In the most recent Hardcore Software substack post, I shared the "turning point" for learning how to ship software. It was a memo/presentation based on the work of Excel 5 that shipped 11 days late. Let's look at the first "massive" project to ship on exactly time, Office XP. 1/
2/ First a quick excerpt from hardcoresoftware.substack.com. This is the memo from 1990 on Shipping Software, written by the development manager for Excel (Microsoft legend Chris Peters). Cool Stuff.
3/ The key lesson is the most obvious which is actually having a ship date. It is amazing how many projects have dates that are "1st quarter" or "1st half". That's 90 or 180 dates. Second lesson, shipping is everything. It's all that matters.
4/ This all seems so obvious especially in hindsight. But even to this day, software projects always seem to be late or "behind schedule".
Then along came Office XP (codename Office11). We picked the poetic ship date of March 2, 2001 or 3-2-1. Rockets adorned the whole project.
5/ Today talking about these projects is sort of surreal. The scale and complexity of building such a "bare metal" project is unfamiliar. It was a team of about 25 million lines of code (not all new, but all written by us) and about 300 engineers, 500 total. For 20 months.
6/ Office XP was the release that retired Clippy. It was very sad. We did a press release and he went on a retirement tour, stopping in SF.
7/ When we finished it was called "RTM" release to manufacturing, because it was, well released to a manufacturing plant to make DVDs and boxes. We had a "golden master" disc sent to Japan for duplication. There was a bill of materials that we ceremonially signed off on.
8/ There was a big party. In Hardcore Software I mentioned the fountains. Many took turns being thrown in the fountain. Each year the waterproof protection I wore increased. Prior to that party each componnent of the 25M lines signed off and we filmed it.
(that video is really embarrassing) 9/ We did a launch when the product was actually available (when it was done being put in boxes). Bill Gates hosted that party. A special guest joined Bill on stage—a guy who ran an online book store in Seattle. 20 years ago this week. // END
PS/ There's a history to the name Office XP. Windows wanted it to be unique to Windows. Microsoft wanted a Windows and Office that "matched". Also we didn't know what the next one would be called, XP²? Also Windows XP in 8/2001 was mostly on time too! A first (!)
TYPO, not Excel 5, but Excel 3. Excel 5 was late because of the Mac :-)
PPS/ Office “10” not Office “11”. I have this all in a giant spreadsheet. You’d think I could read it.
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Just before then Excel for Windows shipped in 1987—the first Windows version. Some fun Excel background 1/
2/ Excel for Mac shipped in 1985 and received very strong reviews and was quite successful. Between Mac Excel and Mac Word, Microsoft “Applications” had grown to be the leading Mac vendor and also about half of Microsoft!
3/ Windows Excel was built by creating a cross-platform layer (what it was called in code) enabling Windows and Mac to share the core engine for calculation/charting/etc. But it still needed Windows...but no one had Windows.
I ordered 4 accent pillows from a well-known home furnishings store. They shipped them in 8 packages. Each pillow ships individually and separately from cover. I received one today—the box that would easily fit all 4 pillows.
Gonna take me 3 weeks to recycle all the cardboard.
Update on my shipment. Part 2 of 8 scheduled to arrive today. But wait, what will arrive?
2/ Just finished a "blow out" year for PC sales, at 275 million. Sounds huge from a growth perspective, but that still doesn't approach estimates of 450 million or more from a decade ago.
3/ The underlying shift that started in 2010--towards low power, high reliability, "sealed case", app store, connected to phones, WWAN, and more computers epitomized by the iPad -- remains in full swing.
2/ Hardcore Software is my first-person account of Microsoft events from pre-Windows 3 through the rise of Office, building a new Windows, and disruption. Along the way came the internet, pivot to enterprise, antitrust trial, product quality crises, reorgs, Apple, …much more.
3/ My substack is a serialization of a book, or two, I wrote. I realized in working with a traditional publisher that I could tell a much better story for many more people by using Substack. So that’s what I chose to do. Here’s why:
Today is the 13th anniversary iPhone announcement—easily one of the greatest launch events and moments of technology change in history. What was the "world" like at the time? When something changes the world so much it seems obvious in hindsight. That was not at all the case. 1/
2/ First, Apple itself was on a bit of a rebound with the iPod and iMac. But that only made Apple part of culture and healthy, but still a fringe player in computing. In all 2006 Apple sold about 5M Macs, which was strong for them but not compared to 235M PCs (98%share).
3/ Apple in the midst of the "Get a Mac" advertising campaign. That’s the "I’m a Mac" and "I’m a PC". These ads were brilliantly executed and brutal relative to Microsoft. These really hit where it hurt the most. So much we had endless fights over if they were true. They were.
Here's an interesting (to me) graph. The grey line are unit sales of all "personal computers" starting in 1981 (IBM PC, Apple, Tandy, Sinclair, and more). 1981=35,000 units WW.
What is the related sold blue line that is a much nicer exponential curve?
The solid blue are internet hosts. People have a lot of difficulty understanding exponential growth. Few understood the implications of "every desktop and every home".
And even many of those people didn't understand "...connected to the internet."
3/ A few have asked about what I counted. Prior to NAT (home internet addresses like 192.168...) every computer connected to the "internet" over tcp/IP had an address that had to be allocated and maintained. That was easy to measure. Here is the source. tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1296