Microsoft Archive

Longtime Windows development chief James Allchin wrote in a January 2004 e-mail to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and company co-founder Bill Gates that the software vendor had "lost sight" of customers' needs and said he would buy a Mac if he wasn't working for Microsoft. "In my view, we lost our way," Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft's platform and services division, wrote in an e-mail Jan. 7, 2004. The e-mail was presented as evidence late last week in the Iowa antitrust trial, Comes v. Microsoft. Update: Today, he wouldn't though.

"Microsoft Office isn't among the apps that will run natively on Intel-based Macs - and it won't be until the latter half of 2007, according to media reports. But when it does ship, Office will apparently be missing a feature so vital to cross-platform compatibility that I believe it will be the beginning of the end for the Mac version of the productivity suite."

The holiday season hasn't gone exactly as Microsoft had hoped and Ballmer sits down with CNET News.com to discuss life after Vista, battling the iPod, and the rising importance of mobile devices.

Microsoft has announced an integrated suite of tools for designers, as well as a new preview of the company's 'Flash killer' technology, putting Microsoft squarely into competition with Adobe. Microsoft on Dec. 4 announced its Expression Studio suite of tools for designers, consisting of four tools - three of which had been introduced heretofore and a new tool stemming from an acquisition the company made last summer. In addition, Microsoft announced a new CTP of its WPF/E technology, and there's also an app to show it off, while with some workarounds WPF can be used in Vista's Sidebar.

Consumers cannot run home versions of Windows Vista as virtual machines because virtualization is not mature enough for broad adoption, says Microsoft. They claim "that consumers don't understand the risks of running virtual machines, and they only want enterprises that understand the risks to run Vista on a VM".

"For the last year or so, one of the questions I've been asked again and again has been: "Can I use the new Office user interface in my own product?" On one hand, it's an immensely satisfying question to hear, because it means that others in the industry believe in the value of what we've built and see how the sound UI research we've done can benefit their own products. Creating the new user interface has been our team's passion for the last three years, and we love sharing the fruits of this hard work. On the other hand, the new Office user interface was a huge investment by Microsoft and the resulting intellectual property belongs to Microsoft."

Now that Windows Vista and Office 2007 have been released to manufacturing, the spotlight is on Windows Server 'Longhorn'. Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president for server and tools sat down with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli at TechEd: IT Forum to give an update on Longhorn's road map, discuss the company's controversial deal with Novell, and give his thoughts on Sun Microsystems' decision to license Java under the GNU GPL. Meanwhile, CNet interviews Bill Gates.

ActiveWin reviews Office 2007, and concludes: "It's an innovative interface yes, but will the benefits outweigh the changes? That's for users to decide. My personal say is getting used to the interface should not be a problem for many since the familiar tools are organized in ways that makes it convenient for the user to access both new and previously hidden features. This makes the interface more intelligent and more aware of what the user is doing, presenting the right tools for the task at hand. I am proud to say: this is an Office release I definitely look forward to using everyday."

It seems Microsoft has released the long awaited Windows Vista to a selection of its larger customers. If you're a Microsoft Volume License customer, you can now download Vista from the MVLS Volume Licensing site. Since around 10am (GMT) this morning, Vista has been properly released into the wild via MVLS - but no news yet as to when it will be available to the developer-centric MSDN community. The Inq also gives a rundown of what Aero-capable video cards you can buy if you have a machine that lacks AGP or PCIe slots. Meanwhile, the EU is threatening to fine Microsoft again.

"Exchange Server 2007 will be released to manufacturing in December and be available to customers within a number of days after that, Microsoft officials have confirmed. The formal announcement of Exchange 2007's RTM date was made in David Lemson's keynote on November 7 at the Exchange Connections conference."

Microsoft said Monday it has finalized the code for Office 2007, marking the completion of the first of two key projects for the software giant. Both Windows Vista and Office are slated for release to big businesses on Nov. 30. Microsoft has issued near-final test releases of Vista, but has not yet completed the final, or 'gold', code for the new operating system.

"Application Verifier is designed specifically to detect and help debug memory corruptions and critical security vulnerabilities. It makes it easier to create reliable applications by monitoring an application's interaction with the Windows operating system, profiling its use of objects, the registry, the file system, and Win32 APIs (including heaps, handles, locks, and more). It also includes checks to predict how well the application will perform under Least-privileged User Account operation, compatibility tests to be used in logoing, and print tests to verify your usage of the print subsystem."

For more than two decades, Microsoft's software and Intel's processors were so wedded that the pairing came to be known as Wintel. But as that computing era wanes, Microsoft is turning to a new source of chip design: its own labs.

Microsoft is expected to announce on Tuesday that it is making its virtualization file format available for free and without a license. At an interoperability conference in Brussels, the software giant said that its Virtual Hard Disk Image Format specification can be used by third parties without the need for them to get a commercial license. The virtualization technology will be available under the terms of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise, which it introduced in September.