Programming Windows: Geeks Bearing Gifts (Premium)

At 8:00 am on October 27, 2003, Microsoft opened the doors to Hall A at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and a melee ensued as the assembled developers and other geeks literally elbowed and fought each other for a prime position near the stage. The goal? To bear witness as Microsoft chairman Bill Gates revealed Longhorn, and with it, the future of computing---in full for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw3PNxXP5nY&list=PLDf534jHFtf8yNOqjO64VwcwRpRgN0Bg_

Those familiar with the history of Microsoft and Windows know that this moment was the single most exciting time in that history, an apex at which anything seemed possible. And that the excitement was all too brief, to be followed by a distressingly long period of inaction, uncertainty, and, ultimately, failure. But having successfully elbowed my way to the front of the crowd, I waited with everyone else, excited, and unaware of the disappointments to come.

And then it started.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEueWyu0TXA&list=PLDf534jHFtf8yNOqjO64VwcwRpRgN0Bg_&index=3

Microsoft flashed a promotional video on-screen that started with imagery of the past but then dazzled the audience with a quick-fire series of Longhorn imagery backed by the rocking strain of “Horndog” by Overseer. Dubbed “Aero Rocks,” the video promised that Longhorn was “about ideas that inspire,” that Microsoft would “make the future happen … today!” (which seemed like a riff on my website’s slogan, “the future of Windows … today!”) We would “work smarter, AND harder,” it intoned. “We don’t see pixels, we see pictures,” it continued, as stunning transparent UI imagery flashed by. “We’re geeks bearing gifts. And. We’re. Just. Getting. Started.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHigZ1pid_s&list=PLDf534jHFtf8yNOqjO64VwcwRpRgN0Bg_&index=3

The video, and the music, stopped. And the crowd erupted as Bill Gates walked to the podium onstage, smiling as the applause continue to grow, raining down on him. He welcomed everyone to “the Longhorn PDC.” And then he proceeded to bore the living shit out of everybody there, robbing the room of its excitement, for nearly 40 straight minutes. With his characteristically nasal voice, Gates explained how Microsoft and the industry had gotten to this point, and he detailed the advances that would enable his firm to deliver on what he called “the digital decade.”

He bored us with talk of Trustworthy Computing, Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP2), and the coming advances to auto-updating. He previewed Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), where Microsoft would enable “the firewall by default. It's got changes in Outlook Express and IE for safer e-mails and browsing. It uses some of the new hardware features in the newer chips to block a large class of exploits. It changes the way we do some of the code protection. We recompile a lot of the key modules. That goes into beta later this year.”

On and on he ...