Longhorn is Microsoft’s biggest update since Windows 95. They promise lots of changes and features. Release date taken from winsupersite.com

As hardware manufactures start to get on the Longhorn train, more and more people will wait to buy hardware. Why would I plop down $6000 for a high-end FX-57 AMD box with the shiniest hardware ever when Longhorn isn’t even finished yet. You see, Longhorn includes a graphics layer that is a rewrite of DirectX. In fact, it not called DirectX anymore. It’s Windows Graphics Foundation. It provides a hardware accelerated API for GUI components (just like Core Image from Apple). So there’s no way my shiny new card is going run an unreleased OS as well as a card that is manufactured after that OS is released. So clearly, there is an incentive to wait on buying a new computer. Thusly, people (like myself) are interested in the what, the how and the when of Longhorn.

Windows Graphics Foundation = Core Image

Called Windows Graphics Foundation (WGF), this new architecture will usher in some major changes to how 3D graphics operations get handled by Longhorn. These changes extend well beyond Longhorn’s Avalon technology, which will render the Windows Desktop using a GPU’s 3D graphics processing power rather than the traditional 2D blitter. WGF will instead define the core 3D operations themselves.

WGF promises to speed up the user interface by offloading the drawing work to the GPU. So stuff like minimizing a window can be done faster in the video card and with more blinking lights and fireworks. Unfortunately, it means that 2d cards probably won’t cut it. My powerbook has a 9600 mobile chip in it and it’s painfully slow with graphics. OSX is a beautiful hog. Get ready for the same thing in the PC world.

Castle = Bonjour

With Longhorn, creating ad hoc networks based on peer-to-peer technologies will be simple and seamless, opening up new avenues for group collaboration.

Apple has a technology called bonjour which is a networking layer that provides for ad hoc peer to peer networks and discovery. For example, you can walk into a building and find all the printers on the network without a bunch of ugly broadcasts and relaying. You could write a text-editing application that easily finds other text editors on your LAN so you can edit the same file at the same time. iChat can search using Bonjour for other people chatting. Again, OSX is already doing this.

EFS = Filevault

Longhorn will include technology based on the Encrypting File System (EFS) that helps prevent data exposure from lost or stolen laptops. You’ll be able to forward event logs to a central location.

OSX has a little option in the System Preferences window that says “encrypt my home directory”. It’s 128-bit strong and you’d need the person’s password in order to get to their files. Most of the time, OSX lets you install everything under your home directory so the thief wouldn’t even be able to play your copy of Doom3 without your password.

Apple’s already doing this.

Fast Search = Spotlight

Here’s the “full window” mode of spotlight vs Longhorn’s Fast Search. Wow, a perfect copy.

I know people are always stealing ideas from other people. Apple has stolen ideas in the past (see: Dashboard vs Konfabulator). But this is a major OS release! Microsoft has the resources right? Shouldn’t they be the market leader? Not the market follower?

Above is the abbreviated spotlight interface on the left and the Longhorn interface on the right. If you clicked on the spotlight search, it would expand to a screen that is almost identical to the Longhorn screen. (Click the Longhorn picture to zoom in)

Login Screen = OSX

Login screens in general are pretty generic so this critique is a bit of a stretch. However, in the context of all the other interface copying, there are some similarities that disgust me. The user names are now aligned in the center like OSX (XP was more right-aligned). The shutdown and reboot options are lined up along the bottom and you can see them all there (expanded) like OSX. XP had a shutdown link that brought up the shutdown choices, sort of a two step process to shutdown.


Note that Longhorn shows user icons for the login screen (XP does this too) but it’s kind of useless past the login screen. Apple uses your user icon for iChat, I wonder if Longhorn will copy this ‘icon reuse’ with MSN messenger.