MSFT exec: I’d buy a Mac
[ok, so the quote is three years old…]
Microsoft’s Allchin on Mac praise: I was ranting to change Vista process He says he was ‘purposefully dramatic’ in 2004 e-mail to Ballmer, Gates Eric Lai
December 12, 2006 (Computerworld) — Outgoing Windows development
chief James Allchin says he was being “purposefully dramatic” in a
three-year-old e-mail to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO
Steve Ballmer that surfaced late last week at an Iowa antitrust trial
against Microsoft Corp. In the e-mail, Allchin told his two
colleagues that development on the Windows Vista operating system had
gone astray and that he would buy a Macintosh from rival Apple
Computer Inc. were he not a Microsoft employee.
In a posting at the Windows Vista blog early today, Allchin said the
e-mail was a “rant encouraging a change to the way we were building
Windows at the time. I made the comment for effect about buying a Mac
if I was not working at Microsoft. Taken out of context, this comment
could be confusing.”
Allchin, whose e-mail quote was confirmed as genuine and direct by
Computerworld.com yesterday after it was posted by open-source legal
Web site Groklaw.net, continued: “This email is nearly 3 years old,
and I was being purposefully dramatic in order to drive home a point.
The point being that we needed to change and change quickly. We did:
We changed dramatically the development process that was being used
and we reset the Windows Vista development project in mid-2004,
essentially starting over.”
Allchin, co-president of Microsoft’s platform and services division,
is stepping down at the end of this year as Vista nears its Jan. 30
ship date to consumers. Allchin has said previously that delays in
Windows Vista’s arrival — it is shipping five years after Windows
XP, rather than within Microsoft’s aimed-for three-year gap — were
the result of extensive rewriting of code in order to make the
operating system more secure and bug-free from the get-go.
Allchin was also quoted by lawyers representing Iowa consumers in
their opening arguments in the case of Comes v. Microsoft Corp. as
saying Microsoft had “lost sight” of customers’ needs. In his blog
posting, Allchin said his comments were consistent with the “spirit
of being self-critical” that “continues to flourish at Microsoft.
Within Microsoft everyone considers it their duty to always put their
convictions and our product quality ahead of everything else. That
was the intent of my mail to Bill and Steve, and I consider it a
great example of how this company can focus and do what’s right for
customers.” The ongoing legal fight is one of two remaining antitrust
cases at the state level from the slew of cases brought by the U.S.
government and multiple states starting in the late 1990s. Microsoft
has already settled one similar class-action lawsuit brought by the
state of California in 2004, for $1.1 billion.
An excerpt of the court transcript from last week’s hearings — which
includes direct quotes from the proceedings and from lawyers reading
various e-mails from Microsoft executives aloud — shows how
Allchin’s e-mail was presented:
“Exhibit 7264. Almost three years ago, on January 7, 2004, Jim
Allchin, the senior executive at Microsoft, sent an E-mail to
Microsoft’s top two executives, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, and the
subject was losing our way.
Mr. Allchin says, I’m 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 our
customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great
vision, but that does not translate into great products. He goes on
to say, I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.”
Microsoft’s lawyers are expected to begin giving their opening
statements by tomorrow.