>>55627229
Longhorn was in development for 3 years, it was supposed to be what Windows Vista was gonna be, but then they had a problem with it and scraped the whole project and just changed the UI of XP and used that as the whole OS release.
>>55627688
if only the ui changed, why was vista so much more demanding than xp was?
>>55627229
Bill Gates left with thousands of anti-trust bureaucrats restricting Microsoft at every turn.
Apple got into the government and won. They basically bribed the government to destroy Microsoft and told them they basically can't innovate: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/16/us/employees-from-microsoft-give-gore-an-icy-reception.html
This probably destroyed or delayed too long so many promising projects within Microsoft such as Longhorn, Courier, or Windows Mobile.
Gore got a nice cushy job as a board member of Apple and made millions for his service. Bill Gates threw up his hands and just left. It's quite sad we can't see the same shit done against Facebook, Google or Apple, which are monopolies today, because they own the government right now and there's nothing we can do.
They did this to AT&T too long time ago and broke up the company. But they got smart and now also control the government as puppets.
Is this the next desktop thread
>>55628083
The rabbit hole goes further. Shareholders of Microsoft were slowly replaced as Bill Gates sold off his shares. Eventually they got enough support to remove Steve Ballmer (who was an incompetent fool anyway, but was no puppet) and replace him with someone else they could control.
This is where Windows 10 comes in and all the bullshit that we're hearing about it. It's basically a botnet, in fact, all the updates now are pushing for more control over the user. Completely against the original intentions of the company were about.
The company is not the same as it was 15 years ago. It was destroyed from within. Ironically Microsoft did the same thing with Nokia, except more openly. The fact that the Finnish regulators did nothing smells foul to me. A great company such as Nokia gets destroyed by a Microsoft shill out in plain sight then gets bought out for peanuts screams illegal to me.
>>55627895
Because the whole UI was changed
>>55628169
Yeah after not using Windows for a long time I'm just recently realizing how bad it's really gotten. I had no idea Windows XP SP2 and Office 2003 would be the high point of Microsoft. They just snowballed into way too many abandoned standards and protocols for any sane person to keep up with it seems like.
>>55628449
But they made it GPU accelerated, that's even less of an excuse.