Early years Allchin was born in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1951. His father originally worked as a warehouse worker. While he was still an infant, the Allchin family moved to
Keysville, Florida, where his parents worked on a citrus farm. Allchin grew up in a tin-roof house built by his father. When he and his brother Keith were children, they earned by hoeing weeds on the farm's orange orchard. As a child, he spent some of his free time learning music. Allchin first began playing the trumpet but later switched to the guitar. Neither of his parents attended college, but his father had a natural talent for math and would perform business calculations off the top of his head. While pursuing his PhD in Computer Science at
Georgia Institute of Technology in the early eighties, he was the primary architect of the Clouds distributed
object-oriented operating system; his PhD thesis was entitled "An Architecture for Reliable Decentralized Systems". In 1983, Allchin was recruited to
Banyan by founder Dave Mahoney, eventually being Senior Vice President and
Chief Technology Officer. During his seven years at Banyan, he created the
VINES distributed operating system, which included the StreetTalk directory protocol as well as a series of network services based on the
Xerox XNS stack.
Bill Gates tried to recruit a reluctant Allchin to join Microsoft for a year, yet successfully convinced him to join in 1990. Gates told him that whatever he created would have a wider customer base through Microsoft than anyone else. Allchin is also known for
debugging systems remotely by having the person on the phone toggle in hexadecimal via front panel switches of early computers to correct problems.
Microsoft Initially, Gates put Allchin in charge of revamping
LAN Manager, using his networking expertise. However, Allchin scrapped the project, citing the need to start fresh. Allchin's first high-profile project at Microsoft was the
Cairo technology, which was intended to add on to
Windows NT to create the next version of the operating system. At the NT Developer Conference in July 1992, Allchin gave a presentation about the future Microsoft operating system. One of the main goals for Cairo was the ability for users to locate files based on their content as opposed to their name. Users would also have access to files stored on other machines on a network as easily as they had access to files on their own hard drives. Cairo was scheduled to ship as a single package in 1994. After several delays, it was finally released in pieces; the technology was shipped in successive operating system releases. In 1999, Microsoft re-organized its corporate structure. The Consumer Division, which maintained versions of Windows for home users and the Business & Enterprise Division, which maintained Windows NT, were combined into a single operating system division: the Platform Group. Allchin became the vice president of the new combined group. This promotion put him in charge of the development of both the home and business versions of Windows. With the release of Windows XP in 2001, both business and client versions of the operating system utilized the same code base. The server business grew substantially during this period of time. Allchin fostered an environment of transparency in the Windows division, with the company providing the public with regular updates on the development process. Allchin was diagnosed with cancer in late 2002 and took a leave of absence for part of 2003. He recovered from the illness, which changed his perspective on life. He decided at that time to retire from Microsoft, although Gates suggested that Allchin stay with the company for a while longer. On September 20, 2005, Microsoft announced that Allchin would become co-president of a new Platform Products and Services Group, which combined the old Platform Group, Server and Tools Group, and the MSN Group. Microsoft also announced that Allchin would retire after
Windows Vista shipped, leaving Kevin Johnson as the president. Allchin was a member of the Senior Leadership Team at Microsoft – a small group responsible for developing Microsoft's core direction along with
Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. He was claimed to be blunt, technical, and "straightforward." Bill Gates complimented him: According to exhibits filed in 2006 by the plaintiff in the case of
Comes v. Microsoft, Allchin wrote a memo to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in January 2004, one which was critical of Microsoft and Longhorn. The letter said that Gates and Ballmer had lost their way and compared them to
Apple who he believed had not. Allchin was also critical of Microsoft relaxing its requirements for computers to carry the 'Vista Capable' badge. The seal, designed to inform customers of a computer's ability to run the Windows Vista operating system, was not initially intended for computers running Intel's 915 chipset. This was overturned, however, after Intel voiced their dissatisfaction with the decision. In an email to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Allchin wrote:
Controversies Running the most profitable product areas within Microsoft caused Allchin to be involved in many controversies and disputes along with his business and technical leadership responsibilities.
Brad Silverberg, the Microsoft executive who had been responsible for Windows 95, emailed several people in Microsoft September 27, 1991: Jim Allchin replied: During the
United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial, emails sent by Allchin to other Microsoft executives were considered as an evidence by the government lawyers to back up their claim that the integration of
Internet Explorer and Windows had more to do with their competition with
Netscape Communications Corporation than innovation. In August 1998, Allchin asked an engineer named Vinod Valloppillil to analyse the
open source movement and the
Linux operating system. Valloppillil wrote two memos which were intended for Senior Vice-President
Paul Maritz, who was the most senior executive at that time after Bill Gates and
Steve Ballmer. Both memos were leaked and popularly known as the
Halloween documents. a video-taped demonstration created by Microsoft attorneys, which supposedly illustrated Allchin's points, was shown to be misleading.
Post-Microsoft career After leaving Microsoft, Allchin devotes his time to music, technology, and philanthropy. He released his first album,
Enigma, in 2009 calling the album a beta test. Then in September 2011, Allchin released his first widely distributed blues-themed album:
Overclocked. The album
Q.E.D. was released in September 2013 and
Decisions followed in June 2017.
Prime Blues, his latest album, was released in September 2018.
Overclocked,
Q.E.D., and
Decisions all received widespread acclaim especially for Allchin's guitar work.
Overclocked,
Q.E.D., and
Decisions were featured on iTunes as New and Noteworthy and all reached in the top 10 on Internet Blues Radio.
Decisions was the No. 1 Blues Album in Washington State for 18 weeks starting in June 2017. And
Decisions was in the 10 top Blues Rock albums nationally for 14 weeks.
Prime Blues remained in the top 10 Blues Albums on the national Roots Music charts for 18 straight weeks, staying in the number 1 position for 2 weeks.
Prime Blues was the number 1 Contemporary Blues Album nationally for 11 weeks. ==Bibliography==