Trilight Zone

[tricore]

Jim Allchin's "I would buy a Mac" statement now has context. The e-mail is publicly available.

The e-mail is out and about none too soon for Microsoft. 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.

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.

"http: //www.apple.com/ilife/video/ilifeO432C.html [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] 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"

For more context, Allchin sent the e-mail to Ballmer and Gates the day following Jobs' 2004 Macworld keynote. Apple's CEO announced iPod mini and an updated iLife suite, with the new application GarageBand. Jobs articulated a very cohesive digital entertainment strategy with successful and beneficial integration--something Microsoft has been struggling to achieve.

The iLife `04 video Allchin referred to is no longer linked to on Apple's Web site, but you can find what I believe is the right video here. In watching the video, I had the "Wow" experience Microsoft promises with Windows Vista.

A few months after this e-mail, Microsoft reset the Windows Longhorn (now Vista) development clock to zero. The company restarted from the Windows Server code base. I assume this was the Plan B that Allchin referred to.

I also assume that Allchin called Longhorn "a pig," because of WinFS, the new file system Microsoft would later pull from the operating system.

In context, the "buy a Mac" statement doesn't mean what Jobs and others insinuated. It means something more.