I think he was trying to get the message across without getting himself fired - at least in the first note. I'm not sure if it would have made a difference. I

I think he was trying to get the message across without getting himself fired - at least in the first note. I'm not sure if it would have made a difference. IMHO - Microsoft could have gone too ways. They could have gone full cash-cow, returned even more money to shareholders, and watched the franchise slowly shrink. (The IBM model, who seem to buy more shares back every year) Or they could have gone full-on towards R&D and killing their sacred cow with a better push into the post-PC world. In muddling between the two they did the worse of both worlds: they missed a tech wave, and punished their shareholders.