35 ms·

“I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” (2004)

127 points by renaudg 5y ago

throwaway4good 5y ago
So what has changed? You can buy a Mac today even if you are working at Microsoft.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  I had an iMac G4 in 2004 and I have a MacBook pro M1 in 2021. I used only PCs running Ubuntu, ArchLinux, and Windows between. When I got the M1, it felt like home. Not much did change over 17 years. If you think about windows only, between windows XP and a recent windows 10, it's very different and much better. It's possible to use the computer while an application is using all available resources now. You also have descent composting with GPU accelerated 3D effects and good windows management. Good touch screen support too. Also much better security, and a great Linux integration with WSL. I actually prefer a lot of things in Windows than Mac today. I think Mac OS is a bit behind windows on some features I use, like touchscreen support or the Linux integration. But the good hardware makes it worth it since the M1.
  - sbuk 5y ago
    I'm interested in the ' touchscreen support or the Linux integration.' part of your comment. I don't think we'll see touch screen on a Mac in the short-to-middle term because Apple have very defined views on interaction models. Of more interest is the Linux integration part. What Linux 'features' are missing from macOS on the terminal that cannot be installed from either Homebrew, MacPorts or pkgsrc? Genuinely interested...
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      About Linux it's to have Docker with good performances, and a development environment more similar than the production environment. I'm almost not a fan of compilation to install standard tools, its a bit slow and it feels unnecessary. About the touchscreen support, it's simply that I like touchscreens. It think it's more convenient for some usages and I think Apple acknowledged that with their ridiculously small touch bar. I hope they will allow real professional usage on the iPad pro or bring touch screen support to the MacBook eventually. I could live without it but I still touch my MacBook screen by mistake once in a while.
      - sbuk 5y ago
        Thanks. That makes sence, although Docker on the M1 seems to have improved things. If it's any consolation, my 3 year old tries to touch things on computer and TV screens! It's clearly an natural interaction given the technology around today.
- exegete 5y ago
  The author of the email probably technically “could” buy a Mac but why would he do that? The negative press would have been detrimental to Microsoft. The same is true today. Imagine the headlines that would get re-tweeted - “Microsoft head of platforms uses a Mac at home”
  - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
    Similar to Eric Schmidt using Blackberry and iPhones over an Android phone: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/21/eric-schmidt-blackberry-user https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/21/eric-schm...
- wink 5y ago
  There's a difference between "people at Microsoft Research giving a public presentation on a mac" and "one of the top 10 people at Microsoft runs around with a mac". But yes, it is a bit of a different time as well, but I think Allchin the person is a pretty important part of the statement.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  This was during the reign of noted loon Ballmer, so probably not a great idea. Remember this? https://www.cultofmac.com/501138/apple-history-steve-ballmer-iphone-freakout/ https://www.cultofmac.com/501138/apple-history-steve-ballmer...
LucidLynx 5y ago
Post-email: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=20 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=...
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  Where he HILARIOUSLY insists Vista was better than anything else on the market. It's like that Iraqi general saying US troops were nowhere near the capital.
  - apolymath 5y ago
    Vista was the best thing on the market. You know why? Gaming. Everything came down to what system could handle intense gaming, and guess what, it definitely wasn't Mac or linux.
basisword 5y ago
I think the context of this occurring during Longhorn (LH) development is important. For anyone that doesn't know Longhorn[1] was the precursor to Vista. They tried to do a lot of big things but it dragged on for years before they had to recalibrate, abandon a lot of ideas, and ship Vista. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista
- perceptronas 5y ago
  I am not sure if it fits this topic/forum, but there is a joke made by Jobs on youtube [1] about Longhorn/Vista. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCh7D_OpKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCh7D_OpKM
- C19is20 5y ago
  ', and ship Vista.' You spelled 'shit' wrong?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Maybe I’m the minority but I’ve only had good things to say about Vista. Maybe the problem isn’t Vista but trying to run it on underpowered hardware? It ran perfectly fine on a quad-core and 4GB of RAM.
    - krylon 5y ago
      Which, to be fair, was a fairly high-end machine at the time. As I recall, the problem was not just Vista's juicy hardware requirements, but the fact it would initially behave quite unpredictably performance-wise. OTOH, Microsoft is said to have fixed most of the problems with SP1, and Windows 7 was, as far as Windows versions go, a very solid system.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      One of the scandals of that era was Microsoft purposefully lowering the hardware requirements for Vista so that lower end PCs could get the all important Vista sticker. I was in tech support at the time, and a ton of cheap HPs came in that were sold with vista and 2gb of ram.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I think LH refers to what appeared later as Windows Vista. It's kind of nice to see a Microsoft executive had the same opinion of this product as their customers.
- johanj 5y ago
  Yes, the codename for Windows Vista was Longhorn.
- zokier 5y ago
  No, that's the opposite, read the followup: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=20 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=...
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    When reading his reply[0] it's obvious he was right in the original email when he said he saw no solution to this problem. They even tried to start from scratch and the result was still arguably the worst Windows edition ever. [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20070107170621/http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/12/12/title.aspx http://web.archive.org/web/20070107170621/http://windowsvist...
    - pvitz 5y ago
      In my opinion, Windows ME was worse. I decided to use Windows 2000 and then XP. 2000 was very stable compared to what we were used to with the 95/98 series.
    - some-guy 5y ago
      I'll be honest, I didn't notice many differences between Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP1. I agree Windows Vista was absolutely terrible when it came out, but so was XP. And so was 98. And 95.
  - Razengan 5y ago
    The follow up is basically “oops I shouldn’t have been caught thinking that out loud” I mean he’s calling Vista a “phenomenal product”, for Fourier’s sake
deleted 5y ago
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bellyfullofbac 5y ago
I've read enough of buggy behaviors on MacOS that I'm not sure I'd buy a Mac today. Wasn't their new filesystem a giant mess? Even the shiny new M1 had SSD wear problems in the beginning, hmm, great QA, guys!
- Slippery_John 5y ago
  A recent Windows update caused frequent BSODs with a fun variety of error codes. This would happen fast enough that I couldn't even roll back the update. So I had to wipe my hard drive and re-install the entire OS from a flash drive. I've never had a macOS update cause such a catastrophic failure.
- dsego 5y ago
  4096 files is the limit when reading from SD cards on a Mac (not windows). https://youtu.be/0bqOB_XGBVE https://youtu.be/0bqOB_XGBVE
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Interesting. But the video is way too manic (too many cuts, guy too animated and shouty) that watching him gives me anxiety.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Actually I think the rollout of APFS was one of their more impressive technical achievements. They wholesale updated iOS 10.3 to the new filesystem without any issues. The only downside to it is it is probably a bit heavy for traditional drives, it really needs an SSD.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Back in the 2004 era Windows was far more notorious for BSODs, but in the intervening time they've put a lot of work into fixing that. Mostly in drivers; things like WHQL, and the amazing subsystem that allows the graphics drivers to crash and recover with only a momentary black screen. The Longhorn project did include an attempt at doing a fancy new filesystem, more database flavoured; I'm not sure if they ever finalized the feature list, much less got it working, and now everything ships with NTFS which is slow but reliable.
qwerty456127 5y ago
A friend of mine preferred Apple for hardware and Microsoft for software. About a decade ago he bought a MacBook and installed Windows 7.
- tasogare 5y ago
  I did that too around 2009 for a few years. It always bugged people that my MBP was running Windows.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Sometimes I miss Windows. MacOS has a huge amount of weirdness where an errant swipe or button combination does something completely unexpected as a new user.
- ska 5y ago
  This was the standard setup for a bunch of people I knew doing windows development around then - according to them the MBP was far and away the best (laptop) windows hardware available at the time.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
And that was in the PowerPc Era! I think this is the video mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ2lWbRU3xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ2lWbRU3xM
- tobr 5y ago
  Here’s the linked page on Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20040108215755/apple.com/ilife/video/ilife04_320.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040108215755/apple.com/ilife/v...
  - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
    Is that embedded video playable on anything? it isn't compatible with the latest version of Quick Time I have
- muizelaar 5y ago
  Indeed. You can find the original on the-eye.
hughrr 5y ago
I love the backpedalling later about how great Vista is. Which was bollocks.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  That's pretty much what you'd expect though, the original email was never meant to become public. Companies are never upfront about their weaknesses.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I disagree. Vista did have some problems, but this was because it introduced SuperCache (which worked in a way that did not match everyone's expectations), a new strategy for file copies (that didn't work better in a lot of cases), a new display server, and new driver models for networking, sound, and video in user space. Vista is when we stopped having to reboot for changing the video driver, where a sound driver crashing no longer bluescreened the system, and we got per-application volume controls at the OS level. Additionally, since it was new it was bloated and slow on current gen hardware and manufacturers often slapped "Vista Capable" stickers on computers that were really not ideal for it. As with most Windows versions, it was pretty solid by Service Pack 1. By 7 pretty much everything had been ironed out and consequently we remember 7 as the highest water mark since the peak, Win2k.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    It had some problems because they mostly didn’t test it properly. That hasn’t changed now. Hence why the edge and windows alt tab integration actually broke alt tab on windows 10 RTM for nearly 6 months.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Things are actually much much worse today in regards to testing. I don't think Microsoft even has testers for Windows these days, they just push updates to users and and force them to test.
  - 5y ago
sys_64738 5y ago
XP SP3 was about to hit the market as M$ went into security overdrive mode.
sidcool 5y ago
I feel that the only reason Microsoft survived the 2000s was their deep entrenchment into the enterprise. If the same continued in the 2010s, they would likely be on life support by now.
- ksec 5y ago
  Roughly half of the PC in use are in Enterprise and Corporate. Part of the reason why moving Windows forward with Backward compatibility is so god damn hard.
- ThrowawayB7 5y ago
  > "deep entrenchment into the enterprise" If that was all it took, Sun Microsystems would still be alive too.
spodek 5y ago
As long as the hardware runs Linux, I'm going to overwrite the operating system, so I'm indifferent. I've bought all my recent computers used from Craigslist and Linux runs great on all of them.
- culopatin 5y ago
  Good for you. How does this have any relevance in this thread though?
drcongo 5y ago
Back around Vista time I went to watch a talk by one of MS's UI designers about all the time and effort they'd put into designing the Vista interface. He gave a demo showing a walk-through of some set-up "wizard" and talked about all the details he thought were important. At no point did he mention the fact that depending on which screen you were on the "next" and "previous" buttons would swap places with the "cancel" button. If you tried to skip quickly through a setup wizard by clicking on the "next" button, you'd cancel everything on screen 4. This perfectly summed up Microsoft's understanding of UX to me. The things MS cares about in design are entirely unrelated to the things users care about. Users want to know where the next button is without having to hunt for it. Users want to not accidentally cancel something they've already spent time on. In many ways, this encapsulated Vista as a whole. None of that OS was made for the user, it was all territorial infighting inside MS. Sadly, I think Apple has lost this focus now too. The Touch Bar is a load of accidents waiting to happen at any given time, and the new dialog boxes with a stack of buttons below remove the ability to use muscle memory to hit the right one and need to be scanned every time.
- nindalf 5y ago
  With any luck the Touch Bar is on its way out. The M1 MacBook Air doesn’t have it and is honestly a better laptop for that sole reason.
  - Ashanmaril 5y ago
    That was mostly based off the base-model 13" MacBook Pro from before which didn't have a touchbar.
    - arn 5y ago
      There are legit rumors that Apple is specifically killing the Touch Bar as well.
      - Ashanmaril 5y ago
        I know, I'm just saying the M1 MBP isn't an indicator because it's not a new design.
ubermonkey 5y ago
It's amazing they effectively ignored him.
anthk 5y ago
Mac OS X for its era was astounding. Think about it. The ease of the Macintosh (journalist, media people) that's it, a good looking OS and the security and Unix tools preinstalled which would be helping ex-Solaris/Sparc departments. As it was shipped with XQuartz, a Terminal by default and tons of Unix utilities, even Motif worked, so porting expensive Unix stuff between Solaris, Linux and OSX was a breeze. Windows... well... w2k was for companies or the enterprise, people followed Windows 98SE as if it was a cult and ME was a polished turd. W98SE was crap on security, FAT32's performance for an installed OS was a nightmare, having to defrag a lot and performance degraded a lot over time. You had to format and reinstall once a month. Oh, you need to reinstall the chipset, soundcard, and video drivers? Some BSOD on the process will be guaranteed. Linux and KDE by 2004 was nice, but broadband wasn't everywhere and setting it up was not as easy if all you got from a retailer was a Slackware/Debian DVD with an installing book. For everything else you had to be ready to learn a lot. And X.org wasn't as ready as today. OFC my KDE3 setup from 2004 with bells and whistles like the Nvidia Geforce 2 drivers was nearly on par on OSX' features, (even with Cinelerra and JackD) but OSX set it up everything for you by default since 2001-2002. Even Microsoft Office under OSX looked beatiful. And today, ironically, I'm almost the opposite, by using CWM, void, OpenBSD, groff+ms, sc-im, Gnuplot and so on. But to each its own. OSX by being a Unix helped Linux/BSD's a lot too, even if it took a huge chunk of market. CUPS polishing, (CUPS ofc worked pefectly in 2003 without Apple's support, but I think Apple gave them more support on weird printers), Bonjour, HTML->Webkit...
- auiya 5y ago
  And for music producers! Logic Pro is probably the best bang for the buck you buy right now as far as DAWs go.
  - anthk 5y ago
    Well, I already say that Macs were pretty known for media/writting people such as journalists, artists, painters, designers, writers, and so on. That was pre-OSX. Mac OS 9 with Quark Xpress and Photoshop were THE tools used in any newspaper/magazine HQ, no matter the country in the world. Professional printed papers/music and video production = Mac. Period. No one would say otherwise in the 90' s. But with OSX you had both the media/press people and the science people in your pocket. (Unix sysadmins with KSH, Unix utilities and SSH ready from the beginning, maybe not as a server but you could test all crap locally, and well, Aqua looked shiny, fun and shit would work; and for die hard C/C++/Perl/X11/Motif programmers porting legacy scientific tools to Xquartz and Motif with barely any changes). And OFC, LaTex, with some GUI's showing the PDF preview.
sys_64738 5y ago
Some insight around this time. http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...
ydnaclementine 5y ago
Naive question, today can you work at microsoft as use a mac for development on the job? (non windows specific development of course) I think about how if you work at apple, you're probably strongly pushed to not use an android phone (I'm sure some exist). Compared to google, you could probably use either android or ios (even with google "owning" android), or mac, windows, or their own flavor of ubuntu for development. Windows is less than stellar for development generally (ignoring .net/c# things), I'd be grumpy using windows for development even if they offered a zillion dollars. WSL probably makes it okish, but is still new
- plainnoodles 5y ago
  IME device/os choice is usually more around IT security than weird cultish things. I.e. my current job, we only use iOS/mac because then IT only has to worry about keeping a fleet of iOS/macs patched and secured. Instead of Windows and a million different linux distros. I also personally think they picked osx because devs using windows probably won't care (since windows is already not great for dev), mac people are happy, and linux people are just glad they're not using windows. (I'm personally in the "linux person relieved to not be using windows" camp).
  - dexterhaslem 5y ago
    windows is already not great for dev? I'll bite, what were you doing, ios apps? lol
    - phist_mcgee 5y ago
      Getting a functional semi-ok, posix sorta vaguely compliant terminal is not a fun or easy task in windows. The web runs linux, and unfortunately, windows doesn't really want to do linux (WSL is a tiny concession)
      - mickael-kerjean 5y ago
        WSL doesn't cut it, it's at best frustrating with all sort of weird problems. Just yesterday, as I was forced to use Windows at work, I couldn't get emacs to save a file because of some weird locking issue when trying to compile some react application that would work fine on linux
walrus01 5y ago
Around the time this was written I knew a number of people who had bought a Mac because it was a nice BSD-like command line environment with a reasonable GUI. These same people also spent a lot of their times in ssh sessions to various Linux and FreeBSD servers. MacOS 10.0 and 10.1 were buggy messes, but the successors were pretty good. Shortly afterwards, MacOS 10.4 and 10.5 improved on it a great deal.
- CountSessine 5y ago
  10.4 (Tiger) was fantastic because it was the first version where the UI and the underlying file system drivers and bash were in-sync - in 10.3 you could delete a file in Terminal but the change wouldn't show up in Finder. MacOS just kept getting better and better until sometime around Yosemite or El Capitan, with a small hiccup with Lion.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    I think they put a lot of extra work into 10.4 because it was also the first version that ran on Intel hardware. Lots of QC related to the platform transition from PowerPC. If all those $2500 MacBook pros had launched with a flaky OS it would have been a disaster.
legitster 5y ago
I think it's pretty telling that there are lots of letters like this from Microsoft, but almost none from Apple. I can't imagine someone from Apple writing a letter like this to Jobs and still working at Apple.
- sushisource 5y ago
  I agree, but seemingly that hasn't mattered or helped much? Apple is a more valuable company in terms of market cap, and almost certainly a more 'loved' company in terms of mindshare. Many people thought they'd be doomed without Jobs but they've seemingly been doing just fine still (ignoring many valid criticisms here, of course, but talking about the general population). Which I really find fascinating. Aside from their arguably better stance on privacy, I don't really find there's much at all to love about Apple products beyond they look quite nice, generally. In fact I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about. Is that really all there is to it? The consistency of aesthetic is enough to win? I've always found it to be an interesting question, why they continue to be so successful.
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    Just to take a recent HN front page example, the link to SyncThing. It says "Since Android phones, at least, are Linux-based, one need only set up a normal shell environment on it and put Syncthing there to achieve this goal; the process shouldn't take more than a day or so." The disconnect between the two worlds "people who use Apple products" and "people who think a day or so of your life is a reasonable amount of time to install an app that copies files over a network" is, well there's no way to cross that gap. And then you describe what Apple does as "dumbing down", for dumb people. People who don't want to care that SyncThing is written in Go instead of Java which means they can't access the Android API to write to an SD Card and the docs lead to a Github issue with 128 comments explaining why they aren't going to fix it. People who give their iCloud account login and Apple has their photos? Dumb people. [I know people choose SyncThing to keep control locally and that often comes at a cost of more trouble, more effort. It's illustrative of very different worlds, that's all].
smoldesu 5y ago
MacOS was starting to get good in 2004, but unfortunately I feel that it went to their head. My opinion of MacOS didn't really start to decline until Catalina, at which point it started to become blatantly obvious that Apple was focused more on "business" than "computers" these days. I was surprisingly content with the openness of Mojave, and even hopeful for the future of the OS. If any slivers of hope were hanging on during Catalina, they were certainly demolished when they showed off the Big Sur redesign.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Share the same opinion - in fact, I downgraded back to macOS Mojave. In some ways, I guess the picture is clearer now on why macOS seems to have gone downhill. With their own ARM processors, Apple had to re-shift its focus away from Intel and make its OS work well on its own processor. And of course, with their own ARM processors they can further dumb down macOS and lock it down like ios as that's more profitable for them in the longer run.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    > And of course, with their own ARM processors they can further dumb down macOS and lock it down Anything to back this up? There was nothing preventing them from ‘locking down’ an intel based macOS, and I haven’t seen any evidence of a money grab with M1 based macOS either…
    - webmobdev 5y ago
      > There was nothing preventing them from ‘locking down’ an intel based macOS On Intel Macs, you can install Linux and Windows if you are unhappy with macOS. So they couldn't really lock it down. With their own custom ARM processors, they can prevent the installation of other OSes. Thus, like with iPhone or iPad, you will be stuck with the OS they provide. With the M1, so far you can only run other OSes on VM.
      - djrogers 5y ago
spullara 5y ago
Anecdote: A senior person at Microsoft that I knew after he left relayed his experience trying to use a Mac at HQ. Balmer threw it across the room during a meeting.
- lowdose 5y ago
  Special effects for a more dramatic vibe for Bill Gates Jr. listening in.
- Verdex 5y ago
  My first thought is that this sounds like a terrible work environment. My second thought is, "Wait senior person at microsoft? That means he could probably afford multiple macs." What I'm imagining is that after Balmer throws my mac across the room I pull out my second mac. I would also be scouting for someone who can install an airbag into my mac. Like, can you imagine the look on Balmer's face when he throws your mac and an airbag explodes out of it? Then you can just say, "What? Laptop airbags come standard on macs." To reiterate, it does sound like a terrible situation to have to work in. But unbridled anger on the part of another is the perfect opportunity to create some incredibly comedic scenarios if you're willing to put in the elbow grease.
  - asddubs 5y ago
    airbag modules are probably a bit too big for that. also it would just propel the mac in the other direction
  - spullara 5y ago
    Ultimately Balmer was fired and the attitude of the company changed a lot, so that's something.
jamesbfb 5y ago
I recently saved an old (2012) Mac Pro from the trash at work. As a lockdown project, I decided to do the rejuvenate the thing, thing. Cleaned it up, wiped and put a fresh copy of High Sierra on it. I am a long time Linux guy and I was pleasantly surprised. It’s almost fun to use! That said, I believe High Sierra is the last release before things start getting...weird? My wife has a newer Mac (cannot remember the release) but I had some pretty crazy hurdles to install an unsigned bit of software. If that’s the trajectory Apple is taking, I don’t think I will be ditching Linux for MacOS.
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  I haven't really had a problem getting anything done in Big Sur on my 2017 Macbook. Before my Macbook I had a Lenovo X1 Carbon with Arch and KDE; I really loved that setup but there are several conveniences with Macs. I prefer Excel to LibreOffice for example, and I like messaging integration with iPhone and all of the applications I use are really nice; I always felt like there were a few apps on Linux that were not well designed and I had to use them anyway. But, Arch has such a great package management system. You can easiy revert to any previous version of a package, you can quickly do a binary search to find which package broke you after an update etc. Homebrew is a total garbage fire. A couple weeks ago I typed "brew upgrade git" and it upgraded the version of every homebrew package on my system. My Postgres database wouldn't start because my databases had to be upgraded. I had a deadline... Also for some reason I'm more likely to run into build problems with certain native packages. I'm really on the fence about what my next computer will be.
- robertoandred 5y ago
  To open unsigned software, right click, click Open, and click Open on the dialog that pops up. That’s for High Sierra and newer releases.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    It's still annoying. Apple needs to realize, it's my machine, and I'll take whatever risks I want. Stop trying to police me as though I'm incompetent. I know full well at this point if some random executable is going to be sketchy and it's wholly on me if I run it. It's just a push to go to the app store, while convenient, it most certainly is not for developers who don't want to deal with their BS to maintain a presence there.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TroisM 5y ago
I would buy an iphone today if they warent so restricted.

127 points by renaudg 5y ago

throwaway4good 5y ago

So what has changed? You can buy a Mac today even if you are working at Microsoft.

speedgoose 5y ago
I had an iMac G4 in 2004 and I have a MacBook pro M1 in 2021. I used only PCs running Ubuntu, ArchLinux, and Windows between. When I got the M1, it felt like home. Not much did change over 17 years. If you think about windows only, between windows XP and a recent windows 10, it's very different and much better. It's possible to use the computer while an application is using all available resources now. You also have descent composting with GPU accelerated 3D effects and good windows management. Good touch screen support too. Also much better security, and a great Linux integration with WSL. I actually prefer a lot of things in Windows than Mac today. I think Mac OS is a bit behind windows on some features I use, like touchscreen support or the Linux integration. But the good hardware makes it worth it since the M1.
- sbuk 5y ago
  I'm interested in the ' touchscreen support or the Linux integration.' part of your comment. I don't think we'll see touch screen on a Mac in the short-to-middle term because Apple have very defined views on interaction models. Of more interest is the Linux integration part. What Linux 'features' are missing from macOS on the terminal that cannot be installed from either Homebrew, MacPorts or pkgsrc? Genuinely interested...
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    About Linux it's to have Docker with good performances, and a development environment more similar than the production environment. I'm almost not a fan of compilation to install standard tools, its a bit slow and it feels unnecessary. About the touchscreen support, it's simply that I like touchscreens. It think it's more convenient for some usages and I think Apple acknowledged that with their ridiculously small touch bar. I hope they will allow real professional usage on the iPad pro or bring touch screen support to the MacBook eventually. I could live without it but I still touch my MacBook screen by mistake once in a while.
    - sbuk 5y ago
      Thanks. That makes sence, although Docker on the M1 seems to have improved things. If it's any consolation, my 3 year old tries to touch things on computer and TV screens! It's clearly an natural interaction given the technology around today.
exegete 5y ago
The author of the email probably technically “could” buy a Mac but why would he do that? The negative press would have been detrimental to Microsoft. The same is true today. Imagine the headlines that would get re-tweeted - “Microsoft head of platforms uses a Mac at home”
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  Similar to Eric Schmidt using Blackberry and iPhones over an Android phone: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/21/eric-schmidt-blackberry-user https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/21/eric-schm...
wink 5y ago
There's a difference between "people at Microsoft Research giving a public presentation on a mac" and "one of the top 10 people at Microsoft runs around with a mac". But yes, it is a bit of a different time as well, but I think Allchin the person is a pretty important part of the statement.
rsynnott 5y ago
This was during the reign of noted loon Ballmer, so probably not a great idea. Remember this? https://www.cultofmac.com/501138/apple-history-steve-ballmer-iphone-freakout/ https://www.cultofmac.com/501138/apple-history-steve-ballmer...

LucidLynx 5y ago

Post-email: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=20 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=...

ubermonkey 5y ago
Where he HILARIOUSLY insists Vista was better than anything else on the market. It's like that Iraqi general saying US troops were nowhere near the capital.
- apolymath 5y ago
  Vista was the best thing on the market. You know why? Gaming. Everything came down to what system could handle intense gaming, and guess what, it definitely wasn't Mac or linux.

basisword 5y ago

I think the context of this occurring during Longhorn (LH) development is important. For anyone that doesn't know Longhorn[1] was the precursor to Vista. They tried to do a lot of big things but it dragged on for years before they had to recalibrate, abandon a lot of ideas, and ship Vista. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista

perceptronas 5y ago
I am not sure if it fits this topic/forum, but there is a joke made by Jobs on youtube [1] about Longhorn/Vista. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCh7D_OpKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jCh7D_OpKM
C19is20 5y ago
', and ship Vista.' You spelled 'shit' wrong?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Maybe I’m the minority but I’ve only had good things to say about Vista. Maybe the problem isn’t Vista but trying to run it on underpowered hardware? It ran perfectly fine on a quad-core and 4GB of RAM.
  - krylon 5y ago
    Which, to be fair, was a fairly high-end machine at the time. As I recall, the problem was not just Vista's juicy hardware requirements, but the fact it would initially behave quite unpredictably performance-wise. OTOH, Microsoft is said to have fixed most of the problems with SP1, and Windows 7 was, as far as Windows versions go, a very solid system.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    One of the scandals of that era was Microsoft purposefully lowering the hardware requirements for Vista so that lower end PCs could get the all important Vista sticker. I was in tech support at the time, and a ton of cheap HPs came in that were sold with vista and 2gb of ram.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

I think LH refers to what appeared later as Windows Vista. It's kind of nice to see a Microsoft executive had the same opinion of this product as their customers.

johanj 5y ago
Yes, the codename for Windows Vista was Longhorn.
zokier 5y ago
No, that's the opposite, read the followup: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=20 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1418259351140188166?s=...
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  When reading his reply[0] it's obvious he was right in the original email when he said he saw no solution to this problem. They even tried to start from scratch and the result was still arguably the worst Windows edition ever. [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20070107170621/http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/12/12/title.aspx http://web.archive.org/web/20070107170621/http://windowsvist...
  - pvitz 5y ago
    In my opinion, Windows ME was worse. I decided to use Windows 2000 and then XP. 2000 was very stable compared to what we were used to with the 95/98 series.
  - some-guy 5y ago
    I'll be honest, I didn't notice many differences between Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP1. I agree Windows Vista was absolutely terrible when it came out, but so was XP. And so was 98. And 95.
- Razengan 5y ago
  The follow up is basically “oops I shouldn’t have been caught thinking that out loud” I mean he’s calling Vista a “phenomenal product”, for Fourier’s sake

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bellyfullofbac 5y ago

I've read enough of buggy behaviors on MacOS that I'm not sure I'd buy a Mac today. Wasn't their new filesystem a giant mess? Even the shiny new M1 had SSD wear problems in the beginning, hmm, great QA, guys!

Slippery_John 5y ago
A recent Windows update caused frequent BSODs with a fun variety of error codes. This would happen fast enough that I couldn't even roll back the update. So I had to wipe my hard drive and re-install the entire OS from a flash drive. I've never had a macOS update cause such a catastrophic failure.
dsego 5y ago
4096 files is the limit when reading from SD cards on a Mac (not windows). https://youtu.be/0bqOB_XGBVE https://youtu.be/0bqOB_XGBVE
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Interesting. But the video is way too manic (too many cuts, guy too animated and shouty) that watching him gives me anxiety.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Actually I think the rollout of APFS was one of their more impressive technical achievements. They wholesale updated iOS 10.3 to the new filesystem without any issues. The only downside to it is it is probably a bit heavy for traditional drives, it really needs an SSD.
pjc50 5y ago
Back in the 2004 era Windows was far more notorious for BSODs, but in the intervening time they've put a lot of work into fixing that. Mostly in drivers; things like WHQL, and the amazing subsystem that allows the graphics drivers to crash and recover with only a momentary black screen. The Longhorn project did include an attempt at doing a fancy new filesystem, more database flavoured; I'm not sure if they ever finalized the feature list, much less got it working, and now everything ships with NTFS which is slow but reliable.

qwerty456127 5y ago

A friend of mine preferred Apple for hardware and Microsoft for software. About a decade ago he bought a MacBook and installed Windows 7.

tasogare 5y ago
I did that too around 2009 for a few years. It always bugged people that my MBP was running Windows.
thehappypm 5y ago
Sometimes I miss Windows. MacOS has a huge amount of weirdness where an errant swipe or button combination does something completely unexpected as a new user.
ska 5y ago
This was the standard setup for a bunch of people I knew doing windows development around then - according to them the MBP was far and away the best (laptop) windows hardware available at the time.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

And that was in the PowerPc Era! I think this is the video mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ2lWbRU3xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ2lWbRU3xM

tobr 5y ago
Here’s the linked page on Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20040108215755/apple.com/ilife/video/ilife04_320.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040108215755/apple.com/ilife/v...
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  Is that embedded video playable on anything? it isn't compatible with the latest version of Quick Time I have
muizelaar 5y ago
Indeed. You can find the original on the-eye.

hughrr 5y ago

I love the backpedalling later about how great Vista is. Which was bollocks.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
That's pretty much what you'd expect though, the original email was never meant to become public. Companies are never upfront about their weaknesses.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I disagree. Vista did have some problems, but this was because it introduced SuperCache (which worked in a way that did not match everyone's expectations), a new strategy for file copies (that didn't work better in a lot of cases), a new display server, and new driver models for networking, sound, and video in user space. Vista is when we stopped having to reboot for changing the video driver, where a sound driver crashing no longer bluescreened the system, and we got per-application volume controls at the OS level. Additionally, since it was new it was bloated and slow on current gen hardware and manufacturers often slapped "Vista Capable" stickers on computers that were really not ideal for it. As with most Windows versions, it was pretty solid by Service Pack 1. By 7 pretty much everything had been ironed out and consequently we remember 7 as the highest water mark since the peak, Win2k.
- hughrr 5y ago
  It had some problems because they mostly didn’t test it properly. That hasn’t changed now. Hence why the edge and windows alt tab integration actually broke alt tab on windows 10 RTM for nearly 6 months.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Things are actually much much worse today in regards to testing. I don't think Microsoft even has testers for Windows these days, they just push updates to users and and force them to test.
- 5y ago

sys_64738 5y ago

XP SP3 was about to hit the market as M$ went into security overdrive mode.

sidcool 5y ago

I feel that the only reason Microsoft survived the 2000s was their deep entrenchment into the enterprise. If the same continued in the 2010s, they would likely be on life support by now.

ksec 5y ago
Roughly half of the PC in use are in Enterprise and Corporate. Part of the reason why moving Windows forward with Backward compatibility is so god damn hard.
ThrowawayB7 5y ago
> "deep entrenchment into the enterprise" If that was all it took, Sun Microsystems would still be alive too.

spodek 5y ago

As long as the hardware runs Linux, I'm going to overwrite the operating system, so I'm indifferent. I've bought all my recent computers used from Craigslist and Linux runs great on all of them.

culopatin 5y ago
Good for you. How does this have any relevance in this thread though?

drcongo 5y ago

Back around Vista time I went to watch a talk by one of MS's UI designers about all the time and effort they'd put into designing the Vista interface. He gave a demo showing a walk-through of some set-up "wizard" and talked about all the details he thought were important. At no point did he mention the fact that depending on which screen you were on the "next" and "previous" buttons would swap places with the "cancel" button. If you tried to skip quickly through a setup wizard by clicking on the "next" button, you'd cancel everything on screen 4. This perfectly summed up Microsoft's understanding of UX to me. The things MS cares about in design are entirely unrelated to the things users care about. Users want to know where the next button is without having to hunt for it. Users want to not accidentally cancel something they've already spent time on. In many ways, this encapsulated Vista as a whole. None of that OS was made for the user, it was all territorial infighting inside MS. Sadly, I think Apple has lost this focus now too. The Touch Bar is a load of accidents waiting to happen at any given time, and the new dialog boxes with a stack of buttons below remove the ability to use muscle memory to hit the right one and need to be scanned every time.

nindalf 5y ago
With any luck the Touch Bar is on its way out. The M1 MacBook Air doesn’t have it and is honestly a better laptop for that sole reason.
- Ashanmaril 5y ago
  That was mostly based off the base-model 13" MacBook Pro from before which didn't have a touchbar.
  - arn 5y ago
    There are legit rumors that Apple is specifically killing the Touch Bar as well.
    - Ashanmaril 5y ago
      I know, I'm just saying the M1 MBP isn't an indicator because it's not a new design.

ubermonkey 5y ago

It's amazing they effectively ignored him.

anthk 5y ago

Mac OS X for its era was astounding. Think about it. The ease of the Macintosh (journalist, media people) that's it, a good looking OS and the security and Unix tools preinstalled which would be helping ex-Solaris/Sparc departments. As it was shipped with XQuartz, a Terminal by default and tons of Unix utilities, even Motif worked, so porting expensive Unix stuff between Solaris, Linux and OSX was a breeze. Windows... well... w2k was for companies or the enterprise, people followed Windows 98SE as if it was a cult and ME was a polished turd. W98SE was crap on security, FAT32's performance for an installed OS was a nightmare, having to defrag a lot and performance degraded a lot over time. You had to format and reinstall once a month. Oh, you need to reinstall the chipset, soundcard, and video drivers? Some BSOD on the process will be guaranteed. Linux and KDE by 2004 was nice, but broadband wasn't everywhere and setting it up was not as easy if all you got from a retailer was a Slackware/Debian DVD with an installing book. For everything else you had to be ready to learn a lot. And X.org wasn't as ready as today. OFC my KDE3 setup from 2004 with bells and whistles like the Nvidia Geforce 2 drivers was nearly on par on OSX' features, (even with Cinelerra and JackD) but OSX set it up everything for you by default since 2001-2002. Even Microsoft Office under OSX looked beatiful. And today, ironically, I'm almost the opposite, by using CWM, void, OpenBSD, groff+ms, sc-im, Gnuplot and so on. But to each its own. OSX by being a Unix helped Linux/BSD's a lot too, even if it took a huge chunk of market. CUPS polishing, (CUPS ofc worked pefectly in 2003 without Apple's support, but I think Apple gave them more support on weird printers), Bonjour, HTML->Webkit...

auiya 5y ago
And for music producers! Logic Pro is probably the best bang for the buck you buy right now as far as DAWs go.
- anthk 5y ago
  Well, I already say that Macs were pretty known for media/writting people such as journalists, artists, painters, designers, writers, and so on. That was pre-OSX. Mac OS 9 with Quark Xpress and Photoshop were THE tools used in any newspaper/magazine HQ, no matter the country in the world. Professional printed papers/music and video production = Mac. Period. No one would say otherwise in the 90' s. But with OSX you had both the media/press people and the science people in your pocket. (Unix sysadmins with KSH, Unix utilities and SSH ready from the beginning, maybe not as a server but you could test all crap locally, and well, Aqua looked shiny, fun and shit would work; and for die hard C/C++/Perl/X11/Motif programmers porting legacy scientific tools to Xquartz and Motif with barely any changes). And OFC, LaTex, with some GUI's showing the PDF preview.

sys_64738 5y ago

Some insight around this time. http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...

ydnaclementine 5y ago

Naive question, today can you work at microsoft as use a mac for development on the job? (non windows specific development of course) I think about how if you work at apple, you're probably strongly pushed to not use an android phone (I'm sure some exist). Compared to google, you could probably use either android or ios (even with google "owning" android), or mac, windows, or their own flavor of ubuntu for development. Windows is less than stellar for development generally (ignoring .net/c# things), I'd be grumpy using windows for development even if they offered a zillion dollars. WSL probably makes it okish, but is still new

plainnoodles 5y ago
IME device/os choice is usually more around IT security than weird cultish things. I.e. my current job, we only use iOS/mac because then IT only has to worry about keeping a fleet of iOS/macs patched and secured. Instead of Windows and a million different linux distros. I also personally think they picked osx because devs using windows probably won't care (since windows is already not great for dev), mac people are happy, and linux people are just glad they're not using windows. (I'm personally in the "linux person relieved to not be using windows" camp).
- dexterhaslem 5y ago
  windows is already not great for dev? I'll bite, what were you doing, ios apps? lol
  - phist_mcgee 5y ago
    Getting a functional semi-ok, posix sorta vaguely compliant terminal is not a fun or easy task in windows. The web runs linux, and unfortunately, windows doesn't really want to do linux (WSL is a tiny concession)
    - mickael-kerjean 5y ago
      WSL doesn't cut it, it's at best frustrating with all sort of weird problems. Just yesterday, as I was forced to use Windows at work, I couldn't get emacs to save a file because of some weird locking issue when trying to compile some react application that would work fine on linux

walrus01 5y ago

Around the time this was written I knew a number of people who had bought a Mac because it was a nice BSD-like command line environment with a reasonable GUI. These same people also spent a lot of their times in ssh sessions to various Linux and FreeBSD servers. MacOS 10.0 and 10.1 were buggy messes, but the successors were pretty good. Shortly afterwards, MacOS 10.4 and 10.5 improved on it a great deal.

CountSessine 5y ago
10.4 (Tiger) was fantastic because it was the first version where the UI and the underlying file system drivers and bash were in-sync - in 10.3 you could delete a file in Terminal but the change wouldn't show up in Finder. MacOS just kept getting better and better until sometime around Yosemite or El Capitan, with a small hiccup with Lion.
- walrus01 5y ago
  I think they put a lot of extra work into 10.4 because it was also the first version that ran on Intel hardware. Lots of QC related to the platform transition from PowerPC. If all those $2500 MacBook pros had launched with a flaky OS it would have been a disaster.

legitster 5y ago

I think it's pretty telling that there are lots of letters like this from Microsoft, but almost none from Apple. I can't imagine someone from Apple writing a letter like this to Jobs and still working at Apple.

sushisource 5y ago
I agree, but seemingly that hasn't mattered or helped much? Apple is a more valuable company in terms of market cap, and almost certainly a more 'loved' company in terms of mindshare. Many people thought they'd be doomed without Jobs but they've seemingly been doing just fine still (ignoring many valid criticisms here, of course, but talking about the general population). Which I really find fascinating. Aside from their arguably better stance on privacy, I don't really find there's much at all to love about Apple products beyond they look quite nice, generally. In fact I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about. Is that really all there is to it? The consistency of aesthetic is enough to win? I've always found it to be an interesting question, why they continue to be so successful.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  Just to take a recent HN front page example, the link to SyncThing. It says "Since Android phones, at least, are Linux-based, one need only set up a normal shell environment on it and put Syncthing there to achieve this goal; the process shouldn't take more than a day or so." The disconnect between the two worlds "people who use Apple products" and "people who think a day or so of your life is a reasonable amount of time to install an app that copies files over a network" is, well there's no way to cross that gap. And then you describe what Apple does as "dumbing down", for dumb people. People who don't want to care that SyncThing is written in Go instead of Java which means they can't access the Android API to write to an SD Card and the docs lead to a Github issue with 128 comments explaining why they aren't going to fix it. People who give their iCloud account login and Apple has their photos? Dumb people. [I know people choose SyncThing to keep control locally and that often comes at a cost of more trouble, more effort. It's illustrative of very different worlds, that's all].

smoldesu 5y ago

MacOS was starting to get good in 2004, but unfortunately I feel that it went to their head. My opinion of MacOS didn't really start to decline until Catalina, at which point it started to become blatantly obvious that Apple was focused more on "business" than "computers" these days. I was surprisingly content with the openness of Mojave, and even hopeful for the future of the OS. If any slivers of hope were hanging on during Catalina, they were certainly demolished when they showed off the Big Sur redesign.

webmobdev 5y ago
Share the same opinion - in fact, I downgraded back to macOS Mojave. In some ways, I guess the picture is clearer now on why macOS seems to have gone downhill. With their own ARM processors, Apple had to re-shift its focus away from Intel and make its OS work well on its own processor. And of course, with their own ARM processors they can further dumb down macOS and lock it down like ios as that's more profitable for them in the longer run.
- djrogers 5y ago
  > And of course, with their own ARM processors they can further dumb down macOS and lock it down Anything to back this up? There was nothing preventing them from ‘locking down’ an intel based macOS, and I haven’t seen any evidence of a money grab with M1 based macOS either…
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    > There was nothing preventing them from ‘locking down’ an intel based macOS On Intel Macs, you can install Linux and Windows if you are unhappy with macOS. So they couldn't really lock it down. With their own custom ARM processors, they can prevent the installation of other OSes. Thus, like with iPhone or iPad, you will be stuck with the OS they provide. With the M1, so far you can only run other OSes on VM.
    - djrogers 5y ago

spullara 5y ago

Anecdote: A senior person at Microsoft that I knew after he left relayed his experience trying to use a Mac at HQ. Balmer threw it across the room during a meeting.

lowdose 5y ago
Special effects for a more dramatic vibe for Bill Gates Jr. listening in.
Verdex 5y ago
My first thought is that this sounds like a terrible work environment. My second thought is, "Wait senior person at microsoft? That means he could probably afford multiple macs." What I'm imagining is that after Balmer throws my mac across the room I pull out my second mac. I would also be scouting for someone who can install an airbag into my mac. Like, can you imagine the look on Balmer's face when he throws your mac and an airbag explodes out of it? Then you can just say, "What? Laptop airbags come standard on macs." To reiterate, it does sound like a terrible situation to have to work in. But unbridled anger on the part of another is the perfect opportunity to create some incredibly comedic scenarios if you're willing to put in the elbow grease.
- asddubs 5y ago
  airbag modules are probably a bit too big for that. also it would just propel the mac in the other direction
- spullara 5y ago
  Ultimately Balmer was fired and the attitude of the company changed a lot, so that's something.

jamesbfb 5y ago

I recently saved an old (2012) Mac Pro from the trash at work. As a lockdown project, I decided to do the rejuvenate the thing, thing. Cleaned it up, wiped and put a fresh copy of High Sierra on it. I am a long time Linux guy and I was pleasantly surprised. It’s almost fun to use! That said, I believe High Sierra is the last release before things start getting...weird? My wife has a newer Mac (cannot remember the release) but I had some pretty crazy hurdles to install an unsigned bit of software. If that’s the trajectory Apple is taking, I don’t think I will be ditching Linux for MacOS.

jeremyjh 5y ago
I haven't really had a problem getting anything done in Big Sur on my 2017 Macbook. Before my Macbook I had a Lenovo X1 Carbon with Arch and KDE; I really loved that setup but there are several conveniences with Macs. I prefer Excel to LibreOffice for example, and I like messaging integration with iPhone and all of the applications I use are really nice; I always felt like there were a few apps on Linux that were not well designed and I had to use them anyway. But, Arch has such a great package management system. You can easiy revert to any previous version of a package, you can quickly do a binary search to find which package broke you after an update etc. Homebrew is a total garbage fire. A couple weeks ago I typed "brew upgrade git" and it upgraded the version of every homebrew package on my system. My Postgres database wouldn't start because my databases had to be upgraded. I had a deadline... Also for some reason I'm more likely to run into build problems with certain native packages. I'm really on the fence about what my next computer will be.
robertoandred 5y ago
To open unsigned software, right click, click Open, and click Open on the dialog that pops up. That’s for High Sierra and newer releases.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  It's still annoying. Apple needs to realize, it's my machine, and I'll take whatever risks I want. Stop trying to police me as though I'm incompetent. I know full well at this point if some random executable is going to be sketchy and it's wholly on me if I run it. It's just a push to go to the app store, while convenient, it most certainly is not for developers who don't want to deal with their BS to maintain a presence there.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

TroisM 5y ago

I would buy an iphone today if they warent so restricted.