First off I just want to say: like Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web I think it is refreshing to see upper management types at Microsoft getting enough confidence and backbone to do some real smack talking.

I am of course talking about the statement made by Michael Turner at the Worldwide Partners Conference were he said:

“It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their [Apple’s] Vista, and I’m okay with that.”

Of course the typical reaction by the Apple heavy tech blogosphere has been one of condescension and smack talk of their own. Alex is one of the few who has come out and basically said right on Microsoft:

What Microsoft will do to smooth this over remains to be seen, but it is refreshing to see Redmond talk some smack against Cupertino. I mean, this is some backbone at long last.

First off though I don’t want to have Microsoft try an smooth anything over. Let the statement stand as is – there is nothing wrong with it.

More interestingly though is that is one of the first times that I have seen any of the Microsoft management team publicly acknowledge in this way that yes Vista was a turning point for the company, which really is what this statement is saying.

Every company needs a wake-up call at some point. Apple’s just might be the iPhone 4 and their belief that design will always trump engineering. The whole iPhone mess might be a bump in Apple’s roadmap but they will recover from it.

Vista was Microsoft’s and until this statement they pretty did their best to sidestep that bump without having to admit to it. So it is nice to see that; at least to some degree, the company is willing to face up to what went wrong and now go about and fix it.

Not to mention the fact that some good smack talk never hurt anyone.

[Editor’s Note: What people are missing about the “Apple’s Vista moment” comment is a post from: winextra. No movie quotes or archetypes were hurt in the making of this blog post. –mrh]