Loved

Introduction: My Story

Getting Flamed by Bill Gates

When Blue walked through my door, I knew it couldn't be good. The only other time the Word Business Unit manager sat down in my office was back when he was doing his whistle-stop get-to-know-you tour. He got right to the point.

“I just got an email from Bill Gates. It said, ‘Word for Mac is depressing Microsoft's stock price. Fix it.’ So, I'm here to ask, what are we doing?”

I was a young product manager for Word for the Mac, and it was the first time I'd been trusted with a major product. A few months earlier, the newest version of Word for Windows released, delivering against a strategic plan that was years in the making. Up to that point, the Windows and Mac versions had different code bases, features, and release cycles. This new version used a single code base for both, meaning for the first time, the two would have the same features and ship simultaneously.

But the Mac version was late—very late. Each day it slipped past the Windows release was viewed as a public failure. We rushed to get the product done, deciding its new features were worth a hit in the product's performance.

Mac users HATED it. It was so slow that in their eyes it felt barely usable. And they missed their more Mac-centric features.

Back then, Word and Excel were the most significant productivity products on the Mac. Apple was a beleaguered company, and if Word didn't work well, there was real fear in the Mac community that it could be the death knell ...