John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Microsoft Research: Also Fumbling the Future

Success, as the old adage claims, has many fathers–even Apple’s success, much as CEO Steve Jobs would like to think otherwise. So it’s interesting to hear that among the progenitors of Apple’s current renown is Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft Research.

Speaking at Microsoft’s (MSFT) Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles today, Rashid talked up his Apple (AAPL) street cred, reminding attendees that he helped develop Mach, the operating system microkernel that’s now the foundation of Mac OS X. “If you use a Macintosh or an iPhone, which honestly, I would not recommend, you would be using code that I wrote more than 25 years ago,” Rashid said. “If you’d asked me 25 years ago if I thought code I was [writing would be] running today on a cellphone, my reaction would have been, ‘What’s a cellphone?’ It just shows you things really do survive and get used in interesting ways.”

Used in interesting ways in Apple products, anyway. Just ask PARC.

[Image Credit: Someecards]


comments so far. Add yours.

  • http://allthingsd.com/ Eric Welch

    Honestly he would not recommend?

    Yeah, why use something that just works, when you can get stuff that requires constant monitoring? Vast amounts of processor cycles to protect and clean up predatory attacks from virus makers and malware vendors, who would not exist today if it weren’t for the massive security flaws in Windows intentionally left wide open? (Don’t forget, Microsoft bought one malware vendor (Gator) and then their anti-malware software refused to detect the offending software.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

I think going public today is almost like a Bataan death march. I think Wall Street — this will insult many people — but I think in many ways it bears a resemblance to organized crime. It is legal today what they do, but what they do is manifestly unfair.

— Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, in conversation with Bloomberg Television’s Margaret Brennan