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http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lo...

Then, in June 2004, Steve Jobs announced that Apple was releasing its new operating system, called “Tiger.” And inside Microsoft, jaws dropped. Tiger did much of what was planned for Longhorn—except that it worked.

E-mails flew around Microsoft, expressing dismay about the quality of Tiger. To executives’ disbelief, it contained functional equivalents of Avalon and WinFS.

“It was fucking amazing,” wrote Lenn Pryor, part of the Longhorn team. “It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.”

Vic Gundotra, another member of the group, tried out Tiger. “Their Avalon competitor (core video, core image) was hot,” he wrote. “I have the cool widgets (dashboard) running on my MAC right now with all the effects [Jobs] showed on stage. I’ve had no crashes in 5 hours.”



> Vic Gundotra, another member of the group, ...wrote “...I’ve had no crashes in 5 hours.”

That's like a parody of what a Microsoft hater would say, yet it's an actual quote from Microsoft. Makes me feel sorry for them in retrospect.


Somehow they managed to turn it around enough that there's discussions in this thread about a windows surface and an iPad Pro. Which is something in itself.




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