Allchin's last stand?

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Unwilling to suspend disbelief

So, we have a report that criticizes and mocks Jim Allchin. Should we believe its conclusions? I'd rather investigate whether the author has stock in Google.

The problem is tone. Let's look at a few examples.

The quote:
Now comes what Dave Winer calls the "Dancing in the Streets" segment.
[This is not a quote from Jim Allchin. It's the author's attempt to imply you should consider Allchin a fool.]
"Now, I think from my feedback of this -- it's just brand new news today -- has been incredibly positive because I personally have talked to lots of corporate [customers] about what they want in terms of deployment, what they want in terms of the features of security?."

The camera zooms out as if to reflect the easing of Allchin's tension.
[The quote is bracketed by diminishing comments. This one connects to a past "60 Minutes" reference to imply that Allchin is one of the crooks made to sweat on that program.]

Back to quoting:
"... we'll also have the APIs as we've talked about -- except it won't have the WinFS APIs because that won't have shipped yet."

Okay, WinFS won't ship with Longhorn.
Here's what happens to the quote when our author takes his moment to slant it:

Whoops.
[Allchin has made a mistake or a damaging admission.]
Let's recap: security is a feature,
[Nope, he said, "... the features of security...". Nice try. Maybe "aspects of security" would have been safer, but Jim Allchin may not have thought to protect himself.]
more focus on the basics, we're shipping the new APIs, but not the Holy Grail ones.
[No question for our author, WinFS is the only significant part of Longhorn.]
Now back to our movie.


Here's another:
Quoting Mr. Allchin:
"And certainly the hardware vendors are super happy
Slanting Mr. Allchin to show that he has contempt for hardware vendors:
[Microsoftese for 'they'll get what we give']."


And finally, our author's summary of what's going to happen:

Apparently they [developers, etc.] want a new set of APIs to learn, a down-level and downloadable version of the Avalon graphics engine for Windows XP and 2003
[for emphasis, note:]
that will choke virtually all of those machines,
[dissing continues]
and the mother of all auto-update downloads when WinFS is finally ready "off-cycle" in 2007 or so. Maybe.

What a bunch of incompetent duffers they are at Microsoft! Can't do anything right and try to mislead the people they're about to treat very badly. Don't know how they got out of second grade, let alone run a software company.


Actually, I would appreciate an article that put what is happening with Longhorn into context, including what competitors are doing. The current author has loudly informed me that he has no objectivity or interest in anything but making Jim Allchin look bad and predicting the failure of Microsoft to keep up with competitors.
Guess I'll have to keep looking for an article worth reading.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 09/10/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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