Microsoft to gut 'Longhorn' in attempt to ship in 2006 




"According to developer sources, Microsoft is cutting back its Longhorn client's planned feature set so as to be able to make its current delivery targets: Beta 1 by next year and final release some time in 2006," Mary Jo Foley and Darryl K. Taft report for Microsoft Watch. "Microsoft is expected to officially announce later on Friday its future roadmap for the desktop version of Longhorn. And while developers and customers who expected they'd be required to rewrite their applications to take advantage of Longhorn may be happy with Microsoft's roadmap changes, others who were banking on promised Longhorn features, such as the next-generation Windows File System, will be far less so."

"The end result? Longhorn is going to be a lot more of an evolutionary than a revolutionary Windows release," Foley and Darryl K. Taft report. "'Longhorn is going to stop being a whole new thing and more of an XP with a lot of good new stuff,' said one developer close to Microsoft, who requested anonymity.

Full article here.

"Cattle mutilation appears to be a phenomenon more common on the MidWest prairies than the Pacific coast, but one steer in particular faces a very nervous weekend: Microsoft's Longhorn. Microsoft project managers have demanded that features be jettisoned in order for the next major version of Windows to ship as projected by 2006, and the major loser is the new GUI, codenamed Avalon, according to multiple sources who spoke to The Register on condition of anonymity. Features are being 'decoupled,' according to current Redmond jargon, meaning they may be introduced at a later date. Or not," Andrew Orlowski reports for The Register.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: 2006? Yeah, right. Why wait for 'Longwait,' when you can smoothly add an already-more-advanced-than-Longhorn Mac OS X 'Panther' machine to your computing arsenal right now? Then pick up a copy of Mac OS X 'Tiger' in January 2005 and be even further ahead of Microsoft's "2006" OS. It's time to add a Mac to your life! (You can thank us later.)
 

Posted: Fri - August 27, 2004 at 11:59 PM        

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