Full text of Microsoft exec's "I'd buy a Mac" e-mail

Not surprising. Jim Allchin was the lead PM on many versions of Windows. iLife blows any of the embedded Microsoft tools away. iLife is the reason to switch a home user from Windows to Mac. And LH (Vista) IS a pig. They say it will run on 512 MB RAM but when have Microsoft's sys requirement estimates been accurate? Windows XP's minimum RAM requirements are 128 MB. It can barely boot up, much less run applications with that amount of RAM. We won't move to Vista until the hardware requirements are cheap enough to run it WELL, not just barely. Useability is also an issue. Hopefully that will get better with Vista and the redesigned Office '07 interface. Hopefully it's not too little, too late. The Apple snowball is rolling. Fast.

In PPC days, there is Virtual PC from Connectix. So it is still plausible.

#20: You are a dumbass. Of course you can run Windows on a non-Intel Mac! It's a program called "VirtualPC", made by Connectix and purchased by MICROSOFT. It emulated the Intel processor and all supporting circuitry, allowing nearly 100% compatibility with any x86 software (albeit through slow emulation).

It was Allchin who convinced Gates and Ballmer to start Longhorn over. Allchin was also the Microsoft exec who *led* the Windows Vista team. If this note is authentic, it was probably part of the case he made to make Windows Vista the operating system it is today, even though it's very late.

From a Wall Street Journal article in 2005:

"Windows is broken and Microsoft has admitted it. In an unprecedented attempt to explain its Longhorn problems and how it abandoned its traditional way of working, the normally secretive software giant has given unparalleled access to The Wall Street Journal, even revealing how Vice President Jim Allchin, personally broke the bad news to Bill Gates.

"Allchin is co-head of the Platform Products and Services Division. 'It's not going to work,' he told Gates in the chairman's office, the paper reports. '[Longhorn] is so complex its writers will never be able to make it run properly.' The reason: Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Thousands of programmers each produced their own piece of computer code, to be stitched together into one sprawling program. But Longhorn/Vista was too complex: Microsoft needed to begin again, Allchin told Gates. Allchin's warning recognised a growing threat from Google, Apple Computer, makers of Linux and corporate buyers - the latter horrified about security problems. Allchin and a small team demanded a revolution in how Microsoft works."

To Mr. Joe who wrote:
20. What the heck? This has to be a fake...

Didn't Apple switch to Intel in 2006, and that the e-mail was sent in Jan of 2004?

How could you run a MS OS on an Apple before they switched to Intel?

the answer- you can't... this is a fake..

Are YOU that stupid? You've always been able to run WINDOWS on a MAC whether it be software or hardware who cares? The FACT is you can and WINDOWS can't..... It really does hurt now doesn't it? As far as being "fake" not hardly - It is like a Ford vs Chevy - It really does not matter - It is more of a case of a machine that works and one that does not.....GO MAC :-)

VPC for Mac has been around for many years. Maybe you're fake.

Actually, you could run Windows on the Mac for years and years before they switched to Intel processors. You used a product called Virtual PC, later bought out by Microsoft, that emulated and x86 platform on PowerPC. Now, with intel processors you can run the Windows OS natively through Intel virtualization, which means it essentially runs at full speed. Emulation of Virtual PC was rather slow. Sorry to burst your bubble.

This is NOT a fake. It's a document on file in a current court case. And if you don't understand what VPC is, this isn't the place to try to explain it to you. (And it's also a good bet that it's why VPC for the Mac was discontinued.)

Joe Mama, virtual PC existed long before intel macs, emulating an x86 processor on which you could run Windows or another OS.

Joe Mama,

It's called Virtual PC. That's how you run MS OS on a Mac prior to the Intel transition.