What would had been 10 years old if it came through...

Longhorn concept - YouTube

Windows Longhorn/vista, slated for October 2003. Wow! It's weird to think 10 years ago, there would had been the most advanced Windows or any other operating system ever. Such potential and such failure that left the biggest software company in tatters almost and STILL even to this day, are suffering the consequences of that failure with a screwed up release cycle that is behind what it should be, and Windows versions that missed new computing methods with touch by far definitely late.

Although vista/Longhorn was the biggest failure of Microsoft, I have to draw some parallels to that and Windows 8. The video above showed off the concept UI of vista, and if you notice (you have to be keen on observation versus irrational generalizations) there is focus on typography, digital motion, telecommunications, solid windows and transparent Taskbar, white iconography, less focus on window chrome in general (no window control buttons per se but just markings, large back button, small forward button), a large top section of the File Explorer UI that has some commands on it, and lastly a gadget sidebar UI that kind of looks more uniform than just strewn about gadgets, almost like live tiles. Except, what a ridiculous amount of 3D effects and light shadows!


And I also wanted to add this, the Windows Neptune build. If you also notice, it has some interesting details like Windows 8, simple clean lines.

What the point I want to get across is that this metro design concept of Windows 8 really isn't anything new and yet it is at the same time. Ten years ago would had brought the most radical and advanced version of Windows to date. Ten years later brought the most radical and also advanced version of Windows ever to be used on a WHOLE multitude of PCs, not just desktops or laptops, but tablets and further branching out into the smartphone. Quite something.

I've read up a little on this mysterious Longhorn, but it always seems like information about it is hard to find. Obviously it didn't make it to 100% fruition. But, silly question ... are we to assume that bits and pieces of it found their way into Vista, 7, and 8?

That concept video really blows me away. But the funny thing is, now with 8, we seem to be going back to "less is more" because of battery life and all that.

In several ways, yes, parts of Longhorn made it into subsequent releases of Windows. Back in 2001 or 2002, the idea of Libraries that were introduced in Windows 7 were already thought of. Blew my mind. Some of the visual design, like the Advanced options screen when you Ctrl Alt Delete made it. Gadgets were the offshoot of the Sidebar in Longhorn, in that it was basically the Taskbar's sidekick.

WinFS is the gold mine that never made it and probably won't ever due to the fact that cloud storage most likely, makes the file system redundant. That would had been revolutionary as it was an object centric file system versus the current file system standard we have now. ReFS in Server 2012 is the first change to a file system since NTFS.

But it's interesting in general because the concept video had an amount of metro design, like the typography use, immersivish type design of the windows and Desktop that looks more like Windows 8 than anything. Most of what was in that concept wasn't around the window chrome or polish, it was actually around the content of the windows themselves, with digital motion making things alive.

There was also this sound scheme in one of the beta's. It was beautiful!

like Windows 8, simple clean lines

Click to expand...

If you want to describe it that way.

You are right, it isn't new. I think there have been various attempts at that kind of thing ( in different areas , including architecture ) every twenty years or so since the late 50's. Short lived, not popular.

Is it going to catch on this time?

SIW2 said:

like Windows 8, simple clean lines

Click to expand...

If you want to describe it that way.

You are right, it isn't new. I think there have been various attempts at that kind of thing ( in different areas , including architecture ) every twenty years or so since the late 50's. Short lived, not popular.

Is it going to catch on this time?

Click to expand...

This type of architecture hasn't been sent to the mainstream until recently.

That is the windows I would like to use. It's too bad they never continued with that and made that Windows 8.
That SHOULD have been Windows 8 at minimum.

That should had been Windows vista.

Yeah, at minimum was the wrong word, I should have said, at most.