Q) The employees of which company love Macs? A) Microsoft.

As some of you may already know, there is a class action lawsuit going on against Microsoft at Iowa District Court for Polk County and many insider emails have been brought into public notice. There is something interesting in these emails.

This is an email sent by Jim Allchin in which he tries to remind Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer that they are 'losing our (their) way'. It was revealed recently and even features in Steve Jobs's Macworld '07 keynote.

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 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.

*www.apple.com/ilife/video/ilife04_32C.html

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 challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of "scenario, simple, fast" to heart.

jim

The following is a series of disclosed emails circulating among Microsoft employees (these are from more than two years back). I have bolded the parts I loved and underlined a bit of my own addition.

From: Quentin Clark
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 1:39 PM
Subject: tiger

Any idea how I can get my hands on the developer bits apple released at their conference this week?

From: Vic Gundotra
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 1:43 PM
Subject: RE: tiger

Lenn and I both have the DVDs

I was at the conference yesterday

Lenn is still there.

I hate to give up my DVDs, and I know Lenn doesn't want to give it up either. (If I send you mine, can you promise me to get them back to you unscratched? J)

From: Quentin Clark
Sent: 1:47 PM

Yes. We must have this. We must do analysis. I will return them, unharmed

From: Vic Gundotra
Sent: 1:49 PM

I'm assuming you saw the speech

Lenn is running the bits already

He says he is blown away by the WinFS clone (read Spotlight) functionality - it's already working

I will install bits before I send the DVDs to you

I'm amazed you guys didn't send someone to the conference J

From: Quentin Clark
Sent: 2:00 PM

We are very heads-down. I am surprised you didn't ensure it was on our radar.. given you are the master of all things ISV..

From: Vic Gundotra
Sent: 2:02 PM

I assumed it was obvious you would watch your competition J

Steve copied our pitch almost word for word. He said "it's strange that it's easier to search the web using google than your own machine.", and then went on and did a long demo of Spotlight - which is a hot version of WinFS.

Lenn was going on and on last night about how fast it was on his mac.

From: Lenn Pryor
Sent: 8:47 PM

You will have to take Vic's disk ... I'm not giving mine up

Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and ... my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was ****ing amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.

From: Vic Gundotra
Sent: 9:33 PM
Subject: FW: tiger

Interesting reaction from one of our LH evangelists.

I have tiger bits, will try to install tomorrow. I was at Jobs keynote.

In many ways Jobs took our WinFS and Avalon pitch word for word and delivered it. The difference was he had more stable bits than we did.

-vicg

From: Jim Allchin
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 7:48 AM
Subject: RE: tiger

Yes. I know.

It is hard to take.

I don't believe we will have search this fast. We will have a developer message which they don't and won't. But, they got the 80% and they will receive wide credit for this.

jim

From: Vic Gundotra
Sent: 8:29 AM

Steve is trying hard to retain the developers he has left.

He showed "spotlight" functionality embedded in 4 different apps, then highlighted that developers can build (and should build) the same functionality in their apps.

I have SDK - will send it to Quentin

They even showed a bit of extensibility in their design.

I don't have details, but at first blush, I think they will be there 80% on developer platform too.

Their Avalon competitor (core video, core image) was hot - lots of transparency, ripple effects, etc

I have the cool widgets (dashboard) running on my Mac right now will all the effects he showed on stage. I've had no crashes in 5 hours.

Their video conferencing was amazing (you have to see a demo).

They have no indigo/web services story

They are betting on RSS in a high profile way - so they will get credit for this too

They have "agent" like software - I have it working on my Mac as of last night. It's very cool scripting software for the entire system. You should see a demo of this - Jobs does it in his keynote

I've enclosed a screen shot from Lenn of using Spotlight against locally cached exchange data. (You can point the built in mail client against an exchange server. The mail is copied down locally, and then "spotlight" works against it wickedly fast)

Video of Job's talk is here: *stream.apple.akadns.net/

The bits we deliver in Sept 05 PDC must be compelling, even in beta form. UI must be hot. We will be directly compared against tiger.

-vicg

From: Jim Allchin
Sent: 9:48 AM
Subject: FW: tiger

Sigh...
jim

In a nice tribute to Apple, the emails also reveal that Microsoft’s top executives were so taken with Tiger that they refused to share their installation discs for fear they might never get them back.

Add this to the statement of a retired member of Microsoft's design team that they invariably had a Mac in the work environment from which they took inspiration and it starts to make sense why Microsoft employees refer to Apple's labs as "R&D South".

This whole thing was an amazing revelation for me.

:lol:

Sources

well to beat em u need to know em ... but again i saw a mac at croma some time back ... damn its a 1 lac m/c ... i aint gonna spend tht much and then buy all genuine stuff ... no matter how good the mac may b ... paisa bolta hai

Well the Windows Logo was in fact designed on a Mac...

A Mac Book costs $1000 (Rs. 45K) in US and by the time it reaches here the price is doubled. Damn.

I thought most of Vista was developed in MY HYD!!??

Re: Q) The employees of which company love Macs?

hailgautam said:
A Mac Book costs $1000 (Rs. 45K) in US and by the time it reaches here the price is doubled. Damn.

I thought most of Vista was developed in MY HYD!!??

It costs $1100. However, that cost does not include the tax that Americans have to pay. The price that you see on the site is without tax.

As far as the cheapest Mac goes, it's available for 33k

:yawn

Post edited : No use wasting time with macboys.

I expected an unintelligible post from you and you have, as usual, delivered on my expectations.

gx_saurav said:
That mail by jim alachin was written 3 years ago, when Longhorn was in 4xxx builds. He himself made it clear after this was posted on the net.

Yeah, what does that have to do with anything? I mentioned the dates on all the emails I had the dates available for. Three years ago, Tiger's bits were available to developers and they were discussing that. As you can see, they were pretty favourably disposed towards Apple's offering. Today, Leopard's developer bits are available and they must be shell-shocked over Time Machine or something. How does the time factor make any difference?

gx_saurav said:
MS employes are themselves saying how much Jobs copied from longhorn, thanx for pointing out the words like "WinFS clone is working". Well here is the thing, spotlight were among a few enhancement in the service pack MacOS X 10.3 , woops sorry, thats a new OS, in longhorn, we just don't have search, we have lots more.

Yes, Spotlight and WinFS are essentially the same thing, but as you can see, the MS employees clearly know which one is better. "I don't believe we will have search this fast." These emails were sent in a guarded environment. They did not know that the emails would be made public, so the words here are absolutely true, not politically correct. It is quite clear that they are amazed at what Apple has released three years ahead of Microsoft. I nearly fell off my chair laughing when Vic Gundotra said that he had had no crashes in 5 hours. It is amazing for a Microsoft employee that an operating system can run high end graphics for 5 hours and not crash! LOL!

gx_saurav said:
MS took 5 years, & relesed everything in one go, Mac relesed things one by one each year, & charged for a new OS

And Microsoft charged more than the total cost of all of Apple's upgrades in one go. Plus, they treat their customers like ****. If you have bought an upgrade version of Windows Vista and you have to re-install the operating system in future, you have to install Windows XP first. :lol:

I'm amazed you guys can back a company that has the nerve to bind their users so pathetically.

gx_saurav said:
P.S. - Don't u guys have anything else to do, other then posting & trying to prove the ever expensive & not so good Mac, better. This isn't a technology use i guess

Oh yeah, and you are as busy as a sparrow! I can see that.
As for the not so good Mac, LOL! We have seen Jim Allchin's and Vic Gundotra's views and your opinions pale in their comparison. They are practically fighting over the DVDs of Tiger. Ha! Ha!

hailgautam said:
A Mac Book costs $1000 (Rs. 45K) in US and by the time it reaches here the price is doubled. Damn.

Nope. The 45K does not include taxes, as mail2and rightly mentioned and price of a MacBook is Rs. 63,000 including taxes in India. You can generally get it cheaper than that.

so arya according to u if an employee of reliance uses a hutch conx means that reliance sux .... or is it tht if i work in coke i just cant drink pepsi ....

aryayush said:
I expected an unintelligible post from you and you have, as usual, delivered on my expectations.

Comment 1 noted

arya said:
Today, Leopard's developer bits are available and they must be shell-shocked over Time Machine or something. How does the time factor make any difference?

Lolz....u really need to know few things about software developemt, & computers, other then just bowing to your macbook. Everyone knows Apple copied time machine

arya said:
Yes, Spotlight and WinFS are essentially the same thing

Yup, another thing which apple copied

quote said:
And Microsoft charged more than the total cost of all of Apple's upgrades in one go.

Vista ultimate = $400
MacOS X 10.2 to 10.4 & soon 10.5 = $130 X 4

arya said:
Plus, they treat their customers like ****. If you have bought an upgrade version of Windows Vista and you have to re-install the operating system in future, you have to install Windows XP first.

Again, do u understand the meaning of the word "Upgrading to another OS". That means u r replacing your old OS & u do not end up with 2 license.

arya said:
I'm amazed you guys can back a company that has the nerve to bind their users so pathetically.

Tell me about it

, i guess we learned it from some other membars here which follow a cult, & bow to everything "fruit"

If u have no problem, with sticking to a Apple hardware which again is uber-costly, while being a PC & no user upgradation option, then we have no problem in installing Vista upgrade DVD using the workarround

No use wasting time with macboys. Plz in the future, do not post such topics in News section, it ends up in fight club section always
__________

mAV3 said:
so arya according to u if an employee of reliance uses a hutch conx means that reliance sux .... or is it tht if i work in coke i just cant drink pepsi ....

right on target man, where do u come up with such lines. I use airtel broadband, does that means BSNL broadband sux, of course it doesn't cos it's free for me

gx_saurav said:
where do u come up with such lines

apple brings out the best in me

mAV3 said:
so arya according to u if an employee of reliance uses a hutch conx means that reliance sux .... or is it tht if i work in coke i just cant drink pepsi ....

It is not just about using it, it is about loving it and accepting that it is a much better product than yours.

gx_saurav said:
Everyone knows Apple copied time machine

Yeah, sure! Have you even seen Time Machine? I can guarantee you that a similar (but miserably implemented) feature will appear in the next version of Windows some five years from now. And no, 'Previous Versions' is not even close.

gx_saurav said:
Yup, another thing which apple copied

AFAIK, I saw this feature in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" in 2005 and in Microsoft Windows Vista in 2007. It does not need a genius to figure out who has the photocopiers on.

gx_saurav said:
Vista ultimate = $400
MacOS X 10.2 to 10.4 & soon 10.5 = $130 X 4

Leopard has not yet been launched. Besides, Tiger is already so far ahead of Vista - how can you ever compare Leopard to it!

gx_saurav said:
Again, do u understand the meaning of the word "Upgrading to another OS". That means u r replacing your old OS & u do not end up with 2 license.

I am willing to bet that everyone in this world except you (and your aliases gxsaurav, brutality9k, etc. etc.) and Steve Ballmer thinks that this is one of Microsoft's worst moves. You got a free copy of Vista Ultimate and it is all fine and dandy for you - but not everyone is that lucky! Microsoft sucks!

arya said:
Yeah, sure! Have you even seen Time Machine? I can guarantee you that a similar (but miserably implemented) feature will appear in the next version of Windows some five years from now. And no, 'Previous Versions' is not even close.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

sorry couldn't help myself on your ignorence. We had system restore in 2000 (Windows Me) Volume shadow copy in 2003 (Windows Server 2003).

Time machine = Volume shadow copy with a new skin or theme. DO u know what previous version is? oh sorry, u cannot use Vista (cult rule)

arya said:
AFAIK, I saw this feature in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" in 2005 and in Microsoft Windows Vista in 2007. It does not need a genius to figure out who has the photocopiers on.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Again, sorry couldn't help myself on your ignorence.

Longhorn demonstrated Syetem wide instant search in Longhorn 30xx builds in 2002. Apple copied the same feature. Plz go & read somewhere, other then following the cult

arya said:
You got a free copy of Vista Ultimate and it is all fine and dandy for you - but not everyone is that lucky! Microsoft sucks!

Ya, i can understand, u must be missing games, Webcam in Yahoo messenger, voice chat, & god knows how many other features. hota hai bhia.....angur khate hote hain. Since u r not getting those u have to post something na...do so.

I know what u think, Microsoft sux, ok, fine....now will u plz live with it insted of starting a new post everyday & shouting it like all mac users. U like Mac, plz be happy with it, We like Windows but we don't shout it rox, we know where it lacks & we admit it. Ever seen a linux/Windows user starting a thread about "Mac sux".

Seriously Boy, do u know anything about computers & technology, softwares, the GUI, graphics, network or anything, other then your Mac, i mean, i have never seen a mac user posting anything usefull or informative in this forum, regarding anything, other then shouting that Mac rox, MS sux, & all hail the fruit. All your posts are same

apple vs ms discussions = 1 more thread locked

What can I do if he can go to any lengths (even as far as making three or more usernames) to spoil discussions!

If someone has anything useful to say, please do contribute! We are done with enlightening posts such as "hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahaha" and "Seriously Boy, do u know anything about computers & technology, softwares, the GUI, graphics, network or anything, other then your Mac, i mean, i have never seen u posting anything usefull or informative in this forum, regarding anything, other then shouting that Mac rox, MS sux, & all hail the fruit. All your posts are same".

well...you state what should be posted here, i mean, atleast i don't find any meaning of this thread. The correct responce is from mav3, which sums up the thread

. You started the thread, maybe you know whats meaningful to post here, & by the way, plz specify what we are supposed to discuss here?

oh! & sorry if it hurts your feeling, i really don't know what you know about computers & technology, seriously, other then Mac & Apple-o-logy

Like I said, you like Mac, plz be happy with it. There is no need talk about something you don't know about

@ pathiks

This is happening from ancient times man,

will happen again.