Comments on: Spolsky's Review

By: Alec

Alec — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 15:53:08 +0000

I remember the clash well, and I can imagine the struggle to hold onto the WebTV identity must have been extraordinarily difficult.

By: Steve Perlman

Steve Perlman — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 13:23:36 +0000

Thanks, Alec. It certainly was quite a while ago, (in fact we have the WebTV 10-year reunion next weekend). In any case, it is definitely the case that it took time for WebTV to get integrated into Microsoft system, including the 3YO planning. It was an enormous culture clash: small, from-the-hip start-up to large, carefully-planned corporation, and also from Redmond, WA to Silicon Valley, CA. It took some give-and-take on both sides. Sometimes it was serious business matters like the 3YO (which WebTV adopted once we learned it), other times it was purely cultural, like pets on the Silicon Valley campus (which Microsoft allowed, even though pets weren't allowed in Redmond).

By: Alec

Alec — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 06:37:43 +0000

Hey Steve, thanks for dropping by. I've altered the piece. The distant past is the distant past, and while I was confident of the facts when I wrote it, it's also possible that I've confused the paper throwing incident with another group's review.

By: Steve Perlman

Steve Perlman — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 04:48:45 +0000

I'm afraid that the events described here were so legendary that they never occurred. billg (and steveb) would certainly voice their opinions directly, but they never tore up pages and threw them at people… or at least not at us. They could be colorful in their antics (especially steveb), but I always found them (and Paul Maritz) to treat top technical talent with a great deal of respect. The co-founder of WebTV you mention here is Phil Goldman, not Phil Goldstein. Among many other things, Phil co-developed Multifinder (the Mac OS of that era), and he wrote the operating system for WebTV from scratch. It cold-booted in less than 10 seconds with only 2 MB of RAM and 2 MB of ROM to work with on 112 MHz MIPS CPU. Sadly, Phil passed away a couple of years ago at age 39. Sorry to be prickly about what I otherwise wouldn't mind leaving posted as an amusing tale, but it matters to me that Phil's legacy remains unaltered.

By: Alec

Alec — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 16:05:31 +0000

Yes it was, wasn't it? Nice to hear from you Shannon!

By: Shannon P

Shannon P — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:50:42 +0000

Alec – that WebTV presentation was rather legendary among the Billg reviews. That's why we worked so hard on the Windows 3 year reviews so you could walk out of there in one piece. Lions indeed.