Longhorn: It's (Not) About Time

Today, Microsoft kicked off its professional developer conference. But, natural wildfire overshadowed those Microsoft had hoped the show would ignite. California wildfires threatened the main air traffic control facility yesterday, so the FAA stopped planes from taking off for any of the Los Angeles area’s five airports. I had the great displeasure of sitting at Dulles Airport staring at our plane, powered down but otherwise ready for takeoff, for more than two hours.

Many other attendees couldn’t make the event. I spoke with one that, after being grounded in Phoenix, rented a car and drove the last leg of his journey. I’d like to offer my condolences to the people that lost loved ones or homes in yesterday’s California wildfire disaster.

The wildfire Microsoft hoped to ignite: Developer enthusiasm for the next version of Windows (Longhorn), SQL Server (Yukon) and Visual Studio .Net (Whidbey). That wildfire of enthusiasm certainly will be big.

The one I predict will initially be bigger: The press frenzy over Longhorn and SQL Server delays. Windows Platform chief Jim Allchin declined to discuss ship dates, announcing a summer 2004 beta instead. That realistically puts Longhorn’s public release in 2006, which is something I predicted long ago.

The press shouldn’t get into a huff over the Longhorn release date. This conference really isn’t about product release dates. I’m sure Microsoft would have liked to give one, but the company rightly decided to focus on developers. My advice to the media: Don’t sweat Longhorn’s ship date right. There’s not enough difference between end of 2005 and early 2006 (assuming Microsoft can’t make that) to warrant the fuss.

Microsoft made it pretty clear coming into the event that Longhorn’s release would be years away. During this morning’s keynotes, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Mr. Allchin set expectations that the Longhorn transition will be long in coming.

"It’s very clear we’re at the very beginning of this process," said Mr. Gates.

It’s too bad in a way Microsoft also poorly set expectations about what to expect. Big Longhorn hype preceded the show. Microsoft employees helped feed the hype with Weblogs touting the developer conference and the first peak at Longhorn. Evangelism is good, but, in this case, maybe it was overdone for operating system that could be as much as three years from release. More time should have been spent touting other aspects of the event.

The developer conference is, in many ways, more a showcase of technologies developers need to understand now so they can get acquainted with Longhorn, Yukon and Whidbey.

Showcase technologies are pretty much all developers will get on the Longhorn preview CD, which even Microsoft is calling pre-Alpha code. Pre-Alpha means the OS is a helluva short way along the development path.

In describing Longhorn, Mr. Allchin told developers that "performance is not good yet."

Microsoft is giving developers this way-early preview so that they can start planning for all the changes Microsoft plans for Longhorn. These affect the graphics subsystem, the file system and numerous application programming interfaces, and that’s just for starters. My advice to developers: Start working with the new tools and preview code now. Microsoft has good reason for starting the new OS introduction process earlier than usual.

Mr. Allchin made a similar point: "We’ve never shared bits this early."

What Mr. Allchin didn’t mention: That Yukon’s big beta won’t be coming as soon as expected. The expected major beta had been imminent with Microsoft earlier projecting late-2004 release of Yukon. It’s a safe bet Yukon won’t ship until mid 2005, at the earliest. Five years between SQL Server releases is a pretty significant gap. I’m assuming that means the new file system planned for Yukon--and Longhorn, I might add--is far from finished. That file system is one of the cornerstones of Microsoft’s next wave of product releases and ambitious push into search.

Posted by Joe Wilcox at October 27, 2003 03:42 PM