Confidential Microsoft Email Posted Online

From the class action "Comes et al. v. Microsoft" suit, some very enlightening internal Microsoft emails have been made public. Emails to and from Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, etc all make for some mind blowing reading.

One of my favorites is from Jim Allchin to Bill Gates, entitled 'losing our way', in which Allchin states "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."

Here's a screen capture of the original email. You can download a PDF version at the offical court website.

In the email, he says:

This is a rant. I'm sorry.

I am not sure how the company last 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 tnto great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to casioally all Windows application software (although not the hardware) . Apple did not lose their way. You must watch this new videc 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.htm.

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 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 takrng the lessons of "scenario, simple, fast" to heart.

jim