
Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project - glhaynes
http://longhorn.ms/
======
aaronbrethorst
In case you ever wondered where the codename "Longhorn" came from, Windows XP
was codenamed Whistler, and the follow-up version was codenamed Blackcomb,
after the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains at the popular, eponymous Whistler
Blackcomb ski resort in British Columbia a few hours away from Seattle.

The Blackcomb release of Windows started slipping, so an interim release was
planned. It was codenamed Longhorn, after the Longhorn Saloon and Grill at
Whistler Blackcomb:
[https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g154948-d70639...](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g154948-d706390-Reviews-
Longhorn_Saloon_Grill-Whistler_British_Columbia.html)

~~~
pedalpete
I'm from Whistler, and maybe it is just local legend, but we hear that the
reason Whistler and Blackcomb were chosen is because so many Microsoft
employees come up on weekends.

There are a LOT of local Whistler references in microsoft codenames
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames)

Harmony, Symphony, Emerald, Springboard, Bobcat, Cougar in the NT family from
what I can tell.

~~~
HashThis
This is 100% true. I worked on Longhorn at Microsoft.

------
ErikAugust
I remember getting a Longhorn build - it took all day to install, and 15-20
minutes to boot.

The first and only time I booted it up, I was greeted with an analog clock.
The seconds hand tended to get stuck and jump 3-10 seconds at time. The only
reference I can find to it: [http://lifehacker.com/5078415/analog-clock-adds-
a-classic-ti...](http://lifehacker.com/5078415/analog-clock-adds-a-classic-
timepiece-to-your-system-tray?comment=8772452#comments)

That's when I knew that it might be a good idea to stick with XP until further
notice. Further notice ended up being 6-7 years, when I finally went and
bought Windows 7.

------
skaber
Good memories. I remember leeching longhorn builds from some guy on an irc
channel on efnet through xdcc transfers. Every two-three weeks there was a new
longhorn build that I would burn on a cd and use to format the family pc. I
would've been a great beta tester!

~~~
borski
Dude, I have a strong feeling this was me.

------
maslam
I have vivid memories of working on Longhorn as an intern. It was an
incredibly ambitious project - rewrite of the "filesystem" (really, a
relational object store!), driver framework and display stack to name a few.
The project failed the same exact way many projects fail - they are too
ambitious and not well-scoped. The demo Hillel showed, IIRC, was complete
vaporware.

~~~
frik
WinFS wasn't a filesystem, but implemented upon NTFS as filesystem filter
driver and dotNet based service, the files were stored in a hidden directory
(SQL Server Compact and raw files with generated filenames in sub folders).
The dotNet service was just very slow.

The original vision of "information at your fingertip" was behind the Cairo
project. And Cairo had an object stored in the NTFS filesystem driver. WinNT4
and 2000 got several of the Cairo inovations. Well, some hidden APIs were
still left in (at least in WinXP era).

~~~
cm3
And from what I understand ReFS is also implemented on top of NTFS, but this
time it's real, shipped code and meant to provide some of the features found
in ZFS to Windows users.

~~~
WalterGR
_this time it 's real, shipped code_

WinFS was real. Before the project was cancelled, we released a beta and a
"beta refresh" \- both installable on XP.

(Disclaimer: I was on the WinFS team.)

~~~
frik
Can you tell us more about the "Live Journal" demo app? It looked like a
killer app back then.

Video (watch at 14:55): [https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/scobleizer/Shishir-
Mehrotra-...](https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/scobleizer/Shishir-Mehrotra-
WinFS-beta-1-team-meeting)

I tested WinFS beta2 on a high end WinXP PC (back then), WinFS beta was slow
and the cool "Live Journal" demo app wasn't included.

------
unsignedqword
Vista was not a very well-received release, but I remember using 64-bit Vista
way back when. Maybe my memory is failing me a little, but I don't really
recall Vista being that bad or unstable. UAC, of course, was a little annoying
then, but 7 felt a little more unstable and crash-prone than Vista.

My dad still uses a Vista desktop regularly (a 2007 install) and as far as I
can tell it still works perfectly fine for him. I suppose he's probably
leaving far too much to chance, but still.

~~~
ajdlinux
If my memory serves me correctly, a lot of the public outrage at the time was
about poor drivers for some time after release?

~~~
ams6110
Also wasn't that the release that had _endless_ popup warnings asking
permission for arcane things. Anyone who used it became trained to just click
"Allow" a dozen times just to get on with what they wanted to do.

~~~
NamTaf
The issue was chiefly that XP didn't enforce good programming practices
(storing user info in /Program Files/ was rife and one of many issues).
Introducing the UAC security structure meant that suddenly all of these
applications tried to do things that triggered UAC elevation prompts.

This was addressed twofold, as far as I understand: 1) Application developers
were railroaded into best practices and forced not to do terrible design
ideas, and 2) MS introduced a whole load of compatibility features such as
virtualising folders transparently so when bad apps still tried to do bad
things, it was securely captured and diverted around requiring a UAC elevation
prompt.

Regarding the stability issues, Vista's driver model was new when compared to
XP. Naturally, the number of bugs in drivers increased initially but slowly
settled down. Much of the '7 is more stable / faster than Vista' groupthink is
the result of bad drivers getting better in the intervening years.

~~~
Rafert
Many consider Windows 7 to be Vista 'done right', but Vista paved the way for
that to happen with breaking changes you described.

------
cpeterso
Else where on the longhorn.ms website are PDFs from some Microsoft internal
emails from 2001–2002 that are interesting reads in their own right:

"Notes and Next Steps from Windows Client Business Plan Review":
[http://longhorn.ms/wp-content/uploads/PX06977.pdf](http://longhorn.ms/wp-
content/uploads/PX06977.pdf)

"FW: Longhorn search": [http://longhorn.ms/wp-
content/uploads/PX08378.pdf](http://longhorn.ms/wp-
content/uploads/PX08378.pdf)

Steven Sinofsky: [http://longhorn.ms/wp-
content/uploads/PX07069.pdf](http://longhorn.ms/wp-
content/uploads/PX07069.pdf)

------
untog
This is really fascinating, though I have no idea why. That said, I'd love to
read a series of articles about the development of Longhorn and why it failed
rather than a tech dive into the components developed. Does anyone have any
recommendations?

~~~
forgettableuser
There was a in-depth article from Vanity Fair from 2012, "Microsoft’s Lost
Decade" which tries to put together what happened.

[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-
lo...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-
steve-ballmer)

Some excerpts:

    
    
        By 2002 the by-product of bureaucracy—brutal corporate politics—had reared its head at Microsoft. And, current and former executives said, each year the intensity and destructiveness of the game playing grew worse as employees struggled to beat out their co-workers for promotions, bonuses, or just survival.
    

...

    
    
        Then, in June 2004, Steve Jobs announced that Apple was releasing its new operating system, called “Tiger.” And inside Microsoft, jaws dropped. Tiger did much of what was planned for Longhorn—except that it worked.
    
        E-mails flew around Microsoft, expressing dismay about the quality of Tiger. To executives’ disbelief, it contained functional equivalents of Avalon and WinFS.
    
        “It was fucking amazing,” wrote Lenn Pryor, part of the Longhorn team. “It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.”
    
        Vic Gundotra, another member of the group, tried out Tiger. “Their Avalon competitor (core video, core image) was hot,” he wrote. “I have the cool widgets (dashboard) running on my MAC right now with all the effects [Jobs] showed on stage. I’ve had no crashes in 5 hours.”
    

...

    
    
        Longhorn was doomed. A few months later, Allchin brought together the Longhorn team and made the announcement: Microsoft couldn’t complete Windows Vista in time to hit the latest planned release date. In fact, the company couldn’t foresee any launch date. So a decision had been made at the most senior reaches of Microsoft: after three years of work, throw everything out and start over. It was decided, at least for now, to drop or modify many of the original objectives; no more using C#, abandon WinFS, and revise Avalon.
    
        Apple was already in the market with those features; Microsoft was basically giving up in its effort to figure out how to make them work.

~~~
executesorder66
>no more using C#

So what did they use instead? C++ ?

~~~
pjmlp
They returned to the original design of .NET.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-
net...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net-generics-
research-project-history-the-msr-white-paper-from-mid-1999/)

Using COM and AOT compilation, instead of the CLR and JIT.

That is why Windows 8 eventually introduced the WinRT, which is basically the
COM+ Runtime of Ext-VOS, but using .NET metadata instead of COM type
libraries.

The C++/CLI syntax was re-purposed for C++/CX and Windows Runtime Library
became the ATL replacement for this new improved COM.

.NET got improved AOT compilation story instead of NGEN, and COW was improved
so that .NET could have a good story for writing and consuming WinRT
components.

EDIT: It isn't COW, rather RCW and CCW.

------
saganus
How come they can distribute binaries of an OS that belongs to a company?

I mean, even though it is a failed project, it still may have valuable stuff,
patents, etc.

So how come they are able to distribute without issues? are they going to
potentially get a C&D? should we start archiving these just in case?

~~~
chungy
There's a few possible answers: * Microsoft doesn't know about it * Microsoft
doesn't care about it * The website has ignored C&Ds * [insert other reasons]

I'm actually most inclined to think "Doesn't care" is the correct answer. None
of these builds are under support and it's unlikely that your necessary
drivers or apps will run on it. They're alpha and beta builds of Windows
Vista, for crying out loud -- even the full release is getting long in the
tooth (and programs like Chrome and Firefox are dropping support).

~~~
saganus
Yeah, I definitely agree on the first and the third, but I'm not so sure about
the second.

Even though they might be unsupported or unusable that doesn't mean that the
legal team would be happy to ignore them.

Sometimes (most times?) companies are very aggressive when it comes to their
IP, especially when it's a core product.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's really cool that we have access to these
things, just out of curiosity (although I doubt I'll ever download and install
them, because of laziness). But things like the emails and such, just seems
like a fuzzy/gray area.

In the end I was hoping there was some other kind of answer like, Microsoft
actually let them publish things or something like that, but I'm skeptical.

------
cpeterso
I have some screenshots from 1998 of Microsoft's "Neptune" project, a
prototype of a task-based GUI to replace the Windows 95-style GUI. I keep
meaning to publish these screenshots online for historical reference..

~~~
carlesfe
Well now I'm curious, please upload them to imgur :)

~~~
breakingcups
IIRC, Neptune was basically XP's Longhorn. It was designed to be the new
consumer version of windows, a successor to Windows 98. Built on Windows 2000,
it had quite a few new features that were new to consumers. However, the
relevant work was eventually merged with the new business version of Windows
to form what would become Windows XP.

There's plenty of screenshots you can already find online, you can even find
ISO's for build 5111 and run it in a VM yourself.

~~~
petepete
Here are some, for the lazy.

[http://winsupersite.com/windows/supersite-flashback-
neptune](http://winsupersite.com/windows/supersite-flashback-neptune)

------
cyanbane
Could this be one of the most expensive software development failures of all
time? Is MS putting money on top of that to show how much of a failure it was
and how they decided to deal with it? At a minimum, just letting the story be
told from the grave to allow for people to look out for similar things in
other projects? Interesting I think. I don't know of many companies who
allow/support documentation of a failure of this magnitude. MS continues to
amaze me these days.

~~~
rasz_pl
OS/2 was couple of billion dollars.

~~~
yuhong
The Microsoft part of the OS/2 2.0 fiasco is so bad and unethical it is one of
my favorite topics (I'd say it is even worse than Longhorn).

------
brooksc
During the Longhorn project (before the reset to use Win 2003 code and create
Vista from it)... There was plans for a "Castle" feature which would allow you
to roam your profile, data across multiple PCs in the home. Parts of castle
made it into Win7 homegroups later, but it was very much scoped back.

At the time I was in the WMDRM team which handled content licensing. We had a
feature that built on Castle if you purchased audio/video content (purchased
music still had DRM then) we'd automatically roam the content licenses among
all the PCs in the home. We had the typical challenges from content owners
that this could be used to share content in a dorm, over the internet. We had
to design in things like proximity detection to ensure you aren't sharing
beyond a home network. It was somewhat complicated (DRM couldn't be simple),
but it would have provided a far better user experience.

We also planned a centralized DRM licensing backup/restore service so you
weren't beholden to the service you bought content from deciding to let you
have another license years later.

All of this was cancelled with the reset unfortunately...

------
DoctorBit
I remember this old article from 2004:

Allchin: Don't call it 'Shorthorn'

Despite the removal of WinFS, Longhorn will not be short on features, Windows
chief Jim Allchin tells CNET News.com.

[http://www.cnet.com/news/allchin-dont-call-it-
shorthorn/](http://www.cnet.com/news/allchin-dont-call-it-shorthorn/)

------
tostitos1979
I'm curious if the Microsoft of today has learned its lesson and changed its
ways? As an outsider now, I see lots of positive things going on such as
acceptance of other platforms (especially Linux), open source activity, etc.
Is Microsoft a good place to work again for a hacker (who doesn't play
politics)?

~~~
elevenfist
I highly doubt it, based off the people I know who work there at the ground
level.

------
xiphias
I loved the concept video, the only problem was that it wasn't executed:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y)

~~~
rbanffy
I used it to poke fun at my friends at Microsoft for almost a decade.

------
Numberwang
I wonder if the project name for win10 was shoehorn.

~~~
mwcampbell
No, it was Threshold.

~~~
voltagex_
Threshold, then Redstone.

~~~
douche
Interesting, considering Microsoft has acquired Mojang

~~~
voltagex_
Yep, Threshold was Halo, Redstone is Minecraft.

[http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/08/windows-10-update-
redston...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/08/windows-10-update-redstone/)

------
partycoder
I would like to know about what happened with the Windows Future Storage
(WinFS)

~~~
orionblastar
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS)

[http://superuser.com/questions/11346/what-happened-to-
winfs](http://superuser.com/questions/11346/what-happened-to-winfs)

Apparently it was canceled and part of it was added to Microsoft SQL-Server
2008, and Windows 7 and other software.

I think WinFS sort of was replaced with Cloud Storage and all of the Websites
that allow you to store files in the Cloud. It is why Microsoft bought out
Skydrive renamed as Onedrive.

~~~
WalterGR
_I think WinFS sort of was replaced with Cloud Storage and all of the Websites
that allow you to store files in the Cloud._

How so?

The point of WinFS was to store an object graph representing your data in a
DB. It was more or less antithetical to files.

(Disclaimer: I was on the WinFS team.)

~~~
mjevans
'the cloud' is associated with tagging type metadata and searching
descriptions; I think that's what is being referenced.

The actual implementation of storing and searching also becomes someone else's
problem. In a way it's just another slosh back and forth in the cycle of
centralization and de-centralization of processing/storage.

~~~
WorldMaker
Similarly the sloshing back and forth between predefined ontology/semantics
and "deep learning". In a way, isn't Cortana attacking many of the WinFS
problems from the opposite direction? Cloud first and "deep learning/AI"
versus local first and "deep semantics".

------
Razengan
I was most interested in the rumors of a vector-based GUI (which persisted in
the guise of "Aero Diamond") and the promise of a fully object-oriented native
API. Thankfully I found the latter in OS X at least.

------
smegel
> The project, however, failed completely and development had to reset. More
> than three years late Microsoft released Windows Code Name 'Longhorn' as
> Windows Vista...

...the project, however, failed completely...

~~~
matthewmacleod
It did fail completely. Microsoft started from scratch, using the same
codename.

~~~
smegel
You didn't get it. I was continuing the sentence.

------
ajdlinux
Anyone else having DNS issues?

~~~
lawpoop
No but I'm not running Vista.

------
VOYD
Why is anybody writing about this monumental fail?

------
latenightcoding
I remember using the longhorn theme on windows xp

------
mtkocak
wtf?

------
lmrs
Why?

------
BitHunter
What an unfortunate name. Of all the animals the longhorn just so happens to
be associated with my glorious alma mater.

