coming from those new markets no how. The last possibility is simply: they don't keep up their numbers. No matter how big they might be now, they still *must compound grow their business* and they don't have any real ways of doing that that have any likelihood of working. This is where the trainwreck starts. Not having enough resources and talent to make a radically and meaningfully upgrade is the point of impact. Yes, I use XP, and I use Linux, and I use Mac OS X. I am an Alpha Geek with an MBA.

"Longhorn is a bar, close to the whistler mountain" Indeed. Which explains why they're spending promotional money like drunken fools to push an OS that tastes like cheap Light Beer to unsuspecting patrons that are too wasted to notice that the swill tastes like panther p i s s.

Buying a new PC every year: $1500 Longhorn will run on most high end XP machines you can buy now and many others. The requirement is only 2GHz 512mb and a 9800 GFX. Most people had this well over a year ago Buying Longhorn in 2007: $300 c'mon its not likely to be nearly that much. We're talking more like £80 and yes GBP Antivirus and Spyware Protection: $100 Antivirus 1 year trials can be downloaded from microsoft for free, of which are fully functional. Microsoft produces its own antispyware, which of course is free. Why is it your .mac subscription costs you $100 just for virex, an @mac email address and a few other novelties which can be found for free anyway? Sitting here writing this on a MAC while you're being invaded by viruses and spyware: PRICELESS PRICEY! iChat doesnt allow usb cams, only the exprensive iSight, Tiger costs $130, when it should be a free update to panther users. I think you're telling porkies! Oh and by the way, I am a mac and pc user as well!

Why bother with either Microsoft or Apple? You can get FreeBSD or Linux for free and run it on either a PC or a MAC...can't beat that. MAC OS X is basically FreeBSD with a pretty GUI that Apple charges $130 for...

This build of Longhorn is a developer build to test drivers on. It's pre beta 1. I don't understand why paul and everyone else missed this point.

""Longhorn is a bar, close to the whistler mountain" Indeed. Which explains why they're spending promotional money like drunken fools to push an OS that tastes like cheap Light Beer to unsuspecting patrons that are too wasted to notice that the swill tastes like panther p i s s." How clever and mature.

All you MAC fanatics just look at what OS the Fortune 500 (and most major institutions) use. Please tell me that they are all idiots for using Windows. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Mobil Oil, etc, yes please tell me that they are all fools for using Windows. They are all living in a fantasy land and have made all their fortunes and success through sheer luck.

HELLO ANYONE LOOKING FOR SOME GAY ACTION???? SEATTLE

Good god the apple people need to realize that their "OS" is BSD. Apple just did some kernel hacking and made a better window manager. For the most part they are running a jacked up version of FreeBSD that has proprietary junk all over the user land. Now that I have done my apple bashing I feel better. Heh. I'm not surprised longhorn is disappointing most of the features they have been talking about have been pretty lame in my opinion . To their defense at least they are built a non-Alpha 64-bit version.... FINALLY. Personally I havent been impressed with any changes in windows since Win2k Server.

RE "All you MAC fanatics just look at what OS the Fortune 500 (and most major institutions) use" Sure, for throwaway & re-image desktops. In the datacenter, the company jewels are more than likely stored on UNIX. Our company (which is Fortune 1000) loses $30,000 an hour in downtime. There is not a one Windows Server even ALLOWED in the datacenter.

"Joking, right? Does anyone have any idea how big of a company that Microsoft is? A death spiral is certainly poetic, but is hardly true." No we're not joking. Look at General Motors, one of the world's biggest organizations. They're in a very terrifying death spiral right now, one that they're unlikely to recover from. Sure they still have #1 worldwide market share but so what. It's not 1957 anymore, and today's outlook for GM is decidedly bleak. Even the mightiest corporation will fail if it alienates too many customers through too many generations of lousy products. Any has-been can survive for a long time off sheer momentum, but that momentum is finite. When your corporate culture turns into a morass and you can't come up with any compelling product (or any product at all in the case of the still-unseen Longhorn), you're dead. It's been said that dying companies emit a "loser's stench". There are certainly some nasty fumes coming from Redmond these days (and not just from Ballmer).

OK - so I post a comment about how Apple is nowhere in the server market - and people reply about supercomputers! Meanwhile in the real world, Apple don't actually sell production supercomputing servers do they? If they do, I doubt they're in the Apple Store! They have the Apple server hardware - and thats about it. So, banging on about supercomputing equipment is totally irrelavent. Most businesses install servers based on their need - they don't spend hundreds of thousands on ONE supercomputer! Get your head into the real world and realise that, as I stated (and I note, you didn't have anything to say about this), that Microsoft will be sustained by a combination of business, home, developer and manufacturer interest. Apple's share of the server market is even smaller than their share of the home computer market. They don't have a decent line up of products - in other words, they just don't have it sewn up the same way Microsoft have. So, bang on about how much better you think OSX is all you want, bang on about how great you think Apple is. It's not all about you - look at the bigger picture and Apple in it's present form isn't ever going to be the company that brings Microsoft down.

Internals are important but us shmoes want features. Those screenshots are totally uninspiring. I already have win XP with a nice nvidia driver that gives me all kinds of pretty sparklies on my desktop. OSX 10.4 has spotlight and automator -- not to mention all the tools you need to write full-fledged mac applications right out of the box -- not to mention BSD Unix underneath everything. Tell me again why I should want a Windows box? Oh right. Games. But that's why I'm buying a PS3.

so when are you switching to the mac full time paul?

$30,000 dollars an hour? Thats small potatoes in larger financial firms. I've seen loses millions per minute (and that happened on a Sun server though it could have been on anything). Look, any OS, Mac, Windows, Unix, Linux etc can crash. In reality it's not usually the OS but the quality of the application running on the OS that can bring it crashing to a mindless death. If I put sugar in a gas tank, the cars is going to stall be it a kia or a BMW. Now please, some intelligent posts please!

OS zealots are ****** retarded.

"Uh, less than a year ago they were #3 fastest SUPER Computer in the world. Granted now that VTech Super Computer has fallen to around #17 of late... BUT of the 16 ahead of BigMac NOT ONE is running your "superior" Windows. And Apple has only been in this server business for 1.5 years. How long has Microsoft been at it?" What drugs are you on? How many businesses do you know that actually use that kind of supercomputing hardware, in-house? How many businesses even use that index to make decisions on what hardware to buy? Get into the real world please.

long horn $700 tiger $150 FreeBSD, Mandrake, Suse, Redhat, YellowDog, Debian ... Free? I doubt mac is going to take over the world when all thoses x86 users can switch to other unix variants that wont cost a penny. Not to mention Sun comming out with os based on java. Might want to google for "Looking Glass" before you declare mac victory in UI.

"Ahahaha...is that why the second fastest supercomputer in the world is built using XServes?" And how many businesses do you know that actually buy supercomputers like that to run their business on? How many even use the supercomputing indexes to make decisions of what hardware to buy? None, in my experience. People use UNIX for servers. Face it, accept it. OS X is UNIX. Yes, I accept OSX is Unix, what you need to accept is that the market is dominated by Windows Servers, Linux Servers, and various flavours of Unix - but not by OSX server. "Windows is VMS with a Win32 shell. Congratulations on your videogame playing operating system. Why not just replace it with an X-Box and call it a day?" Yeees, there seem to be allot of people desperately trying to make out that thats all that Windows is used for. I guess it doesn't matter to you at all that the number one client OS in business is still Windows? Surely, if Windows was only good for games, that would not be the case? I guess it also doesn't matter, that by a massive margin, the largest selection of business applications are written to run on the Windows platform. ISVs still favour Windows because thats the most populat platform. You may not like these facts - but they're true, and you might want to keep them in mind, before making up cheap lines in future

Wow you guys are all a bunch of no life nerds. Get outside. Jeezus. I have a Powerbook and a Dell 8300 sitting right next to it. Big deal. I am a Window admin, but I love OS X. You guys are acting like this is a gangwar. For my workflow, I prefer OSX. I can get things done faster. When I want to use Media Center or play a game, I switch on my PC or XBOX. Woopty ******* do.

I work in a mixed Windows/Mac environment. I personally work on both. I've never experience the frequency of crashing that is being attributed to XP. I run Photoshop, Illustrator, Office and the Internet all day long on XP and rarely experience a problem. I don't shut it down for days at a time. I agree that it takes more to keep XP running smoothly than OSX. It is a shame, but that's life. But just like OSX, if you do the updates, it runs pretty much problem free. I can't wait to install Tiger in a few days!

Gee, Longhorn may take years to get here, but I've heard there are already over 1000 viruses ready to go at launch. Switched to Mac last month!

"As for the delay in getting there - everyone who has been awake for the last 18 months knows that Microsoft have hardly been doing nothing. They stopped work on Longhorn to develop XP SP2. " The reason for the delays are XP SP2 and other distractions, most of which MS has only itself to blame. For example, Media Center, Tablet PC, Xbox, etc.. Instead of focussing their efforts on their central product, Windows OS, they have allowed themselves to squander valuable resources pursuing a number of ill-conceived projects. That's why they are (at least!) 18 months behind Apple in delivering a next-generation OS.

Please stop zealoting for either operating system. Most of the Windows zealot remarks here are by folks who haven't used any recent version of OS X much, if at all. And most of the Mac zealot remarks are knee-jerk. Here's my humble opinion. I develop on Windows all day in my corporate job. SQL Server is pretty impressive, but Windows itself leaves a lot to be desired... if you are familiar with other operating systems. Task switching when you're running more than a few apps is horrible. The operating system CONSTANTLY interrupts you with requests while you're busy in another program... Why the hell are background apps allowed to throw dialog boxes on TOP of foreground apps? And so it is literally a breath of fresh air to come home and work on my Dual 2.5ghz G5, where I am tinkering with Ruby on Rails (amazing web app platform), PostgreSQL (perhaps not quite as full-featured as SQL Server, but quite the bang for the buck), World of Warcraft (oh wait... that's just a timekiller), etc. etc. You really have to experience it for a while to "get" it I guess. And as I "get" both on a regular basis, and I know which one is better, I feel like a traitor at my job. And soon I may leave ;)

It's funny how most people forget this is a developer build and not even beta 1, while some of you actually remember this fact and don't go bashing something which is ment to be used for driver and app development at this point. Others are also bashing the UI on how ugly it is and just looks like XP with a new theme, well duh, that's all you get in a pre-beta 1 dev build, if you think MS is going to show you what the final longhorn UI will be this early in the dev process you're insane. Remember XP's final look didn't come to until the final month or 2 when it got into RC1 as far as I remember. And the last point I want to make is for all the OSX lovers out there, Tiger is what? Version 10.4, do any of you happen to remember what the original OSx 10.0 was like? Far from finished, slow and with most things not working at all. Now finally after 4 point releases, not to mention all the x.x.1 releases/pathes you finally get something you can talk about. Well yippidy-do-da.

"RE: "Your operating system is UNIX, and UNIX lost the fight years ago " Tell that to some of the largest financial institutions and telecommunication providers in the world. Like it or not, UNIX is the backbone and OS of choice to safeguard the most sensitive data in mission critical environments. Personally, I am awed that the same power & security are available to me in a laptop. I guess that's why I have months of uptime on my Powerbook. I've rebooted, maybe 7 times in the past 3 years, it just sleeps when not in use or traveling. Within two seconds of opening the lid, it's at the desktop and attached to the wireless network. You'll NEVER have that with Windows. Not to mention most apps drag to the trash as a self contained package leaving no residue behind. I have a 3 year old OS X build running as fast as the day I got it. There's obviously no registry or DLL hell to deal with. It's a clean & elegant operating system." So you're saying that every applications you use on MacOS is a single contained file? I think not. When you drag that icon to the trash, it deletes all of the settings and files assoicated with that application. Elegant yes, but then again I imagine more than one Mac user has accidentially deleted an application when they only wished to remove the shortcut/icon to that application. Concerning Windows, it's "messy" registry and "DLL Hell", Apple has a user base small enough that they can trash an entire OS just so they can redesign the entire thing. Microsoft does not have that luxury because Windows users won't put up with it. Hell, Windows still runs my Windows 3.1 apps like a charm, while you have to reboot into "MacOS Classic" to use your legacy apps. Finally, it's nice that your PowerBook has "months of uptime", but it's rather shortsighted of you to say that nothing in MacOS will ever be available in Windows. The hibernate feature is already available in Windows and concerning uptime . . my desktop machine running Windows XP SP2 has been running for four months, 12 days, 18 hours.

come on guys, quit the crap. I'm a windows XP power user and I'm scared as hell. Scared because: 1) Paul knows the frills will be added later on. If he says the beta sucks, there might be more issues. 2) I really don't understand why I should wait more than a year to recieve updates to things that should be fixed already in XP. We have definitely some point to consider Tiger a simple update, but with all the features that WON'T make in longhorn, I'm really beginning to think we've been waiting for SP3 too. Wasn't for 64Bit support I would have given up my hope long ago (exactly when WinFS was withdrawn). Is it a new OS? Microsoft prove it! Anyway if Longhorn fails, hell I'm dead in the water! Go Linux? yeah sure.... I simply can't. Switch to macosx? same answer.... what should I do?

On the other front is Solaris 10. It's now available for free and runs on Intel/AMD 32 and 64bit platforms. It is not much of a gamer's OS but is peerless as a serverplatform. No, don't think about the Solaris of ten years ago. This new "10" has some truely revolutionary features like "ZFS". Why would anyone run a Windows Server when they could have Solaris 10?, So it's not just Tiger that's squeezing them with a new release

"I have to admit, if I was a windows fan boy and windows was only installed on less than 2 percent of computers, I'd be quite upset and jealous too! " I keep seeing pointed references to Apple's small market share brought up as evidence that Microsoft is somehow a "better" company and Windows is a better OS. At least, I think that that is the argument that is trying to be made - the posters never seem to be absolutely clear on what their point is. But, for the sake of argument, let's accept that the 2% figure is true. Doesn't that then make Microsoft, Longhorn, and Microsoft's track record on innovation look even more pathetic if a puny company with only 2% market share is consistently beating them on providing the market with innovative new products? If Microsoft has, say, 90% of the desktop OS market and Apple only 2%, then shouldn't we be hearing about Microsoft technology breakthroughs about 45 times more often than those from Apple? But that isn't the case, is it? Why?

Peerless? Not on x86. Solaris is still treated like a stepchild on non-Sun hardware.

Did you freely choose what operating system you're using today? Or was it your last/only resort? To me MacOSX is the best of both worlds. On one side you have a nice and easy to use OS, which you aren't fighting against to, neither treats you like an idiot. On the other side I have a powerful Unix OS, where I can do all the stuff I do with Linux, HPUX or Solaris; (with the plus of having the cool interface, CDE (sorry HP, but it's a pain to use CDE) and being able to run MS Office, All on the same machine. BTW. My desktop at home is an ancient 1998 or 1999 350 Mhz. Blue and White G3, running MacOSX 10.3.9 100% usable. (may be after monday it'll have Tiger.) I wonder what the latest version of XP can do if it's able to boot on a 1999 machine?

On the bright side, a vanishingly small percentage of the Anonymous Users posting thus far have actually managed to get one fact or another correct, and thus indicate that they might have multiple neurons, might have a slight clue about something in the world, might be able to find their way out of an unlocked, well-lit broom closet given a map, et cetera. As for the rest... well, I've got a 11-12 hour shift coming up, so I just hope that'll be enough time to post all the sorely needed corrections. :)

I think Paul, you were right, that Microsoft only works well when it works in small steps. They promised a huge leap with Longhorn and it looks that even after years of trying to get it out the door not a damn thing has happened! Yet this is the approach that Apple has been taking with OS X and it now looks, in some ways, that they may beat Microsoft to the punch! One other thing. Why is the Sidebar gone?

This site sucks. wow, this article is REALLY BAD. "i was late for everything, i slept through things" wow, you were LATE? this site is going down the drain quickly, Slashdot HAS turned the site into a Mac Fan site, well Paul, cya as im deleting this site from my bookmarks, and advise any others to follow to WinBeta.org , where they have an actucal review on LONGHORN not a article on i was late and i was lost and i ... yawn article. Nothing in this article is information on Longhorn, and you spent the day there, wow. WinBeta.org

And the Winner is ??? All of us !! Competition is great ! As Microsoft and Apple try to out do each other , we the consumer get a better product over the long term. We don't want or need one company having a strangle hold of the market. At the moment Apple are winning back some market share and Microsoft is finally starting to pull its finger out with Longhorn. The future looks great !

It'd be nice if the people here would STOP referring to the lastest build of longhorn as being final. Plase, if you go a read a real article @ winbeta.org you would know that this is no where near the final of anything, meaning, design,features etc, so really, type in www.winbeta.org in your address bar, hit enter or click go and read the article and then come back here to BASH. (with real info anyway :S) Why is this article even called a Longhorn review? its completly boring and un-informative, good work on thrashing yourself Paul!

XBOX will be Microsoft in 10 years. Everything else is spam in a can. That's the way systems work. Google...?

"Microsoft has begun its long overdue death spiral" I will believe this once large corporations begin putting Macs into peoples' cubicles and powerbooks into the hands of every field employee. Microsoft does not win business based on end-users loving their technology or quality of work. They win based on deals with partners (ie. the PC makers that ship systems with Windows pre-installed, schools who get the software for free, etc).

Paul, could you disable anonymous posts here? That might keep down the riff-raff who only come to troll.

First of all, the reason that OSX is so stable is because Apple wussed out from writing their own kernel and instead snagged a pre-made UNIX one. Microsoft, no matter the compilaints, has always developed their software in-house, and always tried to improve it as a company. Furthermore, all this crap about them stealing DOS is completely immature and incorrect; Bill Gates legally bought SCP-DOS from Seattle Computing Products, he just didn't tell them what he was using it for, which is fine. He also hired the developer of the OS to work at Microsoft.

"First of all, the reason that OSX is so stable is because Apple wussed out from writing their own kernel and instead snagged a pre-made UNIX one" ----- ^^^I would have to aggree. I work in publication, and I work on BOTH... BOTH... Operating Systems. OS9, OS X, Win98, Win2K, and XP. Is OSX a nice OS. Yes. Will I go out and buy a MAC. No. Im a PC guy.. I like to mess with the hardware on my PC. With A MAC you cant do that as much. I use XP, but I love my Linux. And if you look at X and Linux they look alot alike. I say use what you want .. leave others to use what they wish..

"So you're saying that every applications you use on MacOS is a single contained file? I think not. When you drag that icon to the trash, it deletes all of the settings and files assoicated with that application. Elegant yes, but then again I imagine more than one Mac user has accidentially deleted an application when they only wished to remove the shortcut/icon to that application." Yes, the application is contained in what is called a "Bundle" and the preferences for applications are contained in the users Library/Preferences folder. Files created using the app are typically saved in the Documents folder. So you delete the app, just re-install by either using the installer or drap and drop. Your prefs and files are still there for you to use. Is that so hard to comprehend? "Hell, Windows still runs my Windows 3.1 apps like a charm, while you have to reboot into "MacOS Classic" to use your legacy apps." More dumbass comments from ignorant Windows fanboy. Launching an OS 9 applications merely starts the classic environment. Imagine that, being able to run two OS's simultaneously. You can run three if you use Virtual PC which allows you to run Windows. Or you can run a fourth with the X11 Window manager to run Unix apps. Then there is Fink. Imagine that. Your comments are the reason us Mac users come here to ridicule you. Dumbass Windows fanboys. You can keep your stinking gaming OS.

The comments on this site are great. Funniest stuff on the web.

Re: if Longhorn fails, hell I'm dead in the water! Go Linux? yeah sure.... I simply can't. Switch to macosx? same answer.... what should I do? What should you do? Learn to use a computer! Give up the fisher price OS and your dependence on stupidity and learn to think. If you going to be that lost if Longhorn blows up, you really shouldn't be using a computer.

I'm a self-confessed Mac fanboy (and closeted Linux user), but I'd hesitate to start writing Microsoft's obit just yet. Redmond will take whatever time it needs and spend obscene amounts of money to make Longtime releasable. It's mission critical to them. They'll do everything but come over to your house to force you to install it. And they'll still be at 80% market share or better when it happens. That being said, the various Linux distros and OSS projects get better every day. And Tiger looks like a thing of beauty. Apple will have it in a very mature state by the time Longhorn hits the shelves. Windows will be around for a long time. But some of the alternatives are getting more and more attractive.

Stop spelling it "MAC"! MAC is something completely different from Macs. If you can't spell the name of something properly that you are not nearly informed enough to pass judgment on it.

In reality, MS appears doomed for big trouble because from day 1 the windows infastructure has had lots of problems due to its non-unix robustness core and non-open standards nature. As long time heavy PC Linux/Windows developer and user, recently brought a mac mini to have a go on OSX. Man. Blew me away and now it feel 10+ years ahead than MS! Be very very surprised and afraid! MS has really bad innovation problems, Office and Windows are their only real products nothing changed much, its GETTING tiring and BORING. Thats why people pirate the crap.

SO what if we call it MAC.. DO you work on reparing them every day.. Deal with font issues.. Pagemaking problems, Server issues.. Dont tell me I cant pass judgment on something Ive worked on for the past 5 years..

I've never seen the amount of negative press for any OS like Longhorn is getting. And it all has the same message: "Why should anyone care at all about Longhorn?" Dump the mess, Microsoft, and start working on trying to co-opt Linux.

fans will have to look for things, windows users will never lose it in the first place ----- UTTER BS. Spotlight searches, not just metadata on all files, but data within the file, any kind of text contained in your file..if you wrote a letter, you could type a few words that were in that letter and you'd see the letter as a result.. there is no conceivable scenario where you would need to 'tag' files.. none.. movie? Picture? that's already 'tagged' in the respective apps.. remember any numbers or sizes for any file.. it'll find the file.. there is no conceivable scenario where Apple's solution is not going to be good enough.. Apple's got an incredibly thorough(pardon the pun ) solution

"Ever heard of the Unix function "grep"? That's what OSX Spotlight is based on." No, not really. Each filetype you want Spotlight to index has a plugin which tells Spotlight how to pick out metadata. grep isn't much use at picking metadata out of an mp3 file or a PDF. You could of course write a Spotlight plugin that just used grep for text files but text files are already done so no need. The Microsoft guy demoing adding metadata when saving made me spit coffee out. He sooo doesn't get it. Spotlight wipes the floor with the search tool the Microsoft bought in to replacing WinFS. Yes folks - it's another buy in. Microsoft didn't even invent their own search after 8+years of talking about it.

I suppose it is late to post something but (and I use FreeBSD, so I really don't have anything invested in either of the high priced spreads), but few people are going to dump their x86 hardware to buy into Apple; they'll just use whatever Longhorn turns out to be, whenever it happens to ship. Likewise, Macintosh users are not going to buy into the x86/Dell camp just to save money. Now, if Apple released OSX for x86; _that_ would be a donnybrook, to be sure. Until then let's just ratchet down the invective a bit and let Microsoft answer their critics. (While you're waiting you might dig out a spare drive and try out one of the BSDs. They're a lot of fun, and solid too.) Sorry, had to throw in a plug. :)

About the comment "The MSN Messenger server farm handles over 70 million concurrent sessions every single day. Until recently, they were using 250 32-bit servers to manage that load. When they switched to Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition running on x64 hardware, they reduced the size of the farm to just 25 servers. Yikes." Well, that may *NOT* be saying much. 25 quad Opteron systems would do a lot better than 250 dual Pentium II systems. (They dont' say WHAT 32-bit servers they were running on, or what x64 servers. I would assume that they wouldn't upgrade less-than-one-year-old eight-way Xeon systems; I would assume that they were running on outdated P2s or P2-based Xeons as it was, and it was just time to upgrade anyway.)

"In the end OSX will be the inferior product. Just like quick time is. I am proud to say that as an image owner at my work (a fortune 50 company) I am responsible for removing and blocking access to Quicktime on almost 100,000 PCs. Somtimes (rarely) I love my job." Why? Quicktime comes with H.264 codecs which give both better quality and lower bitrate than anything available on Windows. It would save your company an awful lot of network bandwidth.

Apple's share of the server market is even smaller than their share of the home computer market. They don't have a decent line up of products --- wow you're stupid. Xserves have been blowing people away with their price/performance since their inception. leading the pack. you are just plain ignorant.. wow wow wow..

"apple's technologies are not tailored to deliver the scale MS targets." You are of course completely right. Having distributed computing (XGrid) and XSan built in to the OS is completely of no use whatsoever. RemoteDesktop blows. Those XServes running OSX Server cause me no end of trouble - I'm completely wasting my time checking up on them as they never give me any extra work and I'll probably not need to employ extra staff. I also don't know what I'm going to spend the extra money I saved from not having to buy exchange and client licences on. Apple really make my life tough - the more I use them the less work I need to do.

Ever see the Next OS...MS has been way behind & copying for a while. http://media.jjb.cc/files/videos/jobs_NS30_demo_large.mov

"What drugs are you on? How many businesses do you know that actually use that kind of supercomputing hardware, in-house? " Huh? The Virginia Tech computer is built from off the shelf Xserves and MacOSX 10.4 has distributed computing built in with it's XGrid software. So, the answer is 'ALL businesses' that use Macs can use that technology. Since Macs have been dual processor for years, most of the intensive applications are also extremely well threaded so should benefit well from distributed computing.

LONGHORN SUCKS HAHAHAHAHAHAHA NOW CRY FAT AND GREASY MS FANBOYS!

YOu knoW what the world needs? Of course! dumb discussion peoplE! c'mon guys there are many IMPORTANT things to discuss about besides which OS should die. The truth is that the more OSes the better!! and grow up! you're not your fVck*nG OS. And those who complain about mirco$oft and monopoly. get real! what would you do if your crappy company started earning a lot of dough from nothing until you get to be the richest man in the world. Oh i know! of course you would dump it all because you don't want to be a monopoly. you'd complain the same about Apple if MacOS were on the lead and you know inus Torvalds would be better off as the richest guy in the world with linux. and windows hasn't been a bad OS either, has helped moms to send letters and store recipes plus (seriously) many great things have been done with windows. I'm confident that Longhorn will become a good OS in its own way, too. There's no such thing as an OS of Evil, kids. Move forward!

"windows users have no idea what they are missing with osx" Some of us do, it is called KDE/Gnome. Spotlight was in no way the first program for instant searching, they've been out since the dos days.

"Hell, Windows still runs my Windows 3.1 apps like a charm, while you have to reboot into "MacOS Classic" to use your legacy apps." More dumbass comments from ignorant Windows fanboy. Launching an OS 9 applications merely starts the classic environment. Imagine that, being able to run two OS's simultaneously. You can run three if you use Virtual PC which allows you to run Windows. Or you can run a fourth with the X11 Window manager to run Unix apps. Then there is Fink. Imagine that. Your comments are the reason us Mac users come here to ridicule you. Dumbass Windows fanboys. You can keep your stinking gaming OS. Dumbass comments? He doesn't sound like an idiot, he simply has never used MacOS 10. I did not see him insulting Apple fanboys directly though, something you can't seem to avoid. He may be an idiot, but you're an *******.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! OS/2 rulez

"Yeah, windows is really copying.. Steve jobs and all of his followers try to re-write history, but the fact is, there is much less to worry about with Tiger, being only 2 percent of people use it, and they copy microsoft whenever they can." Personally, I think the "who's-copying-who" argument is pretty damn lame. But it's worth noting that Spotlight's technology first appeared on Apple's developer site in 1993 and the term was trademarked in 2000. I have no doubt Longhorn inspired them to finish it, though. Good thing there's two operating systems out there to force advancement. I'm rating the article poorly. Lots of potatoes, not much meat.

Look, You Apple fanboys are completely immature and unknowing of anything. I've never once met a Microsoft fan who is as immature, outspoken, or unknowlegable as you people. Maybe it's because Microsoft has had the brunt of the world on them and the supporters have to find actual reasons to support them rather than just pointing fingers. All I've seen from non-Microsoft fans is open source garbage and stupid edited pictures of Bill Gates...really mature and logical. Why don't we have a decent discussion for a change?

As an xp user, i'm disapointed to what i see in longhorn. I know the're working on the code, but hey, i don't care about that. i want a really nice desktop, i want it to move, look 3d and be very customizable. If longhorn looks like this when it ships, i'm going to mac osx. but then.... i aint got £1500 to spend on a decent comp when you can get a amd65, 1 gb ram, 200gb hd for about £400. Think! Lower your hardware prices apple and stop ripping us off. you will then be able to grab microsofts marketshare by the balls.

I am an Apple fanboy. However I have kids and no money, with access to PC hardware on the cheap. Panther and Tiger smoke XP in about every angle, except the price of the hardware they run on. I have a single Powerbook which would be next to impossible to replace, but PCs are a different story however. I look forward to Longhorn in the hopes of it coming in at least a close second to Apple, just to have something different than a user interface carried over from Windows 95. MS has great resources, and if they can make a "switcher" out of me, more power to them.

I read every comment on this page - it was a good time! There is some funny stuff contained here - but I see a bunch of info missing, so I'll add it. First and foremost - OS X Tiger is the last MAJOR release of the OS for the next few years. Alot of the mac comments I see here keep saying that by the time Longhorn ships OS 10.5 will be out. It will not - Jobs briefly mentioned that developement of the OS is to scale back. It's been a wild ride of upgrades - it really has. Each upgrade has been worth the cost to me, anyway - and I have not had to buy new hardware yet either... so the OS cost is not a bother to me. Macs are no longer more expensive - that used to be a valid argument. At $499, they are VERY competitive in the market now. And the mini is no scaled back Celeron piece that low-end PCs are either. It's fast, nice looking, and really a very cool system. Macs aren't perfect, regardless of what some users have said. I still can't get a decent Mac GPS mapping system. The receivers need a 'virtual serial port' to run - which IS antiquated - but the software (route 66) just plain blows. Streets and Trips is not good software, but it does the job over and above what my PowerBook could do - this isn't an Apple failure, just a developer issue. Not enough profit in making a better solution, so no one did. That said - that is the absolute ONLY thing I complain about my Mac for. If an average Windows user sat down and played with OSX for a bit, I belive alot of opinions would change. Most extreme Windows users simply haven't used the Mac platform. I was guilty of this myself... once I got past the Apple stigma, I really, really enjoy using my mac. I actually have fun doing normal tasks.. and that was new for me. For GPS I must use WinXP on a laptop, and it is frustrating to go back and forth between the two worlds. Everything is very simple and solid on my mac, while everything on the PC takes times. Not being rash, just giving a comparison. Connecting to our office 802.11 network on the Thinkpad is difficult, and requires me to 'Repair Connection' almost every time. I also have problems printing wirelessly. Of course, the mac skips these issues. I've really discovered that I spend less time making the computer do what I need it to. The mac kind of runs itself, and that's very cool. I know mac people harp on this - but it IS very nice to know my stuff is secure from virus and the like. It is nice to know that even if I make some stupid clicks, I can't get taken. Belive it or not, the Thinkpad I use got a virus from (I was told) the clip art function in Word? Pretty wild. Other than that, XP doesn't crash or need rebooting alot. I do notice it takes the Thinkpad about 1 minute to wake from deep sleep while the Powerbook is about 1 second. On the subject of business : I own a small business in Ohio. We're a new company, but it was my choice to decide what computers we bought. We are technology-based... a real estate company that sells homes for free - no commissions or contracts. (golistfree.com) I decided after ALOT of comparison that we would go with macs. It has honestly been the best decision I have ever made in business. We have 10 PowerBooks, and 3 airports that cover our main office and warehouse. We use a mini with a 300GB FireWire drive as our 'server'. The only PC is the Thinkpad. We have 3 printers, and the mini also acts as our fax server as well. To date, I haven't had to spend one dollar on fixing, upgrading, or repairing my macs. The clip art virus on the thinkpad did cost me $75 to fix, and then they only reinstalled the OS - which I could have done myself. Initally, our staff was resistant to the macs. After a few weeks things really changed. We use a large variety of equipment, digital cameras, bluetooth phones and faxes, scanning equipment, etc... the lack of drivers has helped us alot. I'm not saying Macs are the eternal answer - but they made a good business model for me. We are beginning to franchise, and our model requires Macs. I do believe they are better business tools. It's funny to see the mini run OS X Server so well... Now... is Windows going under? Obviously not. Any business man can answer this. Competition is what drives innovation. I believe that MS has gotten so big and used by so many people that it's lost it's R and D 'edge', if you will. But that's OK! Apple is really making a very fun, stable OS right now. But OS9 was really very bad. It was the competition from Windows that drove Apple to innovate. It's a constant theme and it's awesome! Business make other business strive to be better - to lead and create - I think it's quite cool. I really truly hope Longhorn is a great OS - because that will force Apple to continue innovating. Jobs has said OS X is going to slow down now - and it should - it really is a great OS and it functions much more completely than Windows, it's ahead, it really is. But if it stays way ahead, if Windows botches Longhorn, then competition is not as strong and what really suffers is not Apple, or MS, but ALL consumers. I've often heard Apple compared to BMW and MS compared to Ford - both in quality and in 'how many people use our products." Neat discussion. Lots more Fords on the road. But are they better, or safer? Someone mentioned that Apple is hanging on because of the iPod. Stop. Not cool. First of all, the music biz was one tough nut to crack, and Apple innovated there to capture a market and turn a profit. That's biz. GOOD biz. Beyond that, Apple has been in the game as long as everyone else, even MS. They have cash reserves in the billions, stock prices are strong and consistent... and a fact I saw in numbers was that iPods were driving Mac sales... which is unexpected, really. Anyone in business is impressed by that. That's like saying a consumer buying a car thought it was so great they went a got a matching house. That kind of cross sale is something MS can't do easily, no company really can. Jobs, if nothing else, has vision and can lead. Gates has it too, just seems he has left development and research to other people. Something that scares me is that he IS Apple. Without him, I do fear for their long term. Anyway - I'm rooting for a GREAT Longhorn - it will help drive the entire industry, Apple included. Good things happen when competition gets fierce... I don't believe screenshots today represent final product, or even close. They see Tiger, they see some cool things, and they can innovate when motivated. Perhaps Apple will provide the motivation they need to really push the new OS to it's max potential. Windows zealots - give OS X a shot for more than 5 minutes - I think you'll really enjoy it. It's far more than simple 'eye candy'. The thing really just works. Mac zealots - OSX time at the top is limited if Apple doesn't continue to out-innovate the industry. Apple has slipped in the past. I belive Apple learned valuable lessons from their near failure in the 90's and the massive move to DOS/Windows platforms. It may very well be that MS needs to learn the same lessons...create, innovate, learn, grow. It also needs to be said that Jobs and Gates are billionaires. Billionaires tend to lead expensive lives, and they like it that way. Gates doesn't feel like going back to being a starving college kid who has to create an industry. Steve Jobs is driven by creation it seems, he still lives and breathes Apples research. BUT... at some point I fully expect to see a revolution from some starving college kids who get the idea in their head that they can change the world.

Like a lot of people out there, I'm both a Mac and Windows user. I'm practical - at home I can choose my own platform but at work I have to use Windows. In fact, at home I have both Macs and Windows machines. Therefore I'm very interested in what will be the next version of Windows. The comparisions between Tiger and Longhorn are valid because both represent what will be the predominant home computing platforms for the next couple of years or so. (Not to dismiss the popularity of Linux). Personally, I hope that Longhorn incorporates the best of Tiger and that Longhorn also introduces some new innovative features that will make Apple have to keep up. This should be healthy competition - not needless trolling between Mac and PC users.

ONLY GAY FAGGOTS USE MACQ **** YOU FRENCH ONIONI EATNIYG MAC FAGGOTS

"SO what if we call it MAC.. DO you work on reparing them every day.. Deal with font issues.. Pagemaking problems, Server issues.. Dont tell me I cant pass judgment on something Ive worked on for the past 5 years.." I think this translates roughly as "So what if I'm wrong? I'll be loud anyway." Dude, you'd be way better off learning something from the exchange and appearing less ignorant in the future. I can tell you this: There's no way I'd let you put your hands inside my hardware if you're this unwilling to learn the right way to do something.

CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ CUNTZ

THE M Anonymous User -April 26, 2005

"BTW. My desktop at home is an ancient 1998 or 1999 350 Mhz. Blue and White G3, running MacOSX 10.3.9 100% usable. (may be after monday it'll have Tiger.) I wonder what the latest version of XP can do if it's able to boot on a 1999 machine?" Hi, I have an old Dell Dimension XPS T500. It is from 1998 and came with Win 98. It has 489MHZ for speed and 128 MB RAM. We've upgraded to XP Pro, and sure, I'll admit, the transition wasn't flawless. Several of my computer drivers like printer and audio stopped working. However, my printer and speakers still work fine (only the drivers are incompatible). My computer runs slow (from all the downloading I do-that's my fault, not Windows). After setting XP up on this computer, it works well and has been with my family for years. SO YES, WIN XP CAN BOOT ON A 1998 COMPUTER. THANKS! LONGHORN RULES (SO FAR. THEY TOOK THE SIDEBAR OUT WHICH SUCKS 'CUZ IT WAS THE DEFINING FEATURE OF LONGHORN)! OH WELL HOPEFULLY MICROSOFT WILL GET ITS ACT TOGETHER. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, I'LL HAVE TO GET A LONGHORN LAPTOP FOR COLLEGE, SO M$ MAKE IT THE BEST DAMN OS YOU CAN MAKE!

I SEEN MANY ADS FOR MAC. ALL THE COMPUTERS ALWAYS BEING USED BY N.I.G.G.E.R.S. IT MEANS MAC IS THE COMPUTER OF WATERMELON EATING N.I.G.G.E.R.S. ALSO **** AND GAY SE X UP THE A.S.S. MAC USERS SUCK MY C0CK

SURE ARE A LOT OF CUNTZ IN HERE ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

F.U.C.K. YOU MAC USERS

Price, price, price. If it isn't the "it's not the majority" argument, it's some gross exaggeration of price differences. Well, if your time is worth more than 5 dollars an hour, then the time you save in NOT doing non-productive troubleshooting, reinstallation of Windows every year (because it gets "crufty" after a while), manually deleting records in the Registry with regedit because of stupid Windows programs that don't have good uninstallers (or crash on uninstall)... etc. etc. ad nauseum... It MIGHT be cheaper to get a Mac, like a Mac mini. Heck, 500 bucks for a backup computer as insurance in the event the Windows Virus To End All Viruses hits the Internet? Something that gives you an experience that makes you look at Windoze differently? Small price to pay!

F.U.C.K. YOU TOO UNDERAGED WINBLOWS WINDOZE MICROSHAFT STUPID KIDS

Hey, folks. I live between two IBM R&D facilities. Before the iPod was introduced for the PC, the average person in my town thought a computer could only (1) make Office documents, (2) do web-related stuff and (3) play games. And they thought "MAC" was an acronym for something. The iPod and iTunes have given Apple plenty of exposure over here. Everyone has an Apple product of some form now. And a ton of my peers are now asking me what kind of Mac they should buy. People are beginning to expand their previous definitions for "computer". So. Is Apple gaining ground? Sort of. Is Microsoft "going down"? Certainly not. As long as the PC consumer is ignorant of what computers should really be expected to do, they'll persist. But the people exposed to this Longhorn beta are *not* of the ignorant crowd. You know what it means when, partway through a giant project, a company's proposed product isn't impressive. I'm sure you've all considered how fast the computer market is changing, and at what rate. Longhorn will unfortunately be an improvement that won't demonstrate enough progress. It won't destroy Microsoft's sales, but it'll taint their image. (And image is all that Microsoft is, isn't it?)

Nothing worse than having 50 Anonymous people in a non-moderated, apple vs. Mac war, with people cursing at each other, and no even knowing who they are cursing at. MAC Fans.. Please be objective, not athorative about things which might be debatable. The morning yawn thing which stirs things up isn't needed anyway. If it makes you yawn, why are you here everyday. Quit calling the MAC fans names Windows fans.

I would like to point out a piece of wisdom to both sides learned from Fark. "Arguing on the internet is like running in the special olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded."

I bet you're shocked to see a meaningful post this far down in Trollville. Well here it is. IF Apple switches over to x86 or most likely, x86-64 chips, we all know what that means. MacOS will run on commodity PC hardware. This will really seal the deal for Apple and spell the beginning of the end for Microsoft. It'll allow Apple to actually charge reasonable amounts of money for their hardware, dispelling the myth of 'Apples are too expensive'. All the major companies already make software for Mac, and the lazy game developers would just be forced to jump on board. While they're coding for OSX it'll be simple to port all the opengl games to linux. With that double-edged sword, Microsoft has no chance but turn into a hardware house (hey, they make good mice).

"He doesn't sound like an idiot, he simply has never used MacOS 10." That's why he's a dumbass, dumbass.....Commenting on something he knows nothing about. LOL. Like most of the Windows fanboys here. I can have an intelligent conversation on the merits of one OS vs another but when you start pulling S*** out of your ***, then I have to call it for what it is, bulls***. LOL. Anyway, why do facts bother you Windows fanboys. Fact is, Tiger is here with it's new features. That's a fact. There's no way around it. Longhorn, on the other hand, is going to be a longshot. Especially in it's first iteration. As an early adopter of Mac OS X back in 2001, I can tell you that it was lacking in many areas. I could tolerate it though, knowing that it was a brand new direction that Apple was headed to in a desktop OS. With each iteration, Mac OS X has been refined to become a very strong, stable desktop and server solution. This has taken place over the course of 4 years. Hoping that the first release of Longhorn is going to be a homerun and kick every other OS's *** is a pipe dream. Right now Windows users, especially the consumer, have had nothing but nightmares with malware on an OS that has been out about the same amount of time as Mac OS X. Many are fed up and looking at other options. (Mac sales increased 43% year over during this past quarter). That must tell you something. A buggy first release of Longhorn will definitely cause even more defections. P.S. I also found it strange when watching the WinHec conf that the search feature would need user interaction to increase it's usefullness. Having to add metadata? Geez!!!! You think the average joe is going want to do this?

" the product they are bashing is nowhere near finished " Umm, since it's already three years overdue, what's the excuse for the UI still being such a pile of crap? The visual design should have been done a *long* time ago. What do they do, throw it all out and start over every time Apple revises Aqua?

"This one's bizarre, but we heard at lunch today that Apple is unhappy with the PowerPC production at IBM and will be switching to Intel-compatible cheaps this very year. Yeah, seriously." this thing has been said at least 10 times a year since I don't know when, but I bought my first Mac in 1997 and people were hinting at that. for several reason this will NEVER happen: 1-Apple would lose face about all its claim on the cpu competition front, it would lose face to its user base who would lose face to their listeners... suicide 2-Switching to Intel would require a rewrite of everything Mac OS, the system, the third party apps, everything... suicide 3-Intel cpus are underpowered compared to PowerPC processors. I'm no fan or anything but I deal with computers from various platform every day, i do media work, film editing, audio editing, broadcast stuff not multimedia, I deal with extremely powerfull machine, day in, day out. I'm writting this on a PC, my own PC, running WindowsXP. I'm no fan of anything I say this out of pure and repeated observation of both processor in various environment. Going to Intel would actually reduce their computers power, and their user base requires those powerfull machine (compared to the usual saying that style bring you to a Mac, for most of us, its actually power), media editing is very demanding, so is genomic and biotech which use a lot of Macs it seems. So going intel as far as power is concerned... suicide 4-Even Microsoft is slowly going the PowerPC way, so is Nintendo and Sony, many others are already in. The nest Xbox, remember, it will use a PowerPC and its being programmed for on Mac machines. Going to a technology so old even its competitor ditches it... total suicide for Apple... nuff said we heard it we would like it it won't happen meanwhile I have WindowsXP, macOsX and Knoppix at home and I'm one happy computing fellow... monopoly and monoculture sux.

This one's bizarre, but we heard at lunch today that Apple is unhappy with the PowerPC production at IBM and will be switching to Intel-compatible cheaps this very year. Yeah, seriously. Interesting... Yep, dual cores are really nice... I love X64, sucks to be in the MAC camp when your OS doesn't have any balls.

I read every comment on this page - it was a good time! There is some funny stuff contained here - but I see a bunch of info missing, so I'll add it. First and foremost - OS X Tiger is the last MAJOR release of the OS for the next few years. Alot of the mac comments I see here keep saying that by the time Longhorn ships OS 10.5 will be out. It will not - Jobs briefly mentioned that developement of the OS is to scale back. It's been a wild ride of upgrades - it really has. Each upgrade has been worth the cost to me, anyway - and I have not had to buy new hardware yet either... so the OS cost is not a bother to me. Macs are no longer more expensive - that used to be a valid argument. At $499, they are VERY competitive in the market now. And the mini is no scaled back Celeron piece that low-end PCs are either. It's fast, nice looking, and really a very cool system. Macs aren't perfect, regardless of what some users have said. I still can't get a decent Mac GPS mapping system. The receivers need a 'virtual serial port' to run - which IS antiquated - but the software (route 66) just plain blows. Streets and Trips is not good software, but it does the job over and above what my PowerBook could do - this isn't an Apple failure, just a developer issue. Not enough profit in making a better solution, so no one did. That said - that is the absolute ONLY thing I complain about my Mac for. If an average Windows user sat down and played with OSX for a bit, I belive alot of opinions would change. Most extreme Windows users simply haven't used the Mac platform. I was guilty of this myself... once I got past the Apple stigma, I really, really enjoy using my mac. I actually have fun doing normal tasks.. and that was new for me. For GPS I must use WinXP on a laptop, and it is frustrating to go back and forth between the two worlds. Everything is very simple and solid on my mac, while everything on the PC takes times. Not being rash, just giving a comparison. Connecting to our office 802.11 network on the Thinkpad is difficult, and requires me to 'Repair Connection' almost every time. I also have problems printing wirelessly. Of course, the mac skips these issues. I've really discovered that I spend less time making the computer do what I need it to. The mac kind of runs itself, and that's very cool. I know mac people harp on this - but it IS very nice to know my stuff is secure from virus and the like. It is nice to know that even if I make some stupid clicks, I can't get taken. Belive it or not, the Thinkpad I use got a virus from (I was told) the clip art function in Word? Pretty wild. Other than that, XP doesn't crash or need rebooting alot. I do notice it takes the Thinkpad about 1 minute to wake from deep sleep while the Powerbook is about 1 second. On the subject of business : I own a small business in Ohio. We're a new company, but it was my choice to decide what computers we bought. We are technology-based... a real estate company that sells homes for free - no commissions or contracts. (golistfree.com) I decided after ALOT of comparison that we would go with macs. It has honestly been the best decision I have ever made in business. We have 10 PowerBooks, and 3 airports that cover our main office and warehouse. We use a mini with a 300GB FireWire drive as our 'server'. The only PC is the Thinkpad. We have 3 printers, and the mini also acts as our fax server as well. To date, I haven't had to spend one dollar on fixing, upgrading, or repairing my macs. The clip art virus on the thinkpad did cost me $75 to fix, and then they only reinstalled the OS - which I could have done myself. Initally, our staff was resistant to the macs. After a few weeks things really changed. We use a large variety of equipment, digital cameras, bluetooth phones and faxes, scanning equipment, etc... the lack of drivers has helped us alot. I'm not saying Macs are the eternal answer - but they made a good business model for me. We are beginning to franchise, and our model requires Macs. I do believe they are better business tools. It's funny to see the mini run OS X Server so well... Now... is Windows going under? Obviously not. Any business man can answer this. Competition is what drives innovation. I believe that MS has gotten so big and used by so many people that it's lost it's R and D 'edge', if you will. But that's OK! Apple is really making a very fun, stable OS right now. But OS9 was really very bad. It was the competition from Windows that drove Apple to innovate. It's a constant theme and it's awesome! Business make other business strive to be better - to lead and create - I think it's quite cool. I really truly hope Longhorn is a great OS - because that will force Apple to continue innovating. Jobs has said OS X is going to slow down now - and it should - it really is a great OS and it functions much more completely than Windows, it's ahead, it really is. But if it stays way ahead, if Windows botches Longhorn, then competition is not as strong and what really suffers is not Apple, or MS, but ALL consumers. I've often heard Apple compared to BMW and MS compared to Ford - both in quality and in 'how many people use our products." Neat discussion. Lots more Fords on the road. But are they better, or safer? Someone mentioned that Apple is hanging on because of the iPod. Stop. Not cool. First of all, the music biz was one tough nut to crack, and Apple innovated there to capture a market and turn a profit. That's biz. GOOD biz. Beyond that, Apple has been in the game as long as everyone else, even MS. They have cash reserves in the billions, stock prices are strong and consistent... and a fact I saw in numbers was that iPods were driving Mac sales... which is unexpected, really. Anyone in business is impressed by that. That's like saying a consumer buying a car thought it was so great they went a got a matching house. That kind of cross sale is something MS can't do easily, no company really can. Jobs, if nothing else, has vision and can lead. Gates has it too, just seems he has left development and research to other people. Something that scares me is that he IS Apple. Without him, I do fear for their long term. Anyway - I'm rooting for a GREAT Longhorn - it will help drive the entire industry, Apple included. Good things happen when competition gets fierce... I don't believe screenshots today represent final product, or even close. They see Tiger, they see some cool things, and they can innovate when motivated. Perhaps Apple will provide the motivation they need to really push the new OS to it's max potential. Windows zealots - give OS X a shot for more than 5 minutes - I think you'll really enjoy it. It's far more than simple 'eye candy'. The thing really just works. Mac zealots - OSX time at the top is limited if Apple doesn't continue to out-innovate the industry. Apple has slipped in the past. I belive Apple learned valuable lessons from their near failure in the 90's and the massive move to DOS/Windows platforms. It may very well be that MS needs to learn the same lessons...create, innovate, learn, grow. It also needs to be said that Jobs and Gates are billionaires. Billionaires tend to lead expensive lives, and they like it that way. Gates doesn't feel like going back to being a starving college kid who has to create an industry. Steve Jobs is driven by creation it seems, he still lives and breathes Apples research. BUT... at some point I fully expect to see a revolution from some starving college kids who get the idea in their head that they can change the world.

Dude, you'd be way better off learning something from the exchange and appearing less ignorant in the future. I can tell you this: There's no way I'd let you put your hands inside my hardware if you're this unwilling to learn the right way to do something. --------------------------------------------------- And your saying that your way is the right way uh? Ok, if you say so. Maybe I came off as harsh.. But I have the right to do so. Maybe Im not as slick as some, but I know what I know. And untill your in my shoes, Please Backoff. And untill Im in yours ... I will back off.

"Regarding x64, Microsoft's policy is that all of the server software it releases this year has to be x64 compatible (but could still be 32-bit). By 2007, all of Microsoft's server products will come in native x64 versions." If M$ had stayed with Alpha, full 64bit computing with the Windows OS would have been reality for the last five years.

Soooo.... Longhorn is just XP with some metadata, inflated sysreq's, and clever splash screens? I mean, really. Avalon? Indigo? Freaking nonsense. Mac OS X Tiger is further nonsense. I'm way more familiar than I want to be with OS 9, OS X Puma, Jaguar and Panther... and although I can't say the same for Tiger, what I can say is that it seems like an awful lot of effort for me to just run the apps that I want to run and not even see the OS at all. That's right. I hate Operating Systems. I have never once had an Operating System do anything nice for me. Everything that you kids are talking about is extra interface features that are added onto the Operating System, which can be added onto ANY OS. That's why we have these wars about "WinFS! Spotlight! GREP!". I mean, to get real specific about it, the first implementation of any "Spotlight"-ish feature is Dashboard for Linux. Blasphemy, I know. It's not about innovation (the Software world's version of FIRST POST!!!!!), but it's about implementation. What are people using OS's for? For a while, Microsoft was clearly the loser in this race. Their Windows9x kernel was failing dismally, as were the System APIs into that kernel. So they ditched it. Seriously, it's gone. Everyone knows that WinME is like some illegitimate love child, and no one talks about it. So they switched to the NT kernel, which didn't crash... one of the main 'features' of any OS, and proceeded to make a Desktop OS out of it... which has done remarkably well considering the wide berth of the current 9x userbase. Mac OS wasn't doing much better, in fact, there's a handful of apps for Mac OS 9 that work (Photoshop and Pro Tools come to mind), otherwise the platform is nearly barren. What happened was a re-evaluation. With the bursting of the 90's bubble, Apple and Microsoft saw themselves at the end of some kind of weird weekend software-hype binge. They took a serious look at their products and made some serious changes. For Microsoft's part, they engineered a server OS. For Apple's part, they build a Desktop shell on top of a server OS. See, it all comes back to what people use a computer for... and one of the requirements of usage is that the thing being used actually works. Thus, stability is a huge issue, one Microsoft and Apple addressed by switching to the NT/FreeBSD OS respectively. Now, since we've mostly solved that pesky stability issue, the software industry is currently most interested in information management... which, combined with communication, is software's main domain anyway. Microsoft is doing this with special folders (such as 'My Documents') and default save paths, whereas Apple has employed Spotlight to further enable users to manage their information. In the business sector, Microsoft likes to tout Outlook as the center of all information... which is probably silly, but Apple uses LDAP, etc. to counter this idea... essentially using the Linux counter-arguments against Windows. Anyway, let's skip to the point. Outlined above, it's pretty clear that MS has a vision... and it doesn't include other OS's. Unfortunately, the OS is becoming less and less relevant as it becomes more obvious that computers are used for data management and communication. The systems that do these two things better than the others have a place in the Next-Gen OS club. The systems that don't... we'll forget about them shortly.

"This one's bizarre, but we heard at lunch today that Apple is unhappy with the PowerPC production at IBM and will be switching to Intel-compatible cheaps this very year. Yeah, seriously. Interesting... Yep, dual cores are really nice... I love X64, sucks to be in the MAC camp when your OS doesn't have any balls. " YOU ARE RETARDED. OS X is, and has been 64bit. Hardware was 64bit when G5 shipped. Quite a few apps are, you guessed it, 64bit. Typical windows dork. You think your crap pc was there first, but as usualy you're eating the rear. Hey, ignorance is bliss, right?

"Apple no longer makes oeprating systems - the get an old free one then put a pretty face on it." Windows 1.0 : Godawful and unpretty face put atop DOS Windows 2.0 : Equally unpretty face atop of DOS Windows 3.0 : Buggy but less un-pretty face put atop DOS Windows 3.11 : Bug fix of a less than un-pretty face put atop DOS Windows NT 3.51 : First non-DOS OS. Not really compatable with anything. Butt-ugly. Windows 95A : Marginally prettier face put atop DOS (Although they said it wasn't) Windows 95B : Bug fix for the above. Still sat atop DOS Windows NT 4.0 : Windows 95's GUI put atop of NT. They called it a UNIX killer. A bored Finn cooped up in his bedroom wrote a cheap knock off of Unix that outperformed it. Windows 98 : Same face put atop DOS as before but with a few whistles. Windows 98SE : Bug fix for the above. Windows 2000 : Pretty face put atop NT (The only decent OS they ever produced, BTW) Windows XP : Fischer Price face put top of NT. You were saying?

Jeez, what a long winded discussion. www.the-lad.com I think my latest comic sums up this entire thread!

I just love it! Apple only has a (pick 2-7%) market share, so they are GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. Right. And Mercedes Benz has an even smaller share of the car business, but you don't think that it is going out of business any time soon. And even though you drive something else, you'd give your left nut to own one. You should look at Macs the same way.

Jeez, what a long winded discussion. www.the-lad.com I think my latest comic sums up this entire thread!

These screenshots are butt ugly. 1Gz PC???? Riiiiiight.... I can't even run XP with Luna on a 1.5Ghz machine with 512Mb.

I'm left nutted, I'd give my right nut to own a Merc.

Ahhh, the voice of the 2% crowd... please go play with your stoooopid one-button mice...

hay guys i heard windows sucks confirm/deny

one word: LINUX

'"First of all, the reason that OSX is so stable is because Apple wussed out from writing their own kernel and instead snagged a pre-made UNIX one" ----- ^^^I would have to aggree. I work in publication, and I work on BOTH... BOTH... Operating Systems. OS9, OS X, Win98, Win2K, and XP. Is OSX a nice OS. Yes. Will I go out and buy a MAC. No. Im a PC guy.. I like to mess with the hardware on my PC. With A MAC you cant do that as much. I use XP, but I love my Linux. And if you look at X and Linux they look alot alike. I say use what you want .. leave others to use what they wish.." Uhh... OS X is based own Apple's own version of UNIX called Darwin. http://developer.apple.com/darwin/ Get a clue. Apple still writes the OS. It's even open source and available for x86.

Any *nix! UNIX, LINUX and OS X. The place to be over the next few years.

Apple still uses a UNIX base for the kernel, what was trying to be said was that Microsoft doesn't "borrow" other methods to put in their kernel.

This comment might be a bit long since I'm replying to ideas that have been stated repeatedly in the last 170K of comments, but I'll try to only say things once. Like Paul, I deal with both Windows and Mac. (Also Linux, Solaris, and for the right price, darned near anything - even SCO.) I have XP SP2 and OS X 10.3, and have ordered 10.4, since there are some features in it that I want. Like most people, I'm eager to hear more about what Paul means by "the makings of a train wreck." I think both Microsoft and Apple will survive Tiger and Longhorn. The balance might shift a little, but that's okay, probably even better for everyone. It's good to have multiple choices in the market, and both companies do a lot of the same things. For example: - Charging to go from NT 5.0 to 5.1 (2000 -> XP) or OS X 10.3 to 10.4 - Replacing "classic" OSes with ones based on "old" multiuser OSes. - Promising and showing features that turn out somewhat different. - Claiming their way is cheaper (depends how you measure it). - Claiming their way is easier ("easier" is what you're used to). - Dabbling in non-core product lines (Newton, iPod, XBox, PocketPC). - Having users who troll on each other's boards. ;) Neither wants to be perceived as "chasing the taillights" of the other, in terms of innovation. As for who has a feature first, if they both wind up with it, it doesn't really matter - the users win. Nor does it matter what anonymous posters here say each kind of computer is "for" - in almost any category, there are multiple options available for either operating system. With that said, a few replies to specific comments: "How did Apple breeze by Microsoft with five OS X releases in the past five years?" Complex. Microsoft was first to market - by quite a long way! - with its next-generation, server-ready OS (Windows NT), which even ran on 64-bit CPUs in the early 1990s. But although NT was inspired by VMS, was written by a development team including VMS veterans, and wound up with a kernel so VMS-like that Digital sued Microsoft, it wasn't actually VMS underneath. In comparison, Apple bought NeXT, which came with NeXTSTEP UNIX, and kept the innards, while building compatibility and GUI layers to make it act like a Mac. Two different approaches to the same problem. Anyway, Apple is now able to concentrate on optimizing their OS (it is true that each major release of OS X has been _faster on the same hardware_ than the one before it!), adding new features and applications, etc., while Microsoft is dealing with lingering security concerns and the need to once again "rewrite" Windows - to some extent. Interestingly, had Microsoft licensed VMS, or flat-out bought Digital and built Windows NT as a GUI atop VMS with DOS compatibility handled somehow, there's a fairly good chance it would have had better security. "...universities all use Macs now. Even groups like NASA use Mac." I do some work for a university research institute that's partly NASA-funded, and I would not say that "all" universities use Macs. In the state university system here, most labs are PC-based, but there are some Macs too. That said, within the space sciences, I do see a lot of Macs. Most desks where I work have Solaris or Linux workstations with dual (or even triple) monitors, but a lot of people also have laptops, and there's a trend toward PowerBooks, since they can handle a lot of the same UNIX apps, plus major commercial packages like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite, and even Microsoft Virtual PC for the few applications that require Windows. That's a lot of capabilities to put into a sub-7-pound package. I've also seen some articles over the last year indicating that Apple's laptops are gaining popularity and market share within higher education, but of course that doesn't necessarily reflect the wider market. "Are any games actually written specifically for the mac? No." Most answers I saw to this involved whether Mac versions of games were available, but I read this as more of "are there games that are ONLY available for the Mac, and not for the PC?" The answer, however, is still a yes. There aren't a lot of exclusives; where possible, developers like to sell on as many platforms as possible. One example, Ambrosia Software, which offers such games as Escape Velocity Nova and Pop-Pop for both Windows and Mac, has several games that are Mac-only, some of them OS X-only. "...apple develops for a few photoshop freaks and video editors and a very narrow audience of people with no real needs for anything other than a pretty UI and disk space." If this were true, Apple would have had no reason to adopt UNIX. (And if it were true of Microsoft, they would have had no reason to draw from VMS in developing Windows NT.) Both companies have designs on the enterprise space, the scientific space, the supercomputing space. Right now, Microsoft certainly has more of a foothold in the enterprise, Apple has more of a foothold in supercomputing, and I'd say science may be a tossup, depending on what you're doing. See NASA bit above. "...windows need a clean coding to rebuild the OS..." This is an interesting possibility, and honestly, much of the technology is already out there. Linux or BSD at the kernel level, some VMware or other virtualization bits, and some pieces of Windows and maybe WINE, and Microsoft could, in fairly short order, have a UNIX-based version of Windows. And it'd probably put an end to a lot of their security woes. But it would require a sea change in how they approach the market. "What everyone is missing with what Longhorn is is that it's a new OPERATING SYSTEM!" *furrows brow* According to... whom? All indications are that it's a new version of Windows NT (which, being heavily influenced by VMS at the kernel level, was also debatably not a "new" operating system) with some significant - and much-needed - changes under the hood. I haven't gotten the impression from Paul, Microsoft, or anyone else that it's a complete, from-scratch rewrite. "UNIX and Linux can do minor add-on features where MS can rewrite the whole thing and make it do what today's computing envirnments demand." Sometime, I invite you to take a look at one of the UNIX family tree diagrams that's out there somewhere. As an IT professional in the 1990s, I saw SGI go from 32-bit to 64-bit on UNIX. I saw Sun go from Motorola 68K CPUs to SPARCs with BSD-based SunOS, then acquire Interactive UNIX/386i and switch to SysV-based Solaris on SPARC and X86. A decade ago, I was working on machines with fifty-plus Pentiums - running UNIX. (Dynix/PTX on Sequents, specifically.) "Today's computing environments demand" a lot of things - most of which are beyond the reach of Windows, although the new clustering version should help address that. Yes, Microsoft can rewrite Windows any time it chooses to - and many people have suggested that it do just that. But any reuse of legacy code risks perpetuating bugs and vulnerabilities, and starting from scratch is hugely expensive in money, time, and lost competitive advantage. "That's what the sad little Mac trolls want. To destroy a popular Windows site." Although Paul has certainly managed to step on a few Mac-using toes over the years, he just gave Tiger a four-out-of-five rating, and has now said the Longhorn demo looked like a "train wreck." Why would Mac users want to destroy his site? Maybe those aren't actually Mac users - after all, a really clever troll who liked Windows would naturally pose as a Mac user to disrupt things and draw attention away from the fact that Paul - or his alien pod-person replacement - has complimented Apple and dissed Microsoft. "If you Mac morons like UNIX so much why not buy a Sun box. They've been doing UNIX far longer than Apple." About four years, to be precise. SunOS was begun in 1982, and A/UX, which ran on M68K Macs, was begun in 1986. Of course, there may be some debate as to how useful the first version of each of those actually was. But to answer your question, a Sun box is probably more expensive, slower, and wouldn't allow someone to run Unix, Mac and Windows applications like a Mac would. "Solaris is based on BSD like OS X, dummy." Uh, no. SunOS up to 4.x (aka Solaris 1) was BSD. But since Solaris 2.0 (SunOS 5.0), Solaris has been SVR4-based. Some long-time Sun users (myself included) still miss our BSDish flags to "ps" :) "Windows is VMS with a Win32 shell." No, it's not. A lot of kernel-level ideas were lifted from VMS, but it's not VMS. "From day one of the PC era the dream was to be able to run Unix on a PC. That was impractical if not impossible in 1982, and in 1990." In 1990, I was running Interactive UNIX/386i on a PC, with dual displays. That software was later bought by Sun and used as the basis for Solaris/x86. And it was not the first PC UNIX, by far - XENIX dated back to 1990, and Microsoft themselves were heavily involved in that. "FYI microsoft names all of its betas after places relating to or near Redmond, Washington. Longhorn is a bar, close to the whistler mountain" ...which isn't close to Redmond, Washington. Well, okay, I suppose it's closer to Redmond than it is to, say, Hawaii. But it's not even in the United States; the Longhorn Saloon, and the Whistler Blackcomb resort, are in British Columbia, Canada. Your neighbors to the north thank you. "iChat doesnt allow usb cams, only the exprensive iSight" Well, actually... http://www.ecamm.com/mac/ichatusbcam/ But I had to type "ichat usb" into Google to find that. Hard! "Apple don't actually sell production supercomputing servers do they?" No, but neither does Microsoft. In fact, neither do most vendors, since many supercomputers today are clusters, not individual servers. Apple sells rackmount servers, RAID gear for them, grid computing software, SAN software. People use those bits, along with network switches and such, to construct supercomputers. As a matter of fact, the Xserve RAID is certified under Microsoft's "Designed for Windows" logo program, for use with Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Professional. Sound bizarre? Well, consider that after Apple itself, the top developer of software for the Macintosh is Microsoft. Consider that the development kit for Microsoft's XBox 360 comes installed on a Power Mac G5. As much as their users may sometimes rant and act silly toward one another, the companies enjoy a somewhat symbiotic relationship. ;) "Microsoft will be sustained by a combination of business, home, developer and manufacturer interest." Interest? Or inertia? It's expensive to switch platforms, and that's a significant disincentive for anyone, from "Joe User" to the largest enterprises. "Apple in it's present form isn't ever going to be the company that brings Microsoft down." Agreed. Microsoft controls its own fate. And that statement should be frightening enough. ;) "how many businesses do you know that actually buy supercomputers like that to run their business on?" Supercomputers aren't intended for "running a business." You don't do payroll on a supercomputer; for that, you'd probably use a midrange or mainframe server, if you're an enterprise, or a small server (i.e. Windows) if you're a small business. But more than half of the top 500 supercomputers are categorized as being in "Industry." Most of the top banks, oil companies and digital media companies in the world use them for mission-critical number-crunching, and would have a hard time running their businesses without supercomputers. (Disney's got one in the top 60, I think.) "Furthermore, all this crap about them stealing DOS is completely immature and incorrect; Bill Gates legally bought SCP-DOS from Seattle Computing Products, he just didn't tell them what he was using it for, which is fine. He also hired the developer of the OS to work at Microsoft." I thought it was called QDOS, for some reason. Of course, I keep thinking there's more to the story - something about the makers of CP/M (Digital Research, maybe?) being upset about SCP's DOS (which became Microsoft's) because they considered it a ripoff of CP/M's interface.

"You can keep your stinking gaming OS." THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE, YOU STUPID ... MOTHER ... FUKCERS!!! You little trolls just don't get it do you? For you to spend your time to go to a site you hate to bash users of an operating hate means that you are far too obsessive, and have very little value in your life. It's sad really. But you go on and continue wasting your very invaluable time, you sad little trolls.

"1Gz PC???? Riiiiiight.... I can't even run XP with Luna on a 1.5Ghz machine with 512Mb." You could if you weren't such a dumb fukk.

"As for the delay in getting there - everyone who has been awake for the last 18 months knows that Microsoft have hardly been doing nothing. They stopped work on Longhorn to develop XP SP2." Funny the behemoth is Redmond can only work on one thing at a time, and with marginal results. Yet the little fruity named company is pumping out Tiger, Final Cut, iLife, iWork, Xgrid, Xsan, Quicktime, and on and on... Oh yeah, they're also designing and releasing new hardware, while opening iTunes in more and more countries. Hmmm, yeah it does look like Ms is a trainwreck. Thanks Paul! That's the first credible thing I've seen you post. Maybe there's hope afterall... Flame away lemmings!

Luna runs just dandy on a Thinkpad 600 (Pentium II 266Mhz, 192MB RAM). What's your problem, moron? Why can't you get it to run smooth on a 1Ghz machine? Too stupid?

Maybe it's just me, but trolling the hell out of a Longhorn review doesn't seem like the way to convince people to switch to a Mac. Guess those Apple users "think different," though. Keep on winning those hearts and minds, guys!

"Funny the behemoth is Redmond can only work on one thing at a time, and with marginal results. Yet the little fruity named company is pumping out Tiger, Final Cut, iLife, iWork, Xgrid, Xsan, Quicktime, and on and on... Oh yeah, they're also designing and releasing new hardware, while opening iTunes in more and more countries." Wow, that is one stupid post. Obviously the poster was talking about operating systems. But you went and extended to ALL of Apple's products. You are an idiot. Never heard of Visual Studio 2005? SQL Server Yukon? Next version of Exchange? Xbox 360? Media Player 10? MSN Messenger 7.0? Office 12? Obviously MS was hard at work on a lot of other projects. You are too stupid or too blind to be able to acknowledge that. You hatred of all things MS leads you to twist and distort. Yeah, you are stupid.

LOL! I'm here in the middle of a ComSc lecture. BTW, Longhorn has a long way to go before catching up to OS X.

It will be really funny if Microsoft does incorporate some Linux functionality into Windows, then that would mean that they haven't enough faith in their own product. Perhaps if Microsoft would get their hands out of so many pots they would be able to concentrate on making a decent product. They should have left the PDA's and Cell Phone OS' alone and put their efforts into their flagship OS. If they would have done that, they wouldn't have to play catchup just as they are doing in the browser and search engine markets. Apple was smart by taking things step by step, slowly increasing their offerings after the small successes that they had from the iMac to the iPod and now the Mac Mini. Sure it took some time for them to offer what the public would really want, but they continued at a logical pace and now it's showing real promise for their future. Bottom line, if you are going to play in the game, you better get yourself prepare and then play as though your life depended on it. Apple was a hungry company and their determination to make the best products really shows. Microsoft needs to cut back severly and put their best foot forward if they want the public to see them as real game players.

"BTW, Longhorn has a long way to go before catching up to OS X." Wrong again. You sad little troll. Macuser isn't enough to keep your d1ck up?

I find it absolutely remarkable that a company like Apple (which is 1/5 the size of Microsoft) manages to innovate so much more, generate so many more products and design hardware to boot.

"I find it absolutely remarkable that a company like Apple (which is 1/5 the size of Microsoft) manages to innovate so much more, generate so many more products and design hardware to boot." You sad little ignorant troll. You obviously know nothing of Microsoft's product catalog. MS designs a far wider array of software than Apple. How many server products does Apple release? Hardware... let's see - Xbox, Xbox 360, networking gear, input devices, and so on. Yeah Microsoft has never done hardware. Ignorant stupid little troll. At least MS has had two button (and more) mice for years. Oh, but Apple is working on releasing that innovation right?

I fail to understand why there is such animosity between Mac and Windows users. Just use what you like the most. Both Gates and Jobs doesn´t think any of you are special snowflakes that must be made happy - you are just nunbers in their spreadsheets. And most important, this build of Longhorn is hardly aimed to end users.

Hey Windows users, let's flood Mac sites with troll posts! Oh wait, we are not that obsessive, sad and pathetic. That's right.

Frankly, the OS is out of our control. Its in the hands of the businesses. Why use MacOS when there are no good, well supported server applications available for it? Is it better to run dual operating systems and wrangle with open source software and command line coding? Or is it cheaper for a company to buy an entire package from a company that will _support_ everything from the back end to the client. How much do consultants for unix cost over consultants for MS? Then the logical connection is that it's easier to learn one operating system over two for home users. Frankly, people who take the time to learn how to use macs (i.e. the current user base) are probably the only people who are going to be interested in it. Those Computer-perfectionists who can't possibly understand the shrewd side of OS choice. Another thing.. some Mac user mentioned yearly updates. ??? We're using windows 2000 with 500mhz boxes bought 2nd hand from the SYDNEY OLYMPICS @ work (that's five years ago), and they run FAST! With some proper administration, Windows 2000 is a very fast OS, and I don't understand the problem there. Sure, if you want games, you have to upgrade, but you can't even GET games on a mac. Well, not the good ones anyway.

"I fail to understand why there is such animosity between Mac and Windows users." The animosity is on the Mac side. These poor sad little trolls are so bitter at Microsoft, they cannot help themselves from spending inordinate amounts of time at a site they hate, bashing users they hate. It's sad really, how obsessive these sad little trolls are.

forums@macworld.com

MACS ARE FRUITY, JUST LIKE THE PEOPLE THAT USE THEM!!!

SILLY RABBIT, MACS ARE FOR *******!

"The animosity is on the Mac side. These poor sad little trolls are so bitter at Microsoft, they cannot help themselves from spending inordinate amounts of time at a site they hate, bashing users they hate. It's sad really, how obsessive these sad little trolls are." No, we're here laughing at you. LOL. Especially, the fanboys with the potty mouths. LOL. Sound like sorelosers. Kids. Anyway back to reality. MS is having such a hard time putting together an OS because they never really have. All the stuff they had starting from DOS was either stolen or bought. Now they have to innovate and create, and guess what? They can't. They have a "Left Brain" approach while Apple has more of both "Left and Right". If you've worked with engineers, you know what I'm talking about. Ever wondered why Bill Gates puts many people to sleep when he gives his speeches? Too much left brain. Also, almost all of the presenters were as dry as you can get. I didn't hear any oooohs or aaaaahs with any of the stuff they presented. Why? Lame. Nothing innovative. Watching an SQL process. ooooooooh. What was even lamer was the first presenter. Surely, they could have come up with something with more pizzazz than just, "look, I can display 140 extra creatures on this animation instead of 10." or whatever the hell he was trying to show. Lame....Lame-o. LOL. It's great to be a Mac user.

THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN: SILLY RABBIT, MACS ARE FOR B1TCHES!!

Apple is the last company anyone under Open Source will support. They are as focused on IP and proprietary technology as Microsoft is. In fact most of Apple's practices are even more rude. Look at them suing that kid for publishing iPod Shuffle info ahead of time. Or the latest - Jobs is P.O'ed with a book publisher who published a biography on him. Result - Apple is pulling those books out of their stores. If Microsoft had done any such thing, the whole industry would have gone up in uproar. Check the URL. http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/26/news/newsmakers/apple_book.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes Goes to show that the big guys are hated most. But Apple is most certainly not an Underdog. It's just a company that has lost strategic vision in the platform space (and is now trying to catch up to the x86 platform - according to blogs) and has moved into CE to sustain itself. Even here it hasnt learnt its lesson and continues to enforce complete control over the entire system (iPod+iTunes). I dont understand how Apple fans can ever critisize Microsoft. They belong to the same greedy capitalists out to suck every bit of $$ from customers. The real underdogs are the open-source community, who are toiling under the threats of big monopolists like Microsoft (in OS) and Apple (in Digital Media). We make better systems. We rock!

APPLE ... WE SUCK $130 FROM OUR CUSTOMERS FOR EACH MINOR UPGRADE. BUT THEY LOVE US FOR IT!

MACS... ENDORSED BY GAY PEOPLE EVERYWHERE!

APPLE - WE PUT OUT MISLEADING BENCHMARKS, THEN CLAIM OUR SLOWER HARDWARE IS THE FASTEST. WE GOT BUSTED IN THE UK.

OS X ... THE "STABLE" OS THAT RECEIVES CONSTANT PATCHES

"Yeah. Tiger is an upgrade to Panther that is about the size of Longhorn. Are you saying Longhorn should be a service pack, considering Tiger has everything Longhorn has?" You don't know much about Longhorn, do you? Longhorn has been extensively reworked under the hood. Longhorn is a MAJOR upgrade to Windows. Tiger IS IN FACT a very minor upgrade to Panther.

APPLE ... WE MAKE OVERPRICED HARDWARE, THEN SCREW CUSTOMERS BY MAKING THEM PAY FOR MINOR UPGRADES. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT A SERVICE PACK OR FREE ADD-ONS ARE.

This is very inappropriate!!! Please don't do this. I beg of you. Please don't mix issues that are NOT related. Macs have nothing to do with Homosexuals. Please be smart about what you say. I urge everyone to think before they post ANYTHING here or on any other website. Both Windows and Mac OS X have their uses. One is better in one arena and the other is better for other purposes. Please behave maturely about matters like this. We are all grown people and one of the characteristics we should have should be rationalized thinking. Please be thoughtful about what is being said here. After all we are not talking about physical objects. We are talking about 0 and 1 representations. Please have that in mind. - From a concerned reader!

"Apple still uses a UNIX base for the kernel, what was trying to be said was that Microsoft doesn't "borrow" other methods to put in their kernel." Uhhhh... the NT kernel is based on UNIX and IBM OS/2. The networking stack is all UNIX. You did know that, right?

"APPLE ... WE MAKE OVERPRICED HARDWARE, THEN SCREW CUSTOMERS BY MAKING THEM PAY FOR MINOR UPGRADES. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT A SERVICE PACK OR FREE ADD-ONS ARE." Yeah. Tiger is an upgrade to Panther that is about the size of Longhorn. Are you saying Longhorn should be a service pack, considering Tiger has everything Longhorn has?

MAC ZEALOTS ... MACUSER FORUMS DON'T EXCITE US. OUR D1CKS GO ALL FLACCID, SO WE HAVE TO GO TO WININFORMANT TO BASH AND GET OFF. THEN WE CAN CIRCLE-JERK.

I must say, I have spent the last 3 hours reading through all of these posts, and I have gotten very little information. I found two posts about the subject I was looking for (Apple moving to Intel processors). However, after reading through the first couple of posts, I realized that it might be fun to read through the rest considering all I was going to be doing was work or homework (procrastination makes it happen). The one thing that I would like to mention is that not all of us Mac users are ignorant. In fact, from what I have seen overall from these posts, there have been significantly fewer spelling/grammatical errors from the Mac posts than there have been from the Windows posts. Not only that, but I don't "remember" reading any blatent windows bashing posts from a pure Mac user. I am sure there were some, but it has been a few hours. I agree that Tiger is really just an upgrade, and in some respects, it might aught to be free. On the other hand, SP1/SP2 were both mostly bug fixes while Tiger really implements a lot of new features. They may not be grand, heck, maybe not even worth $120, but Apple is attempting to move forward, not fix things that they should have done right at the beginning. The switch to UNIX was great! I HATED Mac before OS X, but once I started playing around with the new OS, I really enjoyed it. I used to use XP when I first got to college, but since I am going for a computer science degree, Windows really did not make sense for me. Linux was a much better choice and for a good while, I used Gentoo as my primary OS. Sure I had Windows and did the whole dual boot thing, but that was really only for my roommate and friends. I also could not afford an Apple machine, but since I started working at the store, I got a bit of a discount which helped out and I now have an awesome 15" PowerBook. Now, I am attempting to start my own website design business and I needed a server. Nothing grand and spectacular, but something that would last and run until I could save up enough money for a new one. I would have loved to get a mac, but for $90 at an auction, I can't beat the little PIII 933 I got (ok, my roommate bought the same model for $60, but that was after the guy who wanted 27 of them got finished bidding). In any case, Apple was my first choice, but I couldn't get it. Windows on the other hand is definitely my last choice. I can't count the number of times I had to reformat my harddrive when running 98 or XP, and granted, I have had to reformat my Mac, but only because I am a power user and I decided I wanted to dual boot linux on my Mac. It ran ok, and for a while I used it more, but then I just found myself using OS X more often and wiped the linux side completely (my music and movie database was getting a little to big). Anyway, just to rant and rave a little bit before I get my own blog up, I really hate the windows "trolls" who can't come up with a better word than troll. It seems to me that you could at least check a thesaurus or something. Paul, I am sorry, but I really did not find this entry useful or informative in any way shape or form, however, the comments were quite hilarious!

"Yeah. Tiger is an upgrade to Panther that is about the size of Longhorn. Are you saying Longhorn should be a service pack, considering Tiger has everything Longhorn has?" You don't know much about Longhorn, do you? Longhorn has been extensively reworked under the hood. Longhorn is a MAJOR upgrade to Windows. Tiger IS IN FACT a very minor upgrade to Panther.

"No, we're here laughing at you." See, that's the pathetic part. You don't even realize how sad and obsessive comments like that look. That's really all you have to do? Man, that must suck.

MacOS makes me drool, but it can't become a windows challenger as long as it runs on closed hardware, for many reasons. Production capacity, price/performance mainly in the low-end. Also, there isn't much you can do on a mac but not on a PC. Almost anything is available for windows, including complete unix-like environments (you can even run KDE or GNOME in windows). The opposite is not true. MS project files, MS Access databases, vb applications (Extremely common in most enterprises) and of course many games will not work on a mac.

Oh, and you Mac trolls can try to play it off, like you are just makin fun, so that your anti-MS zealotry doesn't appear so obsessive, but it shows thru. Your hatred and animosity is clear. It's sad really.

Windows fanboy: LOOK! LOOK AT ME!!!!! I'M YELLING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS CAUSE I'M SO ****** THAT APPLE HAS AGAIN TAKEN THE LEAD IN OPERATING SYSTEMS. I'M SOOOOOO ****** THAT I HAVE TO READ AND HEAR ABOUT TIGER WHEN MY OS WON'T BE RELEASED FOR ANOTHER 2 YEARS. WHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

"Windows fanboy: KHFSDLFKHSKJ" APPLE ZEALOT ... I AM SO OBSESSIVE I MUST GO TO WINDOWS SITES TO TRASH MS. I HAVE NO LIFE, AND I WILL TRASH ANYONE THAT LIKES ANYTHING DIFFERENT THAN ME. MY WAY IS THE ONLY WAY. STEVE JOBS IS GOD.

"You don't know much about Longhorn, do you? Longhorn has been extensively reworked under the hood. Longhorn is a MAJOR upgrade to Windows. Tiger IS IN FACT a very minor upgrade to Panther." OS re-written for metadata and fast search? Windowing system re-writen to take full advantage of hardware acceleration? New resolution independent windowing system? Ability for image work to be sent to the graphics card? Javascript integration with the desktop? New mail client? New RSS client? New version of QuickTime re-written in OpenGL for gods sake? New support for scripting any application in the OS visually? Support for syncing system settings across all computers over the internet? Built in dictionary and thesaurus available in any application? New built in PDF renderer? Not to mention hordes of new frameworks and libraries available to us developers under Cocoa? (I will never write under .Net, I know it, and it's crap on a stick) I'm not even including all the apps that got upgraded. Support for video and audio conferencing with multiple people at once? Yeah, sounds like a minor upgrade to me.

"I will never write under .Net, I know it, and it's crap on a stick" I AM IGNANT, AND I AINT GONNA LEARN ABOUT ANY OF THAT THERE MS TECHNOLOGICAL THINGYS

"I AM IGNANT, AND I AINT GONNA LEARN ABOUT ANY OF THAT THERE MS TECHNOLOGICAL THINGYS" .Net is crap. Cocoa runs circles around it. Guess what, I know both, I've coded both, and in the end of the day, I always come back to Cocoa. Oh, thats right, I forgot the Tiger comes with a new version of the free developer tools. Microsoft is foolish enough to charge for their development tools. But of course, none of you Windows users even know what Cocoa is. You should, considering Cocoa was the first object oriented language, and .Net wouldn't exist without it. Ah, but ignorance is bliss. It lets you guys get away with saying stupid uninformed things.

"Microsoft is foolish enough to charge for their development tools." Because MS is the only company that charges for development tools. That's brilliant. You are a tool.

"APPLE ... WE BLEW OUR WAD, AND NOW WE MUST RELEASE A STATEMENT SAYING THAT WE ARE GOING TO SLOW OS DEVELOPMENT. OUR BLIND FANBOYS WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING WE SAY, SO JUST TELL THEM IT'S CUZ WE ARE SO FAR AHEAD." Yeah, you're a bit late on that one. Apple announced they were slowing OS development... a year and a half ago?

APPLE ... WE BLEW OUR WAD, AND NOW WE MUST RELEASE A STATEMENT SAYING THAT WE ARE GOING TO SLOW OS DEVELOPMENT. OUR BLIND FANBOYS WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING WE SAY, SO JUST TELL THEM IT'S CUZ WE ARE SO FAR AHEAD.

Hey you windows guys, a lot of people came to this site through links from other news sites like slashdot so that they can be updated on x86 news. As far as longhorn is concerned, you guys are not even aware of its features. Do you seriously think that it takes them 5 years to develop a stupid search function? a new filesystem? a GL-accelerated UI? I sure hope not cause if that's the case you're all in for a bad treat. I can't speak for mac. but Linux has had these search functions you talk about since the 90s. The filesystems used IBM on ther eServers, SGIs filesystem they use on their CRAY supercomputers, And reiserfs are all available to Linux. Most games can be emulated under linux to run faster that natively in Windows. Sun has its "project looking glass" that crushes the accelerated UI of longhorn. The new X servers are coming out this summer with all the widgets and acceleration. Linux is not a substitute for windows, but I think you guys should take a look at longhorn and ask yourselves what it is you are paying for, just like the editor did.

It's apparently obvious from his INANE RANTS that there is one Windows fanboy that has issues. What a sad pathetic little man. LOL....good night.

OMG - THE MAC USERS CONVINCED ME! I WILL CONVERT TOMORROW!! AS SOON AS BEST BUY OPENS, I WILL BE A MAC OWNER, AND I WILL MAKE ALL WINDOZE USERS SEE THE LIGHT!

"It's apparently obvious from his INANE RANTS that there is one Windows fanboy that has issues. What a sad pathetic little man." And you have no issues, right? Spending all your time on a site you hate bashing people and OSes you hate? You are the sad little troll.

>>OS re-written for metadata and fast search? Windowing system re-writen to take full advantage of hardware acceleration? New resolution independent windowing system? Ability for image work to be sent to the graphics card? Javascript integration with the desktop? New mail client? New RSS client? New version of QuickTime re-written in OpenGL for gods sake? New support for scripting any application in the OS visually? Support for syncing system settings across all computers over the internet? Built in dictionary and thesaurus available in any application? New built in PDF renderer? Not to mention hordes of new frameworks and libraries available to us developers under Cocoa? (I will never write under .Net, I know it, and it's crap on a stick) I'm not even including all the apps that got upgraded. Support for video and audio conferencing with multiple people at once? Ahem... RSS? Free upgrade coming soon. JS intergration w/desktop? Dangerous, bud. They'd have to remove that if it was the majority of users that were being targeted. A Poor move. New Mail Client? Free upgrades w/ms. >Hey Windows users, let's flood Mac sites with troll posts! Oh wait, we are not that obsessive, sad and pathetic. That's right. EXCUSE ME! I believe that we are umm.. Individual? God. Some people are so DUMB. Some of us ARE that obsessive, as you can see by the flaming going on here. Like I said earlier... Windows is the logical choice, that's all there is to it. It may not be the best OS around (although personally I feel it's more intuitive, as it's not app-based), but it's the best SOLUTION.

Free dev tools with your yearly $130 OS upgrade. Nice. Apple doesn't milk their customers. NOOOOOOO.

Whoops.. In my last post, I didn't adress the new graphics funtionality. It IS very impressive, but also essentially useless for the end user, functionality wise. Like most apple stuff.

I gotta say from seeing Paul's article and the screenshots, the future looks bleak for longhorn. Does anyone remember the longhorn concept videos? They had some fantastic ideas and a proper UI design, not this colour-blind pissup of a UI. and the sidebar no longer there? Nooooo. There is no better time than now for Apple and the Linux conmmunity to take away desktop market share from Microsoft.

"RSS? Free upgrade coming soon. JS intergration w/desktop? Dangerous, bud. They'd have to remove that if it was the majority of users that were being targeted. A Poor move. New Mail Client? Free upgrades w/ms." Yeah, you left out the rest of the other stuff that I listed thats kinda important and are kinda major features in Longhorn but... JavaScript is pretty gosh darn safe in non-IE web browsers. The implementation on Mac OS X can't do any damage to your system, not to mention the user has to install any modules themselves. The installation cannot be automated by a web page or anything. I'm currently running Tiger btw on my Mac. I have a 3.6 ghz P4 running XP and two Linux boxes also.

OMG - THE MAC USERS CONVINCED ME! I WILL CONVERT TOMORROW!! AS SOON AS BEST BUY OPENS, I WILL BE A MAC OWNER, AND I WILL MAKE ALL WINDOZE USERS SEE THE LIGHT!

"I'm currently running Tiger btw on my Mac. I have a 3.6 ghz P4 running XP and two Linux boxes also." Oooooooooh, your resume! I will listen to you now! You are a hero!!

"Because MS is the only company that charges for development tools. That's brilliant. You are a tool." Hmmm... lets see here... I have a company that provides better programming API's with free developer tools. I have another company that provides expensive programming tools for an *** backwards API. I'll take being the tool for $500, please.

MAC ZEALOTS ... MACUSER FORUMS DON'T EXCITE US. OUR D1CKS GO ALL FLACCID, SO WE HAVE TO GO TO WININFORMANT TO BASH AND GET OFF. THEN WE CAN CIRCLE-JERK.

"I'm currently running Tiger btw on my Mac. I have a 3.6 ghz P4 running XP and two Linux boxes also." Yeah, well I have Tiger running on my dual 2Ghz G5. I also have various Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 machines running Win2000 Pro, XP Pro, XP MCE, XP Pro x64, Server 2003, Server 2003 x64, Longhorn Dev Preview, and 4 Linux boxes using different distros. I have an iPod, two Pocket PCs, a WinMob SmartPhone, a Powerbook, and a Zaurus. I have a much bigger E-D1CK than you.

APPLE ... WE SUCK $130 FROM OUR CUSTOMERS FOR EACH MINOR UPGRADE. BUT THEY LOVE US FOR IT!

"I'm currently running Tiger btw on my Mac. I have a 3.6 ghz P4 running XP and two Linux boxes also." Yeah, well I have Tiger running on my dual 2Ghz G5. I also have various Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 machines running Win2000 Pro, XP Pro, XP MCE, XP Pro x64, Server 2003, Server 2003 x64, Longhorn Dev Preview, and 4 Linux boxes using different distros. I have an iPod, two Pocket PCs, a WinMob SmartPhone, a Powerbook, and a Zaurus. I have a much bigger E-D1CK than you.

"I'm currently running Tiger btw on my Mac. I have a 3.6 ghz P4 running XP and two Linux boxes also." Yeah, well I have Tiger running on my dual 2Ghz G5. I also have various Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 machines running Win2000 Pro, XP Pro, XP MCE, XP Pro x64, Server 2003, Server 2003 x64, Longhorn Dev Preview, and 4 Linux boxes using different distros. I have an iPod, two Pocket PCs, a WinMob SmartPhone, a Powerbook, and a Zaurus. I have a much bigger E-D1CK than you.

OS choice for the majority of users (read windows users) is about 2 things. 1. What do I know? A: Windows, I learnt it at work. It's compatible. 2. What do I need? A: A. Computer. They don't care about the rest. Comprende? And the reason it's chosen for work? 1. Back-end tie-in. All microsoft products are intergrated, Open source and the occasional (very occasional) mac solutions are not. 2. Support. For a nominal fee (considering it's usefulness) microsoft SUPPORTS your system. 3. Simplicity. Time is money. 4. Future Compatibility. Yes, this is an endless cycle, but also an important one. 5. Hardware Price.. Lesee.. $599 for a full, upgradable PC inc windows, screen, keyboard, mouse, everything, all supported by one manufacturer, or $599 for a solid box with limited networking capabilities, no screen, no keyboard or mouse, and a OS that you have to RETRAIN PEOPLE TO USE. Hmm.. Which is more cost effective? Anyway, for os enthusiasts like you guys, as one guy said, theres nothing like competition to keep MS busy. Thank god for Mac pushing windows into longhorn. Where would we windows users be otherwise?

Frankly, OS choice for the majority of users (read windows users) is about 2 things. 1. What do I know? A: Windows, I learnt it at work. It's compatible. 2. What do I need? A: A. Computer. They don't care about the rest. Comprende? And the reason it's chosen for work? 1. Back-end tie-in. All microsoft products are intergrated, Open source and the occasional (very occasional) mac solutions are not. 2. Support. For a nominal fee (considering it's usefulness) microsoft SUPPORTS your system. 3. Simplicity. Time is money. 4. Future Compatibility. Yes, this is an endless cycle, but also an important one. 5. Hardware Price.. Lesee.. $599 for a full, upgradable PC inc windows, screen, keyboard, mouse, everything, all supported by one manufacturer, or $599 for a solid box with limited networking capabilities, no screen, no keyboard or mouse, and a OS that you have to RETRAIN PEOPLE TO USE. Hmm.. Which is more cost effective? Anyway, for os enthusiasts like you guys, as one guy said, theres nothing like competition to keep MS busy. Thank god for Mac pushing windows into longhorn. Where would we windows users be otherwise?

"Free dev tools with your yearly $130 OS upgrade. Nice. Apple doesn't milk their customers. NOOOOOOO." Yearly? It's almost been 2 years since the last upgrade. I know I felt milked though when I went to the store to pick up my boxed copy of the Mac OS 10.1 upgrade. Boy, spending $130 on that... Oh wait. Thats right, I didn't. Apple gave out boxed copies for free as an upgrade. Let's see here, OS X was free with my machine... 10.1 was free. 10.2 came with my machine. 10.3 was $130... I'm trying to feel like I'm being milked. I'm really trying.

"10.1 was free." Cuz you showed up on the one day Apple gave it away free? Hero.

"Let's see here, OS X was free with my machine... 10.1 was free. 10.2 came with my machine. 10.3 was $130..." So you bought a new machine to get 10.2. Yeah, that wasn't built into the machine. Tool. Umm... where's the cost for 10.4?

MAC USERS ... WE WON! I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE WON. BUT WE SURE WON BY GOING TO THAT WINDOWS SITE AND BASHING EVERYONE!

"So you bought a new machine to get 10.2. Yeah, that wasn't built into the machine. Tool. Umm... where's the cost for 10.4?" Yeah, it's kinda the standard upgrade cycle. Between 10.0 and 10.2 two years had passed. I moved from a 400 mhz box to a 1.25 ghz laptop. I have a developer account. We get Tiger for free. Of course, I'll still be buying the retail copy Friday just so I can have a licensed copy for the girlfriends iBook.

YOU ARE ALL SINGLE NERDS WHO SIT AT YOUR COMPUTERS ALL DAY AND WANK OVER YOUR NEW ICONS. SO BLOODY WHAT IF YOU THINK ONE IS BETTER THAN THE OTHER. GET A WIFE OR A DIFFERENT HOBBY. I USE WIN XP BECAUSE IT RUNS MY APPS. IT HASN'T CRASHED AND I KNOW WHERE I STORE MY STUFF. I WOULD LOVE TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD A NEW MAC TO TRY OUT BUT IT CAN'T BE INSTALLED ON A CENTRINO SO IT'S PRETTY POINTLESS ARGUING WHICH IS BETTER. RIGHT I'M BACK TO WORK NOW. GOOD LUCK IN FINDING A GIRLFRIEND.

Ah-hem. Aside from the Windows and Mac crowd bashing each other, can I point out that the longer that Longhorn waits around for a nice UI, the more and more Linux native clients will be available, running and installed out there. The only two money-making Microsoft franchises are Windows (which is now waiting a *long* time for the next revenue hit - sorry, release) and Office. Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but arent over 50% of office users using previous versions, because there's no new core features in office that compel them to upgrade ? Arent more than 30% of office users on 97 ? Ouch. So a switch over to a competing office suite is on the cards ? Whilst I'd be the first to agree that a company with trillions in the bank is in now way in any trouble, what this (purile and infantile at times) discussion does prove is that Microsoft no longer (if they ever did) innovate. Google own search, Skype own VoiP, iPod own portable music, Mac is leading on OS design, and dont even get me started on the Collaboration/messaging stuff that Microsoft is pushing out the door. Sony own the console market (and dont have to subsidise each console to the tune of hundreds of bucks, etc), blackberry own portable messaging, and Nokia/Erikkson/Sony own handsets. If I were running Microsoft right now, I'd accuse senior management of sleepwalking. Just to add more petrol to the fire. If Microsoft are still innovating - why spend the next 15 months advertising Windows XP. A product I already have. A unreliable, slow, bloated, POS that requires at least two add-ins to keep it secure (ad-aware, blackice, for instance). Microsoft have to stop being hated in the marketplace, innovate and attempt to lead again, without being viewed as the geeks enemy. Something that google finds effortless, and clearly Mac (whist suing messageboards and pulling publishers books is not good) stll come over as at least being honest enough to invite to your home. Fair point ? I fully expect the toddlers (see above, ad nausem) to flame me over this heretical comment. But can anyone actually argue constructively that any of this is wrong ? (No. Not going to put my name in *this* forum, thank you very much)

This is for that dutch guy in one of the previous posts who wanted to comment on my website, but probably didn't take the time to look around: http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/?p=18#comments

I'm a bit new to computing, but I've noticed that the people who use Windows don't like the people who use Macs (because they are smug) and the people who use Macs don't like the people who use Windows (because they are smug). And the people who use Windows don't like the people who use Linux (because they are smug) and the people who use Linux don't like the people who use Windows (because they are smug). I hope this phenomenon doesn't diminish before I get the chance to study it fully. The only people who *do* seem to get along reasonably well are the people who use Macs and the people who use Linux. And their computers don't usually even use the same processors! Fascinating...

These Mac fanatics should be shot. If I wanted desktop search on Windows, right now (before Tiger ships), I could go download the MSN desktop search, it works great and it's free. Why do Apple fanatics insist Longhorn will need a 3Ghz processor? Paul Thurrot has already reported Longhorn "Will run fine on a 1Ghz CPU with 256mb of ram" .. that's what - a 5 year old PC now? Why do Mac fanatics insist that Windows users replace their PCs each year? I've had this PC since ate 2002 (2.8Ghz, 512 ram) and it's running perfectly still. I merely added more ram to it and updated the graphics card earlier on this year. Oh, I'll tell you why OS X is based on UNIX.. because the kernel is OS 9 was rubbish.

It is impressive to see how MS fans lack argument and lack neurons

fools! you sucks! ---------------------------------------- longhorn is a great systeme, and we hope that computers from the next generation will run it smoothly... with a 3 GHZ processor, and a big video card... M$ had never created something new... they always copy other's ideas... i use 3 mac and 2 pc at home, my mac are oldies 400 Mhz and jaguar (macosX 10.3) runs smoothly on it, but i can say the same thing from my PC... XP code is bull of ****... at every update you need a greater computer... not the sema e for mac.. better os at evrey update... no need to change your computer...

My wife had used nothing more than Wintel machines starting back in the 8086 days. She switched to the Mac (like thousands of others with the exact same story) when she saw me work on my shiny new Mac after I switched from XP last year. I am dying to make many points to this thread, but I will cut it down to the essence. Any more will spark more argument, though I would be more on topic. The essence of my experience. 1988 I purchased an Amiga (followed by two others over the years) and computing was fun. 1998 I switch to Windows (95, then ME, then NT 4, then XP) and computing was no longer fun, though I believed that things would get better if only I upgraded again, and again. Software and hardware purchases. Only frustration and unfulfilled promises. 2004 I purchased a Mac. Computing was fun again. I am so looking forward to Automator on Tiger as I miss AREXX. Core Image and Video will be great too as I am into graphics (yeah, like you lot can't spot that).

hello Girls i'm a ******* mac user and in two days i will use longhorn on my computer bye bye! see you next year

today there is only one A380 in the sky, and thousand 747. today there is only 3% of mac user in the world, and almost 95% of windows user. but in five years? think it!

I use both Windows and Mac OS on a regular basis, and I am, quite frankly, turned off by all this favoritism on both sides. I own a fairly powerful Windows PC (3.2 GHz P4, 200 GB HD, 1 GB RAM), which should run Longhorn just fine, if this article's information is any indication. I'm also going to be buying Tiger for my Mac the day it's released. Knowing the suggested minimum for Longhorn was useful, but I didn't find much of the other stuff here useful. It's truly a bad sign when the comments take up most of the page space and there's an awful lot of 1/5 ratings.

"APPLE ... WE SUCK $130 FROM OUR CUSTOMERS FOR EACH MINOR UPGRADE. BUT THEY LOVE US FOR IT!" XP PRO is £279 in the UK. XP PRO was only a minor update from Windows 2000, which in turn was only a minor update from Windows NT. What new features did it come with? XP got a cheesy interface but it was still just NT5.1 under neath. 2000 added USB and Bluetooth but was still just NT5.0 underneath - the interface was almost identical to NT 4 or even Win98 except for cheesy animation in the menus that most people turn off and moving control panel icons around. £279 an update for minor changes every 3-5 years doesn't sound like a good deal to me. It's only mitigated by the fact most users usually change the computer at about the same time to be able to run the new OS so get the new OS 'free'. £89 for a MacOSX release every 18 months to 2 years by comparison, with often quite major new functionality, seems a much better deal to me but if you'd rather stick to a Windows release schedule for new stuff, just skip every other OS release or pick it up at the same time as upgrading computers. Your choice. It doesn't take much thought to work out £89 every 4 years for alternating OSX releases is cheaper than £279 every 4 years for every Windows release.

I'm buying 5 licenses of OS X 10.4, at a cost of roughly $24 each (total $119). I really can't see why anyone would spend $130 for a single copy. ;)

"1. What do I know? A: Windows, I learnt it at work. It's compatible." Compatible with what? Answer: other windows computers. It's such a lame argument.

I love mac fans :) Put window$ in trash

I am a school student, At school we use those other computers, i think they are called mac's. With mac's i don't like the idea of having your main bar at the to, that is annoying, you can not see what items you have open except if there minimised in the dock. MS: It has been 10 months since 4074, well... not much has changed. Remember, this is a winhec release designed for developers, this build was released because it was a stable build. Also as stated Longhorn isn't due until Dec 2006, lets hope they pull there finger out and we will see what they have by then

As much as I love Mac, I wish Microsoft would come up with some nifty ideas, that Apple could copy. Competition is good for the end user. It is just that I haven't read/seen anything so far that Apple could copy off Longhorn. Did I miss anything?

Look, as far as I see it each platform has its own advantages in the details. the MS platform tends to be better thought out for a corporate environment because there are more technologies built in intended for that kind of use. IE, Outlook, Word, Excel PowerPoint (see the pattern) are all really good on windows. Apple has made really great improvements to OS X in the last two versions. 10.3 was really the first OS X that I would be comfortable deploying as a widespread platform. Tiger (10.4) builds upon this and has some good integration features that make it play nice with the dominant enterprise infratructure, windows. In the consumer environment OS X has some really good stuff. The UI is the best on the market - you have to use it to really appreciate it - the devil is in the details. When you buy a Mac (including the Mini) you get some great software to manage and create media based projects. The iLife05 package can be purchased seperately for upgraders and in my opinion is well worth the $80 Apple charge for it if you have a use for it (digital camera and camcorder users apply here) iTunes jukebox is a free download and is included in the OS. I actually purchased this software when it was called SoundJam before the buyout. It is the best Juke/encoder and it is the search routines and smart playlist technology in iTunes that have been adapted to make Spotlight and Smart folders in 10.4. Where the magic happens is the indexing routines which are lightening fast. The software update routines on OS X are alot nicer than XP and general maintenance is just easier. Currently there are no (maybe one trojan) malware, viruses, spyware, etc on OS X compared to over 100,000 on Windows (there were 60 on OS 9) I use both platforms. I bought a PC laptop for the kids to do their homework on (the schools here use PC's) and I use them at work as well but I will contine to prefer the Mac until I see an overwhelming reason to enjoy using a PC. I dont think that Longhorn is going to give me that based on what I have seen and read. By the way, the kids still use my Mac to do their homework because they say that it is easier and takes less time.

Do you remember Steve Jobs' presentation when Panther came out? "Redmond start your photocopiers" and "Presenting Longhorn" posters showing the Mac OS X 10.3 CD. Screen behind Jobs shows a panther prowling. "...and what have our competitors over at Redmond been up to?" The panther fades to a Longhorn cow chewing the cud... That was over a year ago. Ouch. ;-)

Being the network manager, security specialist and all around IT guru at a gold certified Microsoft developer firm, also running an ISP server farm division of about 300+ Windows based servers for over 10 years now, I often wonder how the heck Microsoft keeps hold of such a large marketshare. Why do Windows lover keep on loving Windows, that I'll never know... I am so glad Microsoft products are such crap-****, it keeps me, and will keep me busy and employed for years to come. Bring on the big bucks! Thank you Microsoft !!! But at home, where I'm the only decision maker, I use OSX. Enough said.

I couldn't be bothered reading the whole page of comments. But anyway, if it hasn't been said already, you can search for Applications to launch in Mac OS X Tiger. Simply press CMD+SPACE to activate spotlight, then type the name of the application. Key down to the correct entry, and press enter to launch. Nothing special about this feature in longhorn. Also KDE can autocomplete program names too. Press alt-f2 and start typing, it'll autocomplete the program name like a web browser completes a url. Damn MS are great, aren't they?

'see i'm calm. 'see i won't argue with anyone ya i sleep well at night. what i like most? the silent satisfaction i got each and everyday running my computer. the kinda computer i own? no need to answer, you can guess by yourselves!... la plus belle satisfaction qu'on a devant un mac est celle que l'on savoure chaque jour devant sa machine en silence, tout simplement.

Do youself a favour, buy a mac and throw Windows into the Recycle Bin

Ce qui est bien dans les comparaison Windows / MAcOS, c'est qu'on est jamais dépaysé d'un site à l'autre. Toujours autant de raleurs, de trolls, ... La critique (Positive ou Négative) est facile, surtout venant la plupart du temps de gens qui sont partisans fanatiques de l'un ou de l'autre. Avant de donner un commentaire de l'un ou de l'autre, j'attendrais d'avoir la version finale de LongHorn pour le comparer à MacOS X 10.4, si tant est que ces 2 OS soit comparable.

If everyone just chilled the **** out something constructive might get said. Regards Microsoft and their advocates - they are touting longhorn now ; it is wrong to do so as the final thing is an unproven quantity. But they do to keep the microsoft masses faithful. Comparison of longhorn to tiger is also wrong - tiger comparison to XP is correct. Tiger is better than XP. As for the cost of upgrading OS X over the last 4 years compared to XP - well arent the incremental OSX upgrades and 3-4 yearly MS upgrades roughly the same amount? I would say that apple has the better OS currently, regardless of applications available, and that MS fans should take it on the chin that XP is not as advanced as panther or tiger. All parties should wait for longhorn to be released before comparisons to whichever iteration of OSX be made (10.5 will probably be ready when longhorn debuts). Then a complete point to point comparison and overall assessment can be made.

"10.5 will probably be ready when longhorn debuts" Apple has been on an annual upgrade cycle which would suggest an April 2006 date for 10.5 Microsoft were aiming for December 2006 for Longhorn without several key features, including the much vaunted WinFS. Recent comments by Gates have suggested that it will be pushed back to spring 2007... still without WinFS and that it might actually come out piecemeal, as upgrades to XP. So, if Apple keeps up it's current rate of OS improvement it is entirely possible that not only Mac OS X 10.5 but OS 10.6 will be out before Longhorn. WinFS as a component will have to be hurried along to beat Mac OS X 10.7.

I'm a Mac user who uses Windows XP at work. It has some nice features that enable pretty darn good productivity. It really hasn't "crashed" although it gets really sluggish sometimes, requiring a reboot. Of course we have a huge IT department that keeps all these systems up-to-the-minute updated, so of course they run reasonably well. My wife's family has a WinXP PC at home. It's a complete disaster. I got really tired of being tech support for them all the time, with it crashing, viruses, spyware, pop-up ads (even when IE wasn't running...ah, but it's always running... you just try and delete that POS... it reincarnates) etc., so we bought them a Mac. After the inital learning curve, no more tech support calls. No viruses, no spyware, no pop-up ads, no weird dll hell, no problems... Now they call me to learn how to do new things, add new programs; "I want to buy an iPod now". Great. So I'm still doing support, but at least it's to teach new concepts instead of to fix problems. I've read many posts here. A sad majority of them are uneducated potty-mouths. Truly sad. The point is, the article was written to take a look at where Longhorn currently is, and it was compared to MacOS X. So, okay. MacOS X is clearly a great OS. Linux is a great OS. And, in my opinion, Windows is an ok OS. I think it's pretty clear that Windows has the largest market share, and the largest share of applications. That's nice. But since the comparison of OSes was drawn, that's what we're here to compare. In this sense, MacOS X (the OS) is clearly superior to Windows. So is Linux. I'm not saying Windows is crappy - on the contrary, XP is the best work I've ever seen out of Redmond. It's just that Linux and MacOS are more advanced at almost every level. The history of how we got here is irrelevant (for this discussion). Currently the technological winners are Linux and MacOS X. I also maintain that "Tiger" is the comparitive OS to the unfinished "Longhorn". By the time "Longhorn" ships, Apple will be sending 10.5 out the door, and possibly even working on 10.6. Apple is so far ahead of MS again it's almost pointless to have this discussion. Honestly, I fear Apple's biggest future competition is going to be Linux, not MS. Linux has almost everything under the hood that MacOS X has, almost. And when Linux finally matures to be mass-market desktop ready (easy for joe-average-consumer) I think there'll be a shake up in the industry. Yea, Longhorn is looking like a train wreck from a technical point of view. You can bet the MS marketing machine will excel at covering up all the hideousness.

This will make an interesting paper sometime on how people relieved frustration in the late 20th, early 21st century by venting on public forums. After all this verbal abuse I will buy the first operating system that is soft and nice like a bunny and doesn't try to offend anyone.

As a Mac user I donb't really like Windows UI but I nonetheless think that a good Longhorn would be a good thing for both sides : emulation is always good. Alas, it seems from what I peeked here and there that Windows developement teams are struggling with the now critical complexity of the Win architecture to a point where they are seriously lacking in adding innovating features and are merely patching the beast to avoid to have it lagging too much behind its competitors. If Windows had not such an insane marketshare, it would crumble... I sincerely hope Longhorn innovations will become much smoother and numerous in the coming months...

As a Mac user, I have tried the Mac Tiger OS. It is not all that it is cracked up to be. In fact it is pretty miserable in comparison to what I had heard. Perhaps Longhorn will still evolve into something that will give me a great OS. Many of us Mac users are a bit dissappointed with our lot at the moment. Our only consolation is that Microsoft is having some delays with their business - but that is small consolation really if it delays our switch to something better.

"Paul, when you speak with the "folks from Dell", can you ask them why they haven't addressed the design flaw that affects every Inspiron 5150 they made and causes the motherboard to break after 6-14 months of use?" Chinese Capacitors. Reportedly the Chinese had spies in Japan looking for info on capacitor electrolyte formulas. The Japs put out a honeypot with a bad formula, and the Chinese took it and made capacitors with it. Those caps landed on Chinese made motherboards that were for Dell. The electrolytic capacitors fail, your computer fails.

I think it's interesting that so many people equate quality with success. Sure, Tiger may be a FAR superior product to Longhorn. You think the general public will care? HA! The public have made McDonalds the largets, most successful restaurant chain NOT on the quality of the food, but on price and convienince. Sure - perfection is a laudable goal. But in the marketplace, "good enough and cheap" will beat "perfect and expensive" EVERYDAY! I'm sure Microsoft's goal is to make 10% more than the cost of tech support and lawsuits generated by Longhorn. Digital_dave_ia@yahoo.com

Me too. Longhorn build 5048 is better than this crappy Mac I am using at the moment LOL

I would make the switch from my lousy Mac to Windows in a heartbeat if Longhorn was available with the predicted features too.

Macs running on intel? I guess the alcohol level at that lunch was kind of high.

"Many of us Mac users are a bit dissappointed with our lot at the moment." "Me too. Longhorn build 5048 is better than this crappy Mac I am using at the moment LOL" "I would make the switch from my lousy Mac to Windows in a heartbeat if Longhorn was available with the predicted features too." It's the detail in these comments, that only comes from years of use of an OS, that marks them out as genuine constructive comment rather than lame MS Fanboyz masquerading as Mac users to comment on an OS they haven't the intelligence or confidence to try. Seriously though, it would take a really low opinion of the intelligence of Windows users to believe that they could be comforted by such a thinly disguised ruse. Now how did these guys come to that conclusion?

"Apple has been on an annual upgrade cycle which would suggest an April 2006 date for 10.5 Microsoft were aiming for December 2006 for Longhorn without several key features, including the much vaunted WinFS. Recent comments by Gates have suggested that it will be pushed back to spring 2007... still without WinFS and that it might actually come out piecemeal, as upgrades to XP. So, if Apple keeps up it's current rate of OS improvement it is entirely possible that not only Mac OS X 10.5 but OS 10.6 will be out before Longhorn. WinFS as a component will have to be hurried along to beat Mac OS X 10.7." Now THAT is sad!

"Apple idiots, go get a life." The neat thing is: Apple "idiots" usually have a life because they need not waste it on low level machine configurations. We manage to be quite a productive lot and still have cute girlfriends : )

To any Apple Trolls and Zealots... Give Paul and M$ a break. Yes, I am a Mac evangelist also, but without getting too religious, we don't want to reap what we sow. Do you remember Copland? How many years were wasted on that OS before Apple realized they were digging themselves a hole. Apple has had the advantage in getting Next out of the box and building upon it. It is not easy to build a new OS from the ground up. If one is too smug one may be in for an unexpected surprise when Longhorn comes out and then trying to dig out of the 3% market share will be difficult. Apple posters. Look at this realistically. Don't be so juvenile in ones post. I accomplishes nothing and is ingratiating. Actual apple user since Mac 512

please fix longhorn if all these windows losers(no offence) move to the mac platform i will lose my amazing productivity advantage keep the mac installed user base at a nice 10-15% so remember all; macs are too expensive, you cant upgrade them, they are too slow and u can only get 2 software titles for em

Finally, What is Longhorn? A phantom? A Utopia?

I can't wait for Longhorn! I haven't been this excited since Microsoft released the BEST OS EVER, the EXCITING and AMZAING WINDOWS ME! Bring it on! Yipeeeee!

"apple's technologies are not tailored to deliver the scale MS targets." OMG...that is the most colossally stupid statement I've read on this board. Have you visited www.apple.com? One of the most visited websites in the world, and it runs on Apple technology. Have you visited the iTunes Music store? Again, one of the world's most successful e-commerce sites...all run on Apple technology. There's this company in Cupertino you should check out before you make such a colossally asinine statement. Talk about trolls...

By the way, the kids still use my Mac to do their homework because they say that it is easier and takes less time. Still laughing.... Must have stupid kids...

Well, we cannot complain about Longhorn yet, it's still a beta... but... with Ms i've the feeling of being a betatester since windows NT4.

Re "In the end OSX will be the inferior product. Just like quick time is. I am proud to say that as an image owner at my work (a fortune 50 company) I am responsible for removing and blocking access to Quicktime on almost 100,000 PCs. Somtimes (rarely) I love my job." Good thing you don't work for my company, because I'd fire you in a heartbeat. You obviously let your emotions overcome good sense. Media players are what they are, but we have all of them installed. However, the importance of QuickTime has just dramatically risen with its implementation of h.264. I'm sure you don't know what that is. But as a broadcaster I can tell you that it is being adopted worldwide, and Apple's new QuickTime is fast becoming the standard for high-bandwidth media flow. Besides bias, ignorance, and lack of basic writing ability, you display bad grammer, spelling, and attitude. You're fired!

I am a huge Apple fan and even I am ashamed of the Apple fanatics posting here. Get a life! How many posts have you made today alone? Is this really the most important thing in your life right now? Do you really think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are like superhero and supervillain? Have you honestly ever spent any time with the opposite sex? In person I mean.

The thing you have to admire about PC users is their incredible patience. DOS - barely functional, Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say "just wait for Windows" Windows 3.1 - buggy and barely functional, Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say "just wait for '95" Windows '95 - bug ridden, virus playground, Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say "just wait for '98" Windows '98 - bug ridden, virus playground, round about here MS break their own .doc format in order to also break other company's software, Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say "just wait for SE" Windows '98 SE - a semblance of stability, still a virus playground, Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say "just wait for ME" Windows ME - did anything change? Still an unstable, virus playground, Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say "Just wait for XP" Windows XP - Teletubby styling, virus playground, irritating hardware tied activation; slightly more stable than ME, though less than NT or 2000 (Microsoft's OWN figures on research in France on 1 million net booting corporate PCs - NT crashes 3% of sessions, 2000 4% and XP 12%), Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say: "Just wait for SP1" XP SP1 - MS launch "Trusted Computing" because it's products clearly aren't, did anything change? Still an unstable, virus playground , privacy invasive EULA allowing them to install updates without further permission, Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say "just wait for SP2" XP SP2 - Breaks 50% of apps (MS's OWN figures), second rate firewall, privacy invasive EULA kicks in with the update being installed in April on and XP PC with Auto-Update not turned off, Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say MS "Just wait for Longhorn" Clearly MS knows that when you have a monopoly there's much more money in released bad software than good. You Mac users see the pattern here and opt to avoid it... but they, PC users, don't. MS could hire clowns to hit them over the head at their desks and they'd still sit there dutifully upgrading it, year after year. So, now you Apple Mac users understand the reason they so quickly descend to vulgarity (see above posts), just lay off them, they've had a hard time!

"MS could hire clowns to hit them over the head at their desks and they'd still sit there dutifully upgrading it, year after year." Now that is FUNNY!

Some reps will be around in a few days to check if your ******* is Microsoft compliant. Though, from your degree of support for uncle Bill & co, I'd say they don't really need to check, it's pretty obvious already.

"MAC USERS ... WE WON! I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE WON. BUT WE SURE WON BY GOING TO THAT WINDOWS SITE AND BASHING EVERYONE!" That's FUNNY too! At last, a sense of humour. :-)

MAC USERS ... WE WON! I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE WON. BUT WE SURE WON BY GOING TO THAT WINDOWS SITE AND BASHING EVERYONE!

Yep, and for some reason they are afraid to try an other OS because they would have to learn everything from scratch. I switched (although I use to despise Mac). They have had so much patience dealing with the bugs on the M$ platforms that the time spent to become an experienced user of a different platform would be a drop of water in their ocean of patience. It doesn’t mean they have to switch to Mac, there are other OSs that work just fine. This would force M$ to stop taking their customers for a bunch of lobotomized clowns. Have some RESPECT for yourself, YOU DESERVE better!!

"Clearly MS knows that when you have a monopoly there's much more money in releasing bad software than good" Now that is an ugly truth that everyone should remember. Without competition any monopoly no longer needs keep it's customers' interests paramount. Just look at IE - it's getting upgraded because it is losing market share to Firefox. Even if you don't want to use it you have to thank the Mozilla developers for forcing browser improvements on Microsoft. A little more market share for Apple would benefit everyone. Likely prices would be forced down and R&D forced up... just look at the mp3 player war that's raging now. Look at the quality improvements in those products over just a couple of years. Anyone who wants the platform war to be over and won by one company or another ought to be asked to enjoy a spell in North Korea or Zimbabwe to learn what one party government does for the people.

damn these post are pretty gay. open your doors and take a step outside.. welcome to the real world.

teh geh

Quote: Windows XP - Teletubby styling, virus playground, irritating hardware tied activation; slightly more stable than ME, though less than NT or 2000 (Microsoft's OWN figures on research in France on 1 million net booting corporate PCs - NT crashes 3% of sessions, 2000 4% and XP 12%), Can't tell what a file is without having it spelled out for it in the name: MS say: "Just wait for SP1" Poor reasoning. First of all, FRANCE? But, lets take a look at what we are comparing. NT is 99.9% server systems, been running for years, on stable hardware, with stable software installations. 2000 is also mainly server as well, with stable hardware/software configs, and trained admins. XP is desktop only, therefore, infinite possibilities exist for different software/hardware configs, with very varying user experience levels. Not a fair comparison. And the same goes for the Mac vs Windows argument, too. All stable hardware, made by them, and integrated and tested by them.

The new Star Wars movie is going to be better than the Lord of the Rings IMO.

I don't understand how a company as big and as rich as Microsoft, which makes such boring, poorly-performing, disfunctional and totally insecure products and never innovates a thing can possibly have 90% marketshare. Somebody out there must really hate computers to put this kind of company in the lead.

Yeah, I really look forward to the new starwars. I wonder if the episodes VII to IX are going to be produces!

I gotta say I cannot believe Microsoft is putting so much time effort and cash into recreating the wheel. I think the benefit of a Unix based Operating system is the years and years of development on these - providing us with flavours of Linux, OS/X and the rest. All very stable and lacking only in supported software. If Microsoft jumped on the unix bandwagon we'd have true synergy between platforms, instead as usual they decide they can do it alone. I think it will backfire and lead to a repeat of the post winME debacle where MS used us all as beta testers. A flavour of Unix that will run NT Apps would have got my vote.

"Poor reasoning. First of all, FRANCE?" I'm afraid the poor reasoning is yours. You've ignored the quote: Microsoft's OWN research on 1 million NET Booting Corporate PCs. This is not a million home computers. It's XP falling over during more than 1 in 10 sessions (12%) after net booting from a perfect OS image & trusted apps! And the reason that they did the research on PCs in French Banks rather than US ones may be because it was a French partner's software that counted the crashes for them or that these figures are hardly something to be proud of! Do you speak French? I guess that's why the story is buried in French IT sites then. http://solutions.journaldunet.com/0409/040915_etude_postedetravail.shtml You'd think US PC sites would have picked up on an important story like this wouldn't you? Well when they, in complicity with Intel, write up empty plastic boxes as PC alternatives to the Mac mini perhaps not! http://news.com.com/Intel+shows+off+Mac+Mini-like+concept+PC/2100-1041_3-5596629.html It takes a Fanboy to jump to the defence of the indefensible.

Microsoft is in long term trouble and not just because Longhorn is years late. Someone explain to me why a company that has the largest Army of programmers in the world can't make it's software secure and delays its new OS by YEARs. Panther currently spanks XP hard and Tiger is indeed 5 years ahead. Deal with it. I gladly pay for each new version of OS X due to new features and because each version is faster on the same hardware! Tiger is faster on a G4 and is 50% faster on a G5 due to being recompiled for that processor. Hah! The other reason MIcrosoft is in trouble is corporate sales. Thats where the real money is and as a Senior Systems Architect for a very large well know corporation. I can tell you that in Corporate America Microsoft is losing out big time to Unix/Linux. Both the Bank I work for and the very large Oil company I left about a year ago have banned Microsoft products in many areas because of lack of security, poor stabilty and scalability, and ridiculous support contracts. Just good enough isn't good enough anymore. Yes Exchange and Outlook still rule the roost as does Office but Microsoft has to practicaly give them away now and Exchange is still an unstable piece of junk when deployed to many thousands of geographically distant users. It also requires a small army of admins to support. All of the above is why Microsoft is reduced to disinformation campiagns against Linux and open-source software instead of innovating. The only innovatons from them recently have been outsourcing thousands of jobs to India. Nice work Microsoft.

Question: Apple have created a very nice looking front end for BSD, why is it taking the community so long to create a window manager that competes with this as it can be done.. For me, linux is let down by poor UI and if only a decent one was developed we could say goodbye to Windows!

You have to say that the most inane and rude comments above are vicious attacks on Mac users. I guess the reason for this hiatus is that MS have chosen to launch a mjor advertising campaign for XP and show Loghorn just as Apple releases Tiger...so everyone is getting worked up. What everyone here should know however is that most of the avid Mac proponents that are posting -including me- are ex-Windows users and most all have practical experience of it. Anyone using both systems knows the despair at having to do anything on XP, clunky and unfriendly as it is it simply doesn't compare. And what is worse is that MS are creating more of the same with Longhorn! I know a lot of jobs (no pun) would disappear if servicing of XP systems disappeared - but common guys, just give the Tiger a go and make up your own minds!

"You have to say that the most inane and rude comments above are vicious attacks on Mac users." You'd be that grumpy too if you used Windows all day and it was your OWN choice! Can you imagine what else they do you themselves? Ugh...

Re:"Still laughing.... Must have stupid kids..." Well there's an intelligent and well thought out response to the argument. Grow up and stop being a troll baiting, Microsoft loving, sheep. Your comment is the sort of blinkered philistine pig ignorance I have come to expect from simple minded idiots who follow the masses because they think that there is safety in numbers and miss out on life's real experiences because they are too scared or introvert. You may consider leaving your parents house once in a while. I'm sure looking at the same bedroom walls every hour of the day is clouding your judgement.

Wow.. for once in their existence Apple is SHREWD. Launching Tiger at the end of the WinHEC (LH Preview) Conference.. Here's the crap we'll be marketing in a year and a half, then on the 29th, Apple's Tiger software is hitting retail stores.. wow brilliant move Apple Gates and Co. are thanking their stars Apple has not released a version for x86 yet...

SHUT UUUUUUPPPPP!!!! SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!!! SHUT UP!!!! SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!! SHHHUUUUTTT UUUUUPPPPP!

Yea, Apple had better be seriously considering releasing *some* version of OS X for Intel based cpu's... if Linux/BSD gets a lickable window manager like OS X has and perhaps become almost as easy to use, they'll have missed that boat as well.

As long as Apple are a "hardware company" they will not licence their OS or release a version that other hardware manufacturers can use. They were burnt badly the last time and Steve will not go there again. Its the same for PDA's. Apple were badly burnt by being first to market with the Newton and it was Steve'd. There have been internal PDA projects at Apple since then but they have all been shelved because of the twice bitten strategy.

To the guy who said that metadata searching in Longhorn does not require WinFS. This is from MS Developer site: Revolutionary File Storage System Lets Users Search and Manage Files Based on Content One of the monumental problems organizations face today is aggregating information that's stored in disparate formats. Knowledge workers have long wanted to be able to search for content independent of format. WinFS allows the user to perform searches based on the metadata of the stored item, regardless of what type of file it is or which application created it. This article covers the basic architecture of WinFS and explains how to use the WinFS managed API. By Richard Grimes. http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/default.aspx?pull=/msdnmag/issues/04/01/WinFS/default.aspx Read it and then tell us if you are still sure of that. With Spotlight out on Friday, and BeOS out for years, one wonders if "revolutionary" is quite the right adjective to describe WinFS. By the time mid 2007 comes around I suspect the word most people will be reaching for won't even be "late" but "last".

"SHUT UUUUUUPPPPP!!!! SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!!! SHUT UP!!!! SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!! SHHHUUUUTTT UUUUUPPPPP!" An M$ Fanboi in the death throws of denial. ;-)

Microsoft has begun it's death spiral?!?!? Please. MS is here to stay so live with it. Longhorn will debut, people will flock to it and life will go on. Gates is too smart to fumble the ball now. Get real people.

>This one's bizarre, but we heard at lunch today that Apple is unhappy with the PowerPC production at IBM and will be switching to Intel-compatible chips this very year. Yeah, seriously. Interesting that you'd say that. That big of a bombshell would make it out somehow out of Cupertino, and from there it'd be all over the net. However, you're the only one saying that. The only other time I can find "Intel" in relation to chips is on TUAW(http://www.tuaw.com) who's pointing out that you're saying it. This is over 12 sites, through which nothing gets through.

Is OS X light years beyond XP and Longhorn? I just "made the switch" and from what I have seen and used I think so. I have used Windows for over 10 years and I always dismissed Macs as something cute for college dorms and elementary schools. Then my PC broke down (again). I was so ****** off that I tried a Mac at my local Best Buy and walked out with one. It makes things so much easier. A lot of the MS people that reply with the same "little toll apple freaks" don't know what you are missing out on.

Pawl, Apple switching to intel is mere rumor. For a fact, Microsoft switched to PowerPC (xbox 2).

I wanted to come here and make a negative comment about Microsoft earlier, but unfortunately my new Mac wouldnt stop freezing up on me. Now I just cant be bothered. Macfan

http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/?page_id=17&page=1

http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/?page_id=17&page=1

looks like.. walks like.. smells like.. WINDOWS ! 'nuff said..

Mac Rules!

Originally posted by 'anonymous': "Apple idiots, go get a life." Not only do we clever Mac people have a life, we even have time to enjoy it, thanks to our choice of operating system :-) You probably can't even imagine how it is never to install any drivers... never worry about compatability, never worry about viruses, never any spyware, dialers etc... hahaha, you M$ thralls don't even know what life is... so quit talking about it.

"click start, type in the program you want to use... Lets say I type in "no" notepad, and anything else that would qualify under those search criteria automatically appear. If you have a bunch of programs, this is really useful." Well... what's the difference to QuickSilver or LaunchBar on a Mac... ah yes, you don't have to click at all, just use a shortcut (keeps your hands on the keyboard). Ah, and it launches everything, if you want, apps, docs, urls... you name it. If M$'s interface is task oriented, OS X's interface actually goes to the task. Most everything on Windows takes 1-2 steps more. Try it.

There'll be no switch to x86 archicture in Apple's policy. Nobody's looking to the past. Intel and MS cannot stand one bit of SERIOUS competition.

am i the only 1 who thinks that the longhorn user interface ispretty gud? n the new start menu's been desinged pretty well, i know there r a few things that cud be better like the sidebar cud be put back on n they cud use vector images for the icons coz they do look pretty crap wen there big.....but you've gotta think they started again from scratch n its now based on windows server 2003 and they've made it pretty stable, the only real downside about it is the direct sound bug, which is only really bad now n again, i've seen a few beta screenshots n i can say that it's loads better than this version, but i think this is pretty gud for an alpha release

Forget sharing needles... Windows will expose you to THOUSANDS more viruses. Jeez, why not just bang your head against a wall. Oh wait... I hear your monitors do just fine. Carry on, wayward sons!!!

I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO KNOW where Paul gets this information about "OSX on x86 this year" from... Why isn't there more information about it? It's really boring now... This news become popular every second month... I hate it. Only pointless rumors but no useful information. (i would like to see OSX on x86)

"xp was a massive leap forward from previous bug-riddled versions" News from 16th Sept 2004: Microsoft conducted research in France on Windows stability. Installed crash logging software on 1 million corporate PCs. The results: Crashes per 100 sessions: NT 3% 2000 4% XP 12% Read the full article in French here: http://solutions.journaldunet.com/0409/040915_etude_postedetravail.shtml If you can't read French perhaps that's why Microsoft did not conduct the research in the USA. So much for progress.

YES it's like that... only 5% of mac users on earth that makes only 5% of wise people on earth.... and 95 % of windows user which still believe that the next release of microsoft will be better than the previous one. ah ah wake up that's 20 years now they still say the same things over and over and you buy it...... panther was already a really good OS but Tiger My god. Just try it honestly and you won't go back there. and for the one still thinking that mac is only good to make drawings .... ask your son what he thinks about it because you are still 20 years late. that means you will be happy with longhorn whenever it comes out .... enjoy it then .... whenever you will be able to.

Okay, here is what makes this blog unreliable: 1. The acceptance of "Longhorn will run fine on a 1 GHz computer with 256 MB of RAM, according to Microsoft corporate vice president Joe Peterson". Yet in 2004 this same site quoted analysts expecting "minimum requirements to start with a 4GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM" Hmmm... Considering the my Win2K box runs like crap on 256 and is barely passable with 512, I find it hard to believe that Longhorn is going to run like blazes on 256. Now, I suspect what Peterson meant was "yeah, you can run the OS, but nothing else". And that would be expected. After all, VP's are NOT hired for the technical expertise. 2. This bizarre rumor that "we heard at lunch today that Apple is unhappy with the PowerPC production at IBM and will be switching to Intel-compatible chips this very year". Uh, why? The PowerPC runs cooler than an X86 of the same class. This rumor is dumb on several levels. a. Re-engineering for the X86 is non-trivial. b. The X86 is a dead processor line. The PowerPC is a RISC vs. X86 which is CISC. Frankly, Intel has TRIED to get away from it (mostly because it is CISC) but the installed base has prevented it. c. The X86 does not have one bit that makes the PowerPC line very powerful - The Velocity Engine (which has multiple names but it is a processor in a processor). This allows for very fast, very complex processes to occur IN TANDEM with the PowerPC. An X86 can not compete with it. Period. d. Pixar is stuffed to the brim with Macs. Jobs is literally designing to their needs (if you doubt me, go to an Apple store and pick the top of the line G5 with all the toppings - $14K is out of the line for most home budgets). Oh, I'm sure Longhorn will impress some. But, geez, when I see BS I know a) not to step in it and b) not to eat it. Some of you seem to be making full course meals of it.

Longhore is full of hot air at this time. All talk and a no show...I beleive it when I see it and year from now come on...I can promise you the moon too.

"a. Re-engineering for the X86 is non-trivial. b. The X86 is a dead processor line. The PowerPC is a RISC vs. X86 which is CISC." ROTFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's ridiculous. Well, i would like to know what you thougth when G4 was the most advanced PPC processor. G4 was dead as hell. Deader than dead. And now you say x86 is dead. ROTFL You ignorant. Didn't you know that sometimes it takes time to develop something good? G5 story is about luck but before G5 there was G4, the crappiest CPU. Don't be silly! ROTFL

The G4 was crappy? That's why it runs on a couple watts of power and is pretty fast too...

I repeat: I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO KNOW where Paul gets this information about "OSX on x86 this year" from... Why isn't there more information about it? It's really boring now... This news become popular every second month... I hate it. Only pointless rumors but no useful information. (i would like to see OSX on x86)

Well, I don't know about this debate. But I'll tell you one thing. It's put me off Macs for a long, long time. I was considering possibly taking a look at one. But if it's going to turn me into a freaking evangelist who spends all their time posting about how good their freaking box is, screw it.

Some clueless d i p s h i t wrote: "go to an Apple store and pick the top of the line G5 with all the toppings - $14K is out of the line for most home budgets" WTF are you talking about? I went to Apple's website and maxed out a top of the line G5 with every Apple overpriced option, including 4GB of overpriced RAM, Two 400GB Hard Drives, Fiber Channel Card, Gigabit Ethernet Card Upgraded video card, Bluetooth Keyboard/Mouse, Apple Care, etc. My total was 7,450.00. Where on God's Green Earth did you come up with "$14K"? The only way you even come CLOSE to that figure is if you add in TWO 30" monitors. Most "home budgets" can easily handle a 1,299 iMac, or a $799 eMac. Moron.

proper engRish????? It should be "Proper english", so please stop insulting other people

Apple using Intel chips? "This one's bizarre, but we heard at lunch today that Apple is unhappy with the PowerPC production at IBM and will be switching to Intel-compatible chips this very year. Yeah, seriously." --These rumors have been around for years! -It's just not going to happen! And why should it?

I use Windows, OS X, and Linux regularly. It's sad that this has deteriorated into a serious Mac vs. MS fan boy battle. In any case it's too bad that WinFS isn't coming out because I think it could be a revolutionary step for all file systems. It will certainly hurt MS because they keep cutting revolutionary features and are taking a very long time to release longhorn. However, despite predictions from Mac fanboys that Microsoft is going to drop dead any minute now, they are still showing record profits (primarily from office and windows sales, I believe). I do hope they start to lose their marketshare dominance and with all the delays and cutting of features that may certainly happen.

"There'll be no switch to x86 archicture in Apple's policy. Nobody's looking to the past. Intel and MS cannot stand one bit of SERIOUS competition" actully years ago apple was working with intel because intel came to apple frustrated with microsoft and intel ,novell and apple worked on a mac os that could be ported to the intel chip but then apple afraid they would no longer sell any hardware backed out. On another note i have used windows from 95 to Xp and macintosh from system 4 to panther and now that tiger is out i will be buying it. BUt no windows OS i have ever used could even compare to mac on any level. I have had many people who just 5 years ago and even a year ago swore up and down they would never touch a mac didnt want it didnt want to mess with it . Not they are switching because they are tired of windows viruses, windows crashes and all the other windows crap they have to put up with. MAc is so simple so elegent and it just works no doubt about. WIndows has tried for years to catch up with the stability and simplicty of a mac and have yet to do it. I mean when the whole system they have is nothing more then a pirated version of a mac to begin with why would it be as good. I sit back every day and watch people complain about this virus and that virus and they had to install a new virus software updayte and they have to do this and that to keep thier windows safe. And i think man oh man these people are so stupid i mean if they had a mac they would not have to worry about virus and so forth. people often say well mac doesnt support my game or software. Well get a game machine to play games on computers are for other things not games. and i have yet to find something that was made for windows that an equivalant wasnt made for mac.

Microsoft windows only sells more and only beat Apple in 95 because of marketing ploys and because jon scully was pres of Apple i mean what does a soda pop salesman know about selling computers? Nothing it seemed. Look at the bigger picture here Apple has developed this great fast and almost bullet proof OS with tons and tons of features and MS is still trying to get a new OS to work after 4 years and they keep cutting things out because they cant get it to work right. Apple has had the better OS for years and always will market share aside they are the best. MS just had a better Advertising campain and people believe it. Even HP saw the writing on the wall and jumped on the band wagon with apple and the itunes and ipod. Now with the new Quicktime HD software apple is going to be doing more things and in more areas then before. HP has helped apple tremedsly by getting ipod in places that apple was never seen at before or sold at. We have a Macintosh store here in town and i have seen more people coming in to buy Macintosh in the past year then ever before. Windows users come in and say i love my ipod is it true that mac works just as easy and simple. So we sit them down at a computer and let them play and in 5 minutes tops they are playing music videos, looking at pictures, and are in awe and amazed that it is so simple to use. Longhorn may be ok and all but i just cant see that windows is any better then before. XP was supposed to be a great new much needed os and to me its nothing more then win2000 with window dressing. Try a mac before you ditch it go to an apple store or a macintosh store( not best buy or comp usa) im talking a macintosh store that sells only macintosh products and sit down at a mac and try it for yourself. You will be amazed. IF your in the kansas city area come by mac hardware or look us up in the phone book and give us a call.

Maybe an operating system from Google?

I’m so ****** that they got rid of the side bar with that big clock, that I went out and got a Mac! Now I can have lots of big clocks on my Tiger dashboard;-)

Couldn't agree more! I even asked Microsoft to put in a huge clock. Damn it, they even agreed it was a good idea but didn't put it in! It's so hard to tell the time with such a small clock. We don't all have perfect eyesight you know!

My dear old grandad had this big clock on his mantle. Now that sidebar has gone, I just don’t know what to do…

Pete, is that you? My god, how long has it been? You should visit your old grandfather occasionally you know. I was planning to replace the sideclock with a wireless 12" Windows Tablet screen with a huge sidebar. This way I could sync my time with the GMT atomic servers on the net ... make sure I'm on time for all my ladyfriends. BillG, time to bar up your longhorn!

Sidebar gave me a quaint reminder of Big Ben and has lessened my dislike of the Poms. Now that it’s gone I’ worried about world peace!

Barry, Good to catch up again! Sad news about Granddad, I’m hoping not to visit him for another 30 years or so. But at least I had him buried his big mantle clock and a copy of Longhorn Alpha Build 4074. Cheers, your mate Pete

Sidebar was such a great idea. Shelving it would be a travesty.

You didn't bury Longhorn? The last reminents of Sidebar food-for-worms? Lest-we-forget.

My wife thinks the new Longhorn beta is great. I always used to have a few beers at 6 o’clock. But since sidebar’s gone I’ve been sober. Praise to Microsoft!

Personally, I found sidebar to be more of a religious experience. Build 4074 is sitting in pride of place upon my alter of worship. Right next to VB version 1 and Windows 95A. The ceremonial dagger is almost blunt from the consistent spilling of blood droplets from my forearm, which has of course scabbed over after the many years of worship. And no matter how much I offered the shop, they wouldn't take my money for Alpha 4074.

At first, I didn’t feel I could cope with life anymore. But then a friend from rehab put me onto http://www.clocks.com...

I was watching this guy on TV advertising Longhorn. He said “How much? Don’t ask, because you also get this beautiful sidebar clock…” What will Microsoft do for the product launch now?

We will fight in the trenches. We will fight on the streets. We will never surrender. But, we won’t know the time either!

Don't despair! Build 4074 is still OUT THERE! You're trully sane for loving the side bar... there are many more people like you, MANY. Therapy is not the answer, militant action is the only way to reclaim the sidebar. Who's with me???

All synchronousity is lost. To the pique of our forefathers, what could this world be coming to?

You know, the first thing I said when seeing Longhorn was, "Wow! What an enormous c!ock".

Don't Microsoft know that what every man needs is an enormous clock?

Don't know about the rest of you, but a huge clock on my sidebar in Longhorn sent shivers down my spine.

Rather than the removal of the clock, I was hoping for a horn sound as an alarm. Alas, for sidebar ... I knew it well.

Come on boys, enuff of the potty humour.

Not being a person overstating the seriousnous of issues, I'd have to say that the removal of the sidebar SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS

We want clock, we want clock, we want clock, we want clock. Give me a C "C", give me a ...

For me, a clock used to just be “a thing to tell the time”. But, since seeing the original side bar I was in awe. Those sensuous long hands; that purposeful snap of the second hand to its new position; and all sitting atop lovely thick long bar! Who cares about screen real-estate? Sidebar, you are sorely missed!

Tick, tick, tick These posts just make me sick, I’ve lost my clock And I’ve lost the plot Plus I’m really not sure on the wit!

""And how much did you sad little trolls spend on all those releases? $300? $400? More?"" For the several upgrades a mac user has spent $130 on each over the course of five years, you've had to buy several brand new PCs. How much have you PC fans spent, $3,000? $4,000? More? For the world's most advanced operating system, $130 upgrades every 2 years is nothing to cry over.

I’m despondent. I paid $130, and I didn’t even get a big clock!