Bob Piatek writes with some impressions of Microsoft’s update to Windows, Longhorn: “I found the following description of a session on an upcoming Windows hardware conference. It looks like the next version of Windows will be copying many of the concepts used in Apple’s Quartz Extreme.” Checking out the tech content teaser for the WinHEC conference certainly suggests that. The software-based “new Windows Longhorn Display Driver model,” like Quartz Extreme, treats the user interface as a dynamic multi-layered, three dimensional composite. The new driver promises: “Windows tumbling onto the screen, rotating windows, *warped windows, alpha blending between windows, threads, events and other synchronization objects.” Sounds like Quartz Extreme to me, with additional capabilities added, though there’s a danger for gimicky, hardware-taxing nonsense here from their description. Also, Longhorn would lack the advantages of OS X’s PDF core, since the new version is still entirely DirectX-based. Any takes from cross-platform developers?
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Microsoft Answers Quartz Extreme UI
