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Ballmer Pleads For Openness To Compete With Apple
mjasay writes "At the Mobile World Congress, Steve Ballmer took aim at Apple's closed iPhone ecosystem with an ironic plea for openness: 'Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice.' Ballmer has apparently forgotten his company's own efforts to vertically integrate hardware and software (Zune, XBox), its history of vertically integrating software (tying SharePoint into Office, IE, SQL Server, Active Directory, etc.), as well as years of illegally tying Windows to Internet Explorer that only the US Justice Department could undo. Indeed, Microsoft's effect on the browser market has pushed Mozilla to get involved in a recent European Commission action against the software giant, with Mozilla's Mitchell Baker recently declaring that 'A number of illegal activities were also involved in creating IE's market dominance,' now requiring government intervention to open up the browser market to fair competition. Putting aside Microsoft's own tainted reputation in the field of openness, is Ballmer right? Should Apple open up its iPhone platform to outside competition, both in terms of hardware and software?"
Yeah, open like a venus flytrap
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Microsoft is not asking for source code here. They just want to be able to publish applications for that platform. In fact, they are not asking for anything more on that platform then they permit for Windows or the Xbox.
Microsoft might not let you have the raw source code for the Windows OS. But they will happily hand you and SDK and a compiler and let you develop on it. They also do not care if you make boatloads of cash on the platform, as long as your a licensed developer. The same applies to the Xbox, even though the platform is more expensive to get a license for.
All they are advocating is that Apple let more developers publish software for the iPhone platform.
END COMMUNICATION
He says that with Windows Mobile you got a lot of choice. In a way, he is right, there are more phones with Windows Mobile so you can choose between more phones then with the iPhone which has just one model.
Of course in reality you can't choose at all. You get the OS that the phone maker slammed onto the phone with the restrictions your carrier applied. Freedom? Not in the eyes of the consumer BUT it is freedom in Ballmers very unique world view and since he makes more money he gotta be right, right?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Putting aside Microsoft's own tainted reputation in the field of openness, is Ballmer right?
Two points.
Firstly, this is Slashdot. The chances of anyone putting aside Microsoft's past behaviour in a discussion of that same kind of behaviour, approaches zero. When that discussion was started by Microsoft, it is zero.
Secondly, even TFA spends more time slagging Microsoft for past behaviour than it does discussing what Ballmer has said. The disingenous suggestion that we're then going to discuss the statement from Ballmer on its own merits, isn't even a facade, it's a joke.
This isn't news, but it isn't even slashdot's usual one sided attack. This is a one sided attack pretending to be a serious discussion, and it's pretending so badly that it's frankly embarassing.
They introduced the iPod in an existing market and now pretty much dominate that market. Not because the iPod is very good, but because the competition sucked. And still sucks.
Now they have entered the smartphone market. And, once again, they immediately grabbed a sizable piece of the market. Is it because the iPhone is so wonderful? No, again, it is because the competition sucks. Windows Mobile is a steaming pile, Symbian has more problems than it solves and Android, well, let's wait and see, but initial reports doesn't look all that great.
Remember, succes in the consumer market is never decided on technical merit. It is about usability, interface and perception. Apple really stands out in those areas.
Single battle? Perhaps. But the opposition doesn't seem to be able to conjure up some heavy artillery, so the war might be as well declared "won".
you're kidding, right? MS is only in the position they're in because they can threaten OEMs with a loss if the MS discount if they break exclusivity. Ballmer is just pissed because he can't use the same tactics, and can't make a decent phone either.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
From the *summary* (for [insert deity]'s sake man, at least read the *summary*) of the 'most ungreen companies ever' link you gave above:
... they wouldn't be able to claim it, unless they had some justification for it. From what I read, Greenpeace don't really care about what you *do* these days, they care about what you *promise* to do in the future, and how much you pay them to be quiet. They're a form of eco-terrorists, and eventually they'll get theirs...
As for Darwin, it seems pretty open to me.
Physicists get Hadrons!
His statement is the definition of hypocritical. They are complaining that Apple is doing what they have done/are still doing now. Take for example the Zune. Who controls the Zune? Who controls the Zune marketplace? Can Microsoft's PlaysForSure partners use the Zune Marketplace? Can Zune customers use Linux or OS X?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So now, corporate managers had a PC that was blessed by IBM. They started to buy them. And, as they did, those damn users kept demanding them. So the sheep^HIT managers bought more. By the time Apple introduced the Mac, the PC already had a huge lead because of this tremendous IBM lock in. And when the Mac was introduced, I was working for a company that was developing a PBX controller based on Mac technology. But when we took it to our first prospects, their overwhelming response was "You're not going to run it on that toy, are you?". Since we needed multi-tasking, which DOS didn't offer at the time, we had to build a complete user interface on top of SCO Unix. Then the question we got was "Does it run Lotus 1-2-3?".
Time passed, and the demand for personal computers exploded. (I remember Sir Terry Mathews, billionaire owner of, at various times, Mitel, Newbridge, and March Networks, sneering at it, saying "What executive would want one of those on his desk?" - probably one of the few errors he made in his career.) But again, as the majority of IT managers would only authorise IBM PC's, DOS kept growing. Even when the PC clones arrived, it was a hard sell to IT managers, who were still told by their IBM account reps that connecting clones could bring down their whole network.
Of course, in industries that didn't have massive networks (K-12, arts, advertising, etc.), the Mac did quite well. But when you compare that market to the much larger banking, finance, manufacturing, health care, and government markets - M$ built a huge lead. And that was because they piggybacked on the IBM connection, NOT BECAUSE they were superior.
Here endeth the lesson.
What was once true, is no longer so
As you point out, MS attack open markets and do everything they can to close them up.
The mobile phone and portable media player markets are far less screwed up than the PC market, Apple are just one of many and there are already far more open competitors doing perfectly well.
Microsoft attacks open markets since they allow competitors to Microsoft dominance. However, when Microsoft are NOT the dominant player then they have a habit of encouraging openness, so that they can have a chance to obtain that dominance.
Just look at Microsoft Office. The dominant player was Lotus, and Microsoft campaigned for openness (with RichText being the open format). Lotus went along with it, but then Microsoft made Word's RichText output unopenable in Lotus (whilst still supporting the open version of RichText which Lotus outputted). This made Word look like a better choice, and when it gained dominance in came the series of completely closed Word document formats.
This is the same thing, Microsoft want openness from the likes of Symbian, Apple, Google, etc., which they'll follow with their "extensions", then they'll lock the whole thing up just like Apple's done. As far as users are concerned, this would be the same as the current situation, the only difference would be which company has control.
People can install whatever O/S they want on their PC, but they still need to pay the MS tax, don't they? I never use Windows at work, I put Linux on my PC there as soon as I got it. Yet my workplace payed for *two* licences : the Vista licence it came with when ordered, and the XP site licence.
Other example : we wanted to buy a MSI wind for travel. However the Linux version, while theoretically available, was offered but with no ETA. We got the XP version and promptly put Linux on it. If it sounds like the 20th century, it is. Pretty much the only real way not to pay the MS tax is to buy a Mac or components for a self-build PC.
That is not success, that is extortion, and that is the hallmark of a monopoly still not under control.
Do your own research then. Many of us were alive and kicking and involved with the industry at that time.
Parent is correct on all counts, although he should have mentioned Microsoft was started with code purchased from others, not from code they created. Since then it's been mostly a law-based organization who happens to also create software, not the other way around.
So it's especially ironic that a company convicted of monopolism and illegally typing software components together to stifle innovation is now trying to claim that open standards are the way to go.
For goodness' sake, even SMB had to be reverse engineered!
"Remember, succes in the consumer market is never decided on technical merit. It is about usability, interface and perception" Usability is a technical merit, the one that matters most!