I’ve spent the better part of the weekend looking at competitive products and reviewing coverage on WinHEC. While my team is focused on the consumer segment and we haven’t started the roll-out there yet, there are a few things I would like to clarify:
- Slashdot coverage- there is no Beta of Longhorn. What was shown was not a Beta. That’s why Beta 1 hasn’t shipped yet.
- Some, even folks I call friends were publicly harsh about the UI. I’ve been around for many OS launches, was a Beta tester for Win95 and by now, most people know that the UI is one of the final things to be disclosed. To use an example from the automotive industry, just look at Motor Trend or Autoblog- you’ll find pictures of final production cars test driven all the time with “bras”, weird paint jobs and more used to mask the actual look of the car. This has been the case for quite a while for Windows. You haven’t seen anything yet.
- The objective of WinHEC’s LH call to action was to build hardware – ensure video drivers, audio drivers, and much more all work great with 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Based on feedback- we’ve done that and delivered early code to help them in their endeavors.
Speaking on my own time.
One response to “What you need to know about Longhorn”
I think it’s just a band waggon to jump on at the moment to slag off Longhorn. I see bloggers just reposting other bloggers comments and adding there own spin.
I am waiting till its ready to have my say. Of coruse I am very interested in the Media Center elements of it but I know I will have to wait for now.