The Road to Windows "Longhorn" 2004
原文在：http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_preview_2004.asp
部分翻译：http://www.donews.net/weaver2000/archive/2004/11/23/179738.aspx
It has not been a kind year for Longhorn. Awash as it is in ever-increasing delays, Longhorn has been the subject of barbs from even the most dimmed-minded computer industry columnists, many of whom have begun comparing the Longhorn release to Cairo, Microsoft's aborted mid-1990's object-oriented OS project. And no wonder: Like Cario, Longhorn was to have included the technological equivalent of the kitchen sink, and then some. Clearly, something in Longhorn had to give.
And give it has. As I wrote over three years ago in
my assessment of the development of Windows 2000, Microsoft works better when it tackles projects in small steps. "If there's a lesson to be learned here, and I believe there is, it's that the development of monolithic operating systems is over," I wrote. "While Windows 2000 is a great product, its development time and complexity is just too much to ask of customers. In the future, Microsoft will need to work off of a stable base, adding features on a yearly basis. For example, Microsoft should have developed Active Directory and IntelliMirror separately, releasing these products when they were ready. Asking customers to wrap their minds around all of the new features and changes in Windows 2000 is simply too much to ask." Now replace "Windows 2000" with "Longhorn" and "Active Directory and IntelliMirror" with "Avalon and Indigo," and you'll see what I mean. Longhorn was just too big.
As of now, however, that's no longer true. On the afternoon of Friday, August 27, 2004, Microsoft revealed what industry observers had long suspected: The company is now going to pare down its Longhorn release and ship some previously key technologies separately from the massive new OS. But even though the official announcement pretty much lays out this new plan succinctly, there were indications that Microsoft was heading in this direction previously:
It will never ship. No Microsoft product has ever been delayed as much as Longhorn, and as its ship date slipped from 2004 to 2005 to 2006 and even, according to some rumors, to 2007, Longhorn became less exciting to users and more the object of ridicule.
Office 12. Originally planned as a Longhorn-specific release that would ship alongside the Longhorn client release, Office 12 has been changed dramatically since last fall. First, Office 12 would only run on Longhorn. Then, Microsoft announced that it would ship Office 12 for both Longhorn and Windows XP in order to benefit a wider range of users. Now, Microsoft plans to ship Office 12 well ahead of Longhorn.
The on-again, off-again Longhorn Server. Depending on who you asked, Longhorn Server would either trail the client by several years or would ship alongside the Longhorn desktop. This summer, I was told that Longhorn Server would ship about 9 months after Longhorn client. That schedule is apparently still intact under the terms of the new plan.
The breaking of the Fellowship. Since last fall, Microsoft has been preaching the three core pillars of Longhorn as being the WinFS storage engine, the Avalon presentation layer, and the Indigo Web services platform. These features, Microsoft said, were core to Longhorn and couldn't be taken out. During a series of meetings at the Microsoft campus earlier this month, however, I discovered that Indigo was almost completed and would potentially ship separately for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Windows Server 2003. The news astounded me, as it proved Microsoft's earlier contention about the core pieces of Longhorn to be somewhat spurious. What ramifications, I wondered, would this development have on the future of Longhorn?
Back to square one. During the same set of meetings reference above, I discovered that the core Windows team, which had been working to componentized Longhorn, had given up and would restart their efforts using the Windows XP SP2 code base (previous Longhorn builds had utilized the Windows Server 2003 code base). This startling revelation suggested that even further delays for Longhorn could be expected, unless something dramatic happened.
And indeed, something dramatic has happened.
Change is good
According to Microsoft Lead Product Manager Greg Sullivan, the changes came about because of an internal review of where Longhorn was and where it was going. "Basically, coming off of Windows XP SP2, it was a logical time to take stock and evaluate the Longhorn project," he told me. "We needed to establish priorities, and see where we were. As a company, we learned a lot from SP2, and in conversations with our partners around that, and at the PDC with the deverloper community, we had a good handle on what they were expecting. We mapped out a very ambitious plan for Longhorn at the PDC, and we are absolutely on track to deliver on it. How we will get there, however has changed a little bit."
Here's what's changed.
New guidance on the delivery of Longhorn
Longhorn will ship in 2006, Microsoft says. But take that to mean it could happen in late 2006: Instead, Longhorn will be "broadly available" in 2006. That means that Longhorn will be available in early 2006, not in the waning days of that year. "We're providing guidance and clarity on the target release date," Sullivan told me, "which is something we'd never done before. We did issue some guidance on the beta releases, but not on the final release. So that's new. The clarification of our roadmap is good for customers, especially enterprise customers. The implication of our use of the language 'broadly available' is that we're targeting the first half of 2006, and are expecting it to happen around mid-2006. That clarification is a good thing."
Taking key Longhorn features downlevel to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
Since the PDC last year, developers and ISVs have been practically begging Microsoft to port some of the key Longhorn technologies to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 so that they can target a wider audience of users. Microsoft has acquiesced to those requests and will port the Avalon presentation layer and the Indigo Web services infrastructure, and the appropriate WinFX developer libraries, to XP and 2003. Those products will ship at the same time as Longhorn.
"We got strong feedback regarding a desire to see the delivery of WinFX elements downlevel," Sullivan told me. "It's the new platform. So we will deliver Avalon and Indigo on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. That's significant. Instead of waiting for Longhorn to be heavily deployed, developers can target these APIs to 100's of millions of PCs. So that's good news."
And let me dispel a major misconception: The inclusion of Avalon on Windows XP does not mean that XP is getting the Longhorn user interface. It's not. Avalon is a presentation layer that enables rich media experiences and powerful display technologies. But Windows XP will still look like Windows XP after Avalon is installed; all that means is that XP users will be able to take advantage of Avalon-based applications and services. To get the advanced Longhorn user interface, you will still need to upgrade to Longhorn.
WinFS will not be included in the initial Longhorn release
One bit of bad news is that the oft-touted WinFS storage engine will not be included in Longhorn. However, there's been a bit of misconception about WinFS and which features it enables, and Sullivan was quick to clarify that. "Longhorn will still feature a very rich search experience," Sullivan said. "It's kind of a mistake to equate local search with WinFS. They are different platform elements. So local search will still happen, and we will still deliver a very compelling full text search in Longhorn, alongside new shell capabilities. This will provide some semblance of the 'Find My Stuff' experience. But it won't be the full relational store with deep integration and platform exposure via APIs. For end users, however, it will be the same. We will offer a very compelling user experience for local search inside of Longhorn."
WinFS will ship in beta form when Longhorn is released and will now ship simultaneously on both Longhorn client and Longhorn Server, the latter of which is due in 2007. This year-long delay actually answers a key customer request, because there was some confusion previously about whether WinFS would ship with Longhorn Server. Now, Microsoft is clearly telling us that WinFS is a key feature of Longhorn Server. Incidentally, existing Longhorn users will be able to get WinFS for free when it ships, though the delivery vehicle for that product has yet to be announced.
Also, unlike Avalon and Indigo, WinFS will not ship separately for Windows XP and 2003. This technology is for Longhorn-era products only.
So what will be included in Longhorn?
In an email message to all full-time employees on August 27, Microsoft group vice president Jim Allchin said that the company's customers "love our vision" but just wanted parts of it to be delivered sooner. He said that Microsoft will deliver the following in 2006:
- The highest quality OS we have ever shipped
- New information management tools to improve productivity, including fast desktop search and new, intuitive ways to organize files
- Major security advances that build on Windows XP SP2, such as new technologies to make clients more resilient to attack, viruses and malware
- Flexible and powerful tools to reduce deployment costs for enterprise customers, including technologies for image creation, editing and installation; and much simpler upgrades for consumers
- Significant improvements in reliability, including a robust diagnostic infrastructure to detect, analyze and fix problems quickly, and new backup tools to keep data safe
- A platform that creates Developer excitement with the availability of rich APIs [application programming interfaces]
"Our commitment to broad availability of the Longhorn client in 2006 and broadening the API set underscores our long-term vision for the Windows platform, and our desire to deliver high-quality innovations that our customers and developers are asking for in a timely fashion," he said. "We will not cut corners on product excellence. Our powerful vision is intact; our shipment plan changes will let customers get access to parts of the vision faster."
The new schedule
Accordingly, Longhorn now has a new schedule. It's unlikely that Microsoft will issue any more pre-alpha or alpha builds of the product to the public, Sullivan told me. Instead, the Beta 1 release will be the next major milestone and it's now due in early- to mid-2005. There will be a PDC in 2005, but not this year. And Longhorn will hit the release candidate stage in early 2006 and likely ship to customers broadly by mid-2006. "The acceleration of delivery and the broadening of the distribution of Longhorn technologies should be taken as very good news," Sullivan concluded. And now, thanks to the clearer schedule, we can accurately plan ahead.
November 2004 update: A more detailed schedule emerges
According to internal documentation I first reviewed in late October, Microsoft is planning an aggressive schedule for its oft-delayed Longhorn successor to Windows XP and will ship the long-awaited Beta 1 release of that operating system on February 16. The latest release schedule notes that Microsoft will begin locking down the code for Beta 1 in early December 2004 and then enter the so-called escrow phase in early January.
Currently, the Longhorn team has exited the "milestone" phase of development, denoted by releases with names like M8, M8.1, and M8.2, and has entered a pre-Beta 1 cycle known internally as D1. Longhorn is currently scheduled to ship publicly on May 22, 2006, according to this documentation.
In a related development, the Microsoft Office team is busy preparing Office 12, the next major version of Office, which is tied to the Longhorn release schedule. According to the documentation I've seen, Office 12 will ship publicly on the same day as Longhorn, but will follow a different development path. Microsoft will ship various "milestone" builds of Office 12 until late June, when the project will be declared code complete. Then, Microsoft will issue a Beta 1 release on September 26, 2005, followed by Beta 2 in December 2005 and Beta 3 in March 2006.
Given Microsoft's historic inability to meet release schedules, any or all of this information could change over time. But the documentation I've seen is quite recent and represents the current schedule. I find it interesting that the Beta 1 date for Longhorn hasn't changed since April 2004, when I last saw an internal schedule document for the project: Clearly, Microsoft is attempting to make the best of its decision to drop WinFS from the OS.
Longhorn release schedule (internal documentation: October 2004)
Longhorn D1 (a.k.a M9, or milestone 9) development concludes: November 10, 2004
Longorn Beta 1 internal development: November 11, 2004 to November 24, 2004
Longhorn Beta 1 lockdown: November 29, 2004 to January 14, 2005
Longhorn Beta 1 escrow: January 17, 2005 to February 16, 2005
Longhorn Beta 1 release (client and Server): February 16, 2005
...
Longhorn RTM: May 22, 2006
Office 12 release schedule (internal documentation: October 2004)
Office 12 M1 (milestone 1) integration: July 26, 2004
Office 12 M2 final code check-in: November 29, 2004
Office 12 M3 final code check-in: April 18, 2005
Office 12 code complete: June 27, 2005
Office 12 Beta 1: September 26, 2005
Office 12 Beta 2: December 19, 2005
Office 12 Beta 3: March 13, 2006
Office 12 RTM: May 22, 2006
Conclusions
I've been covering Microsoft long enough to be skeptical about even these revised plans, but given what I've heard about the development of the product recently, the new plan certainly makes sense. How the computing world will react after being promised tech nerdvana, however, remains to be seen. For a broad range of power users and technology enthusiasts, Microsoft's Longhorn promises have been severely diminished, even if it happened for good reasons. But I think it's important to keep one thing in perspective: Longhorn will still be a major Windows release, on both the client and the server, and it will likely still stand at the apex of personal computing when its ships. Put succinctly, though the kitchen sink approach is gone, Longhorn remains the OS technology to watch.
--Paul Thurrott