Midori is not Singularity

Since SD Times published its story about Midori, a number of pundits have suggested that Midori might be a rehash of Microsoft’s Singularity project. (One person with that view is CNet’s Ina Fried, but others have written that as well.)

When doing our due diligence on the Midori technical documents, that was one of the first things we considered. We brought Windows internal expert Larry O’Brien (pictured) into the loop to help us evaluate the documents’ authenticity and significance, and as he writes in his blog,

Substantively, what I can say is that the documents were quite technical and were quite provocative — they weren’t a retrospective on Singularity that we conflated into a discussion of a future OS.

Another perspective comes from InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy, who in “Is Windows Midori doomed to failure,” implies that Microsoft intentionally leaked a trial balloon. I don’t think so, not in this case. Rather, I agree with the BBC’s assessment.