The blogger lunch...
I was invited to a bloggers lunch at Tulio's this morning, where I had a chance to meet and mingle with fellow-bloggers and folks from Microsoft, including Joe Peterson, VP of Windows Product Development, Shanen Boettcher, Director of Longhorn development, and Clyde Rodriguez, Group Product Manager of Windows x64. Some of the bloggers I met included Tom Warren (aka creamhackered), Ryan Hoffman, Steven Bink, Paul Mooney, Robert Scoble, Paul Thurrott, and Chris Pirillo. It was wonderful to meet everyone.
I had a chance to talk to Shanen who was sitting next to me during lunch. One of my first questions to him was about WinFS - what exactly would it bring to the end-user since instant searches, stacks, lists, and other rich document visualization and organization capabilities can be achieved without it (as seen in the BillG keynote). Shanen explained that there was a miscommunication issue of sorts when the "three pillars" of Longhorn were announced at PDC 2003. All the capabilities mentioned above can be achieved without WinFS, and will be present when Longhorn goes RTM. WinFS takes it one step further when it ships by allowing third-party developers to extend and manipulate the schemas.
There was also a Q&A session at the end of the lunch, and people brought up several interesting questions that Joe was able to answer for us. Here's most of what was covered:
Skinnable UI - There is a possibility that Longhorn will allow end-users to control the user interface, giving them more control over their experiences, without resorting to third-party, unofficial hacks. Again, this is just a possibility, and not something that's been set in stone.
System Requirements - Joe was pretty clear about the fact that Longhorn should be able to run sufficiently well on a ~1.0GHz machine with 256MB of RAM (although at least 512MB would be recommended). In addition to having a new driver model for hardware, LH will also be backwards-compatible with drivers that work on XP today, so any hardware that works on XP should work on Longhorn as well.
32-bit or 64-bit - Apparently, most devs at Microsoft are currently developing Longhorn in a 64-bit environment. When the OS goes RTM, it will be a simultaneous 32-bit and 64-bit release, and customers will be able to buy a single copy that supports both architectures. The OS will detect the type of system you have and install the appropriate version.
Security through user accounts - In addition to Limited User Accounts (which Joe referred to as a Protected User Account) that many of us have known about for a while, Longhorn will also include a Protected Admin mode. This means that if you do login with administrative privileges (and most end-users will NOT need to do this), you will still be protected from unauthorized installations. This decreases the likelihood of getting affected by malware drastically, and is a long-awaited security measure that's finally coming with Longhorn.
Integrated anti-spyware solutions - Joe confirmed that Longhorn will ship with an integrated anti-spyware solution. We can reasonably assume that this will be largely derived from the Microsoft Anti-Spyware product for XP that is currently in the beta stage. However, just like Windows Firewall in XP SP2, the integrated solution will give higher priority to third-party anti-spyware applications if you do choose to install them.
What happened to the sidebar?
Remember the sidebar? Some people loved it; others just hated it. Well, if you've been keeping up with the news, you'll notice that the sidebar is gone from 5048. Is it coming back? Well, Joe summarized it by saying that it has been pulled for now, but could make its way back in the future.
To conclude, I'll leave you with some pictures of the blogger lunch. :)
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I had a chance to talk to Shanen who was sitting next to me during lunch. One of my first questions to him was about WinFS - what exactly would it bring to the end-user since instant searches, stacks, lists, and other rich document visualization and organization capabilities can be achieved without it (as seen in the BillG keynote). Shanen explained that there was a miscommunication issue of sorts when the "three pillars" of Longhorn were announced at PDC 2003. All the capabilities mentioned above can be achieved without WinFS, and will be present when Longhorn goes RTM. WinFS takes it one step further when it ships by allowing third-party developers to extend and manipulate the schemas.
There was also a Q&A session at the end of the lunch, and people brought up several interesting questions that Joe was able to answer for us. Here's most of what was covered:
Skinnable UI - There is a possibility that Longhorn will allow end-users to control the user interface, giving them more control over their experiences, without resorting to third-party, unofficial hacks. Again, this is just a possibility, and not something that's been set in stone.
System Requirements - Joe was pretty clear about the fact that Longhorn should be able to run sufficiently well on a ~1.0GHz machine with 256MB of RAM (although at least 512MB would be recommended). In addition to having a new driver model for hardware, LH will also be backwards-compatible with drivers that work on XP today, so any hardware that works on XP should work on Longhorn as well.
32-bit or 64-bit - Apparently, most devs at Microsoft are currently developing Longhorn in a 64-bit environment. When the OS goes RTM, it will be a simultaneous 32-bit and 64-bit release, and customers will be able to buy a single copy that supports both architectures. The OS will detect the type of system you have and install the appropriate version.
Security through user accounts - In addition to Limited User Accounts (which Joe referred to as a Protected User Account) that many of us have known about for a while, Longhorn will also include a Protected Admin mode. This means that if you do login with administrative privileges (and most end-users will NOT need to do this), you will still be protected from unauthorized installations. This decreases the likelihood of getting affected by malware drastically, and is a long-awaited security measure that's finally coming with Longhorn.
Integrated anti-spyware solutions - Joe confirmed that Longhorn will ship with an integrated anti-spyware solution. We can reasonably assume that this will be largely derived from the Microsoft Anti-Spyware product for XP that is currently in the beta stage. However, just like Windows Firewall in XP SP2, the integrated solution will give higher priority to third-party anti-spyware applications if you do choose to install them.
What happened to the sidebar?
Remember the sidebar? Some people loved it; others just hated it. Well, if you've been keeping up with the news, you'll notice that the sidebar is gone from 5048. Is it coming back? Well, Joe summarized it by saying that it has been pulled for now, but could make its way back in the future.
To conclude, I'll leave you with some pictures of the blogger lunch. :)
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