Talk:Cairo (operating system)

name of this article

In early August, an editor renamed this article to Windows "Cairo". I've renamed it back to its prior name, Cairo (operating system). The reason for this is that the in-quotes codename is something that has developed in the last few years when discussing beta versions of Windows software, in lieu of a final name. The press, and Microsoft themselves, didn't use this naming pattern when discussing Cairo. Being internally consistent in terms of how we represent products with codenames isn't important... what's important is how other people refer to it, and that we are consistent with that. -/- Warren 22:24, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

cairo -> xp

if we read the letters of "xp" greek, we read it "chi"-"rho", "cairo".

is there a correlation between xp and cairo? --80.219.164.136 15:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Nope .. not sure why the Cairo name came into being, but the in -joke was that it was in the way from Chicago to Memphis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeff.homme (talk • contribs) 20:50, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Other trivia.

1. You could determine a Cairo developer on the main campus by the distinctive black jackets with a narrow piping of neon-pink/red on each sleeve to shoulder. 2. The unofficial Cairo motto was Novus Ordo Objectorum (The Object is Beauty). Which I believe was in reference to the heavy usage off OOP in the product. 3. At some point when you were logging on there was a little pyramid icon that got built layer by layer (kind of like an hourglass. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeff.homme (talk • contribs) 20:56, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

"Novus Ordo Objectorum" would actually translate as "The New Order of the Object." (See Novus ordo seclorum, "The New Order of the Ages," printed underneath the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill.)

I worked as a technical writer on this project and it was exciting, back in 1995, to listen to the software architects imagine how a computing environment made up of distributed objects would work. The actual implementation, alas, had to wait for a 32-bit network protocol, and a true 32-bit operating system. Pkwrite (talk) 07:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Rather, "New Order of the Objects". Earksiinni (talk) 20:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense.

Jeff.homme (talk) 03:26, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Confusing Features Section

The article states that the Cairo (which I guess would be pronounced Kayro, like the town in southern Illinois, if that bit about being between Chicago and Memphis is true) was developed in 1991-1999. Yet in the features section, the article then leaps ahead to WinFS, Vista, and Windows 7. I don't see the relationship here. If the article just indicates that a file object system was intended for Cairo and points out that one such system was intended for Vista, I think it could be transitioned better. The way the article currently reads sounds like WinFS was originally crafted as part of Cairo. According to the WinFS article, WinFS was first demoed in 2003, four years after the cancellation of Cairo. If that section of the article could be improved for clarity, that would be great. Mandanthe1 08:35, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the lack of clarity, but WinFS really has its roots in Cairo's Object File System. The connection is better explained in the article on WinFS. --bonzi (talk) 09:41, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Shameless advertizing?

Bill Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips.", it says. Sounds very much like he invented this phrase and vision, so it should be probably re-phrased (even though it was him who made it popular like 18 years later, it wasn't his idea). --80.134.52.38 16:53, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Who did have this "vision" anyway? It was someone at Xerox, perhaps Alan Kay, but does someone know this for sure?

so windows me was a bug

Vaporware???

Shouldn't we add something about how it made people wait for years upon years for a product that never actually came to complete fruition in a single, integrated product? All Cairo really was was Microsoft introducing the concept of stuff a decade and a half before it was possible to be implemented on the average desktop computer.

Cairo was not just "another cool thing from Redmond", it was vaporware intended to damage Microsoft's competition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.165.246.61 (talk) 09:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

And if you want Wikipedia to editorialize in this manner, then I guess we'd need to add the same comments to the section on Copland (operating system), Apple's version of "Cairo" which was vaporware as well. Or maybe it's just a simple case of both companies shooting for the moon and not quite being able to get there. Jsc1973 (talk) 11:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

It was the later - both companies were hoping to actually release "visionary" new systems, only to be proven to have overreached vastly. Of course, marketing of both companies also used the development effort to keep the customers in the perpetual state of waiting for the "great thing just around the corner" and so never considering switching to the competition. However, it is not up to Wikipedia to pass judgments like these. BTW, I seem to remember that this article was much longer and better, with more details on the scope of the project and its reflections in today's products... If I had time I would go trawling through the article's history and revert at least portions of it. And I couldn't believe that someone actually proposed this article for deletion as a possible hoax! I remember magazines like Byte (R.I.P.) devoting almost whole issues to it. --bonzi (talk) 09:37, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

A requirements document for Windows Cairo labeled as a plaintiff's exhibit 5542 in Comes vs. Microsoft is posted at Cairo Product Requirements. If this document is part of the public record, information from it may be used to show that it is not a hoax. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hv8EEHpq (talk • contribs) 00:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Not an OS - A Code Name

I think this entire article is essentially made up, with very little in the way of references.

From my personal followings of the industry at that time, Cairo was the code name for an OS project that eventually became NT 4.0. Yes, the interface inspired and was first released on Windows 95, but then was finally released on the NT side as NT 4.0, with the start menu and everything.

Even the internal OS Strings for config files, etc use Cairo on NT 4.0, as opposed to Memphis on 95. Bytemaster (talk) 01:49, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Memphis wasn't 95's codename, though, it was called Chicago.

I do think this article needs work in the way of references, but I would also like a citation for your claim that Cairo was the codename for 4.0, so that I can add it to the article.

CrustyCaverns (talk) 14:11, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Cairo had lots of NT underpinnings but was its own build line. NT 4 was completely separate. The only thing we called NT 4 was SUR for shell update release, I don't recall any other code names. Jeff.homme (talk) 03:18, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Stub?

Is this article a stub, or is there just not enough information out there for a larger article?

I'll add what I can find to the article! :) 157.185.66.2 (talk) 19:05, 4 April 2022 (UTC)