Microsoft's Midori -- a future without Windows
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted July 30th 2008 9:16PM
posted July 30th 2008 9:16PM
The basis for the platform centers around research related to Microsoft's Singularity project, and envisions a distributed environment where applications, documents, and connectivity are blurred in a cloud-computing phantasmagoria which can be run natively or hosted across multiple systems. The researchers are working to create a concurrent / parallel distribution of resources, as well as a method of handling applications across separate machines -- religiously-dubbed the Asynchronous Promise Architecture -- which will set the stage for a backwards-compatible operating system built from the ground up, with networks of varying size in mind. Says the SD Times, "The Midori documents foresee applications running across a multitude of topologies, ranging from client-server and multi-tier deployments to peer-to-peer at the edge, and in the cloud data center. Those topologies form a heterogeneous mesh where capabilities can exist at separate places." Like it technical? Hit the read link for an in-depth look at the possible shape of Microsoft's future.
[Via Yahoo!]
Sorry for my profanity,
but what the fuck are all you guys talking about? Half of your damned phrases (like :"apple has been pushing their OS past its former edges ever since OSX came about") are vague as hell.
Most of you arn't even software engineers to know what the fuck is goin.
Holly shit, stop that already.
@SuperSexyErik (^_^)
...wow... got me? Zinger.
I'm not sure I want all my documents and data floating around in some nebulous ether, but I'm willling to wait to see how it pans out before passing judgement.
More to the hear and now, I was reading about Ubuntu Netbook Remix today, and thinking that it could be a real watershed unless Microsoft comes up with an answer sharpish. XP looks frankly embarassing next to UNR, and besides slowing everything to a crawl Vista wont fit on the typical SSD.
"topologies forming a heterogeneous mesh where capabilities can exist at separate places" is cute and all, but Microsoft Vista, Mobile Edition, with optimization for Atom, small screen, and SSD should be much higher on the priority totem pole methinks...
I don't think it will be so much about the distribution of your documents and personal data as it is about the distribution of daemons as in a micro-kernel that sees itself distributed over a network, all of this running in the background of course.
Microsoft has a lot of brilliant people working for them, especially in R&D.
Upper management is not stupid; they know only Windows and Office make the money, and they also know that the company is declining in prominence. If they continue on the same track, sooner or later, both will be irrelevant.
It's difficult to change the direction of a big company, but if they can change the culture, some truly astonishing products could be brought to market.
Sounds like too much high-concept BS and not enough reality.
Reminds me of Bill Gates' idea for software that uses a camera to analyze your facial expressions to judge weather you like the content you are consuming or not. Sofa-King We-Todd-Ed.
Just make a platform that is 1) reliable, 2) elegant, 3) fast, and 4) easy to develop apps for.
I run APPS on top of my OS 99.9% of the time. I'm not fidgeting with the OS.
I feel like I'm on a site like tmz reading people argue about celebrities or Operating systems in this case.
Yeah, I'm SURE this will actually happen. WFS, anyone? Really!?
Come on. Has anyone else noticed the huge marketing budget MS has created since Bill left?
The Nazis had pretty kick ass propaganda, too.
But it didn't make it a good idea.
MobileMS?
Midori is pie in the sky, many years away from real-world implementation. Midori will share the same fate as all of the fancy features MS wanted to put in Vista, but cut before Vista's release. Microsoft really needs to focus on the immediate future.
@Virtuous,
Do you have crystal ball ? I don't think you know what you are talking about. STFU.
Is planning only short-term the real way to go?
BTW have you considered windows 7 before commenting? MSFT can do several OS project parallel and is also doing so.
From reading the article it just sounds like Microsoft is jumping on Intel's "Millions of Cores" approach and making it easier for developers to develop hugely parallel applications....
This is just another entry in the Microsoft hype machine. They have a track record of shouting "innovation!" and producing mediocre. The canonical example being WinFS.
Hopefully this is finally a change from the norm, but I have my doubts.
I hear the developers are stuck on some hard Continuous Regression Algorithmic Protocols.
They'll have to work it out with a pencil.
If I understand the concept properly, this is WAY beyond anything as mundane as Mac OS/Linux/Windows. It is about a true network-based view of computing, wherein the net cloud is seen as a single amorphous machine/entity. Think massively parallel processing combined with data resolution well beyond linked pages, down to properly contexted words and concepts and images. People themselves become detailed data nodes in this scenario.
Lookin forward to this. I aint a MS or Apple fanboy, I work and use both equally. (to some of you i bet thats impossible to fathom).
You guys are right apple has been pwning MS lately, MS needs something next gen and new. But realise this apple claims theres only one os to buy, but how much is it? 130$? and whats the shelf life of it? 2-3 years? Oh whats that? XP has a shelf life of over 6 years and counting so far, and it costs 100 $.
Vista? Assuming pple actually try it without knocking it and manufacturers stop making PoS computers that are underpowered and min spec.'d for the program, it runs great. As a matter of fact, this comment was written on a Vista Machine!
Sorry for rant. I now prepare my flame shield for you mac zealots about to flame my post
people saying a mac OSX rip off NEEd to get a life. Who really gives a damn! Do you really make computers part of your life? Go outside make some friends, stop all this bashing
I'm not a mac fanboy, not a windows fan boy. I like both both have its diferences, problems and greats. but for you bashing something thats not even worth it, it just makes you look immature....
Now what I'd like to see, is the great guys in Cupurtino and the light headed folks at redmond to get along and create one super OS. Bulit by both. both will need to share ideas....and together they CAN bulid one suit system.
may be thats what microsoft needs, is some apple people to show them how to do things. Steve Balmuer needs to get laied hes so.... light headed.
Someone stop them before it becomes self aware!
Finally a brand new OS from microsoft. I can't wait to see how this turns out.
yawn... We need a new way to compute, and software is obviously a big deal, but we need to move away from IBM form factors and get some new hardware architectures put into place first... I mean we are running our most sophisticated machines on 30-40 year old technologies only slightly updated on the peripheral and interface level.
It would be really handy if one of these massively wealthy and ubber influential companies actually went back to the drawing board and produced something truly amazing, revolutionary and useful... dressing up a corpse and asking us to dance with it just won't cut it for much longer. I know Intel and a few others have been "working on it" for the past 15 years, but come on... I think there is too much money for them to justify phasing out IBM compatible form factors...
We all gobble up their "next generation chips" and MS/Mac/Linux reinventions of the OS, so why would anyone want to move away from such a money maker. We already know this (my) industry isn't built on integrity, and principle but pure unchecked and unbridled capitalism.
*koff* OpenDoc *koff*
Hey Microsoft, 1994 called. They want want their ideas back.
Ah, Midori. Man-in-the-middle attacks just got a bit easier.
Hello,
I think Midori is more or less a general indication as to where the entire industry is looking to head towards. I have just completed my Masters Degree and I am working on my PhD at the Oxford Internet Institute which is a part of the Oxford University. I have been working on an agent based distributed intelligent scalable application framework based on .NET 3.5 and .NET Remoting. The framework essentially allows you to build an intelligent and distributed application with little or no know-how of how distributed intelligent applications work.
I came up with a new idea called meta-intelligence which is intelligence regarding intelligence techniques. I have been able to build a few apps using this and one of the first ones I built was an intelligent web mining application which is currently indexing the web with little human intervention and building the base for a future wholly semantic search engine. The current app we are trying to build is an intelligent microkernel which uses predictive analysis and concepts like petri-nets to predict memory and cpu usages and determine run level priorities and dynamically balance the loads based on this information. The kernel itself functions like an app loading and unloading modules to minimize its footprints. Most interestingly, the kernel can 'talk' to other similar kernels and perform load balancing between themselves if they find the conditions to be mutually beneficial(Current CPU usage, Network Bandwidth, Available Memory). Another concept we were working on is Remote Apps. You could have photoshop installed on a different machine who kernel is currently in a load balancing mode. If your currently system does not have photoshop installed, but you request for it by typing it in the console, the kernels will talk to each other to see who has it installed and then execute it. The visual , graphical rendition will be sent to your system, while the backend processing will be done by the host system (kernels are still sharing the CPU load). The final file will be again saved on your system. We plan to implement a shared-merged file system in the future.
I might have made a few mistakes in typing the above because it usually takes me around 45 to 50 slides and atleast 2 hours of time to explain what exactly I do, but I think what Midori is trying to create is close to what I am working on at the moment. Only, my work is already here and it proves we have the technology to do it. My work is for most part based on .NET and I worked with the Bartok Compiler and Singularity Code to get this far. But I am not the only one working on this. I know of atleast 15 other projects similar to mine (not the same but similar) with different technologies and broadly speaking is a major indicator towards the direction in which we are headed with this. I wouldn't be surprised if Mac OS XI or XII was on such similar lines or if Ubuntu had most of the mentioned features.
Ciph
I know this is WAY off but im dreading the time cloud computing kicks off :)
Relying on ISP's to get your computing done, NO!
i like sex
I'm so hot for Microsoft right now.
I'm certainly no fan of much of what Microsoft has been doing for the last decade or so (I've been running linux for over 6 years as my only OS), but I am excited to see what their absolutely brilliant research division can do with this idea. We likely won't be seeing it until after Windows 7, but that will definitely give other players enough time to get the necessary infrastructures in place to help shift the computing paradigm past the stale situation it's stuck in right now. Cloud computing and always-networked mobile platforms will revolutionize how we deal with computing and especially information, and it's good to see that Microsoft sees the light.
Microsoft Green? Hmm...
Come on Microsoft, put some pressure on Apple!
seriously, for the last ten years the only thing that has forced apple into dreaming up something new and exciting was windows ME. They decided right then and there: How can we be the LEAST like microsoft as possible?
wow skynet is well on track. We made so many apocalyptic movies about super computers that control all computers, yet we do not heed our own warnings. awesome.
Will it run Doom?
i think this is like your C:\Windows (system folder) will now be www.midori.com, and C:\Program Files\Office will now be www.midor.com/office. Or something like that. That means your system files will reside in an internet server, thus reducing risk of virus.
Look at it like this, your browser will engulf your whole OS, you'll be running windows like you run browser, but your personal data and settings will still remain in your computer.
Holy Moses Crap, Windows being dropped, I mean c'mon even you apple pridebags have got to say dAMN! I mean geez...
So everything is interlinked and works together mulitple pc, server and everything that runs a MS OS hmmmm . just add a A.I. to it and we will be all be done for.....
What I hear is Microsoft wants your actual computing running through a process that forces it (the data) to leave your physical location, scrutinizing it to all sorts of filtering, logging and say, verification of legitimate purchase. Can anyone else smell the BS behind the whole cloud computing frenzy?! BTW, the feds have complete immunity to capture all domestic voice data. Most techies know that all RJ-11 gets converted to RJ-45/Fiber optics at some point in the network.. cant this be grabbed and logged as well within a few years? the groundwork is all layed out before us.. wake up and smell the tyranny peoples.
I can't help but feel that MS have this backwards. No-one can design a really sophisticated system from the ground up, IMV they evolve from some really sound building blocks which are added to and manipulated as time passes. MS may feel that starting again fixing some of the design problems is good, but it's a primrose path that leads to tears before bedtime because you simply invent new problems and, because the system is by definition more complicated, these tend to be worse than the ones you tried to fix when you started.
"When you're up to your waist in alligators it's hard to remember you came here to drain the swamp." In other words you lose all sight of why you listened to the people who wanted to start again.
I would ignore the siren voices that cry "start again" and get on with fixing and improving what's on the table. I know it's a dirty word in the US, but the term "evolution" would seem to me to be the best strategy.
Today, I predict that Midori will make Microsoft lost a lot of marketshare. People don't want cloud-related and other weird stuff for their computers. People don't like changes.
just don't speak for an entire planet, ok?
grat gart midori
Oh, please... Linux & OSX trolls, just stay away from this topic and go play nano. If you haven't heard about Singularity, it's architecture or you didn't use it, please STFU. That OS is the next generation OS, and on it's architecture is based Midori.
Not to mention how widely and developer-friendly linux is. Not! ;)
Windows, Linux,Mac,Solaris and the others just human's made. respect whatever they made. OK
If I read it right, please correct me if I'm wrong, its like distributed computing on a massive scale.
My main concern is security; If my computer is asking other computers on the internet to process my data for me, then my data is being sent off to somewhere else where potentially it can be read, or can be returned including virus etc. It's kind of like saying to someone, heres my bank card and PIN, go to that machine and get my balance. Great if you trust the person with your card, but you don't go giving out that information to Randoms on the internet.
Maybe a private network based environment e.g. corporate/enterprise clients, would benefit, because you generally can trust what's inside your own network, but such companies would probably already leveraging some distributed computing tasks on applications built-in house, designed to run in the networked environment.
For home/personal users, this just doesn't tick my box.