Flashes of Panic

There was an article in the NYT over the weekend about how the next version of Windows, widely known by its code-name, “Longhorn,” is now projected for a 2006 release.

This is a big, fat softball gently lobbed over the plate, so let’s just pretend I smacked it over the right-field wall (I slice) to spare you the reading and me the writing.

The part that struck me as more interesting is what I really don’t know about Longhorn. It seems like, as an IT geek, I should be insatiably curious about what Microsoft is going to change in the next version of the world’s most widely used operating system. It’s big enough that Microsoft’s oscillations on deadlines and projected features make the New York Times, after all. Even professionally, I should probably acquaint myself with the bare outlines, since my current trajectory suggests I’ll be dropping this steer on someone else’s desk, and possibly even my own, within three years.

And yet I am largely disinterested. That might be because Windows is not my primary platform; I do know at least a few of the features Apple has planned for the next revision of their system and some of the feature differences between the last three point releases.

For one thing, I suspect I should take this as a sign that operating system research shouldn’t be a concentration of mine. But I also suspect that might be a misconception, and none of this has anything whatever to do with operating systems as a CS researcher understands them; more likely, it’s about user interfaces, marketing, and the sound and fury needed to maintain the illusion that an operating system is something worth spending money on.

I spent a great deal of the last weekend in the company of a small mob of high school girls. (This is like being struck by lightning more than once: are you blessed, or cursed?) While we were watching the marathon on TV, I overheard a conversation about advertising. I think they were discussing a women’s magazine, because I heard, “Notice how they’re all advertising the same thing? Lots of cars, lots of clothes, lots of makeup. They need to advertise them because they’re all the same.”

Does Windows fit that evaluation? I’m thinking about it now, and it looks pretty close.

Now playing: Starman by Dar Williams