4 ms·

I think the context of this occurring during Longhorn (LH) development is important. For anyone that doesn't know Longhorn[1] was the precursor to Vista. They t

I think the context of this occurring during Longhorn (LH) development is important. For anyone that doesn't know Longhorn[1] was the precursor to Vista. They tried to do a lot of big things but it dragged on for years before they had to recalibrate, abandon a lot of ideas, and ship Vista. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista

perceptronas 5y ago
I am not sure if it fits this topic/forum, but there is a joke made by Jobs on youtube [1] about Longhorn/Vista. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCh7D_OpKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCh7D_OpKM
C19is20 5y ago
', and ship Vista.' You spelled 'shit' wrong?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Maybe I’m the minority but I’ve only had good things to say about Vista. Maybe the problem isn’t Vista but trying to run it on underpowered hardware? It ran perfectly fine on a quad-core and 4GB of RAM.
  - krylon 5y ago
    Which, to be fair, was a fairly high-end machine at the time. As I recall, the problem was not just Vista's juicy hardware requirements, but the fact it would initially behave quite unpredictably performance-wise. OTOH, Microsoft is said to have fixed most of the problems with SP1, and Windows 7 was, as far as Windows versions go, a very solid system.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    One of the scandals of that era was Microsoft purposefully lowering the hardware requirements for Vista so that lower end PCs could get the all important Vista sticker. I was in tech support at the time, and a ton of cheap HPs came in that were sold with vista and 2gb of ram.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      2GB would have been fine. I still remember a bunch of Fujitsu laptops that we got at work, all with the "Vista Ready" sticker and 512GB of ram - they were almost unusably slow, but XP ran absolutely fine with the same amount of ram. 2GB would have been a massive improvement.
  - anthk 5y ago
    Most people had 512MB or 1GB back in the day, the lesser ones 256MB.
  - vondur 5y ago
    Vista actually ran fine after service pack 2 was installed. At that point Windows 7 was being released and it became a moot point.
  - lttlrck 5y ago
    I had it preinstalled on a very nice 17" Dell Inspiron 2.4Ghz Core Duo. Vista ran perfectly. I don't think I had a bluescreen on that laptop until I upgraded to 7 (no joke). I guess it all comes down to conservative hardware design from Dell and the right drivers from Microsoft/luck.
pjmlp 5y ago
The project that Windows team kind of sabotaged the .NET efforts, and instead of having everyone team together and create a Midori like effort, they just redid the .NET original components in COM, and later doubled down on the idea with WinRT. Now we have the company trying to undo 10 years of pushing everyone to go down the path that only WinDev can love, because apparently a large portion of the world rather write .NET (with its shortcomings) + DLLs than having to deal with COM boilerplate.
wk_end 5y ago
Interesting how basically the same thing happened to Apple in the 90s: the original, more radical successor to System 7 was in development for years under the name Copland, before they ended up scrapping most of it and releasing the much more conservative MacOS 8. Although I guess the only real takeaway might be that OS development is hard.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Project management is probably harder, classic OS design was well understood by that time.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  I had a WindowBlinds theme that mimicked the Copland look back in the day.
  - zerocrates 5y ago
    What did Copland look like? Some quick googling seems to show me something that looks basically like how I remember Mac OS 8.
andrew_ 5y ago
Nostalgia. I remember in the skinning communities there was A LOT of buzz about Longhorn and the promise it had. I got my hands on a copy of it and the changes to the UX over XP were awesome (I wish I could find screenshots, very sorry that I cannot post some links to support this). Then when Vista was released, it looked nothing like those early builds we saw. Coupled with the performance and stability issues, it really let the air out of the balloon.

perceptronas 5y ago

I am not sure if it fits this topic/forum, but there is a joke made by Jobs on youtube [1] about Longhorn/Vista. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCh7D_OpKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCh7D_OpKM

C19is20 5y ago

', and ship Vista.' You spelled 'shit' wrong?

Nextgrid 5y ago
Maybe I’m the minority but I’ve only had good things to say about Vista. Maybe the problem isn’t Vista but trying to run it on underpowered hardware? It ran perfectly fine on a quad-core and 4GB of RAM.
- krylon 5y ago
  Which, to be fair, was a fairly high-end machine at the time. As I recall, the problem was not just Vista's juicy hardware requirements, but the fact it would initially behave quite unpredictably performance-wise. OTOH, Microsoft is said to have fixed most of the problems with SP1, and Windows 7 was, as far as Windows versions go, a very solid system.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  One of the scandals of that era was Microsoft purposefully lowering the hardware requirements for Vista so that lower end PCs could get the all important Vista sticker. I was in tech support at the time, and a ton of cheap HPs came in that were sold with vista and 2gb of ram.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    2GB would have been fine. I still remember a bunch of Fujitsu laptops that we got at work, all with the "Vista Ready" sticker and 512GB of ram - they were almost unusably slow, but XP ran absolutely fine with the same amount of ram. 2GB would have been a massive improvement.
- anthk 5y ago
  Most people had 512MB or 1GB back in the day, the lesser ones 256MB.
- vondur 5y ago
  Vista actually ran fine after service pack 2 was installed. At that point Windows 7 was being released and it became a moot point.
- lttlrck 5y ago
  I had it preinstalled on a very nice 17" Dell Inspiron 2.4Ghz Core Duo. Vista ran perfectly. I don't think I had a bluescreen on that laptop until I upgraded to 7 (no joke). I guess it all comes down to conservative hardware design from Dell and the right drivers from Microsoft/luck.

pjmlp 5y ago

The project that Windows team kind of sabotaged the .NET efforts, and instead of having everyone team together and create a Midori like effort, they just redid the .NET original components in COM, and later doubled down on the idea with WinRT. Now we have the company trying to undo 10 years of pushing everyone to go down the path that only WinDev can love, because apparently a large portion of the world rather write .NET (with its shortcomings) + DLLs than having to deal with COM boilerplate.

wk_end 5y ago

Interesting how basically the same thing happened to Apple in the 90s: the original, more radical successor to System 7 was in development for years under the name Copland, before they ended up scrapping most of it and releasing the much more conservative MacOS 8. Although I guess the only real takeaway might be that OS development is hard.

mixmastamyk 5y ago
Project management is probably harder, classic OS design was well understood by that time.
andrew_ 5y ago
I had a WindowBlinds theme that mimicked the Copland look back in the day.
- zerocrates 5y ago
  What did Copland look like? Some quick googling seems to show me something that looks basically like how I remember Mac OS 8.

andrew_ 5y ago

Nostalgia. I remember in the skinning communities there was A LOT of buzz about Longhorn and the promise it had. I got my hands on a copy of it and the changes to the UX over XP were awesome (I wish I could find screenshots, very sorry that I cannot post some links to support this). Then when Vista was released, it looked nothing like those early builds we saw. Coupled with the performance and stability issues, it really let the air out of the balloon.