Microsoft patents Operating System Shutdown

Microsoft patents Operating System Shutdown(conceivablytech.com)

32 points by ferostar 15 years ago | 13 comments

sprout 15 years ago |

Specifically they're patenting graceful shutdown of a graphical windowing environment, with a series of prompts to ask the user if they are sure that they want to terminate processes that cannot be gracefully stopped.

All of it seems blindingly obvious, but then it also doesn't look like a claim against any non-Windows OS would last 10 seconds in a court, as there are a ton of clearly Windows-specific claims.

terinjokes 15 years ago | |

Actually, I read the patent differently. They seem to be claiming that a series of prompts is slow to the user, and that they've invented a more efficient and faster system.

1) Non-GUI applications (or applications without a window) should be terminated automatically 2) Applications with a top window can veto, but when they do the other applications are removed from the screen, so that the user can focus on the application veto-ing. 3) Users can be presented with a "Shut Down Now" button, to force the shutdown, ignoring any application vetoes.

Also, remember the description is not part of the patent, only the claims section is. As far as I see, the claims are OS-agnostic.

ithkuil 15 years ago | | |

I don't see that differently from what other graphical OS do; of course there are minor differences but both macosx and gnome (didn't check other linux GUIs) have something similar.

I'm not saying that they didn't copy it from windows, but I think the features were there before microsoft filed this patent (2005).

kenjackson 15 years ago | |

It does seem obvious. Can anyone point to the first OS to do this, enumerate processes that won't shut down and give the user the ability to do so?

It would be somewhat remarkable if this never was done until 2005.

Calamitous 15 years ago |

So did they file this patent, or were they awarded this patent? I'm not familiar enough with patent terminology to tease this info out of the article.

lanstein 15 years ago | |

Awarded. Link: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...

mootothemax 15 years ago |

The flowchart seems to describe the current Windows 7 shutdown sequence. As much as I hate to say it: if this is so obvious, why hasn't any other operating system implemented it?

joeybaker 15 years ago |

As a patent on a process instead of on an actual product, how does this kind of patent tend to fare in the courts?

mattmanser 15 years ago |

Pity that they're incapable of actually implementing this properly.

mattmanser 15 years ago | |

Sod the d/vs, they really have utterly failed at implementing this properly.

In win7 on shutdown on various different computers I constantly get empty dialogs saying "waiting for the following windows to close:"

With an entirely empty dialog...

The actual offending programs are Outlook and Steam. But MS programmers screwed up the implementation of this patent.

Just another example of a patent being worth jack without implementation.

whyme 15 years ago |

That's all right. Using my Mac I rarely have to anyway... and really wonder if I even need to.

bigfudge 15 years ago | |

Admittedly the parent post is somewhat fanboyish, but it's true that the macbook (and imac) sleep functions are light years ahead of most PC laptops. They sleep very quickly on closing the lid, and resume fast too... I've never found sleep to be as effective on Dells given to me by work.

walkon 15 years ago | | |

Avoiding reboots in definitely preferred. I've heard very good things about Mac's sleep speeds, but I have a home built PC and Lenovo ThinkPad that do ok. They take around 5-10 seconds to go from in or out of sleep which is fast enough that I don't think about it and I usually only reboot to install Microsoft Updates, which is a different story.