Annals of Computing

Wow:

Microsoft Watch - Operating Systems - Allchin's "Buy a Mac" E-mail Exposed: Jim Allchin's "I would buy a Mac" statement now has context. The e-mail is publicly available.... Yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the quote during his Macworld keynote. What an opportunity for Jobs, to quote the Windows executive saying he would buy a Mac. The quote was taken out of context, not that Jobs probably had any context to give.

Ummm... I don't think so. I think Allchin said "I would buy a Mac today if I were not working for Microsoft," and gave reasons.

There's a court case going on in Iowa, where the Mac-loving e-mail appeared last month. It's now available among plaintiff's documents, but readers need go no further than the next paragraph to read the entire e-mail. Allchin, who is co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division, sent the e-mail to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer on January 7, 2004:

This is a rant. I'm sorry.

I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems are customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC [Virtual PC] on a Mac you get access to basically all Windows application software (although not the hardware). Apple did not lose their way. You must watch this new video below. I know this doesn't show anything for businesses, but my point is about the philosophy that Apple uses. They think scenario. They think simple. They think fast. I know there is nothing hugely deep in this.

[Note: Link is now dead]

I must tell you everything in my soul tells me that we should do what I called plan (b) yesterday. We need a simple fast storage system. LH [Longhorn, i.e. Vista] is a pig and I don't see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of 'scenario, simple, fast' to heart. Jim

Comments

[save_the_rustbelt]

I'm not certain what a TWAIN Driver is, but if i could get ahold of Bill Gates I would shove one up his @#$%.

Plug and play, yeah right.

[Maynard Handley]

FWIW TWAIN drivers are built into MacOS X :-)
I plugged my Canon scanner into the USB port and it was ready to run.

I do think part of the MS problem is that they are too willing to give a pass to every random piece of crap, whether it's SW or HW, that floats along. The result is under-engineered hardware driven by lousy SW. They could have dealt with years ago if they'd been willing to have a certification program with teeth, one that was willing to say "no, your piece of junk will not be certified as working well with Windows because, quite frankly, it does not work well".

[christofay]

Thank God Apple provides a direction for Microsoft to innovate towards

[Ken Houghton]

Thank G-d MSFT owns enough of Apple that the innovations pay off for Gates twice.

[Paul Reber]

I had been idly thinking of switching to Macs from PCs for various reasons.

Curiously, the email gives me a sense of satisfaction and confidence that computers will continue to get better at reasonable rates over the near future.

It seems to make clear how important it is to all of us computer users that Microsoft was not able to establish a monopoly over OS. I think it makes a nice example of why completely unregulated markets aren't optimal. MS was a good company that grew aggressively to the point where monopoly was achievable. The Fed Govt had to step in to constrain (regulate) this to ensure the continuation of a competitive market. Competition highlights improvements to all products and computers continue to get better. Wherever you are on the libertarian/egalitarian economic spectrum, I think you'd have to agree this is a good thing.

[slocum]

Of course, for Jim Allchin money is no concern, and for somebody like that, why not buy a machine the runs all Mac and PC software? But for a most of Americans (and even more for people elsewhere), the cost difference between a $600 HP, Dell or Toshiba notebook and a $1300 MacBook is not trivial.

Given his position, Allchin *should* buy a -- in fact, he should buy and play with a whole range of Windows and non-Windows computers.

[Crab Nebula]

re: Slocum's post, the price to performance difference - is it really 600 bucks (pc) vs. 1300 (mac) for a basic laptop, or is more like 900-1000 vs. 1300?

I am going back and forth day by day on which to get. Yes, I'm a normal user, but have some power user tendencies and tastes. But only a little....

I could justify spending 300 more on a Mac - but not 600. Appreciate any opinions.

[Patrick]

Allchin's email is from January 7, 2004. Soon after that, all development of Longhorn stopped, and it was then restarted so that Vista is now a very, very good version of XP. Turn off Aero and you don't even need to upgrade a relatively (1GH/500K) recent machine. Macs are fine, Linux is fine, Windows is fine. They are all old OSs. No one knows what the next client platform will be like, but it won't be any of these.

[Biff Spaceman]

The digital rights management systems imposed by Hollywood crooks will make Vista a complete and utter disaster for users and will no doubt serve as the greatest hacking challenge for the underground, just like the last round of DRM crap. The one where the cracker program was printed on Tshirts just to spite the RIAA and other copyright fundamentalists.
Mac is open BSD with some decoration, and once the business world starts jumping on making Linux implementations easier for end users coupled with continuing gains in hardware power, you will have some real choices-a machine that can emulate all legacy OS software so you can run your important programs in a Virtual Machine.

[Ethan]

Crab Nebula:
That $300 difference disappears pretty fast when you have to buy extra hardware and software to get the PC to do the same work as the Mac.