Farewell MacBU, Entourage. Hello MSN Search Toolbar!

5 years sure goes by fast - now it’s time for a change,
and change is good.

Alright, enough cliches.

It is with sincere regret that I
announce that I am no longer with the MacBU. My last day was Monday.

In my 5 (well, 4.9) years at the MacBU at Microsoft, I
helped ship a whole lot of products:

• Microsoft Entourage 2001 for Mac

• Microsoft Entourage X for Mac

• MSN for Mac

• Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac

• Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 for Mac

• PST Import Tool for Entourage 2004.

• Microsoft Entourage 2004 SP 2 for Mac (coming this
  year!)

I joined the MacBU right out of college, as a die hard
Mac fan. At first I was skeptical, figuring that the MacBU was part of some
secret Microsoft ploy to keep Apple down by… uh… producing bad software. Of
course, a lot of those feelings were after the infamous Word 6.0 days, so
looking back that is understandable - and to this day there are still many
Microsoft employees who are apologetic about the Word 6.0 fiasco. In fact, it is
because of the Word 6.0 experience that the MacBU was created! But enough trivia
for today.

Going back to my point, after joining the MacBU and
having been here for 5 years, it is quite obvious that there is no development
team more passionate and more dedicated to the Mac OS X platform outside of
Apple. These are people who truly want to produce great software for the Mac,
and do it with a fraction of the resources of Office for Windows . I am
exceptionally proud of the products we have shipped to date, and I have no
doubts that the products will continue to rock. As an example of Microsoft’s
continued commitment to meeting the business needs of Mac customers, check out
Entourage 2004 SP 2 ships later this year. That was the last thing I worked on before leaving, and I know it’s going delight Mac customers in Exchange environments.

Looking back at those 5 years, there sure were lots of
ups and downs. One major up was the fact that I never had to buy any Macs after
graduating because the MacBU made sure I had some great machines. One major down
was getting Mac OS X 10.0.0 - wow remember those days? And all those posts on
the various rumor sites speculating that it was because Apple had left in
debugging code? I must say, Tiger is pretty darn impressive - and just imagine
if that’s what they had shipped all the way back then (heck, or even Panther!).
Through the various WWDCs and MacWorld Expos that I attended (2 San Jose WWDCs,
2 San Francisco WWDCs, 6 MacWorld SF’s, 2 MacWorld NY’s) I made a lot of great
friends in the Mac community - Apple and elsewhere. And the level of customer
interaction that the MacBU afforded me enabled to meet many of you at demos
across the nation.

Without a doubt, it’s been a great 5 years.

So… why now? What’s going on? Why am I leaving, and
where am I going?

Today is my first day at my new job as a Program Manager
at MSN Search on the
MSN Search Toolbar. At Microsoft, changing
jobs is actually a fairly frequent event - so this isn’t exactly the first time
someone has done something like this before. That said, a lot of people do
associate me with Entourage - especially if you knew the volume of Entourage
support questions I get in my inbox! [BTW, a great resource for
Entourage-related questions is the EntourageTalk mailing list:

Entourage-Talk-On@lists.letterrip.com]. After 5 years, I thought I’d try
something new, something different - and something that’s still in Silicon
Valley. The folks at MSN Search Toolbar have the same level of commitment and
excitement  that I expect, and so I’m going to give this a try.
Fear not for the fate of Entourage and the MacBU - I am sure that innovative,
compelling, quality products will continue to ship. And if not, I’ll be sure to
let my roommate know — he’s a Program Manager on Entourage.