OOPS they did it again!linky1linky2QUOTE
Microsoft's Vista had major Mac envy, company emails reveal
Microsoft executives were awed by Apple's just-added desktop search and acknowledged that what they did in Windows Vista would be directly compared with Mac OS X.
Internal Microsoft email messages from 2004 reveal that company evangelists and executives were awed by Apple's just-added desktop search and acknowledged that what they did in Windows Vista would be directly compared with Mac OS X.
The messages, which were filed as evidence in an Iowa state court trying a Microsoft antitrust case, were between several company evangelists and executives, including Jim Allchin, the head of Windows development efforts at the time. The Vista, then "Longhorn," evangelists had just returned from the June 2004 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.
Lenn Pryor, former director of Microsoft's platform evangelism, said Spotlight, the new Mac OS X 10.4 search tool that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs highlighted at the conference, was "amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn-land today."
Allchin agreed. "I don't believe we will have search this fast," he wrote in an emailed reply 30 June, 2004.
Another Microsoft evangelist, Vic Gundotra, who also attended the conference demonstration of Mac OS X (Tiger), noted other impressive components of Apple's operating system, including video conferencing, what Apple calls desktop "widgets" (whichVista ended up calling "gadgets"), and user interface rendering.
"The bits we deliver in 05 September PDC [Professional Developers Conference] must be compelling, even in beta form," Gundotra wrote in his message of 30 June. "UI must be hot. We will be directly compared against tiger." Gundotra recently left Microsoft, and will join Google after a year's sabbatical to abide by a non-compete clause.
Microsoft released the first beta of Vista to a limited number of testers two months before the 2005 PDC.
Other Microsoft documents and emails posted to a website by the Iowa case's plaintiffs have embarrassed the developer several times. In an email made public in late 2006, Allchin said: "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."
and
QUOTE
Microsoft adapted Vista in Tiger's wake
Microsoft shifted its approach to Vista's development in the wake of Mac OS X Tiger's first public appearance, Information Week has revealed. Obtained as part of a public disclosure in an Iowa antitrust case against the Redmond developer, the messages indicated conversations between the company's technology evangelists and executives about Tiger in the wake of its June 2004 unveiling at Apple's WWDC conference. In at least one case, evangelists recommended changes to Vista's development based on what had been seen at the conference.
Ang Tiger is SOOOO 2006. We are about to be on to the next.
Enjoy technological oblivion.
--Ruggiero