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Microsoft has been working on a highly componentized managed microkernel OS for a while now. For most of that time, it has been called Singularity and they even released a CTP a while back of Singularity if you wanted to play with it inside a VM. I actually did manage to get Singularity running briefly but there was so little that I could do with it that I decided to wait until Microsoft had a clearer vision of what they wanted to do with it.
Now it appears they do have a clearer vision of what they want to do with Singularity : Midori. I'm not sure why they called it Midori (Japanese for Green), but I've never really been able to figure out the thought patterns behind many Microsoft codenames. Singularity was a very appropriate name, since everything was so componentized that you could think of building your applications as writing isolated 'singularities' of functionality that communicated with each other through well-known interfaces and service descriptions. Think of it is taking the SOA concept of enterprise application integration and taking it down into the OS level. It has a LOT of promise and potential and I am really, really excited to see what they end up doing with all of this work.
One thing that struck me, though, was how integrated Cloud computing and the "Mesh" is in the leaked Midori documents. When I first saw Live Mesh come out, I was rather unimpressed because on the surface, it looked like just some other rebranding of shared folders over Windows Live. Then I saw that there was going to be an SDK, and I looked at the architecture and was really inspired.
Someone then asked me, "So, how do you think this is going to integrate into the operating system in the future?"
I replied with: "Are you kidding? This IS the operating system in the future". Think about it. Right now more and more of the desktop applications that we build are consuming Internet services. More and more we're trying to escape the "browser jail". Some people do it with plug-in based RIAs like Flex or Silverlight, other people do it with hybrids like AIR, yet others do it with Smart Clients built in WPF..but we're all doing one common thing: using distributed services over the Internet from inside a rich programming environment. What if the operating system was built from the ground up to be aware of that particular programming paradigm?
What if you could have a file system that was innately aware of the fact that pieces of the file system could be distributed across a cloud? What if the basic, programming 101 API for the operating system itself was designed such that programmers had to build componentized applications that conformed to some really good design patterns, and part of the base OS functionality was allowing locally stored data to automatically take part in cloud synchronization, as if it wasn't an add-on, but innate functionality from the beginning? This is what I think Midori promises for the desktop application programmer and could even hold some serious possibilities for the server programmer as well.
I hope Microsoft actually pulls this one off and creates a truly non-Windows OS that is a programmer's heaven and one that makes security and usability experts happy as well. Basically, they just need to put some real thought into this new OS and I hope they produce it and listen to what their critics are saying about Vista and XP and take that advice to heart. Rather than running marketing campaigns blaming Vista's negative image on stupid people spreading rumors, they should look at what is fundamentally creating Vista's bad image and make sure they don't reproduce that problem in Windows 7 and Midori (if they produce Midori as a real OS).
Midori sounds to me like another classic MS vaporware tactic to divert
attention away from a competitor. This thing won't ship for years...if
ever..and they'll dump billions into it.
Unfortunately I need to agree with James; Microsoft are only able to profit
from the existing monoploy that they have built up with Windows and Office.
To discard compatibility with these rocks of their organisation would
bankrupt them. For my part, I mostly dislike MS software, but I do respect
that there are some pretty damn clever people there who can pruduce this
kind of game changing model - but there is no way is going to get past the
Management...
I'm inclined to follow your cynical thinking here as well. While Midori is
an awesome idea, and would be fantastic if they ever implemented it...the
same thing happened to the original Longhorn. Longhorn was awesome and had
awesome potential before they started over and turned it into Vista.
I think Midori is already here. I think Live Mesh IS Midori. Midori IS
live Mesh. It is the perfect transition from windows to mesh.
