Microsoft Reveals Longhorn Details - Deja Vu say Mac Fans

Not to be outshone by Apple’s Tiger Mac OS announcement, Microsoft is briefing reporters this week on what the next version of Windows will offer when it hits the market next year. High on the list of features are security enhancements, improved desktop searching and organizing, and better methods for laptops to roam from one network to another.

“This is going to be a big deal,” Jim Allchin, Microsoft group vice president, told CNET News.com. While he acknowledged that Microsoft is unlikely to get throngs of people to show up outside retail stores on launch day as happened with Windows 95, he did say the company expects Longhorn to drive PC sales. “This product has something for everybody.”

Mac users say Longhorn bears more than just a passing resemblance to Apple’s Tiger, offers stripped down features and is “only a big deal unless you bought a Mac five years ago.”

But while the OS bears plenty of similarities to Tiger, Allchin stressed that Microsoft has broken new ground in Longhorn and that Longhorn also goes further than Tiger when it comes to what one can do with search results, saying it offers new ways to organize and view the information.

A pre-beta preview of Longhorn will be distributed to attendees of Microsoft’s WinHEC in Seattle at the end of this month.