I'm not entirely sure what Microsoft is intending to do with Longhorn, but I think from a consumer perspective, there probably won't be any real noticeable differences with regards to these cuts. A lot of the cuts thus far have seemed to focus around some underlying changes and power user types of functions, and I think Longhorn will ultimately be a sufficient upgrade to most consumers: more media integrated functionality, a new visual interface, expanded search abilities, improved security (haha!), and so on. That said, I don't think most consumers are going to jump on this bandwagon for that alone and with the cuts (they charge an arm and a leg for their OS and consumers barely use AU as is), and I have to wonder whether businesses will follow suit at all. Unless Microsoft really does deliver on improved security and begins to leverage some other software packages, like Office and IE7 as being Longhorn-only compatible and worth the jump, Longhorn could prove to be a fizzle, in spite of the tremendous planned marketing.
This may be further compounded by the fact that by the time Longhorn's due, Apple will have Intel machines on the market and, according to the most recent WWDC, Leopard, the next OS X installment (10.5), will be ready for release around then. As it stands, Tiger's been winning over most critics as has OS X since Panther's release; and Apple has been aggressively rolling out software of late, as even 10.4.2 is already nearly done. Microsoft has a lot of work to do; you likely won't see me making the jump considering I'm partial to OS X, but I'm hoping Apple's recent momentum will spur Microsoft to do more on the software side....and that doesn't seem to be panning out at the moment.
