The Boston Globe on Windows “Longhorn” notes that it has some new features. It does not note that most of these new features were already available on MacOS and Linux. It does not note that there is any competition for Longhorn. It notes that Windows runs on more than 90% of systems, but fails to note any antitrust concerns. I don’t expect deep discussion of this in a quick note article, but this is little more than a rehashed press release.
The icing on the cake, though, is right at the end:
To keep consumers satisfied in the meantime, Gates said a new version of Windows, called ”Windows XP Professional x64 Edition,” will begin shipping next month that can crunch more information at one time, handling 64 bits of data compared with 32 bits in the previous generation.
Now, do you see anything in that that indicates that this is for a new hardware platform? A hardware platform that’s been available for over a year? That you can’t just run out and put x64 edition on your PC? This product is not a “quick update to keep consumers happy.” It’s long-delayed support for 64-bit processors that will mostly be of interest to business customers, primarily in the server or high-end workstation space. I guess you can blame this on the article being by the Globe Wire Service, but dammit, let’s have some accuracy here.
What gets me is I’m sure that most of the reporting in the world is equally wrong, and I don’t know it because I’m not a subject-matter expert on anything else.
Secretly Ironic 