Sunday, February 1, 2009

Jim Allchin: Microsoft is losing it

The "Comes vs. Microsoft" case continues to provide interesting information. Here is an email from Jim Allchin dating January 7, 2004 addressed to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
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 lest 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 doesn’t translate into great products. I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. Longhorn is a pig and I don’t see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenqe of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of "scenario, simple, fast" to heart.

Note this was sent shortly before the development reset of Vista, which was described in this article, that mysteriously disappeared from the Internet shortly after its first publication. Even the Wikipedia reference to the WSJ is missing.



For those who like to quote Mahatma Gandhi ("First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win") it proves that Linux had passed the "laughing" phase a lot sooner than most assume. Knowing Microsofts business practices, we all know what that means. For those who want to call the FOSS community paranoid, please try again.

4 comments:

Stephen Chapman said...

So, I'm inclined to point out that it's 2009.

That being said, this is extremely old news that I'm surprised you are bringing back up. This stuff was on all of the top Microsoft news sites and blogs as soon as these documents hit the net. If you search hard enough, you'll find even more damning testimony given by Microsoft employees in documents that were available for a short time on the official government site for the case but they were removed when Microsoft discovered the documents were being made public. The files that documented what went on in the courtroom were always available.

I responded to your comment on my blog if you'd like to go check it out and respond: http://uxevangelist.blogspot.com/2008/09/are-you-too-lazy-to-learn-vista.html

I'd just like to point out that you may want to reconsider using such dated and widely-referenced information to prove a point. The Vista bashing saw its time, many people hate the OS simply because of outdated/negative opinions, and now it's on to Windows 7. Why not focus bashing on it instead of digging so far back into the history of Vista... especially pre-reset. Just my 2 cents from a guy without a lot of money. ;)

-Stephen

The Beez' said...

Gee, it's a blog, man. If I thought it would have any news value you would have seen it all over LinuxToday and LXer. But it wasn't.

Instead I posted an interesting article by one of your friends, showing some major hole in Windows 7 security. Microsofts comment? "It's defective by design".

Stephen Chapman said...

Yes, I'm well-aware of that interesting design flaw they've, "implemented." I'm not too proud of a Microsoft blogger to say that I think the, "feature" is as FUBAR as Microsoft's response regarding it is. lol. And as you can tell, nor are my colleagues who are equally as reputable in the Microsoft blogger realm.

MS could've simply said, "yes, we'll get to work on that" since it IS only beta 1 thus far but, hey... I don't work for Microsoft; I just enjoy using their products. If they want to start calling loopholes a part of design, then just as long as they "tweak" it the right way by RTM, whatever floats their PR boat is fine with me.

-Stephen

The Beez' said...

Well, enjoy. MS got the message.