Toward the end of 2007, an email sent by Jim Allchin Microsoft Co-President, Platform and Services Division to CEO Steve Ballmer and to Chairman Bill Gates stirred up controversy as Windows Development Chief's statement: "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft" was taken out of context.

Jim Allchin went public and explained that email, its content and its purpose. You can read all about it here. But you can also read the complete, original message received by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. You can additionally access a .pdf version of the Plaintiff's Exhibit 7,264 through this link.

"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.

http: //www.apple.com/ilife/video/ilifeO432C.html (link no longer functional)

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"

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