Dave’s comment on Longhorn

Dave says "When you ask a Microsoft person to say what Longhorn is supposed to do, you get rambly hand-wavy words that mean nothing. A product with a purpose has a two-sentence description that gets everyone so excited they can't wait.".

Longhorn is improving the platform upon which we (developers) build applications. Longhorn isn't going to get users excited; the applications that Longhorn makes possible is what should get users excited.

Indigo isn't going to excite users; it's plumbing. Same with WinFX. Aero might.. but what should excite users about Longhorn is the first wave of apps designed for Longhorn.

As a developer I'm glad to see the platform improving - and I'm especially glad to that now many of these improvements will be available before Longhorn.

A lot of users don't change their OS until their computer is obsolete and they replace it, and that can take years. It might be 2010 before we can start to assume that users have Longhorn or later. But that'll be a good year.