Programming Windows: It’s Not Going to Work (Premium)

We should have seen it coming.

In the days leading up to the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003, we received yet another warning sign that all was not well with Longhorn. Build 4051 had leaked online two days before the show, giving us a first and early peek at the Developer Preview. And … it was disappointing. Really disappointing.

It was immediately clear that Longhorn build 4051 was still a very early and incomplete build of the coming operating system. Indeed, Jim Allchin would later claim that this was the earliest in a release cycle that Microsoft had ever given such a thing to the public. But that statement, too, should have triggered red flags, as Longhorn had been in active development for over two years by that point. And Microsoft still couldn’t even deliver a proper beta to outside developers?

Build 4051 featured yet another Windows XP-like user interface, with an ugly new Slate theme replacing the Plex theme we’d seen earlier and no hints at all at the coming Aero UI.

“At the risk of sounding a bit negative, Longhorn build 4051 is, sorry, boring,” I wrote. “Once you get over the mildly amusing Slate theme, and the slow and painful hardware detection, it's basically the same as previous alpha builds, albeit in more usable form. Explorer windows feature the Aero-like look that I first revealed [previously] and... well, that's about it. There really isn't that much more to say, at least not yet. We've installed 4051 on three machines so far and we're not that impressed.”

Still, a coworker and I took over 300 screenshots in anticipation of future galleries and articles. And we spent much of our time at PDC alternating between keynotes, briefings, and sessions, and playing with the new build. Unfortunately, compared to the exciting Hillel Cooperman keynote demos, in particular, it never hinted at the promises of what Microsoft intended to deliver.

“We've spent several hours playing with Longhorn build 4051, and while we're still not overly impressed, we have at least gotten the gist of what's going on in this build,” I wrote during the show. “First, it's a dog on any system with less than 512 MB of RAM, so consider that a base amount (up from 256 in Windows XP). The new content aggregator Libraries [virtual folders] are more usable in this build than in previous alphas, and it's clear that a lot of what we're seeing now are just placeholders for future refinements.”

By November, Microsoft was referring to build 4051 as “pre-alpha,” a nonsensical term, to further distance it from the first beta build, which it now expected to deliver in the second half of 2004, a full year from then.

In January 2004, I interviewed Hillel Cooperman and his user experience partner in crime, Tjeerd Hoek. (I will be publishing the full interview soon.) I was surprised to discover that Cooperman had worked for Microsoft for several years---I had assumed he was a recent hire-...