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[May 5, 2003] WinHEC 2003: First Look at Longhorn Graphics 1 Microsoft Publishes First Windows XP SP 2 Patch 2 How can I uninstall the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (JVM) from Windows XP? 3 AD Sites, Part 2 4 Application Problems in Windows XP SP 2 5 What You Need to Know About Windows Update Services More Top Viewed Articles Paul ThurrottInstantDoc #38925 Paul Thurrott's Win Info During a pre-show demonstration yesterday of the Longhorn graphics subsystem at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2003 trade show in New Orleans, I saw for the first time some of the advanced video effects that Microsoft will enable in the next Windows version. Longhorn, which is due in late 2004 or early 2005, includes a completely new desktop composition system that replaces the model earlier Windows versions used with one that is more technically advanced, visually appealing, and scalable. The early test versions Microsoft is showing at WinHEC include amazing animation effects, smooth window scaling, and advanced window translucency. The change is startling. Earlier Windows versions rendered the Windows desktop as one display surface; each window was a region on that shared surface.

In the new model, individual windows are responsible only for drawing their own surfaces and then only when other windows aren't hiding those surfaces. In Longhorn, each window has its own, full-featured surface, independent of the other windows, and each window acts as if it's always 100 percent visible, forcing it to redraw itself constantly. Likewise, the desktop is rendered many times a second by combining the contents of each open window. These changes require significantly more graphics resources than earlier Windows versions, but Microsoft notes that most modern PCs have 3-D graphics power to spare.

For those PCs that don't have the hardware necessary to take advantage of the full Longhorn user experience, Microsoft will scale the graphics back into different modes. In baseline mode, Longhorn will offer features similar to those in Windows 2000 and use software rendering only. The next step up, the so-called tier 1 experience, delivers the minimum hardware-acceleration and desktop-composition features required for the Longhorn user experience. This mode requires mainstream 3-D graphics hardware and offers 3-D capabilities equivalent to what was available in Microsoft DirectX 7. The tier 1 experience also supports low-power modes, making it ideal for mobile computers. In the tier 2 experience, users will get the full Windows Longhorn user experience on the desktop, which includes support for advanced 3-D graphics and animation.

This mode requires the most advanced hardware, such as high-end 3-D hardware released in 2002 or later, and features capabilities equivalent to DirectX 9 and later DirectX versions. The demonstration I saw was performed on a Longhorn build 4015 desktop. When windows moved across the screen, they visually 'shuttered,' bending under the speed of the movement, like a flag billowing in a breeze. The windows had various translucency levels, but in a much more fine-grained and visually stunning way than earlier Windows versions. And, best of all, you can visually scale windows up and down with no loss in quality as you resize them, an effect that's impossible on today's Windows desktop. Microsoft told me that none of these effects were designed for the final Longhorn product, but that the company is simply testing them.

Microsoft could use the scaling feature for window minimization: Instead of using a standard taskbar button to represent a minimized window, Longhorn will probably display a miniature version of the window so that you can visually differentiate among the various minimized windows and more easily select the one you want. The shutter feature will also likely evolve into a minimize effect, Microsoft said. One of the most important aspects of this technology is that application developers won't need to rewrite their software to support the new features. Instead, Microsoft will automatically provide the new animations, transparencies, and effects to any existing Windows application running under Longhorn. All the applications I saw during the demonstration were available today in Windows XP, including Notepad, Command Prompt, Paint, and Task Manager.

Another interesting part of the demonstration involved a set of movie clips from 'Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones' that played in real time while they flipped about on the screen; during this process, applications were launched and ran, all without affecting the speed or rendering quality of the animating, spinning movie clips. The underlying hardware that powered this graphical wonder was a relatively low-level 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 with 384 MB of RAM and ATI's RADEON 9700 3-D graphics card. The effects I've described above are hard to explain in text, but I took dozens of pictures and will post them on the Super Site for Windows later this week. Although the show hasn't even officially started yet, I'm already quite impressed with what I've seen of Longhorn. Reader Comments So it's a lot like what Mac OS X can do today then? Editor's note: Not even close.

It's far more advanced and powerful. Sort of what you'd expect when you compare a PC to a Mac. -- Paul Alex -May 06, 2003 YAWN Mac OS X has had this for years. It's really funny to see Microsoft continue to copy the Macintosh as fast as Apple adds new features and effects. Unfortunately, this stuff is nothing but eye candy and usually gets in the way of getting work done. Editor's note: Not true on both counts.

I'll have a detail write-up with screenshots on the Super Site as soon as possible that will explain why. Don't belittle what you haven't seen and don't understand. -- Paul Michael Montgomery -May 06, 2003 Wow! A product at least 2 years away will have caught up to OSX. Hardware rendering of OS graphics? Amazing!

Translucent window effects? Groundbreaking! Wish MS would spend time on useful projects like actually getting SMS 2003 out the door or making a version of Outlook that enables form printing. Editor's note: Actually, Longhorn's graphics go far beyond anything you can do in Quartz. -- Paul James -May 06, 2003 This WinHEC capability of next Windows release (codename Longhorn) it seems to be based on ex Be Inc. leading OS called... BeOS... you know, the Desktop rendering engine...

Am I wrong? Cheers! Perhaps BeOS isn't absolute after all. Cheers. shag una -May 06, 2003 Query: Will the Longhorn graphics do full-motion video on rotated displays?

With flat panels getting downright cheap, and Tablet PCs setting the example of how useful portrait computing can be, it is annoying to have to turn to landscape for video display. Comment: Seems MS is applying their old mantra of abstraction and virtualization to the Windows APIs themselves. Which makes perfect sense in these days of $1 a Gb drives and 256 Mb video cards, especially for an OS intended for a 2005-2010 life cycle. The implications of hardware-assisted virtualization (Palladium-friendly chip sets, Hyperthreading, and DirectX 9-level graphics chips) on commodity hardware should open up a whole new set of application development options. This should be fun. Felix Torres -May 06, 2003 Hi.

This sounds like the Quartz Extreme graphics capabilities from Apple utilizing the latest Graphics cards to render each Window as textures. It is quite surprising that MS is utilizing this similar graphics display technology. Would be interesting to compare one to one once Longhorn goes into production. Wonder what Apple would have by then?

Adam -May 06, 2003 BEOS could render movies on all sides of a rotating cube, a long time ago. David -May 06, 2003 Note to the editor: we got your point, no need to repeat it another time - you think it's better than OSX. Still, what you present is nothing which sounds very new or very useful. I am not a Mac fan at all, but still it was also my first thought. The icon at bottom and more eye-candy animation... it smells like MacOSX.

If there is more, ok, tell us about it!! Chris -May 06, 2003 I'm not too hopeful, given the hideous appearance of the standard Windows XP themes, but the key is whether this graphic power improves usability. Mac OS X looks nice, but making the window tabs translucent was stupid. I'll be reading closely to see whether you can really justify the claims that Longhorn is going to be so much more advanced than OS X. Certainly there isn't a thing in your description today that OS X can't do. Peter -May 06, 2003 Just for those that say MS is copying OS X with translucent windows and hardware rendering, I direct your attention to Windows 2000 which supports windows translucency.

Look up the Windows API called SetLayeredWindowAttributes that first showed up in Windows 2000. The other technology is GDI+, which, amongst its other features, uses 3 D hardware to render 2 D desktop elements. Both predate OS X. Peter Williams -May 06, 2003 WOW Paul, what a Windows lover, just like those loyal mac fans. John Molson -May 06, 2003 You don't 'compare a PC to a Mac' in terms of m ghz. Nice 'low end machine'. qua -May 06, 2003 And the 'relatively low' hardware configuration includes ATI Radeon 9700 ~ $300 I should, probably, invest in a WARP drive for my system HDD, so that it spins fast enough. How much HDD space does this highly advanced system occupy?

And the Editor's note is: IQ -May 06, 2003 It does sound like a catch-up game (like the initial version of Windows, which couldn't display any overlapping windows at all, but could only tile them). In any case, there are some great texts out there about how Quartz and the graphics layer of Mac OS X work to display the desktop. It's the same thing described here - the display is no longer built up of simple graf ports, but is instead composited dynamically in the same way layers of a Photoshop document are composited. I think Mac OS X uses the flexibility this gives in useful ways. It's easier to convey certain types of information (ie - giving the front-most window a bigger drop shadow to really make it feel like it's 'on top') while making it all look good (a smooth blending drop shadow is better than a harsh block). I hope Microsoft can use this technology to make that humongous new Sidebar feel less intrusive.

While I like the concept of the Longhorn and MSN sidebar, they force themselves too much into the screen real estate and distract my eyes from where they need to be on the screen. Maybe through more natural blending this effect won't feel so harsh. J. Shell -May 06, 2003 Paul, I don't see the difference you mention to the other posters here. Your article describes the Apple Quartz Extreme technology experience perfectly. Check out: web sig graph 2002 b of / sg 2002 b of apple. pdf If I missed something that was explained in your article, please explain. Since your audience seems to have a lot of Mac users (4 comments, all Mac users) perhaps you should have described the differences between Longhorn and OSX?

Pete Peter -May 06, 2003 Note to Editor: 'Not even close'? This turns out not to be the case. 'Every window will have its own, full window-sized surface to draw to. ' Microsoft innovates buffered windows. OK, these were stock items in NeXTSTEP back in 1988, and shipped in Mac OS X right from the start. 'The desktop will be dynamically composed many times a second from the contents of each window.

' Microsoft innovates the compositor. A version shipped in NeXTSTEP, and in Mac OS X it applied to inter-window compositing, the Quartz Compositor. It's hardware accelerated in Quartz Extreme, shipping in Mac OS X 10.2. I have a nice PDF slide show explaining this in detail. 'The Windows Longhorn Driver Model allows for the visual effects seen on a user's desktop to scale relative to the available graphics hardware. ' Microsoft innovates the transformation matrix.

Again, in NeXTSTEP from the start, and in Mac OS X. It's hardware accelerated in Quartz Extreme, shipping in Mac OS X 10.2. If you need any more detail, I'll be happy to address any questions or points you might raise. Mike Paquette -May 06, 2003 Comment to the editor - sorry, but your responses to the three above messages just sound like the knee-jerk reaction of a Wintel fanboy - my response is: prove it! Everything that you have described in your article can be done with Quartz + Quartz Extreme: 1) Each window in an app already has its own port to the display system, and can update the window as much as it wants. Quartz then composites the results from all the windows to the screen, with full transparency. Quartz also stores the resulting image in backing store, so that any app that does not need constant refreshing just refreshes from backing store - no need to force the app to display all the time! (and is one of the many things that speed up wake from sleep so dramatically on Macs).

2) Window Shuttering? Playing a movie on a window spinning all over the screen? Sounds like Quartz Extreme depositing a window on a texture map on the 3 D card, and playing with the texture map. Ever saw a Quartz Extreme demo of a Quicktime movie playing while the entire window minimizes into the Dock with the Genie Effect? Same diff.

3) Displaying a miniature version of the window - sounds like the miniature version of the window displayed on OSX's dock, although who knows if Microsoft's miniature window will update dynamically, like Quartz Extreme's can... So where are the 'more advanced and powerful' features? Up to now it just looks like Longhorn is reaching parity with OS X. I'm all ears! Editor's note: again, there are two aspects to the Longhorn UI, and we " re only see one of them. Those are the underlying graphics capabilities, which I've described and will later provide pictures of (Quartz Extreme on the Mac) and the second is the actual GUI, which will be extensively updated compared to what we see in XP (Aqua on OS X).

The Longhorn graphics architecture is more advanced than that in Quartz Extreme, and I will discuss this in a long-form Super Site article as soon as I can; right now, I'm in New Orleans at the show with a full schedule. -- Paul Juan -May 06, 2003 The differance Paul is that MS will still incorporate that great product activation we all love and allow you to install only one copy on one machine. Their paranoid about piracy. Unlike OSX or Linux dis tros. Even Apple considers activation archaic.

And to get these great new technologies you always have to wait 2 to 4 years for a new release, instead of adding them to service packs of the current operating system. The interface still looks XP " ish. OSX is way more stylish and refined. And by the time longhorn makes it out, who knows what Apple will have added to their future operating system. Alot of people posting replies hear still like OSX as a whole better. Apple did something right.

MS needs to figure it out. Bob -May 06, 2003 I'll be curtius to see if Longhorn or MS will allow you to customize the interface, without the need for third party software like Windows Blinds or Style XP. With SuSE 8.2 I have complete control of my user interface, when it comes to customization right out of the box. And I DON'T NEED. additional 'third party software' that you have to buy to do it. And with SuSE 8.2 customizing the desktop does not have an affect on the operating system at all. Bob -May 06, 2003 Professional graphic artists still prefer Mac OSX or Linux over anything Microsoft produces.

Look at what ILM and Pixar use as their primary operating systems. Or just look at a professional graphics magazine. Alot more Apple stuff than MS stuff. Editor's note: How do you respond to the fact tha more professional artists, , and photographers use Windows than Mac OS? -- Paul Bob -May 06, 2003 So the new windowing is more advanced and powerful than Quartz Extreme? If all we have to go on is what's on this article, I'm wondering how one can say that.

Honestly when I have my Longhorn beta machine next to my OSX machine... the resemblance is amazing. I'm a windows and a mac weenie, so I'm just telling you my opinion from a neutral point of view. Granted Longhorn is a year or so away from release... but Apple will have already release Panther and who knows what else in between. Let the race begin! WOO HOO! Us consumers benefit: -) G'red -May 06, 2003 In fact Apple copied the interface from Xerox so they shouldn't brag so much.

Apple takes advantage of Xerox's incompetence. As does Microsoft of Apple's. Kind regards. Jordi -May 06, 2003 Not just is Longhorn a product that keeps getting delayed, but... it is also a product that MS representatives have hinted may be delayed until 2006-2007. In addition, these amazing new UI graphic capabilities are so... 'amazing'... that you can notice in the screenshot how it has totally screwed up transparencies in handling edge / corner full transparency. And so many of these 'new and exciting' features already exist and are actually either being licensed - or stolen from others (as is always the case with any new Win release - and the cause for literally hundreds of source and technology theft lawsuits against MS every year).

Stardock being one of the companies assisting MS yet again. So far, in the last few releases, MS has touted 'great new features' - of which all have already existed as 3rd party tools, apps or upgrades, and most of which have actually been done with the help of Stardock or IBM (do you have any idea the staggering amount of bugs MS pays IBM to help them fix? MS has gotten so poor at fixing their own bugs they are ever increasingly asking IBM for help to do so) - or help from others (some unwittingly) who had also released the 'new feature' years before MS announced it. Why cant even ONE reviewer actually come clean on this stuff? MS didnt write these 'new' features. They " ve been available to some extent or other for in many cases, numerous years.

So yeah, you may be accurate in saying that they are new features to be in Windows, but they are far from new features available to add to an existing install. Rob M -May 07, 2003 Don't be silly, this isn't even comparable to what Quartz does. In actual fact it's probably the opposite. Quartz basically pastes everything down to a single PDF style image.

Which is what gives it a nice crispness. This on the other hand will break all the elements down and make them look after themselves a little better. Quartz is hardware accelerated rendering only in that the drawing is so hungry that it needs a certain type of accelerator to run it. This is accelerated in that it uses the tremendous (and at the OS level, wasted) graphical power of modern computers to allow new levels of graphical detail and interaction. Personally I hope they don't go too crazy on the effects. I am a professional user and don't much WANT my window to flutter like a goddamned flag when I move it.

I want it to move quickly, cleanly, neatly. I want it to draw in instantly, or better still, never draw OUT. I want it to not have to delay drawing in so it can spin up my goddamned CD-Rom drive so it can tell that the PR 0 N 23 CD is still in there. E. .. what was I saying? Yeah. Apples. Bear in mind people that this is still two years away.

Do you honestly think Apple are that far ahead? Do you honestly think MS cannot innovate? In my opinion MS genuinely innovates as often as Apple. That being... not very often. I'm really sick of Apple people harping on that XP was basically a screen shot of OSX with Apple scribbled out in crayon. Grow up people.

This is (more or less) verbatim a conversation I had with a mac zealot friend recently. 'Why does your OSX look so much like XP?' 'Ha ha ha... why does XP look so much like OSX? They just stole all of OSX and made it crash!' 'No, seriously. Your desktop image is Bliss. jpg. It's the default desktop for windows XP.

' 'Oh. Really? I found it on the net. I liked it. ' I think that says something, folks. Have MS been inspired by some things Apple have done?

Probably. But I don't think much beyond 'Let's make it prettier'. And I'm fine with that. In much the same way Apple looked at Win 95 and said 'hey, lets steal that bar thingy at the bottom.

' They saw something that works, and they improved on it. Good on them. And from the looks of it, MS will take that a step further. It's worth pointing out at this point that a lot of the things that happen in technology are not new. They " re just possible. People said MS copied XP because it's buttons weren't square.

Seriously. That's about the only similarity I can see. And the reason for that is not because they copied, but because hardware is only now at a point where non-square, alpha ed bitmaps can be effectively used. As far as I can tell, the only realistic comparison is that 'OSX looks better than the previous version, and XP looks better than the previous version, therefore they must have copied Apple. ' U. .. questionable at best. Anyway, my point, lost in rant, is that this will be interesting and important technology. Don't lose sight of that in brand based bigotry.

MS will release this. Apple will look and go. 'Hey that's neat. ' And the cycle of plagiarism will go on eternally, as it should. This and quartz are not comparable. Quartz is the present (for Apple, anyway), and Longhorn is the future for microsoft.

They both have their place. Matt Matt Burgess -May 07, 2003 wow, i guess it will have a zoom-effect when you minimize a window, and i'm pretty sure it will play even videos in a minimized view. like osX: -) and by the way, as in osX, the graphic is usually provided by the operating system, so there's no need to adapt software to take advantage of the new graphic layer. but as far as i know MS, they still have one and a half year to sc w it! alex -May 07, 2003 It's far more advanced and powerful. -- Paul' You are not prejudiced, Paul, are you? Oh, I know, you just forgot to include the ironic-smiley. ; -) Julian Editor's note: it's not bias. I run both OS X and XP.

It's called 'real world experience'. -- Paul Julian -May 07, 2003 Paul, that's strange, let me quote your own words from an article last year: 'Want an Early Peek at the Longhorn 3 D Display? Check out Mac OS X 10.2 'Jaguar's peaking of similar but not the same, one of the more confusing features of the next Windows version is its 3 D-based user interface, which some people have taken to mean that Longhorn will somehow incorporate a bizarre spatial UI, similar to that depicted in the Michael Crichton's novel Disclosure. That'd be nice, but it's not true. Instead, Longhorn will feature a desktop-based, task-driven UI based on that in XP, but substantially updated. Where the 3 D comes into play is through Longhorn's incorporation of Direct 3 D, Microsoft's 3 D display technology (used today primarily in games), which will be used to render desktop objects.

Interestingly, this display approach is also being incorporated into the next Mac OS X version, code-named Jaguar, which will ship later this month. Of course, Jaguar uses Open GL instead of Direct 3 D for what Apple calls its Quartz Extreme display, but the net effect is the same: Under each OS, the desktop is essentially a 3 D scene with objects rendered as textured polygons. And while users with low-end hardware will see desktop effects similar to today's OSes, Longhorn and Jaguar users with decent 3 D video cards will see dramatic performance and display appearance improvements, similar to the effect such users would expect when playing 3 D games. Good stuff, and yeah, Apple's delivering it first. ' (web ) Paul, i have semi-transparent OpenGL-Teapots here with environment mapping rotating directly on my Desktop, smoothly, hardware-accelerated all on a 3 year old G 4-400 with Radeon 8500 (so much for the 'low-level' P 4 1.5 GHz with Radeon 9700! )! What's this 'far more powerful' you " re talking about?

It's certainly not in your Article, cause what you describe in there is an exact copy of Quartz (2001) and Quartz Extreme (2002)! Kai -May 07, 2003 Ok, so the rendering might be a bit cleverer than Quartz, but what about BeOS / Zeta? That can run multiple videos without problems on far lower spec'd hardware than a P 4 with a 9700 graphics card! Editor's note: What about the Amiga? I think it's only fair to compare it to products that are actually being sold today. -- Paul Stuart -May 07, 2003 Sort of what you'd expect when you compare a PC to a Mac.

' -- - What? The PC of the future compared to a Mac today? This is what I expect: When Longhorn finally is out, the Mac already has some features that MS can copy again. Same procedure as every year... Editor's note: I meant, PCs perform better than Macs, so obviously, Longhorn's graphic effects perform better than those in Mac OS X. -- Paul Ole -May 07, 2003 Didn? t you write this: 'Want an Early Peek at the Longhorn 3 D Display? Check out Mac OS X 10.2 'Jaguar' last year??

Editor's Note: Like most people, hopefully, I know more now than I did a year ago. -- Paul Bernie -May 07, 2003 Hey, 'Editor', MS is ripping off Apple... it's called 'Quartz Extreme', and it does EXACTLY what MS demonstrated. web This is NOT new... and it does not 'go far beyond anything you can do in Quartz', nor is it 'far more advanced and powerful'. And in terms of comparing a PC to a Mac, it seems as though MS & HP like what Apple's doing... web Get your head out of your ass. Thanks for the kind words. I've used Mac OS X for two years, am familiar with Quartz and Quartz Extreme, and again, what Longhorn can do is superior. -- Paul Jeremy -May 07, 2003 Totally lame excuses Paul.

As stated by others, pretty well everything you described about Longhorn in your article has been available in OSX from it's introduction. Maybe you lack the skills to adequately convey these wondrous superior features through words or perhaps you " re being blinded by your Microsoft-coloured glasses. Whatever, your 'just wait until you see it' just doesn't cut it. From off-loading video processing to levels of transparency to scaling to mini versions of windows in the Task bar (Quicktime windows still running)... all and more are in OSX today. You do a disservice by pandering to the Windows minions by not being honest about MS always playing catch up (particularly with Apple) and by not pointing your audience to OSX today to see where Microsoft is going tomorrow (and MS has even stated some is just testing and bottom line, is still a couple of years off). You exhibit the classic 'if I ignore it (Apple), it's irrelevant and will go away'.

And I thought you more honest and open-minded than that. Fortunately for Windows users, your beloved Microsoft does just the opposite and follows Apple's every move: -) (Even photos I've seen of the new Athena desktop looks eerily like the Mac / OSX (variation of Quantum Foam). Microsoft... things never change.) Editor's note: I've never discussed the Athena desktop, I'm talking about Longhorn. I'll have better shots up on the Super Site as soon as I can. In the meantime, I've seen both the Longhorn UI and the Mac OS X UI, and you haven't, and yes, the Longhorn version is technically superior. -- paul Joe Scozzaro -May 07, 2003 May I ask why this site allows reader comments when the editor insists on criticising them all? His level of fanaticism for Microsoft software is really quite amazing.

As for not understanding the subject, a harsher person might suggest that this indicates a failure on the part of the article's author... Editor's note: I guess if I was a real loser, I'd just delete the comments I didn't like. As we allow anonymous posting, I feel this is a fair trade off. -- Paul Jay see -May 07, 2003 I've seen the preview on - and i'm very impressed. M$ has created a whole new OS without ground braking new developments. Oh - i've forgot the 'long awaited clock' in the login window.

With all this goodies it can't match today's Jaguar neither in technology nor in usability. And again: today's OS X! A editor wrote two years ago 'Seeing today's mac is seeing windows in two years' It has never been more true. I'm pati only await MacOS XI (on 2004/2005); -). AW Editor's note: Sorry, you " re wrong. -- paul Alexander Wolff -May 07, 2003 The first thing I do with a new XP system is turn off all the animation effects: they " re annoying and distracting.

Why would I want windows to go flippy-floppy like a wet dishrag when I drag them across the screen? P.S. I've been using Windows since version 2.1, and have never used any flavor of Macintosh. Pat Rice -May 07, 2003 Any of you who would like to see what may be possible in longhorn, look at today's Mac OS X. Microsoft is just copying again, this time its quartz extreme. So don't be too proud of microsoft. By the time longhorn is released this will be very old stuff. Peter -May 07, 2003 shut up, paul! Editor's note: I haven't yet done that, and I'll try to refrain from doing so in the future -- TheManWhoIsPaul.

-May 07, 2003 One flaw in Quartz Extreme that has yet to be addressed is font smoothing. Quartz Extreme cannot render crisp text below 12 pt, this at the system level. It really has a deleterious effect on the user experience. In addition, not all apps take advantage of Quartz Extreme.

Editor's note: So you " ve just listed two of the many ways in which Longhorn's graphics architecture is superior to Quartz Extreme. See how easy that is? : ) -- paul Rico -May 07, 2003 Interesting. Like many have said, this sounds a lot like Quartz Extreme on the Mac. Paul says its not the same. I await a full explanation as to why. It certainly looks the same from his article.

That's not to say it's a bad thing, of course, it's a logical progression now that graphics cards often have more (specialized) power than the CPU. What I find interesting is that MS is not moving away from GDI (+) and WM PAINT as a way of doing the drawing. The article states: 'each window acts as if it's always 100 percent visible, forcing it to redraw itself constantly'. H. Sounds like it's actually Quartz Extreme without the Quartz. I've not used Quartz, but as a Win 32 programmer that's done a fair amount of graphics code, I always thought it sounded nice. The idea that the Windows still requires my program to keep track of what needs to be redrawn when my window is uncovered (for example) strikes me as a bit backward.

Surely everyone is re-writing this sort of thing all the time. I like the idea of rendering to pseudo-PDF, and letting the OS take it from there. Oh well. Editor's note: I'm not sure how anyone could get enough out of this article to compare Longhorn's graphics architecture to Quartz Extreme, as it's just a news article / overview, not an in-depth examination of the technology. I'll have more detailed information as soon as I can. -- Paul Swythan -May 07, 2003 I'll reserve final judgment when Longhorn ships, but then 10.3 will probably be available when Longhorn is available.

Currently, it's a product demo vs. shipping OS X Quartz Extreme. Doesn't matter if it looks more advanced -- it ain't shipping. Guess it will be interesting to see what WWDC 2003 has in store in a month or so. Editor's note: First sane note from a Mac fan here, I think. : ) And yep, you " re right. I expect Apple to keep pushing ahead and do some great stuff.

Frankly, right now, the big problem with Apple's hardware is the CPU: If they can fix that, you guys will have some valid arguments. Right now, though, the Mac is just treading water. You can say what you want about innovation, Apple-had-it-first, or other often-incorrect assumptions about the relationship between Apple and Mac wares, but if Apple doesn't jump on the right CPU ship this year, the 1.42 GHz boxes its pumping out now in record low numbers isn't going to help at all. in any event, yeah... I'm eager to see what Apple can come up with at the WWDC. And one thing that gets lost in all this is that I really do like their stuff. I'm surprised when people have such violent reactions to anything that challenges their assumptions about the way the world works.

Apple isn't always first, best, or fastest. It's OK. -- Paul Yo -May 07, 2003 ATI's RADEON 9700 3-D graphics card. ' Paul, the system you mentioned is definitely not 'relatively low level'. Currently a 9700 is a pretty ninja-spec graphics card. Even by the time Longhorn is released, it will still be pretty good technology.

Editor's note: Longhorn is shipping in two years. How much does an NVIDIA Ge Force 2 MX cost today? I think they give them away in Cheerios boxes now. -- Paul Robert Knight -May 07, 2003 One of the previous commenter's spoke of the high expense of a Radeon 9700 card. This fails to take into account that such a card will be well under $100 by the time Longhorn reaches the market. By then DirectX 9 class video hardware should be quite common and it would be very disappointing if it weren't properly supported.

Microsoft has a very different set of problems than Apple when it comes to rolling out new hardware support. Apple has a monopoly (ooh, that word!) on its hardware and can easily dictate what will be the minimum system shipped with anew S generation. Microsoft doesn't enjoy that level of control over PC vendors, many of who still shipped machines with anemic 810 graphics when XP became their standard OS and thus crippled some of the new functionality. Microsoft has to keep supporting older stuff that still ends up on new corporate desktops long after its passed into the bargain basement of consumer PCs. Does much of this sound like what Apple has been doing? Sure, get over it.

You could have a dozen completely separate teams starting new operating systems from scratch to run on current and near future available hardware and you'd very likely end up with similar descriptions of the graphics functionality because that is what modern makes practical. (NeXT tried to do a lot of this long ago but it surely wasn't practical with what they had available then and could become torturous in real world use.) The real issue is in implementation and how well the result applied to real world use. Quartz Extreme has impressed a lot of people but only sold computers to already dedicated Jobs-Ade drinkers. I used BeOS for a while and it was quite spiffy but you'd expect a lot from something that no legacy issues at all to overcome. Those legacy issues are also where the value of existing systems lie, in that they have substantial libraries of software that make the system useful to people with work to do who don't care about technical aesthetics. Be Inc. completely failed to make a compelling argument to anyone who wasn't a techie like me and thus offered no reason for major software companies to view it as an opportunity.

Microsoft's job is not to be the first anywhere with the new features. It's to deliver something that runs the majority of what people are already invested in while offering environmental improvements that lead in turn to better applications and more stuff sold. This is vastly more effort than just doing it from scratch and not having to worry about breaking stuff. Eric Pob irs -May 07, 2003 Oh boy...

When will these guys ever start to innovate? Why not admit it: the Mac is just sexier and stop copying all the stuff it can do? After all, Microsoft have now ripped everything from the trashcan to the animated minimizing from the Mac OS. Why not do something new and fresh for a change?

(PC User with secret Mac desires) Editor's note: Sigh. Look, Mac hardware is nice. They are saddled by slow processors, and hopefully that will change. Microsoft isn't 'copying' Apple here; they " ve been working on this technology for years and need to wait until there a large enough base of users with the appropriate hardware before they can use this tech. It's not like the small, controlled Mac market where you know all about the 11 configurations that are used by 90 percent of the users.

The PC world is huge, dynamic and infinitely malleable, and it's amazing that any company can make an OS that runs on all those different systems. Certainly, there are places were Apple has copied from Microsoft. -- paul Jens a -May 07, 2003 How does this come even close to objective journalism? Nothing of what has been said comes close to convincing me that Longhorn's graphics subsystem is anything other than a copy of Quartz Extreme. Protestations of 'it's better on a PC' that are not backed up and only serve to reinforce the a perception of bias. QE has been universally praised as nothing short of revolutionary - it's completely different (not to mention superior) than anything on the market.

I run OSX and XP side by side on a daily basis - I try to spend as much time in OSX as possible). If Longhorn is somehow better or offers capabilities that QE does not currently support, back it up. It's still more than 2 years behind Apple's efforts, and 10+ years behind the original inspiration, Display Postscript. I don't trust ANYTHING Microsoft does. They are at best tolerated.

I have yet to understand how anyone can see them as anything other that arrogant peddlers of mediocre software. How much has Microsoft paid you for your press credentials? Will -May 07, 2003 Help! I was looking for Win Informant comments area and got diverted to a Mac site; -) Seriously, though, whether the Longhorn compositor + renderer walks and talks the same as Quartz or not is beside the point.

The fact is, it only makes sense to use hardware where it's available, if for no other reason than to let the CPU do more 'actual work'. In that regard, since I'm considering a PC purchase this year (obviously it won't have Longhorn to start with, but nevertheless it " ll probably see it in its' lifetime), I'll be interested to see how the performance is at the three levels, and what new features will be 'commonly available' to applications. And, as MacOS X has already shown, well-placed effects can add to the appeal and functionality of a system's UI. A question: Did someone mention that the rendering would come to existing applications automatically? The applications you saw running are all Microsoft ones, and could have been altered for the Longhorn demonstration at WinHEC. Anyways, looking forward to seeing more screenshots and more details of this technology.

Editor's note: Here's what happens. God forbid anyone make an accurate comment about the relative speeds of PCs and Macs: The Mac brigade jumps on the bandwagon and slams things they don't understand (Longhorn graphics and probably Quartz Extreme for that matter) and people they don't trust (me) despite the fact that I actually use Macs regularly and am very honest about the experience. But hey, this is America. I won't edit or delete their comments, but I will throw in my two cents worth. To your questions. Yes, the rendering is applied to any window on the screen, any app, from any vendor.

The performance of Longhorn's GUI is very much 3 D hardware accelerator based: So you can have a fairly slow CPU (1.5 GHz, which, ahem is a faster clock than any Mac, but a low-level machine at best in the PC world), but if you have a cranking (64-128 MB) GPU, you " re all set. -- Paul digital eon -May 07, 2003 In addition, not all apps take advantage of Quartz Extreme. This is simply not true. QE is handled at the Window Manager level. The 'taking advantage' of part is a function of the hardware in your machine. Furthermore...

I believe that ALL currently shipping Apple hardware (and all hardware shipping since QE was released) is QE capable. Editor's note: Not quite. But today, all Macs can take advantage of QE, yes. However, Apple only sells about 2-3 million Macs a year so, at most, 3-4 million Macs are running QE effectively or at all. -- Paul Chris Culla -May 07, 2003 In fact Apple copied the interface from Xerox so they shouldn't brag so much. Incorrect, revisionist history.

Sorry. Editor's note: No. This is actually correct. I recommend reading 'Dealers of Lightning' for a detailed explanation, but this is accurate. -- Paul Chris -May 07, 2003 Alright look...

Microsoft copies Apple. Apple copies Microsoft. This is what the software industry is all about. Someone comes up with a good idea. Someone else improves it. On and on.

Innovation... sometimes. Imitation... you bet. Plenty of examples on both sides. So is Longhorn a Quartz ripoff? Who cares. Even if it is, MS will throw in a few ideas of their own.

Then Apple will improve on that design with their own extensions. On and on. Guess who wins? Yep.

You and me. spiffy -May 07, 2003 You lot a very sad. I thought i read the comment for some interesting info on longhorn yet it's just full arguments about how apple had it first. Who cares? Viewer -May 08, 2003 There are so many comments here I want to reply to, but I'll keep it short. 1.

Why do people assume Paul is biased because he likes the products of a company? If someone writes an article saying 'OSX is rather good' people don't jump up and down yelling 'APPLE PAID YOU!'. What is with you people? It's one man's opinion. And it's worth pointing out it's an INFORMED opinion, unlike most of his critics. 2.

I am a graphic designer. Many of the people I know are graphic designers. Not... a... single... one... uses... a... mac. Let me make that clear.

Not one. The only people I know who use a mac are two Zealot apple sales people and an idiotic american. Excuse the redundancy. 3.

How can people get so fired up about mocking things they haven't seen? Seriously. Everyone here who has seen both Longhorn and OSX, please raise your hand. No? Alright, then, shut the f up! 4.

Let's be clear here. Quartz and Longhorn ARE NOT COMPARABLE. They are not the same. Longhorn is not 'catching up' or chasing. Its totally different. The fact that it makes the pretty pictures is the only connection.

Again, this comes down to shut up until you " ve seen it. 5. Personally I'm not all that impressed. They can add all the fancy graphics architecture they like, but here's my shopping list for Longhorn. a) Anti-Virus - it's 2003, people. Dump an 'adequate but not very fully featured' virus protector into the OS. If people want a better one, then fine. b) Clock - They " re stepping in the right direction.

Adding the calender is a good start. You better be able to put quick notes or alerts on there (Ted's Birthday. Buy Cake. ).

It's also worth pointing out that MS Clock is the only clock made since 1940 that doesn't have an ALARM. What's with that. I know you can do alarm stuff in either MSN Alerts, or Outlook, but not everyone has those, and more importantly, who wants to make an Outlook task to say 'Turn over the chicken'? c) speed. MS can do all they want to provide a database based file system to improve searches, but I want the actual OS to be more responsive. Fast start (2 seconds not 30), fast shutdown, fast directory listing, fast program opening. I know win XP does pretty well, but there is always room for improvement. d) Exclusions and control.

This probably makes no sense, so I'll give two examples. I find I get better performance from my PC when I turn OFF 'Remember each folder's view settings'. Quite substantially. But at the same time, I would really like it if my MP 3's (all legally obtained, of course) would list as detail mode, with bit rate, etc. Naturally any changes I make to it's display are lost when I leave.

Additionally, I always turn off 'Hide file extension for known file type' thing. Because it annoys me. It is important to me to be able to see at a glance whether a file is a. html or a. htm, or a. jpg or. gif. Big difference in web design.

Just for example. Anyway, that being said, I would LIKE for my movie files to be listed as 'Lord of the Rings Trailer' rather than 'Lord of the Rings Trailer. move'. It's neater. Another one is that for example in a directory of MP 3's there are directories and files. Directories look cool in Tile mode, because you get the Album cover.

But then the separate songs in the root directory look crappy. Why can't 'folders' and 'files' have a different view? d) Sound control. I would like the next version of Windows to know that there is more than two types of sound. Wave and Midi. I would like it to be smart enough to let you set the volume for digital music, separately from computer system sounds. Or set internet site sounds independently.

Actually, the entire way sound is handled in windows is shit. You have three different volumes for most things. (Master volume, wave volume and application volume, not even counting the knob on the speakers.) This means that finding a balance with sounds is annoying. You have your music up? Guess how loud that 'YOU HAVE NEW MAIL!' is going to be! Sound control needs to be made more intuitive, consistent and controllable.

Anyway, I'm going now. I have some graphics to design. Later. Matt Burgess -May 08, 2003 Incorrect, revisionist history.

Sorry. Editor's note: No. -- Paul No. Wrong. I suggest you read the following: web history. html.

Apple took many of the basic IDEAS from Xerox... but they developed them WAY beyond what Xerox did (in many ways). Not so much in other ways. Editor's note: Naturally, Apple went beyond PARC, no one is suggesting otherwise. To say that the Lisa and Mac would have looked anything like they did without the PARC visit, however, is laughable. -- Paul Chris -May 08, 2003 This is simply not true. Furthermore...

-- Paul 'Not quite' what? You said exactly what I said. All CURRENTLY SHIPPING (and shipping since about May 2002) are QE enabled. Chris -May 08, 2003 Re Matt Burgess 1. What is with you people? It's one man's opinion.

Gee... do you think the fact Paul runs a couple of in-depth Window's sites and often has direct contact with the MS mother ship might have something to do with possible bias? In one breath, Paul casts faint praise on Apple or claims he has nothing against it, then in the next, throws deliberate barbs and insults. He is either schizophrenic or a deliberate's t disturber (he does make mischievous appearances at Mac sites too... hint, hint) (The number of replies in this thread alone must be setting a record... a coincidence?) 2. I am a graphic designer. Let me make that clear. Not one.

Excuse the redundancy. And I play the drums... that doesn't make me Buddy Rich. Maybe you run in an unusual (uninformed, 'bigoted'?) crowd... and perhaps the Mac users you insulted think highly of you too. I know I don't. (re your 'idiotic american ' remark... hope you " re not Canadian because, being a Canuck myself, IMO that is a shameful comment to make but is, in any event, still quite revealing about you) Some people try to use a hammer and chisel when they really need a wrench so you using Windows for graphics proves nothing re Mac usage for graphics. I've seen shops that had, or know, nothing other than Windows and tried to make them work... sometimes successfully but only after much hair pulling. Rather than use the right tool for the job (A Mac in this case) and avoid all the trouble, they fought with Windows (Or are you claiming Windows is always best at everything?

Are you Bill Gates in disguise? ). These self-imposed heartaches lead me to believe many Windows users must be masochists (witness the almost weekly MS bug & security fixes you love to endure). An independent, professional graphics magazine ran a poll a couple of years ago and the results showed over 75% used / preferred Macs. You " ll probably claim only Mac users likely to respond. It's unlikely the numbers have gone from 75%+ to the few you claim.

I also find Paul's earlier claim to be suspect (reply to Bob - Editor's note: How do you respond to the fact tha more professional artists, , and photographers use Windows than Mac OS? -Paul). Yes, how does one respond as where did he get these numbers? From the Microsoft Ministry of Truth?

A wish pulled out of a hat? Where? Final Cut Pro is a hit with many video pros (especially when used on a Ti Book... an editing studio / suite on the go) and many magazines / newspapers /designers use Macs for art, layout and photos. Macs are also popular in the music industry or did Paul forget to cook those numbers too? Maybe he confused those numbers with the self-taught amateurs and do-it-yourself ers at home who have Windows (thus the high user numbers with MS's 90% market share) because many pros in the media industry still employ Macs. 3.

Seriously. No? Maybe it's because Paul went into great detail describing Longhorn's look and workings and from that, it's apparent similarity to OSX in underlying functionality? Or do you not believe what he's telling you? I may disagree with his subsequent claims of supposed superiority to OSX, but I do trust his technical info and working description even if IMO his eye-witness account may be jaded: -) 4. Let's be clear here.

They are not the same. Its totally different. Certainly they are NOT THE SAME but how can you say they " re not comparable when much of what Paul described about Longhorn parallels OSX? (video off-loading, transparency and visual effects, mini windows, etc... see other postings) And how is MS not 'catching up's ince what it is claiming for the (possible) future in Longhorn is available now in OSX? (Even if you disagree with the actual, behind the scenes techno-workings, the visual presentation, functionality and effects are basically the same.) And why wait until we " ve actually seen it? If you didn't know Paul was describing Longhorn, you'd think he was taking about OSX (if you'd seen or used it at all). Flame away: -) (Don't say I never do anything for you Paul... this should bump your hit numbers up for you even more: -) Editor's note: LOL.

Well thanks man. I'm not sure how I get in the middle of these things. Sometimes spilling your guts doesn't pay, I guess. -- Paul Joe Scozzaro -May 08, 2003 First off, I would like to comment on a couple points that 'rico' brought up: -I don't know if I'm addressing the same thing you are, but Quartz can anti alias text clearly down to about 8 point. You can adjust the text sizes that OS X will anti alias in the General preference pane. You can also specify the degree of anti aliasing so it looks best on your particular monitor.

-To my knowledge, Quartz Extreme is at the system level, so all applications should be able to take advantage of it. Secondly, the key difference I see is that OS X always will give you most of the transparency / animation /fade effects even if you don't have a graphics chip that can support Quartz Extreme. In this case, the processor will be used to drive the effects. Quartz Extreme adds more niceties (like the ability to cycle through desktop background pictures every hour, minute, of 5 seconds with a nice fade effect between) and faster graphics. (Though even without Quartz extreme, I can run 4 looping Quick Time movies at once without any dropped frames) The only flaw I see in Quartz is that window resizing can be a little slow (I think it has something to do with it having to render a drop-shadow for each window). Drives me nuts.

Which graphic engine's better? It's too early to call. Let's see how Longhorn shapes up and compares to whatever OS X version is out in '05. Quite frankly, I don't care what platform others use as long as they feel comfortable and productive with it. me -May 08, 2003 ... was a relatively low-level 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 with 384 MB of RAM and ATI's RADEON 9700 3-D graphics card. ' Low-level? A 384 mb, p 4 1.5 ghz machine with at's fastest video card to date, faster than's ge forces, and you say that's 'relatively low-level'??!?

Editor's note: Uh, yeah, actually. The PC is low-level, the video card is high-level. That card should cost about $40 a pop in 2005 when Longhorn is released, and the 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 will be a historical footnote. -- Paul tim bob -May 08, 2003 Apple bought the privilege of visiting PARC and taking a look at the research Xerox was doing, along with the privilege of building things based on that research.

Xerox got a chunk of Apple stock as part of the deal, and the Apple people weren't allowed to physically touch anything at Xerox, they could only watch demos. There's also a huge difference between what the Apple people saw in their visit to PARC and what was shipped on the Lisa and the Macintosh. (For instance, support for refreshing overlapped windows, and a menu bar.) A good overview of the differences and the process of innovation is in 'Inventing the Lisa Interface,' a paper by members of the original Lisa team that originally appeared in ACM Interactions. I bet you didn't know that some of the inspiration for the spatially-oriented desktop metaphor came from work done at IBM. Chris Hanson -May 08, 2003 Paul, you wrote on September 20, 2002: It turns out, however, that the 3 D UI in Longhorn is much more complicated and capable than anything in Jaguar. Then you wrote on May 6, 2003: The Longhorn graphics architecture is more advanced than that in Quartz Extreme, and I will discuss this in a long-form Super Site article as soon as I can [...

] Now, I sort of enjoy your Mac musings, but don't you think people in this discussion have a point when they basically tell you to 'put up or shut up' when it comes to you dissing Quartz Extreme in favor of Longhorn graphics? I mean, you just can't keep insisting for months that Longhorn will be more advanced than QE, while admitting that since September 2002 you haven't been able to dig up enough info about Longhorn to support your claim! And if you did know all this time, why haven't you written about it yet? Editor's note: It's going up today, actually. We didn't see it until last week, and I was at WinHEC all week and hardly had the time to write a long-form article. My Longhorn preview, however, will be up today and yes, I spent half the weekend on it.

Enjoy. -- Paul Jacob -May 09, 2003 About the never-dying Xerox-Discussion: Here's the facts, and you can read them up straight from the horse's mouth, from the People that used to work at Xerox AND later on Apple, namely Bruce Horn and Jef Raskin: web I see the Mackido-page has already been mentioned... I'm sorry, but those are the facts! Not some badly researched drivel from Robert Cringely, who originally wrote 'triumph of the nerds' which got turned into 'pirates of silicon valley' for TV and which is the root of these false 'facts' that just won't die! As much as he wants to make you believe: Cringely WAS NOT THERE! Jef and Bruce were, very much!

They " re the people that MADE what's being questioned! Oh, and to Matt Burgess: You do happen to know that the OS X dock is actually Next heritage, which is OS X' forefather and has had this dock since its release in 1987, 8 years before Win 95? Jeez, I just can't stand when people keep saying the Dock was copied from the makeshift-Windows-taskbar! Even some Mac-Journos do that, cause they " ve never seen NeXT! I also used to think the Taskbar ist a great feature, but when i switched to Mac i realized it's just a lame makeshift because with most Windows-apps running full screen and no global menu-bar you's simply have no other way of switching apps without the keyboard! And now please someone tell me what exactly i need a GUI and 'Windows' for if i run 80% of my apps in Fullscreen anyway?

Multitasking full screen-Program-switchers were around for DOS a swell! You can't even drag stuff onto that frigg in Taskbar and minimizing 5 Webpages gives me 5 nice 'Internet Exp... ' -Bars that don't tell me anything about which is which page! Windows makes you scream in pain sometimes... Did i say 'sometimes'?

I meant 'always' really! Rico: Quartz does super-small Text perfectly. I assume you are using Camino, which only does proper Display PDF with the two main fonts! Try using Omni web with super-small fonts to see what i mean!

And all Carbon / Cocoa Apps take advantage of Quartz Extreme, since the last Java-Update even Java-Apps do, as well as Apples X 11! So what exactly are you talking about? Oh, and 'I'll-soon-tell-the-secret-on-the-Supersite'-Paul: Where exactly has Apple copied from M$? I'm most keen to learn! Also about this new 'far more powerful' Longhorn-GUI you " re constantly talking about! And i find it most ironic that you blame the Mac-pp here for 'slamming a Longhorn-Graphics-System they don't understand' when you just wrote an article whose contents unfortunately leave us no other choice than to see an exact copy of QE!

You blame your readers for not knowing stuff you failed to tell them / told wrong? Paul: 'Here's Chrysler's new car, and it's amazing: (picture of a BMW) ' Readers: 'Damn, that looks 100% like a BMW! Why did Chrysler copy BMW?' Paul: 'No, it's way way better than a BMW, it's not comparable at all, please don't judge what you don't know! Some day in the distant future i will actually explain why!' Actually, Apple sells more like over 4 Million Macs a year, and has been selling QE-ready Macs since way before QE was introduced, and there's also the option of upgrading older G 4's with QE-ready cards. So your 'at most 3-4 Million Macs running QE's would not be quite correct. Apple now has about 6 Million OS X users, and i guess over 90% are running 10.2 with QE...

Editor's note: Untrue, and I can prove it. (and Apple hasn't hit the 4 million mark in a few years, but whatever.) The Jef Raskin account of the PARC event has already been debunked by many, many people, and Raskin is an unbelievable re writer of history and grabber of credit. Here's one excellent and credible example, also from MacKido: web horn 1. html It was w ri.