Interesting article: No Way to Build an Operating System | The Coffeehouse

Zeo
Channel 9 :)

At the June 2004 WWDC, Jobs blew away the MSFT engineers in attendance by demonstrating lightning fast Spotlight searches on Tiger (OSX 10.4). The court-released MSFT emails show how flabbergasted they were, and the imperative of getting the Tiger preview DVDs back to Redmond for reverse engineering. Comments by MSFT's Jim Allchin and Lenn Pryor were priceless

http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/card/archives/2008/05/no_way_to_build_1.html

Interesting emails to say the least. Smiley

[Edit: Link added]

GoddersUK
I CAN has cheezburger and you CAN'T has stop me!

Is there meant to be a link in that post?

Dovella
Go Microsoft!!

Zeo wrote:

At the June 2004 WWDC, Jobs blew away the MSFT engineers in attendance by demonstrating lightning fast Spotlight searches on Tiger (OSX 10.4). The court-released MSFT emails show how flabbergasted they were, and the imperative of getting the Tiger preview DVDs back to Redmond for reverse engineering. Comments by MSFT's Jim Allchin and Lenn Pryor were priceless

http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/card/archives/2008/05/no_way_to_build_1.html

Interesting emails to say the least.

[Edit: Link added]

it's OLD

Longhorn reset in 2004

after Vista and SP1 in 2998 with kernel WS 08

Vista now work very very fine,

waiting Windows 7 and after talk, blog microblog ,

i Seeing more rumours of gossip lately

PS Joe Wilcox = mac blogger fanboy Apple watch

this is world App£€

ManipUni

Windows Vista does indeed work fine.

The main problem with Vista is that XP SP1 added more in terms of value than Vista did and Vista costs £110 more than XP SP1.

A lot of Vista's features are pure gimmick like the Sidebar for example. Nobody actually uses it day to day.

We'll see how Windows 7 does. But frankly Microsoft aren't likely to do a good job because instead of focusing on stuff that could use some reform (e.g. Control Panel / MMC) they'll focus on box-cover features they can market and sell.

Anyway we've already read on Channel 9 that the people doing Search in Windows think that returning LESS results is better for the end user than returning more. In fact they think returning less results on Vista than Windows 95 is progression (even if the Vista results aren't returning what the user wants and the 95 results are).

GoddersUK
I CAN has cheezburger and you CAN'T has stop me!

ManipUni wrote:

Windows Vista does indeed work fine. The main problem with Vista is that XP SP1 added more in terms of value than Vista did and Vista costs £110 more than XP SP1.

SP1 or SP2?

brian.shapiro
things go on as always

I find it hard to believe Alchin and others when they wrote those e-mails didn't realize they could have had the search part of Longhorn down pat already if all they did was file indexing.

So I just don't understand why they were so flabbergasted, except by realizing their whole development strategy was failing.

OTOH, the author of that blog repeats the idea that MinWin has been taken out of Windows 7, doesn't really understand Microsoft's strategy with Live Mesh, and I'm not sure what his thoughts are on WinFS

GoddersUK
I CAN has cheezburger and you CAN'T has stop me!

Dovella wrote:

Buy on amazon USA. or buy OEM ,

and for me Vista Work Super fine!

His point wasn't it doesn't work, his problem was that he doesn't think it's worth paying £110 pounds to updgrade. He thinks that more was added in Windows XP's service pack - which was free.

Dovella
Go Microsoft!!

ManipUni wrote:

Windows Vista does indeed work fine.

The main problem with Vista is that XP SP1 added more in terms of value than Vista did and Vista costs £110 more than XP SP1.

A lot of Vista's features are pure gimmick like the Sidebar for example. Nobody actually uses it day to day.

We'll see how Windows 7 does. But frankly Microsoft aren't likely to do a good job because instead of focusing on stuff that could use some reform (e.g. Control Panel / MMC) they'll focus on box-cover features they can market and sell.

Anyway we've already read on Channel 9 that the people doing Search in Windows think that returning LESS results is better for the end user than returning more. In fact they think returning less results on Vista than Windows 95 is progression (even if the Vista results aren't returning what the user wants and the 95 results are).

Buy on amazon USA. or buy OEM ,

and for me Vista Work Super fine!

and waiting PDC for talkin SEVEN

GoddersUK
I CAN has cheezburger and you CAN'T has stop me!

brian.shapiro wrote:

OTOH, the author of that blog repeats the idea that MinWin has been taken out of Windows 7,

Personaly I think MS should ship a disk with a copy of Windows with no utilities or GUI on it and tell them they've given them a complimentary copy of Win7 with minwin and ask them to evaluate it. Might make some people understand it a bit better.

Dovella
Go Microsoft!!

GoddersUK wrote:

Dovella wrote:Buy on amazon USA. or buy OEM ,

and for me Vista Work Super fine!

His point wasn't it doesn't work, his problem was that he doesn't think it's worth paying £110 pounds to updgrade.

yes.

ZippyV
Soapbox = Fail

brian.shapiro wrote:

I find it hard to believe Alchin and others when they wrote those e-mails didn't realize they could have had the search part of Longhorn down pat already if all they did was file indexing.

Welcome to Windows 2000. Want faster searches? Click here to enable indexing.

ZippyV
Soapbox = Fail

ManipUni wrote:

A lot of Vista's features are pure gimmick like the Sidebar for example. Nobody actually uses it day to day.

Indeed they failed at that. The least they could have done was adding Silverlight support.

littleguru
let's partaaaay!

ZippyV wrote:

brian.shapiro wrote: I find it hard to believe Alchin and others when they wrote those e-mails didn't realize they could have had the search part of Longhorn down pat already if all they did was file indexing.

Welcome to Windows 2000. Want faster searches? Click here to enable indexing.

Indeed very interesting mails... was Windows search already available at that time? Paolo?

Edit: Looking it up in Wikipedia it seems that Windows Search was originally MSN Desktop Search and came out for Windows 2000 already... strange they didn't know about that.

ZippyV
Soapbox = Fail

Windows 2000 had indexed search but it was turned off by default.

intelman

I know many disagree but I do think spotlight is better than Vista's search still. I like how informative yet simple it is. When you first install OSX, it has a countdown minute and second counter to tell you when it is ready. After that queries pop up instantly. I like doing math in spotlight, so my substitute on Windows is using Firefox's google search box (conincidently located in the upper right), which will do the same thing.

I think performance is a big issue for Windows right now. Things are quick, sometimes, but not consitantly and some things just flat out should be faster.

Also have any of you guys actually tried Windows 2000 and Windows XP indexing....it is so slow.

ManipUni

intelman wrote:

I know many disagree but I do think spotlight is better than Vista's search still.

I'd agree... Considering how long Visual Studio takes to load on Vista in order for me to find anything...

What's that you say, use Vista's built in search? Uhh no... I actually want it to give me accurate results not "when it feels like it" results.

BHpaddock

ManipUni wrote:

Anyway we've already read on Channel 9 that the people doing Search in Windows think that returning LESS results is better for the end user than returning more. In fact they think returning less results on Vista than Windows 95 is progression (even if the Vista results aren't returning what the user wants and the 95 results are).

Huh? I'm confused by what you're saying. None of that makes any sense, as Windows 95 didn't even offer content search capability, metadata filters, etc. And doing a filename search across a drive works just as it always did.

Are you claiming that Windows Search leaves out results that match a user's query?

Or are you saying that some better offering includes results that don't match a user's query, and that this somehow makes them better?

Or are you confusing us with Google, who gives you 10 results at a time...

BHpaddock

intelman wrote:

I know many disagree but I do think spotlight is better than Vista's search still. I like how informative yet simple it is. When you first install OSX, it has a countdown minute and second counter to tell you when it is ready. After that queries pop up instantly. I like doing math in spotlight, so my substitute on Windows is using Firefox's google search box (conincidently located in the upper right), which will do the same thing.

How many items do you have indexed in Spotlight? How many properties are populated on files and searchable?

You can do math in the Start menu with Start++ Smiley

BHpaddock

littleguru wrote:

Indeed very interesting mails... was Windows search already available at that time? Paolo?

Edit: Looking it up in Wikipedia it seems that Windows Search was originally MSN Desktop Search and came out for Windows 2000 already... strange they didn't know about that.

As I recall, WDS / MSN DS was released in beta at about the time Tiger was announced.

At that point it was the project of a bunch of Longhorn developers, most of whom were working on the WinFS shell integration, and decided to split off and do something different (build a great search solution without WinFS, based on a research team's heavily modified version of MSSearch).

Shortly after that the reset happened, WinFS was canned and the decision was eventually made that Vista would use an MSSearch-based indexer instead of WinFS to provide its search functionality. Didn't take long to realize that the small team doing WDS for XP was kicking butt and that their expertise would be needed to get Vista's search on the right track Smiley

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

Anyone have a reputable link to the actual emails quoted? The commenter that posted those snippets just plain made up stuff in at least one other comment to that thread and I'd rather not trust him as a source on those emails.

And as to the various people in and around these articles that think they were actually working on WinFS (as in the actual WinFS codebase/design) since the "cario" days 10 years ago: your ignorance is showing, you might want to tuck it in.

The general idea of a database file system? Sure. But from what little I know about what went on then, it was quite different beast.

Dovella
Go Microsoft!!

intelman wrote:

I know many disagree but I do think spotlight is better than Vista's search still. I like how informative yet simple it is. When you first install OSX, it has a countdown minute and second counter to tell you when it is ready. After that queries pop up instantly. I like doing math in spotlight, so my substitute on Windows is using Firefox's google search box (conincidently located in the upper right), which will do the same thing.

I think performance is a big issue for Windows right now. Things are quick, sometimes, but not consitantly and some things just flat out should be faster.

Also have any of you guys actually tried Windows 2000 and Windows XP indexing....it is so slow.

Intelman
Who is the Best
Spotlight or Windows Search 4.0 ??

intelman

Dovella wrote:

intelman wrote:I know many disagree but I do think spotlight is better than Vista's search still. I like how informative yet simple it is. When you first install OSX, it has a countdown minute and second counter to tell you when it is ready. After that queries pop up instantly. I like doing math in spotlight, so my substitute on Windows is using Firefox's google search box (conincidently located in the upper right), which will do the same thing.

I think performance is a big issue for Windows right now. Things are quick, sometimes, but not consitantly and some things just flat out should be faster.

Also have any of you guys actually tried Windows 2000 and Windows XP indexing....it is so slow.

Intelman
Who is the Best
Spotlight or Windows Search 4.0 ??

Well, there is the thing. Windows Search 4.0 definitely has the speed of Sportlight. If you start using it, you notice just how "slow" vista search was.

Windows Search 4.0 ends basically today, the preview expires in june I think. But other than that, it is still missing features like doing math.

But I guess I do have firefox for that now.

Windows Search 4.0 is definitely a step in the right direction, it is faster, but the update speed isn't as fast as I'd like. When I save a file I want to instantly be able to search for it, because sometimes I forget where I saved it. I am checking this box way too much to find things in sub folders of documents and such.