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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:31
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quote:
Exclusive: PDC Attendees to Get Aero Demo Only
Because Microsoft wants to maintain its competitive advantage during the next 2 years while the company preps Windows Longhorn for release, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003 attendees won't get the code for Aero, Longhorn's exciting and innovative GUI. Instead, attendees will receive a special Longhorn build that has the Aero bits removed, and Microsoft executives will provide only a special demonstration preview of Aero during Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates's keynote address. I've now verified these plans with several sources at and close to Microsoft.
"[Until early September] Microsoft wasn't sure whether it would just demo Aero or supply it to PDC attendees," one source told me recently. Microsoft made the decision to demonstrate Aero only because of the long delay between PDC 2003 and Longhorn's final release, which is set for late 2005. If the company released all its UI work now, its OS competitors--such as Apple Computer and various companies and organizations in the Linux camp, all of which have fewer customers and faster release cycles than Microsoft--would be able to clone the Longhorn work before the OS's release. This problem has dogged Microsoft in the past, the most recent example being Apple's Expose technology, which will ship in Mac OS X 10.3 late this year. Microsoft has been demonstrating Expose-like technology for years now, but the technology won't show up in Windows until the Longhorn release at the earliest.
Despite the absence of Aero, the code that PDC 2003 attendees will receive is intriguing. For the past several weeks, Microsoft has forked the Longhorn code to develop a special PDC build that's separate and distinct from the main code fork. This build will include virtually every Longhorn technology except Aero and will feature a new, darker theme that supplants the alpha Longhorn builds' lackluster Plex visual style. Microsoft is struggling to complete this special build in time for the show, which will be held in Los Angeles in late October. I'll provide more information about PDC 2003 and the special Longhorn build as it becomes available. |
What else is new. 
Shame Aero won't be publically available, from the tech demos of the engine behind it it should be incrediblly stunning and dwarf every other UI out there in terms of elegance, functionality, and performance.
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
The only reference is from Paul Thurrott, a notorious anti-Apple troll and owner of the "winsupersite". |
Editor of Windows 2000 magazine, Windows 2003 Magazine, etc. too. And it's not the only reference, it was first demoed at WinHEC 1999.
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Even if what Asher claims is true, and that is unproven, it follows that M$ will have taken six years longer than Apple to incorporate supposedly their own technology into their own products. What better proof of M$ incompetence could there be? |
First off, where do you get 6 years from?
10.3 will be available late 2003 (essentially 2004), while Longhorn will be out in 2005. Are your math skills truly that bad?
Further, MS has a much harder time than Apple does. Apple has full control and EXTREMELY limited hardware compared to what MS has to support properly. Further, Apple has a userbase a miniscule fraction the size of MS'. Combine the two and you can have faster product cycles, and do FAR less testing (which explains the recent F*cked up OS 10.2 patch, the iTunes-upgrade-that-toasts-your-harddrive, etc).
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There's another explanation for the non-inclusion of Aero with these builds - it doesn't yet work properly. |
But the engine powering Aero has been shown to be working almost a year ago. Aero is simply the textures and layout of it.
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mrmitchell
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If Apple can get out a similar or better performing (looking) product just as fast: then more power to them.
Unless it's patented. But couldn't you also claim MS stole ideas from Apple back in the 80s with early Windows? Both sides will make critical innovations and each side will try to mimic the other's critical innovations. Claiming they can't use it is like a car company saying another company can't put in seats because they patented them first.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Asher
Editor of Windows 2000 magazine, Windows 2003 Magazine, etc. too. And it's not the only reference, it was first demoed at WinHEC 1999. |
That's all I could find, since you provided no reference.
quote:
First off, where do you get 6 years from?
10.3 will be available late 2003 (essentially 2004), while Longhorn will be out in 2005. Are your math skills truly that bad? |
Quite easily, Quartz was in a workable state and released to the general public for purchase in early 2000. Longhorn is supposed to be available in the last quarter of 05 and Aero is being withheld until then, if I understood Mr Thurrott's article correctly - however, I've heard early 06.
There are all sorts of haxies that take advantage of it. Expose is not much more than that. It looks nice, but is just an additional use of features X has had since the start.
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Further, MS has a much harder time than Apple does. Apple has full control and EXTREMELY limited hardware compared to what MS has to support properly. |
Awwwww..... sucks to be Bill
quote:
Further, Apple has a userbase a miniscule fraction the size of MS'. |
What does that have to do with it? Some people are still using 8.5.
quote:
Combine the two and you can have faster product cycles, and do FAR less testing (which explains the recent F*cked up OS 10.2 patch, the iTunes-upgrade-that-toasts-your-harddrive, etc). |
The 10.2.8 patch caused a problem with ethernet on a specific model of G4 - hardly a mega problem. It was fixed within a week. I updated and nothing happened to me.
The itunes upgrade would only toast your hard drive if you performed some incredibly ridiculous sequence of operations and key presses.
Compare that with the hundreds of updates needed to fix Windows security problems (and this has little to do with the size of user base, as David Pogue had to embarassingly admit in a recent retraction in the NYT), these are minor hitches that affected a handful of people.
quote:
But the engine powering Aero has been shown to be working almost a year ago. Aero is simply the textures and layout of it. |
I was deliberately poking fun at M$. I don't care whether or not it works since I don't and will never use Windows. I think it sucks that M$ is making you wait for something that other users have enjoyed for over three years now.
What you need to admit is that the evidence that Expose was pinched from MS is extremely thin and that Apple already had this working back in 99 (during the OS X Alpha release), so it's a stretch to accuse them of nicking it without further evidence.
This has become boring already. I mean find some better evidence. Last time it was from that guy who believed that pure bred dogs were the work of Nazis.
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
That's all I could find, since you provided no reference. |
http://research.microsoft.com/vibe/
Don't let the screenshots fool you, they've merely been upgraded to XP for the latest iterations of it. MS Research's site also has 3D interfaces where everything is a texture, rotatable, zoomable, etc. for years.
quote:
Quite easily, Quartz was in a workable state and released to the general public for purchase in early 2000. Longhorn is supposed to be available in the last quarter of 05 and Aero is being withheld until then, if I understood Mr Thurrott's article correctly - however, I've heard early 06. |
This is such a lame attempt. 
Expose is a feature in 10.3, essentially coming out in 2004.
In no way can you somehow insinuate that this was a feature in 2000. It wasn't. And frankly, it shows desperation that you attempted this.
quote:
Awwwww..... sucks to be Bill |
Yes, life in the real world is much harder than Apple can know. After all, they tried it for a bit and were nearly run out of business, so they had to close off the Apple market again and force their zombie users to buy from them once again.
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What does that have to do with it? Some people are still using 8.5. |
I'm not sure why you mention 8.5 at all. Small userbases mean smaller testcases, smaller testcases mean faster software cycles, faster software cycles mean you can beat a software giant with larger software cycles at their own technology to the mass market.
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The 10.2.8 patch caused a problem with ethernet on a specific model of G4 - hardly a mega problem. It was fixed within a week. I updated and nothing happened to me. |
Yes, but how ridiculous is that? There's no more than a dozen different configurations that OS X has to deal with, compared to how many millions for Windows?
Do you comprehend how complicated open architectures like PCs are to test and validate compared to a limited closed-architecture like the Mac?
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The itunes upgrade would only toast your hard drive if you performed some incredibly ridiculous sequence of operations and key presses. |
It toasted harddrives if you had more than one partition. Period.
quote:
Compare that with the hundreds of updates needed to fix Windows security problems (and this has little to do with the size of user base, as David Pogue had to embarassingly admit in a recent retraction in the NYT), these are minor hitches that affected a handful of people. |
How do you figure that has nothing to do with the size of the userbase? This is elementary stuff.
A large company that has their software operate on 95% of computers is a much bigger target than one with 3%. Couple that with the fact that MS is seen as "satan" in the hacker camps, and is it any wonder why so many hackers spend all day trying to find Windows holes?
User base has a lot to do with it, as does use.
quote:
What you need to admit is that the evidence that Expose was pinched from MS is extremely thin and that Apple already had this working back in 99 (during the OS X Alpha release), so it's a stretch to accuse them of nicking it without further evidence. |
How do you figure Apple had it working in 99?
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
Nope. Steve Jobs stood up publicly and declared that Apple had been beaten on that one. You can watch him saying it at Apple's site if you don't believe me. |
I've seen the keynote in its entirety, and I know the hoopla about it. Of course Microsoft beat them to it, just like they did with most other things.
Has Apple upgraded to a three button mouse with scroll-wheel yet? How about the horizontal-scroll that MS introduced recently? 
quote:
Of course they have. Apple just got sick of waiting for MS to improve IE's performance. The fact that they were able to take Konqueror and have it working 1000% better than IE in a few months is a testament to the slack job done by M$'s mac Business Unit (who do actually produce some good software). |
It's a testament to selective benchmarking mixed with a low-featured small-sized engine.
Real benchmarks show Safari losing to Mozilla and IE sometimes, winning others. Apple and Mac zealots tend to only focus on the ones it wins...
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MS screwed up on that one. Everyone hated IE so much they moved to Omniweb, then to Chimera, then to Safari. |
MS didn't screw up on it. IE existed on the Mac incase the Mac ever took off, MS would still dominate the web browsing scene. Since Apple's market share isn't doing anything but shrinking, what good is IE on the Mac doing? MS decided and told Apple a year before Safari that they were discontinuing all standalone IEs (Mac, Solaris, downloadable Windows ones) in favor of integrating it completely with, and only with, Windows.
I've no idea where you get this outrageous idea that Apple was "upset" with Microsoft over IE, Microsoft told people a long time ago it was discontinuing the product and Apple, obviously, needed a replacement.
quote:
In any case the only requirement to buy music from the itunes store is that you have a credit card with a US billing address. Some of the mac people from uni use it and have had no problems.. Your friend must have done something wrong. |
Ah, yes, he must've done something wrong. In fact, he must have deleted the files themselves, because iTunes sure as hell didn't, right?
And the lady who publically complained about it, and was told by Apple tech support simply to read the fine print, was wrong? And so were the Apple PR people who tried to sugarcoat it and blame the RIAA? All of them lie... 
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
Nice try, but there is nothing in there tech wise that wasn't already in X in 1999. |
You're going to have to link that. First it was 2000, now it's 1999 -- and frankly, both of them are bullshit.
Link it or drop it.
quote:
And if you look at the bibliography you will see that most of the papers mentioned are quite recent (like 2003) so it isn't clear which material Mr Thurrott is referring to. |
The ones at the top are recent, but that doesn't make most of them. The ones relevant to zooming and moving in 3D space are 2000 and 2001. The information outlined in the 2000 papers was show at WinHEC 1999 as a prototype.
Why would that make me steam? What it shows you is how Fitts' law is supposed to be applied.
It says that the borders of the screen is where many toolbars, etc. go because it's an "infinite plane" (if you find the old thread, you'll see I used that exact phrase several times in explaining this to you).
Fitts' law says nothing about it being optimal to putting toolbars on the top, that's what some people interpret the law to mean since, according to the law, borders are literally infinitely faster to access (which makes sense, how? )
The part of Fitts' law that is absolutely unquestionable is the farther the cursor has to move, the longer it takes. And since this article itself says most of the time the cursor is in the middle of the screen, what sense does it make to always put the cursor up at the very top, even if the Window only takes up a small portion in the middle near the cursor?
Further, what sense does it have to have several Windows while still only one toolbar? To activate and select an entry from a toolbar, you need to move the cursor to the window you want, then move it AGAIN up to the top of the screen to activate the toolbar.
By Fitts' law, this is much less efficient and much slower than how it'd work in Windows, with the toolbar attached to the window it controls (thereby closer to the cursor location). Multi-tasking simply makes this that much more apparent.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Asher
You're going to have to link that. First it was 2000, now it's 1999 -- and frankly, both of them are bullshit.
Link it or drop it. |
Well, if Quartz is the central graphics layer of X and was in the Public Beta one would assume that it was in earlier builds, which it was. I saw Jobs demo it in late 99/2000, but Apple has taken the video off. Don't believe me if you like, but all I am claiming is common sense.
quote:
The ones at the top are recent, but that doesn't make most of them. The ones relevant to zooming and moving in 3D space are 2000 and 2001. The information outlined in the 2000 papers was show at WinHEC 1999 as a prototype. |
What is outlined in those pages still does not prove Thurrott's point. Or yours.
quote:
Why would that make me steam? What it shows you is how Fitts' law is supposed to be applied.
It says that the borders of the screen is where many toolbars, etc. go because it's an "infinite plane" (if you find the old thread, you'll see I used that exact phrase several times in explaining this to you).
Fitts' law says nothing about it being optimal to putting toolbars on the top, that's what some people interpret the law to mean since, according to the law, borders are literally infinitely faster to access (which makes sense, how? ) |
Now we admit it. You said to me numerous times that you didn't believe in the "edges of the screen" stuff. You pathetic liar, as soon as M$ says it, you are all for it.
As for "infinitely faster to access", I think you are treating an empirical claim as a mathematical one. It doesn't matter to me, all I claimed is that the edges of the screen are prime real estate. You disagreed with this. Don't try to worm out of it now, other people were in this debate and no doubt remember what you said.
So it goes thus:
(A) People who believe that the edges of the screen are prime real estate since they are easier to capture:
Apple Computer
Microsoft Corporation
A host of internet pundits.
Agathon.
(B) People who don't:
Asher.
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04-10-2003 03:50
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