The long walk to Cairo – It’s over if we want it

Yesterday Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows, aka Vista, aka Longhorn, will be delayed even further.

I remember attending a seminar featuring the IBM OS/2 Chief Technology Evangelist (CTE) in 1994, he demoed OS/2 running on a 16MB 486 doing amazing things, that were impossible to do using Windows 3.0, including speech recognition.

In the early 90ies Microsoft was pitching a future version of Windows NT, code named “Cairo”, that would introduce a distributed object oriented file system.

I remember the words of IBMs CTE clearly; “And it’s a long walk to Cairo”.
“Cairo” eventually became Windows NT 4.0, but we’re still walking and is Cairo in sight?

Why?…What’s that! Take a closer look at the background images shown in the Vista demos: it is indeed the Giza Pyramids – Microsoft clearly believes that they’re on final approach to Cairo.

It’s time to take back the desktop: Carpe Diem – The walk to Cairo IS over (if we want it).