Longhorn and Tiger

Much has been written about the next operating system coming from Microsoft codenamed Longhorn. This post, a dinner with Microsoft’s Jim Allchin, is interesting. And this article on Longhorn gives more insight. I had a chance to learn a bit about Longhorn and I must admit I was surprised at the similarities to Tiger.

But while the OS bears plenty of similarities to Tiger, Allchin stressed that Microsoft has broken new ground in Longhorn. For example, document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small picture of the file itself. The icon for a Word document, for example, is a tiny iteration of the first page of the file. Folders, too, show glimpses of what’s inside. Such images can be rather small, but they offer a visual cue that aids in the searching process, Allchin said.

Allchin said that Longhorn also goes further than Tiger when it comes to what one can do with search results, saying it offers new ways to organize and view the information. While the look of the OS hasn’t been finalized, the translucent windows and other graphics tricks are expected to find their way into the finished software.

Microsoft clearly has a lot of work to do with Longhorn.

Via.

From my perspective Apple’s OS, Tiger, is far ahead in a number of areas: security, desktop search and organization, network roaming, location switching, and the list goes on. From what has been publicly disclosed about Longhorn, it is another example of Microsoft catching up to Apple.

The first time was 1985.

Microsoft finally shipped Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985, almost two years past the initially promised release date. And not nearly as capable as the operating system that Apple had launched in 1984.

We await Longhorn.