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Without crucial feature, what will new Windows do?
NEW YORK — Techies are such cutups.
Microsoft's next version of Windows, due in 2006, is code-named Longhorn. Last week, after Microsoft said it is postponing what would've been the most profound new feature of Longhorn, the tech comedians started calling the coming operating system Shorthorn.
That's why you've been hearing snorts of laughter coming from the IT department. You probably thought they were watching Caddyshack again.
The delayed feature goes by the acronym WinFS, which is not very comfortable to pronounce. It's kind of like last year's problem of pronouncing Gigli. I'd tell you what WinFS stands for, except Microsoft itself isn't so sure. "It's either Windows File System or Windows Future Storage," says Greg Sullivan, a lead product manager for Windows. "Depends on who you ask."
WinFS is supposed to be a major overhaul of the way people find and use all the stuff they store inside a personal computer. This would be a welcome development because in today's Windows-based computers, file storage and retrieval is pretty much a disaster.
Say I wanted to locate a screenplay about the life of Fawn Hall that I started in the 1990s and then hid in a non-obvious place under a nondescript file name so no one else would ever stumble across it.
Like most heavy computer users, I probably have more than 100,000 files on my hard drive. With Windows, if the exact location can't be recalled, you're hosed. Finding a half-forgotten file is like the Kennedys trying to find a spare key they hid somewhere on the compound grounds back when Teddy was slim.
But that's not even the hardest problem. Compared with five years ago, today's computer users have piles of different kinds of digital stuff stored and isolated in separate types of software.
For instance, say I'm best buds with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. I might have his instant-messaging nickname in my buddy list, his e-mail address in Outlook, appointments with him in my calendar, digital photos of him during our Outer Mongolian yak-watching safari stored in imaging software, and some saucy limericks we wrote together in Word.
My computer would have no idea that those Gates items are related to each other. If Bill G. and I are IM-ing, I might wish I could quickly pull together a yak photo, a limerick and a comment from one of his old e-mails to send to him. In Windows, I can't do that unless I know where each item is stored and find it myself.
Major Microsoft release dates:
1983: Windows introduced.
1985: Shipments of first Windows release begin.
1990: Windows version 3.0 ships.
1993: Windows NT released. About 200,000 copies sold in first few months.
1995: Windows 95 launches and sells more than 1 million copies in four days. Analysts say more than 40 million copies shipped in first year.
2000: Windows 2000 professional and server launches. Sales top 1 million in first month.
2001: Windows XP launches. Sales top 17 million in a little more than two months.
Sources: Microsoft, USA TODAY research
WinFS, as Microsoft pictures it, would solve all those retrieval problems. For starters, it would give you lightning Google-like searches of everything on your hard drive.
More significant, it would store all your stuff as a relational database — a huge change from storing it in files. WinFS would keep track of relationships between all types of files and slice the data any way you wanted. You could find everything you touched on a specific date, for example, or find every file, photo and e-mail string related to your ongoing study of the uvula.
In a way, Windows' current file-based system is like having a fully stocked refrigerator, freezer, spice cabinet and pantry, but no way to know how to put those ingredients together to cook something.
If WinFS were running my kitchen, I could pull out a package of Velveeta and the software would instantly tell me every Velveeta-based dish I could cook using the ingredients I have on hand. In no time, I'd be stirring up a batch of that Southern delicacy, Velveeta fudge.
"This is a fairly fundamental change," Microsoft's Sullivan says. "That's why it's so hard."
Which brings us back to Microsoft deciding to release Longhorn without WinFS.
That's a bit of a shocker, since WinFS is a Gates pet project.
"Some of you here have heard me talk about (WinFS') unified storage for more than a decade," Gates said in a speech to software developers in October. "That's been a Holy Grail for me for quite some time."
I suddenly picture Microsoft executives skipping through the Seattle fog on pretend horses while their administrative assistants clap two coconuts together. But maybe that's just me.
In that same speech, Gates even sounded confident that WinFS was on track. "Thank goodness, we have the evolution around XML and user interface capabilities, so that this can all come together," he said. He was talking to other geeks, so he didn't have to speak English.
Sullivan says the delay is only because WinFS is so ambitious. "We said, 'If we're going to do it, let's do it 100% right,' " he says. The rest of Longhorn will be ready in 2006, so better to release Longhorn then and keep working on WinFS, Sullivan says. WinFS won't be ready until at least 2007.
Critics have a different take on the delay.
"I suspect one reason is that feedback from users and third-party developers was that WinFS is even less intuitive than the garbage-dump model that Windows now uses," says Jeffrey Tarter, who keeps a close eye on such developments as founder of industry newsletter Softletter. "Microsoft has never been good at solving this kind of problem, which is why Windows needs a 'breakthrough' feature like this in the first place."
Anyway, Microsoft has now created a new problem for itself. WinFS was made out by Microsoft to be the distinguishing feature of Longhorn. Taking WinFS out of Longhorn is sort of like Boeing in the 1950s saying, "Nah, we'll stick with propellers for the 707. Jets are too hard."
"They'll now have a greater challenge in communicating what Longhorn actually is and what is its relationship to XP," says J.P. Auffret, professor of technology management at George Mason University in Virginia.
So Microsoft will have to tell us why we should get excited about Longhorn and why we shouldn't switch to Linux or Apple instead of waiting. Or why we shouldn't install somebody else's software that might help us make sense of files parked all over our hard drives.
Because, otherwise, The Fawn Hall Story will remain buried on my hard drive, obviously a great loss to world culture. Guess I'll just have to start work on something else.
Maybe a film trilogy, Cars: The Life and Times of Gary Numan.
Kevin Maney has covered technology for USA TODAY since 1985. His column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of Technology columns. E-mail him at:
kmaney@usatoday.com.