While reading Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs, I came across an e-mail excerpt (full version here) sent by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates the night Apple announced the iTunes Music Store. I have edited for conciseness:

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wed 4/30/2003 10:46 PM
To: Amir Ma3~dimehr; Dave ~ester
Cc: Will Poole; Christopher Payne; Yusuf Mehdi; David Cole; Hank Vigll
Subject: Apple’s Jobs again.., and time to have a great Windows download service…

[…] I am not saying this strangeness means we messed up - at least if we did so did Real and Pressplay and Musicnet and basically everyone else.

Now that Jobs has done it we need to move fast to get somethlng where the UI and Rights are as good.

I am not sure whether we should do this through one of these JVs or not, I am not sure what the problems are.

However I think we need some plan to prove that even though Jobs has us a bit flat footed again we move quick and both match and do stuff better. […]

This e-mail reminds me of the WWDC 2004 banners proclaiming “Redmond, start your photocopiers.” It’s nice to see Bill realize they missed the boat, and that they need to catch up, but where is the drive to push out a service that beats Apple’s latest offering? Phrases like “we need to move fast to get somethlng where the UI and Rights are as good” only reaffirm that Microsoft—at that time—was still content with mimicking rather than rethinking.