There is a new blog on WordPress called Graceful Flavor, and they tend to focus on Apple news. They had a post yesterday that immediately caught my eye, entitled:
New Microsoft Email Shows Panic Over OS X Tiger Features
Now, everyone these days expects Microsoft to have iPod-envy, iTunes-envy, even iPhone-envy. But given that the OS wars were largely fought and won in the late 1980′s and early 1990′s, it’s a bit surprising to see a dominant giant like Microsoft caught with not only acknowledging the strengths of Mac OS X, but almost despairing at them.
A snippet here, from an email from Lenn Pryor, the former Director of Platform Evangelism:
Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and … my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was fucking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.
What about this one?
Here’s my take on this:
- Big suprise, Mac OS X is a strong product. Let’s face it – the dominance of Windows over Mac OS had everything to do with x86 and DOS compatibility, and very little to do with the overall design of the 100s of features that make up modern operating systems. At minimum, it’s fair to say that Mac OS X is an extremely strong product in many areas, and it’s not surprising to see Microsoft clearly interested in learning from its competition. I know that within Apple, we spent plenty of time discussing new and planned Microsoft features.
- Microsoft is a huge company, these quotes didn’t come from Bill Gates. Is it really so shocking that there are Apple fans within Microsoft? Come on. It’s a huge company, and it’s not surprising that several people in middle management are Apple fans. Sometimes your best people are the ones who can look outside your four walls and see the world differently. I don’t know if these people are considered thought leaders or pariahs within Microsoft, but either way, these emails aren’t really surprising.
- The grass is always greener… When I was at Apple, while most people were convinced of Apple’s superiority in design, innovation and approach, there was always an inherent sense of insecurity and envy of Microsoft’s ability to reach the broadest audience. There was envy of their resources, their ability to fund money-losers for years on end in long term markets. But this wasn’t unique to Apple. Or Microsoft. All companies who compete ferociously in technology develop an appreciation, which can quickly turn to envy, for the unique advantages of their competition. The trick is to remember that strategy is about unique differentiation – what makes your company, your products, your services and your brand unique in the market. Trying to match your competitors feature-for-feature is a death spiral towards commoditization and lack of identity.
No matter the bravado, I guarantee you that there are people at Apple writing memos about the inspiration they have gotten from Vista. Sure, they’ll say, there’s a “better way” to do some of these things. But they’ll have a note of envy for DirectX 10. They’ll be jealous of how quickly third parties come in to fix holes in the Vista feature set. And Mac OS 10.6 will likely end up stronger for it.
