Windows development chief wanted a Mac

MACNN claims to have found a smoking gun amongst some trial papers in which a top Vole tells Steve Ballmer and co-founder Bill Gates that he would have a Mac if he didn't work for Microsoft.

The email was presented as evidence last week in the Iowa antitrust trial. The mail is from the head of Microsoft's Windows development James Allchin who penned that he thought Microsoft had lost its way.

The mail said that Volish teams had lost sight of what the terms bug-free, resilience, security, and performance meant. Vole could not remember how important current applications are and could not understand the problems customers face, he said.

Allchin said he saw lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products.

Of course the Mac press sees this as praise of the Mac rather than seeing that it was a comment by Allchin about how bad life had got in Microsoft.

It is unlikely that Allchin was saying the Mac was better, but rather saying that VoleWare was getting so bad that he would even stoop to using one. The other thing that the Mac Press is ignoring is the January 2004 date on the email which is before the first of several shake-ups at Vole Central.

More here. µ