File:Antitrust PX07264.pdf

Summary
Plaintiffs Exhibit 07264 (PX07264) is a document from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust case. The document includes text of an e-mail from Jim Allchin, then vice president of the Microsoft Platforms Group, which was written less than three months after the Professional Developers Conference of 2003 and criticized the development process of Windows "Longhorn". In the e-mail Allchin expressed his belief that Microsoft had lost sight of what mattered to its customers and listed several aspects of software development that he felt Microsoft had neglected. He contrasted Microsoft with Apple because he believed that, unlike Microsoft, Apple had not "lost its way" with its development philosophy.

The e-mail(s) is a resource that provides invaluable insight into the "Longhorn" development process; Allchin mentions an ambiguous plan (b) pertaining to the "Longhorn" storage subsystem, WinFS, and expresses frustration because of the operating system's poor performance.

In 2006, Allchin said that when he wrote the letter he was being "purposefully dramatic in order to drive home a point," and acknowledged the positive changes that Microsoft had made with its development philosophy as a result of the development reset of Windows "Longhorn."

Forwarded message

 * From: Jim Allchin
 * Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:40 AM
 * To: Eric Rudder
 * Subject: FW: losing our way...

Fyi: In the spirit of sharing my deep concerns, etc. Please don't forward.

jim

Original message
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 security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems are [sic] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products.
 * From: Jim Allchin
 * Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:38 AM
 * To: Bill Gates; Steven Ballmer
 * Subject: losing our way...

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.

http://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