Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft, J Allard, has spat the dummy over the decision to kill off the company’s table prototype, with speculation mounting that he will quit the company for good.
The man who helped develop the XBox 360 and the Zune MP3 player, is believed to have gone on “sabbatical” with insiders saying that he “may never come back”.
According to sources, Allard was upset that the tablet code named “Courier” never made it to market with senior Microsoft management concerned about not only the prototype, but competing with partners like HP who at the time was working with Microsoft to deliver a new Slate designed to take on the Apple iPad.
Earlier this month HP drop their Windows based Slate in favour of a Palm developed prototype thqat will run WebOS.
ZDNet claimed that their may have been a personal disagreement between Allard and CEO Steve Ballmer over the potential for success of the Courier prototype.
Officially, Microsoft hasn’t confirmed the departure and still lists Allard as an employee, but corporate gaming and Xbox VP Todd Holmdahl may have had his role changed to cover startup projects.
An exit would be a significant loss for Microsoft, which has seen much of its recognizable talent either retire or jump ship to major competitors like Google. Allard is known for having turned the Xbox from a tentative project at Microsoft into a close competitor of Nintendo and Sony. Courier would have been unique in the tablet world but may have sparked rivalry in other teams who wanted their software to succeed.
“Allard was a key guy on Xbox and organizationally he was set up to drive innovations like Courier,” an anonymous insider said. “He was one of the few there that really was willing to think outside the box and has people working on top secret projects off the main campus… He was regarded as being a bit (Apple CEO Steve) Jobs like in that he understood the importance of design, not just function. Hence if he departs Microsoft would lose an important design advocate and innovator.”
