Mario Hadiwinata

Beberapa waktu yang lalu, saya mendengar selentingan bahwa Jim Allchin - the man behind worldwide famous OS : Windows resigned from Microsoft. Yang tak kalah kagetnya, dalam Apple Conference, Steve Jobs sempat mengutip kata2 “If I’m not working at Microsoft, I would by a Mac for myself”. Kaget dengan statement tersebut, ternyata entah bentar atau tidak - tersebar email yg dikirimkan oleh Jim kepada SteveBallmer dan Bill Gates dalam bentuk hardcopy. Berikut ini kutipannya :

From: Jim Allchin
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:38 AM
To: Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer
Subject: losing our way…

This is a rant. I’m sorry.

I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems [our] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn’t translate onto great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows application software (although not the hardware). Apple did not lose their way. You must watch this new video below. I know this doesn’t show anything for businesses, but my point is about the philosophy that Apple uses. They think scenario. They think simple. They think fast. I know there is nothing hugely deep in this.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/video/ilife04_32C.html [Note: link no longer works]

I must tell you everything in my soul tells me that we should do what I called plan (b) yesterday We need a simple fast storage system. LH is a pig and I don’t see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of “scenario, simple, fast” to heart.

jim

Entah kutipan itu benar atau tidak, namun yang pasti kutipan Jim menjadi berita hangat di dunia blogosphere IT. Coba search kata2 “Jim Allchin” maka yg didapatkan bukan kontribusi luar biasa yg dilakukannya melalui Windows, namun nama Jim Allchin dan Mac menjadi satu pasangan Algoritma yang populer diberbagai search engine.

Kembali ke rumor mengenai resignation Jim, sehari setelah Vista di umumkan di US sana - tersiar kabar bahwa memang Jim telah resmi resigned dari Microsoft. Berikut ini kutipan langsung dari Jim di blog nya. Tidak ada yang tahu alasan sebenarnya mengapa Jim resigned, namun berikut ini beberapa komentar dari komunitas Mac terhadap resignation Jim.

Btw, if you read Jim’s blog - you will realize that he is indeed a simple and funny guy. Saya salut bukan karena kehebatan, reputasi, nama besar dan status yang telah Jim dapatkan, melainkan bagaimana (melalui blog) Jim bisa menunjukan bahwa dia adalah seorang yang ramah dan rendah hati. And btw, pertanyaan saya apakah dia akan menggunakan Mac setelah resigned dari Microsoft mungkin telah terjawab. Rasanya sulit mengubah Jim untuk tidak menggunakan OS buatannya, mungkin (ini mungkin lho) yang dimaksud olehnya untuk menggunakan Mac adalah untuk diinstal Vista di dalamnya…

Kita lihat saja “What Comes Next” sesuai dengan judul post terakhirnya Jim. Untuk sementara mari kita lihat bagaimana seorang Jim menghabiskan waktunya setelah lulus dari Microsoft.

• 7:00 AM:  Breakfast with my sons.  Ended up doing a product comparison review of the various cereals we had in our pantry.  Sugar does beat the natural stuff and my suspicions about the impact of packaging on the post purchase experience were spot on.  It turns out the box does matter.
• 7:40 AM:  Kids off to school.
• 7:45 AM:  Went to check email.  Only two pieces.
• 7:46 AM:  Checked network connection to see why I am not getting any email.  Everything working perfectly.
• 8:00 AM:  Went to clean up the playroom so that it’s organized for when the kids get home.  Ended up building an application to sort the Legos using a SQL Server backend and a Windows Presentation Foundation front-end on Windows Vista.  Can’t decide whether the primary index of the database should be color or size of the piece.  While searching the web discovered that Lego means “I put together” in Latin.
• 9:30 AM:  Spent 45 minutes looking around the house for the big refrigerator with the free soda just like Microsoft – was unable to find it.
• 10:15 AM:  Worked on my Windows logo latch hook rug – another couple days and I’ll finish the red.
• 11:00 AM:  Watched Rachel Ray – god is she engaging.  Maybe she should do the launch of the next version of Windows.
• 11:30 AM:  Checked mail again. No messages.
• 11:31 AM:  Turned off Spam filter.
• 12:00 PM:  Went out to lunch with my wife.  Was surprised to see so many other people out for lunch during the week.  I wonder if they have been buzzing around for all of these years that I have been in building 26.
• 1:30 PM:  Went to check out the Apple store at University Village to see what all of the hype was about.  Ended up demoing Windows Vista for all of the employees (and a few customers).  All they could say was “Wow.”  Ended up leading a group of them over to BestBuy to help them pick out new PCs with Windows Vista pre-loaded.  Need to go to the Bellevue store tomorrow.
• 3:00 PM:  Checked email.  150 unread messages. Unfortunately, 149 of them were spam.
• 3:10 PM:  Turned Spam filter back on.
• 3:15 PM:  Went to drive the afternoon carpool run.  Spent 20 minutes waiting in line behind other parents whose kids weren’t even outside yet.  Need to write paper about Next Generation Carpool Queuing solution (NGCQ) that integrates Windows Live Presence with the driveway scheduler.  Must get appointment with school principal when it’s done.
• 4:00 PM:  Home with the boys. Went to the playroom to help them build a train layout. Ended up doing interoperability test to study compatibility issues related to using Thomas trains on Brio track. Turns out while they work, the trains perform better on their native platform.  Need to try Brio trains on Thomas track tomorrow.
• 4:30 PM:  After a phone call with my Mom, I decided I needed to configure her account as a standard user for Windows Vista.   This gives new meaning to “parental controls”, but a son has to do what a son has to do.
• 5:00 PM:  Dinner with the family.  After they finished asking who was this strange man sitting at the dinner table, we had a great conversation about the kids’ day.  May have spent too much time asking them “how they would have done things better” and “what do they see as their key areas for growth.”
• 6:45 PM:  Read kids a bedtime story.  They seem to be recently interested in “chapter books.”  I was amazed by how quickly they fell asleep when I read them one of my favorite classics, “The Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability” by Rogers.
• 7:30 PM:  Checked email.  Again.  No new email. 
• 7:31 PM:  Turned Spam filter off again.
• 8:00 PM:  Went down to my music room to play my guitar.  Dozed off on the couch.