Yes, it was under Allchin, but I suspect that "integrated innovation" couldn't happen without Gates' approval and stewardship. There is another twist - after X

Yes, it was under Allchin, but I suspect that "integrated innovation" couldn't happen without Gates' approval and stewardship. There is another twist - after XP Windows was split into two branches (since they didn't want to delay client to wait for server): Server and Longhorn. Brian Valentine managed Server (shipped as Server 2003), at same time different war room, different managers managed Longhorn ship. So essentially experienced management team was shipping server, and non-so heavy weight - Longhorn. Then some people were taken to manage XP SP2 (result of "security push"). So there is no surprise Longhorn had problems and required "reset" to finally ship as Vista. And the lesson is: never ever branch to v+1 and v+2 branches unless absolutely required - one of them is going to be neglected.