Microsoft's Allchin on Mac praise: I was ranting to change Vista process

Computerworld - Outgoing Windows development chief James Allchin says he was being "purposefully dramatic" in a three-year-old e-mail to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer that surfaced late last week at an Iowa antitrust trial against Microsoft Corp. In the e-mail, Allchin told his two colleagues that development on the Windows Vista operating system had gone astray and that he would buy a Macintosh from rival Apple Computer Inc. were he not a Microsoft employee.

In a posting at the Windows Vista blog early today, Allchin said the e-mail was a "rant encouraging a change to the way we were building Windows at the time. I made the comment for effect about buying a Mac if I was not working at Microsoft. Taken out of context, this comment could be confusing."

Allchin, whose e-mail quote was confirmed as genuine and direct by Computerworld.com yesterday after it was posted by open-source legal Web site Groklaw.net, continued: "This email is nearly 3 years old, and I was being purposefully dramatic in order to drive home a point. The point being that we needed to change and change quickly. We did: We changed dramatically the development process that was being used and we reset the Windows Vista development project in mid-2004, essentially starting over."

Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's platform and services division, is stepping down at the end of this year as Vista nears its Jan. 30 ship date to consumers. Allchin has said previously that delays in Windows Vista's arrival -- it is shipping five years after Windows XP, rather than within Microsoft's aimed-for three-year gap -- were the result of extensive rewriting of code in order to make the operating system more secure and bug-free from the get-go.

Allchin was also quoted by lawyers representing Iowa consumers in their opening arguments in the case of Comes v. Microsoft Corp. as saying Microsoft had "lost sight" of customers' needs. In his blog posting, Allchin said his comments were consistent with the "spirit of being self-critical" that "continues to flourish at Microsoft. Within Microsoft everyone considers it their duty to always put their convictions and our product quality ahead of everything else. That was the intent of my mail to Bill and Steve, and I consider it a great example of how this company can focus and do what's right for customers." The ongoing legal fight is one of two remaining antitrust cases at the state level from the slew of cases brought by the U.S. government and multiple states starting in the late 1990s. Microsoft has already settled one similar class-action lawsuit brought by the state of California in 2004, for $1.1 billion.