Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project
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The Blackcomb release of Windows started slipping, so an interim release was planned. It was codenamed Longhorn, after the Longhorn Saloon and Grill at Whistler Blackcomb: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g154948-d70639...
There are a LOT of local Whistler references in microsoft codenames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames
Harmony, Symphony, Emerald, Springboard, Bobcat, Cougar in the NT family from what I can tell.
If memory serves, "Chicago" was the code name for W95 and "Memphis" was the code name for W98. Also, I want to say that WFWG was called "Snowball" but I'm much less sure about that one (it's been a little while!).
WfW 3.1 was Sparta.
The first and only time I booted it up, I was greeted with an analog clock. The seconds hand tended to get stuck and jump 3-10 seconds at time. The only reference I can find to it: http://lifehacker.com/5078415/analog-clock-adds-a-classic-ti...
That's when I knew that it might be a good idea to stick with XP until further notice. Further notice ended up being 6-7 years, when I finally went and bought Windows 7.
The original vision of "information at your fingertip" was behind the Cairo project. And Cairo had an object stored in the NTFS filesystem driver. WinNT4 and 2000 got several of the Cairo inovations. Well, some hidden APIs were still left in (at least in WinXP era).
Unfprtunately I think it took MS too long to get here. Other vendors got to the home appliances part before them, which is mind boggling given the traction MS had once upon a time.
The original implementation was based on COM, the idea to implement CLR instead came afterwards.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net...
So, WinRT is nothing more than COM+ Runtime brought back to life, with some of the lessons learned in all those CLR years.
WinFS was real. Before the project was cancelled, we released a beta and a "beta refresh" - both installable on XP.
(Disclaimer: I was on the WinFS team.)
Video (watch at 14:55): https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/scobleizer/Shishir-Mehrotra-...
I tested WinFS beta2 on a high end WinXP PC (back then), WinFS beta was slow and the cool "Live Journal" demo app wasn't included.
At least I read it as »We took the API and a bunch of support infrastructure for that API and simply changed the storage engine on disk completely underneath that.«
My dad still uses a Vista desktop regularly (a 2007 install) and as far as I can tell it still works perfectly fine for him. I suppose he's probably leaving far too much to chance, but still.
In those days, I remember seeing Vista laptops with 1 GB of RAM, on which Vista was unusable. People had to edit arcane registry settings to disable the "Aero" look-and-feel, and drop down to a more Windows 95-like display just to run at all.
It really was basically fraud, and infuriated everybody. If Microsoft had been more realistic about their "certified for Vista" specs, it probably wouldn't have been such a flop. On the other hand, new laptops jumping from 1 GB of RAM to 4 GB minimum overnight would have been a hard consumer sell, I suppose.
UAC issues cleared up once all of the software developers got around to releasing the next versions of their applications, but MS took most of the blame. I can't really blame the developers for not wanting to make significant changes to their software before the final release of Vista, given the chain of events leading from XP to Vista. Many are already hard pressed to remember how rocky the XP release was, and that MS did much more in XP to make 3rd party applications work with the system. In Vista they essentially took the extra step to warn the user that the application was misbehaving, rather than silently letting it happen. Some people got into the habit of disabling UAC by default and I had to convince one person who should have known better that he wasn't going to suffer from a deluge of support calls if he stopped disabling it in Windows 7 (and the handful of Vista systems still around).
In the end, 7 put very little in terms of functionality or stability on top of Vista SP1, though Microsoft did put significant work into making it possible to run 7 on systems that didn't have the horsepower for Vista. The marketing push brought a lot of people around. I look at it as an essential part of the strategy they're currently using with Windows 10 (vs. 8), though they took the extra step of changing the underlying version number this time around (something they didn't do when going from Vista to 7).
The biggest problems with continuing to run Vista are that the support window is rapidly closing and 7 will usually perform better on the same hardware (because they toned down the UI and put real effort into getting 7 to work on hardware that was previously running XP).
1. Vista disabled parallel ports direct access, new cnc machines, or people using old printers and scanners still use xp.
2. Vista removed support for directx before dx10... Microsoft realized later how shitty idea that was, but instead added dx9 and below emulation layer. The problem is that it only works almost 100% right on win 7, thus why many gamers still use it ( instead of 8+ where some good games are very buggy or slow )
3. Vista audio model disallowed drivers to do anything that could be used to disable hdmi drm. As side effect all 3d sound cards stopped working properly. Lots of people blamed Creative and other sound card makers, that got generally screwed... now that this tech proved to be essential for vr gpu companies are doing workarounds, for example AMD has as selling point of TruAudio that it skips Windows normal audio stack.
This was addressed twofold, as far as I understand: 1) Application developers were railroaded into best practices and forced not to do terrible design ideas, and 2) MS introduced a whole load of compatibility features such as virtualising folders transparently so when bad apps still tried to do bad things, it was securely captured and diverted around requiring a UAC elevation prompt.
Regarding the stability issues, Vista's driver model was new when compared to XP. Naturally, the number of bugs in drivers increased initially but slowly settled down. Much of the '7 is more stable / faster than Vista' groupthink is the result of bad drivers getting better in the intervening years.
> The project, however, failed completely and development had to reset. More than three years late Microsoft released Windows Code Name 'Longhorn' as Windows Vista.
Is this incorrect, or not the full story?
edit: less confrontational
I did. I also worked at Microsoft during the years in question.
edit in response to your edit: The project was restarted. Longhorn and its three pillars were essentially thrown out. Windows Vista was rebuilt from scratch on top of Windows Server 2003. I assume they chose to keep the same codename so as to reduce confusion. But that doesn't mean it was the same OS.
Hopefully this Wikipedia article answers the rest of your questions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista#M...
edit 2: here's another article:
It was decided, at least for now, to drop or modify many of the
original objectives; no more using C#, abandon WinFS, and revise Avalon.
> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
After a couple of months, we made the complete switch (deinstall the email client on windows and create more gmail accounts).
Now, I boot on windows less than once per year. I have to thank the driver problems of vista 64 (and the other minor defects of Vista 64) for making this migration possible (it is difficult to leave a system we are used to).
My only problem now is that I would like to buy a new computer and I am worried about the full support of all my future hardware.
I have been using Virtualbox to deal with everything I need to do in Windows rather than going through the hassle of rebooting the machine. I use Windows for Active Directory administration, the occasional document that doesn't look right in LibreOffice, and occasionally jumping into Adobe software. My next computer at work is going to be a MacBook Pro with a Windows 10 VM, but at that point I should have most of the Adobe and MS Office tasks covered in OS X instead of the VM.
As for VirtualBox, strange but I just yesterday spent 2 hours trying my best to use it and failing. It just wouldn't resize the window beyond some tiny vga thing. None of the online help did squat; none of the menus and settings had any affect. So I finally gave up. That thing has a ways to go before its useful for a desktop environment.
"Notes and Next Steps from Windows Client Business Plan Review": http://longhorn.ms/wp-content/uploads/PX06977.pdf
"FW: Longhorn search": http://longhorn.ms/wp-content/uploads/PX08378.pdf
Steven Sinofsky: http://longhorn.ms/wp-content/uploads/PX07069.pdf
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lo...
Some excerpts:
By 2002 the by-product of bureaucracy—brutal corporate politics—had reared its head at Microsoft. And, current and former executives said, each year the intensity and destructiveness of the game playing grew worse as employees struggled to beat out their co-workers for promotions, bonuses, or just survival.
Then, in June 2004, Steve Jobs announced that Apple was releasing its new operating system, called “Tiger.” And inside Microsoft, jaws dropped. Tiger did much of what was planned for Longhorn—except that it worked.
E-mails flew around Microsoft, expressing dismay about the quality of Tiger. To executives’ disbelief, it contained functional equivalents of Avalon and WinFS.
“It was fucking amazing,” wrote Lenn Pryor, part of the Longhorn team. “It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.”
Vic Gundotra, another member of the group, tried out Tiger. “Their Avalon competitor (core video, core image) was hot,” he wrote. “I have the cool widgets (dashboard) running on my MAC right now with all the effects [Jobs] showed on stage. I’ve had no crashes in 5 hours.”
Longhorn was doomed. A few months later, Allchin brought together the Longhorn team and made the announcement: Microsoft couldn’t complete Windows Vista in time to hit the latest planned release date. In fact, the company couldn’t foresee any launch date. So a decision had been made at the most senior reaches of Microsoft: after three years of work, throw everything out and start over. It was decided, at least for now, to drop or modify many of the original objectives; no more using C#, abandon WinFS, and revise Avalon.
Apple was already in the market with those features; Microsoft was basically giving up in its effort to figure out how to make them work.So what did they use instead? C++ ?
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net...
Using COM and AOT compilation, instead of the CLR and JIT.
That is why Windows 8 eventually introduced the WinRT, which is basically the COM+ Runtime of Ext-VOS, but using .NET metadata instead of COM type libraries.
The C++/CLI syntax was re-purposed for C++/CX and Windows Runtime Library became the ATL replacement for this new improved COM.
.NET got improved AOT compilation story instead of NGEN, and COW was improved so that .NET could have a good story for writing and consuming WinRT components.
EDIT: It isn't COW, rather RCW and CCW.
Yes, that's pretty much what the bulk of everything that comes with Windows is written in.
I worked on XP and a little bit of Longhorn. In my opinion one of the reasons was that much of the product direction and leadership shifted. The MSN app team merged with the shell team after XP shipped and JoeB, who was running the shell/UX team moved to a new team.
I wouldn't categorize Longhorn as a failure, but a step in a larger pattern of large release: 95, XP, Win7 and then, typically shorter releases in between that are managed differently: 98, ME, Vista.
During those days the Windows division was the one running the OS, C and C++ compilers, while .NET belonged to DevTools division.
So if .NET ever became a success implementing Longhorn, it would mean the Windows division would loose internal power, so many things failed, because instead of improving the languages or runtimes, people would rather see all implode.
So can see how this played by what happened following Longhorn's demise.
Many of the Win32 APIs that should have been .NET code, had been turned into COM APIs. Actually since Vista the majority of new APIs are all COM based (WinRT is also COM).
The Hilo C++ example of the new way of coding with COM for desktop applications was made available.
And the whole "going native" message started coming out of MSDN blogs and there was even a few Going Native conferences before Microsoft merged them CppCon.
The Visual C++ team was ramped up again, as they had moved most of the people out back in the "we are going .NET" days.
The WP 7 with its .NET/JIT model was shown the door.
The COM+ Runtime, which was the genesis of .NET before Microsoft decided to create the CLR instead, was brought back to life but with .NET metadata instead of COM type libraries.
.NET got the Singularity compiler retargeted for Windows Phone 8, with AOT compilation to native code taking place at the Windows store. The MDIL format is native code that just lacks linking, which is done at install time on the WP 8.x devices.
With the going native wind still kind of going strong and Midori ramping down, Project N eventually became what is nowadays known as .NET Native.
So if you look at UWP stack, either .NET or C++/CX, Longhorn is here just based on COM instead of CLR.
I don't know if I am wrong or right, but this is how I read everything that happened, having Windows developer experience since the Windows 3.0 days.
Admittedly without the lost "pillar" of WinFS. Although I suppose these days you could call Cortana a close cousin to some of the original WinFS goals, just from a "cloud-first" direction instead of a "device-first" approach.
I mean, even though it is a failed project, it still may have valuable stuff, patents, etc.
So how come they are able to distribute without issues? are they going to potentially get a C&D? should we start archiving these just in case?
I'm actually most inclined to think "Doesn't care" is the correct answer. None of these builds are under support and it's unlikely that your necessary drivers or apps will run on it. They're alpha and beta builds of Windows Vista, for crying out loud -- even the full release is getting long in the tooth (and programs like Chrome and Firefox are dropping support).
Even though they might be unsupported or unusable that doesn't mean that the legal team would be happy to ignore them.
Sometimes (most times?) companies are very aggressive when it comes to their IP, especially when it's a core product.
Don't get me wrong. I think it's really cool that we have access to these things, just out of curiosity (although I doubt I'll ever download and install them, because of laziness). But things like the emails and such, just seems like a fuzzy/gray area.
In the end I was hoping there was some other kind of answer like, Microsoft actually let them publish things or something like that, but I'm skeptical.
There's plenty of screenshots you can already find online, you can even find ISO's for build 5111 and run it in a VM yourself.
It's probably going to be a while before anything beats the F-35 on that count.
At the time I was in the WMDRM team which handled content licensing. We had a feature that built on Castle if you purchased audio/video content (purchased music still had DRM then) we'd automatically roam the content licenses among all the PCs in the home. We had the typical challenges from content owners that this could be used to share content in a dorm, over the internet. We had to design in things like proximity detection to ensure you aren't sharing beyond a home network. It was somewhat complicated (DRM couldn't be simple), but it would have provided a far better user experience.
We also planned a centralized DRM licensing backup/restore service so you weren't beholden to the service you bought content from deciding to let you have another license years later.
All of this was cancelled with the reset unfortunately...
Allchin: Don't call it 'Shorthorn'
Despite the removal of WinFS, Longhorn will not be short on features, Windows chief Jim Allchin tells CNET News.com.
Vista was actually a fine release, just a bit resource intensive, had a stubborn file copying algorithms, and device driver support from third parties weren't that great at release time. Beside that Win7 is after all a Vista SP1"+", and a damn fine OS until 2020.
The worst Win OS was WinME, which was pretty unstable in comparison to older Win9x releases. I switched to Win2000 and then WinXP and never looked back.
The second worst is Win8x and Win10 though. Rough and unfinished on the UI side, and too many phone home "features" under the hood. The WinMin kernel would be great though, but Windows is heading in the wrong direction (Azure cloud, OS as a service, plans for monthly subscription). It would have been great if the plans for WinFS and Longhorn shell would have been restarted and based on Win7 shell. A C++ based Longhorn UI shell would be great for enterprise and consumer. The search experience would be what one has today with SharePoint but insanely fast and proper integrated in to the Windows environment. The cloud offerings are a joke in comparison, sadly a regression in all fronts and they have no vision as it seems. The dreams of an x64 based Phone that could run Win32 applications like Photoshop - all gone. There is so much legacy, but very uncertain future of the platform. Even in enterprise world, which applications are still native? Only Office 2010 or the remarkable unstable 2013 is what every enterprise user still uses daily, everything else in on SharePoint, SAP (Java based client) or other intranet web applications or even internet web applications. And copying files around is more of an hassle than ever before. A native WinFS and a Longhorn UI would have been so great. Sadly, it's all history. </rant End>
Can it delete an open file?
As a user you can delete an open file, if you remove the file handle. A convenient way is the unlocker.exe tool.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/08/windows-10-update-redston...
http://superuser.com/questions/11346/what-happened-to-winfs
Apparently it was canceled and part of it was added to Microsoft SQL-Server 2008, and Windows 7 and other software.
I think WinFS sort of was replaced with Cloud Storage and all of the Websites that allow you to store files in the Cloud. It is why Microsoft bought out Skydrive renamed as Onedrive.
How so?
The point of WinFS was to store an object graph representing your data in a DB. It was more or less antithetical to files.
(Disclaimer: I was on the WinFS team.)
The actual implementation of storing and searching also becomes someone else's problem. In a way it's just another slosh back and forth in the cycle of centralization and de-centralization of processing/storage.
Why would it never be accepted? My dream is to create a similar platform.
That said, I have no idea if semantics where even an issue in the eventual decision to retire WinFS as the future of storage.
They weren't.
(Disclaimer: I was on the WinFS team.)
...the project, however, failed completely...