Microsoft Publishes a History of the Windows Interface

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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In an uncharacteristic show of reflective honesty, Microsoft published a blog post outlining a brief history of its operating systems: the good and the bad. It’s strange though; I could have sworn there was an operating system between XP and Vista that may have had a problem or two. :D

"The user interface of Windows has evolved and been transformed over the course of its entire 27-year history," and then takes a tour of the interface from Windows 1 to Windows 8.
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I guess they are safe. It's past the 7 year mark for statue of limitations :)
 
to add to that, if you read the actual Microsoft article and not the article about the Microsoft article, it clearly focused on UI changes.
 
Per the web site: "Windows 7 has quickly become the most popular OS with Microsoft selling around 650,000 million licenses per day !"

Impressive.
 
xSystemFailurex said:
Per the web site: "Windows 7 has quickly become the most popular OS with Microsoft selling around 650,000 million licenses per day !"

Impressive.
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In 1 year they sold about 40 to each of us then. Damn that is impressive.
 
xSystemFailurex said:
Per the web site: "Windows 7 has quickly become the most popular OS with Microsoft selling around 650,000 million licenses per day !"

Impressive.
Click to expand...

When I bought a Tech Net sub I got about 100 various Win 7 licenses, so that may have something to do with it.
 
Procyon12 said:
well he means 98 and XP = ME. but they're showing the different UI. for all intents and purposes a screenshot of 95, 98, 2k and ME are the same.
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????

He said an OS BETWEEN XP AND VISTA, none of those came out between XP and Vista.

I'd like to know wtf Majordomo means.
 
pete8475 said:
????

He said an OS BETWEEN XP AND VISTA, none of those came out between XP and Vista.

I'd like to know wtf Majordomo means.
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He's talking about Longhorn, an unreleased version of Windows.

Microsoft threw-out longhorn and started from scratch to make Vista.
 
DeathPrincess said:
650,000,000,000 copies / 7,000,000,000 people = 92.8 copies a day!
236,762,500,000,000 copies per year!
33823 copies each person per year! :eek:
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Yeah I knew I failed there somewhere with the zeros :D
 
This has prompted me to download Windows 8 and give it a shot. I've been holding out. I started at Windows 3.1.
 
Pic of 3.1 reminded of the time when joysticks with pistolgrips were unheard of, and the mouse was a block of plastic.
 
Unknown-One said:
He's talking about Longhorn, an unreleased version of Windows.

Microsoft threw-out longhorn and started from scratch to make Vista.
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umm....longhorn is the dev codename for Windows NT 6.x which became vista and server 2008 as 6.0 build 6002, and then eventually 7 and 2008 R2.

also, nobody makes grinning jokes about longhorn.
also, nobody references longhorn in a UI discussion.

so either majordomo doesnt get the point of the article, he doesnt get what longhorn is, or he made a mistake in which OS's he typed. lets take a guess on which has the highest probability.
 
i want to add to that, the version of windows that got scrapped was called blackcomb. longhorn replaced blackcomb and became every iteration of windows NT 6.x
 
Procyon12 said:
umm....longhorn is the dev codename for Windows NT 6.x which became vista and server 2008 as 6.0 build 6002, and then eventually 7 and 2008 R2.

also, nobody makes grinning jokes about longhorn.
also, nobody references longhorn in a UI discussion.

so either majordomo doesnt get the point of the article, he doesnt get what longhorn is, or he made a mistake in which OS's he typed. lets take a guess on which has the highest probability.
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Longhorn was never really released. Much of it was scrapped and later evolved into Vista.
 
chinesepiratefood said:
Longhorn was never really released. Much of it was scrapped and later evolved into Vista.
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Longhorn *is* Vista. Theres a reason it was called an Alpha and a Beta, because it was under heavy development. It's still the same OS. While there were parts that were cut out (WinFS for example..), it's still the same thing. It's not a separate OS. Longhorn was developed into Vista, they didnt throw most of it out and then create Vista.

Longhorn was the codename for Vista before they decided it would be called Vista oficially. It is still the same.
 
FighterAce124 said:
Longhorn *is* Vista. Theres a reason it was called an Alpha and a Beta, because it was under heavy development. It's still the same OS. While there were parts that were cut out (WinFS for example..), it's still the same thing. It's not a separate OS. Longhorn was developed into Vista, they didnt throw most of it out and then create Vista.

Longhorn was the codename for Vista before they decided it would be called Vista oficially. It is still the same.
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One of the biggest mistakes that people commonly make is that they think Microsoft Codename Longhorn is based on Windows XP, when it's infact based on .NET Server (Server 2003) Release Candidate code.
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http://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php?title=Windows:Longhorn
 
Copied the wrong part

"Longhorn" was the codename for the planned successor of Windows XP. The project was cancelled and replaced with a new project with a similar codename - Longhorn Omega-13, that was renamed to Vista that became the real successor of XP. Early Vista builds often were referred to as just Longhorn most of the time and those two projects often were mistaken.
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FighterAce124 said:
Longhorn was developed into Vista, they didnt throw most of it out and then create Vista.
Click to expand...

"Gradually, Windows "Longhorn" assimilated many of the important new features and technologies slated for "Blackcomb", resulting in the release date being pushed back a few times. Many of Microsoft's developers were also re-tasked with improving the security of Windows XP. Faced with ongoing delays and concerns about feature creep, Microsoft announced on August 27, 2004 that it was making significant changes. "Longhorn" development basically started afresh, building on the Windows Server 2003 codebase, and re-incorporating only the features that would be intended for an actual operating system release. Some previously announced features, such as WinFS and NGSCB, were dropped or postponed." -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista

"Not quite. Unbeknownst to those outside of Microsoft, Longhorn was about to take a major detour. The 4000-series builds that Microsoft had just shown off and handed out had already run their course and were destined for the technological dustbin. The problem, I was told recently, was that the underpinnings of Longhorn--then based on the Windows XP code base--were struggling under the weight of all of the technologies that Microsoft planed to implement in this release.

I'll make available an exclusive write-up about what happened next sometime in June 2005, but for now let's just say that Longhorn's architects went back to the drawing board. The 4000-series builds were scrapped, and the company started building Longhorn again from scratch, using the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1, see my preview) code base (as it did for the x64 version of Windows XP (see my preview). The idea is that Longhorn needed to be better componentized from the start, so that the company could offer more discrete versions of the product to customers and more easily add-on the many disparate technologies it was developing. These versions of Longhorn are identified by their 5000-series build numbers." -- http://www.winsupersite.com/article/reviews/windows-longhorn-build-5048-review
 
xSystemFailurex said:
Per the web site: "Windows 7 has quickly become the most popular OS with Microsoft selling around 650,000 million licenses per day !"

Impressive.
Click to expand...

xIronCrossx said:
In 1 year they sold about 40 to each of us then. Damn that is impressive.
Click to expand...

westrock2000 said:
When I bought a Tech Net sub I got about 100 various Win 7 licenses, so that may have something to do with it.
Click to expand...

DeathPrincess said:
650,000,000,000 copies / 7,000,000,000 people = 92.8 copies a day!
236,762,500,000,000 copies per year!
33823 copies each person per year! :eek:
Click to expand...

xIronCrossx said:
Yeah I knew I failed there somewhere with the zeros :D
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I read that as well, and I think they forgot to put a dash between 650K and million.
650 billion keys/day doesn't make any sense.
 
MajorDomo said:
It’s strange though; I could have sworn there was an operating system between XP and Vista that may have had a problem or two. :D
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You mean there were some operating systems released between Windows 95 and XP that had some problems. I actually like Windows 98, though I never used Windows ME or Windows 2000.
 
Bloody awful. Looks like computing is going back to the 4 colour UI from the 1980's. Nasty.
 
Anyone know where MS left their ability to make a NEW os? Vista SP5 here we come!
 
Stimpy88 said:
Bloody awful. Looks like computing is going back to the 4 colour UI from the 1980's. Nasty.
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It's a matter of opinion. As far as I'm concerned, the OS is a framework that's there largely to provide software with the means to use the underlying hardware and for users to interact with their software. It's nothing more than a monkey in the middle that should do its job and otherwise not get in the way of allowing the computer to perform the task-oriented purposes for which it was built. If the OS becomes "heavy" with pretty UI elements and a 3D environment that doesn't offer a tangiable benefit to my efficiency, then it's wasting resources that rightfully should be allocated to the programs I'm trying to execute. The direction MS is going seems to be a reflection of that mindset and it's good to see it happening.

There's are some benefits to users in a simplified, lighter interface that are not readily apparent, but warrant consideration. The first is the reduction the OS memory footprint which MS is working hard at doing. If Win8 lives up to the hype, 1 GB of RAM should be sufficient to run the OS and still support most workloads the average person throws at their hardware. (In fact, its very workable with a n270 Eee PC.) Shedding the fat means MS has fewer lines of code in which something can go wrong and needs less storage space for an install. This means it's easier to isolate bugs and there is a potentially smaller surface area in the OS that serves as an attack vector for nefarious sorts. Patches should be fewer in number, faster to deploy, and have less chance of breaking things once they're installed. Then there's performance. With less to do, the UI should be pretty snappy on modest hardware. The screen is still a surface with only two dimensions and, no matter how many tricks we use to offer the illusion of depth, it will not ever have actual physical depth. Rendering UI elements in a 3D environment borders on idiotic given the two dimensions of a screen. Asking the system to manage transparency and blending effects simply burns more resources and eats more power (electrical and computational) for eye candy.

Operating systems are bloated. Even lean, lightweight operating systems like Android are pretty fat compared to something like 98 or 2000. (Win95 was perfectly happy with 16 MB of RAM and did okay with 8 MB and 200 MB of hard disk space was more than reasonable.) The core functional capabilities have not really changed, but the need to dedicate a lot more compute power for the same productivity is disappointing.

If this trend continues, we should all benefit from smaller, simpler devices that deliver a full computer experience for a few watts of electrical power that makes it possible to put those capabilities into someone's hands for a very small sum of money.
 
ME never really existed. It was a mass hallucination brought on by Bill Gates shredding 100 dollar bills in to a fine powder and releasing it over cities in huge chemtrails ..

I do remember the jokes that were making the rounds after the ME stupidity.
"Microsoft's next OS will be a combination of Windows CE, ME and NT. The new Windows CEMENT will be more secure as turns your computer in to a useless brick."
 
MajorDomo said:
In an uncharacteristic show of reflective honesty, Microsoft published a blog post outlining a brief history of its operating systems: the good and the bad. It’s strange though; I could have sworn there was an operating system between XP and Vista that may have had a problem or two. :D
Click to expand...

Any chance your gonna clarify so we don't have to guess WTH you were talking about?
You meant the classic reference of 98 and XP, being ME right.........?
We all want to laugh with your sarcasm, I promise. :eek:
 
SkribbelKat said:
Rendering UI elements in a 3D environment borders on idiotic given the two dimensions of a screen. Asking the system to manage transparency and blending effects simply burns more resources and eats more power (electrical and computational) for eye candy.
Click to expand...
Using this argument, one could say that it only makes sense to scrap "3D" games in favor of 4bit games, or better yet...Pong.
 
The desktop workload is passed on to the GPU already so adding a bit more eye candy doesn't really impact the performance.

A Windows 7 Basic desktop (Opaque interface, no taskbar thumbnails, no alt-tab thumbnails) is actually slower than Aero Glass (Full Windows 7 interface). Try it, the CPU usage actually goes down.
 
Stimpy88 said:
Anyone know where MS left their ability to make a NEW os? Vista SP5 here we come!
Click to expand...

What ability to make a new OS? I suppose since they've been cloning Apple's UI since forever, they absolutely had to clone iOS even when what works on a 4" screen isn't best for a 26" screen. Expect later claims that it was just a ploy to sell more copies of windows 7 (one of the things MS is best at is selling you the same thing over and over).

As far as I know, Plan 9/Inferno was the last time anybody tried a NEW OS. It isn't a very good way to return shareholder value.
 
Sly said:
The desktop workload is passed on to the GPU already so adding a bit more eye candy doesn't really impact the performance.

A Windows 7 Basic desktop (Opaque interface, no taskbar thumbnails, no alt-tab thumbnails) is actually slower than Aero Glass (Full Windows 7 interface). Try it, the CPU usage actually goes down.
Click to expand...

Just played around with it, you're right. I'm not sure if I'd call it slower, but moving a window around quickly you do notice it's slightly less smooth and you get that old school windows trail as the computer doesn't remove the old render of the window before it's moved to its new location.

Also with Aero OFF, I can get the CPU usage on my i5 750 up to 50% just by moving windows around on the screen, lol. Talk about efficient! err... not. With Aero ON I can't get it to go above 10%.

Obviously it's because it's off loading to the GPU, but it just goes to show flashier isn't always more sluggish.
 
Sly said:
The desktop workload is passed on to the GPU already so adding a bit more eye candy doesn't really impact the performance.

A Windows 7 Basic desktop (Opaque interface, no taskbar thumbnails, no alt-tab thumbnails) is actually slower than Aero Glass (Full Windows 7 interface). Try it, the CPU usage actually goes down.
Click to expand...

I may not have explained this sort of thing in enough detail. Yes, CPU usage climbs when Aero is disabled, but GPU cycles are instead spent rendering the desktop when Aero is enabled. All you've done is shift the processing workload to another device that doesn't happen to have a handy little graphical monitoring tool in the task manager. Not having the capability at all removes the potential for a 3D GUI workload to exist on any device, CPU or GPU.
 
Tudz said:
Just played around with it, you're right. I'm not sure if I'd call it slower, but moving a window around quickly you do notice it's slightly less smooth and you get that old school windows trail as the computer doesn't remove the old render of the window before it's moved to its new location.

Also with Aero OFF, I can get the CPU usage on my i5 750 up to 50% just by moving windows around on the screen, lol. Talk about efficient! err... not. With Aero ON I can't get it to go above 10%.

Obviously it's because it's off loading to the GPU, but it just goes to show flashier isn't always more sluggish.
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Aero is not DWM is not Aero.
 
SkribbelKat said:
I may not have explained this sort of thing in enough detail. Yes, CPU usage climbs when Aero is disabled, but GPU cycles are instead spent rendering the desktop when Aero is enabled. All you've done is shift the processing workload to another device that doesn't happen to have a handy little graphical monitoring tool in the task manager. Not having the capability at all removes the potential for a 3D GUI workload to exist on any device, CPU or GPU.
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The point in the first place was to the lighten the load by shifting the worlload to the GPU to free up the CPU even before the 3D effects were added. At that point, they might as well pretty it up since additional workload doesn't cripple the CPUs performance.

If we were to go by your way of thinking, we would still be at the Dos prompt.

I'd rather have this
97536739.jpg


Instead of this
85869198.jpg


BTW, i just did a test. I actually have my power strip plugged in to the wattmeter. And my netbook, on basic, while moving some windows around the screen, is pulling 38 watts. On Aero it's down to 33 watts.

On my i5 desktop (see sig). On idle, the rig pulls about 98-100 watts, moving windows around in Basic sends it up to 139watts. Aero on the other hand only goes up to 102 watts. That's practically idle.


GPU rendering not only frees up more CPU for your important applications. It saves you energy as well. The special effects is just the icing. This is just windows evolving to take advantage of existing resources.
 
GPU rendering isn't going away. The blog post was talking about the visual theming with transparency - fundamentally, DWM is still present.
 
Sly said:
If we were to go by your way of thinking, we would still be at the Dos prompt.
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How's that a bad thing? :)

I guess I see some of your point with respect to electrical power since a GPU is more efficient about handling graphics (which it should be since it's a graphics processor). It still doesn't mean that there isn't more lines of code and more stuff that can go wrong through added complexity. I also think its a good thing there's less unnecessary functionality being included in the OS to keep things leaner along with being eaiser to secure and maintain.
 
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