I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Microsoft Watch has more analysis including this tasty tidbit.
Microsoft’s decision to make its Longhorn technologies available to users of older versions of its software is not unprecedented. Microsoft’s Office team opted for a similar strategy, by designing the next major release of Office (Office 12, due out as part of the “Longhorn Wave” of technologies) able to run on older versions of Windows, in addition to Longhorn. Originally, Office 12 was set to be a Longhorn-specific release.
And that summarizes MS’s dilemma.
On different P&L’s the Longhorn team will want Office on Avalon to pull through Longhorn sales. Office will want to support NT4.0 to have the widest possible coverage.
So the new wrinkle is that Avalon will be decoupled from Longhorn.
And Office will support both ?!?! Aw crap. No Office rewrite, more fudge.
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