Mark's MCE Blog

On Friday Microsoft made some announcements regarding changes to the upcoming version of Windows Codename Longhorn based on feedback from it's customers.

1.) Microsoft is reaffirming their commitment for broad availability of the Windows “Longhorn” Client in 2006.
 
2.) Microsoft plans to make elements of Longhorn’s WinFX programming model available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.  This will enable developers to write WinFX applications that run on hundreds of millions of PCs and offer these next generation of applications sooner. Specifically, Microsoft plans to deliver the “Avalon” and “Indigo” pillars of Longhorn’s WinFX programming model for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. 

3.) They originally planned to ship a new data storage system codenamed “WinFS” when they released the Longhorn Client. In order to deliver Longhorn’s innovations to customers as quickly as possible, they now intend to deliver WinFS after the initial availability of Longhorn client.  'We continue to be committed to WinFS.  It is expected to beta when Longhorn client is broadly available.'
 
The Windows “Longhorn” Server Operating System continues to be expected to be available in 2007.

Personally I would have liked to see a Windows XP Second Edition, perhaps built using the Windows Server 2003 SP1 codebase (like Windows XP x64 Edition), however much of the need for that has been dealt with by Windows XP Service Pack 2. Then drive both longhorn client and server for 2007 including Winfs. It's quite disappointing to see winfs removed in the initial release because it was one of the more exciting developments in longhorn, by not having it there from the start it will probably effect the number of people making use of it for applications before the release of the next Windows after longhorn, depending on how they deliver it to end users (and how big it is). In the same way having avalon and indigo for Windows XP/03 is great and should mean we get some great uses for these new technologies a lot sooner than if they were longhorn exclusive API's. It seems to be a tough decision but I am sure Longhorn will still be a great improvement over XP in many areas.