Programming Windows: Reset (Premium)

On August 27, 2004, Microsoft group vice president Jim Allchin told employees that the company still planned to ship Longhorn to customers in calendar year 2006. But to meet that schedule, it would make a major change: WinFS, the new Windows storage subsystem, would ship sometime after Longhorn, so it was no longer part of the product. Even more dramatically, Microsoft would make the other two major Longhorn technological pillars, the Avalon presentation layer and the Indigo communications system, available to users running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

“Allowing developers worldwide to target this existing installed base will create huge new opportunities for them and enable exciting new experiences for hundreds of millions of PC users,” Allchin explained. But left unsaid was a shocking reality from which the Windows team was still reeling: Longhorn as originally envisioned would not come to market and Microsoft had “reset” development of the product using Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) as its new base.

“We will not cut corners on product excellence,” Mr. Allchin’s email continued. “Our powerful vision is intact; our shipment plan changes will let customers get access to parts of the vision faster. With the decisions we are announcing today, I believe we are on a strong path forward to deliver an awesome Longhorn product that will provide incredible value to our customers, partners, developers, and shareholders.”

As one of the few people at Microsoft who fully understood the problems with Longhorn, it's unlikely Allchin believed this. But what choice did he have? All Microsoft could do was start over and take ownership of its problems. And knowing that the Allchin email would leak, Microsoft took the additional step of publicly announcing the changes, again without mentioning that it had, in fact, scrapped all of its previous work and started over.

"We’ve heard loud and clear from customers that they want improved productivity, easier deployment, increased reliability, and enhanced security, as well as the many innovations we’ve been working on,” a quote attributed to Mr. Allchin reads. “We’ve had to make some trade-offs to deliver the features corporate customers, consumers, and OEMs are asking for in a reasonable time frame. Our long-term vision for the Windows platform remains the same."

The press reacted predictably, noting that Microsoft had originally promised to release Longhorn in 2004. And while Microsoft tried to blame the distraction of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on the delays, few believed that a company of that size couldn’t have advanced both products simultaneously.

But this led to some tense moments during a news cycle in which Microsoft was trying to spin the delay as a positive. For starters, some critics began referring to the product as “Shorthorn.”

And when CNET suggested, correctly, that Microsoft would have “rewrite” Longhorn, B...