Ballmer Says Microsoft Wasted Time On Vista

Stoobalou writes "In a chat with fellow CEOs at Microsoft's 14th annual CEO Summit, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer came close to admitting Vista was a dog. 'How do you get your product right? How do you help the customer? How do you be patient?' he asked, as if he knew the answer. What he did know was that Microsoft spent too many years building Windows Vista. 'We tried too big a task and in the process wound up losing thousands of man hours of innovation,' he said." You can also watch video of the speech, but 31 minutes of Ballmer is a lot of Ballmer.

Comments

Re:"Man Hours of Innovation"? Ha.

[Allicorn]

Boy that word sure doesn't mean jackshit when it just gets thrown around and abused like that, huh? Like watching the word 'fuck' get detoothed in Scorsese's Goodfellas, there's this sort of desensitization toward 'innovation' that leaves me confused as to how I should describe people like Tesla, Turing and Shannon

"Fucking innovative".

"31 minutes of Ballmer is a lot of Ballmer"

[Vinegar Joe]

Way too much Ballmer, I'd say.

Re:"31 minutes of Ballmer is a lot of Ballmer"

[Anonymous Coward]

Way too much Ballmer, I'd say.

 
Thank you for your valuable contribution to this thread. Couldn't you have at least tried to add something worth pondering, like:
 
"That much Ballmer makes my eyes bleed."
"That much Ballmer makes my ass bleed"
"That much Ballmer sours the milk and makes crops fail across the midwest."
 
Christ, or even just,
"How did Ballmer stop eating live kittens long enough to do a 31 minute interview?"

Re:"31 minutes of Ballmer is a lot of Ballmer"

[William Robinson]

Way too much Ballmer, I'd say.

I agree.

Whenever we had Vista meetings, Ballmer would start throwing paperweights within first 5 minutes. We used to sit there wearing helmets and bullet-proof jackets. Within 10 minutes he would start throwing chairs no matter what is being discussed about. 15 minutes and he would start monkey dance, and we used to run out of room.

It was worst than meetings with Bill Gates. Bill used to release mosquitoes, cockroaches, rats and monkeys in meeting room. But it was never that scary.

Its not just Microsoft

[rolfc]

I have wasted a lot of time on Vista as well.

How do you be patient?

[Alien1024]

How do you be patient?

I can has patience? I had a patience but grammar eated it.

Re:Microsoft is still way behind

[Thanshin]

windows 7 is nice, but the cool things now are cell phones and tablets. for that you need a mobile OS with a footprint of under 1GB.

Or a bigger phone.

Like, sleve sized, phone.

A one foot wide phone, attached to your arm. running W7.

Carefully directing the exhaust from the cooling system, it could double as a jet pack.

How do you get your product right?

[oldmeddler]

Maybe Ballmer should ask Mark Shuttleworth.

Watching Balmer

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to install moonlight to watch Ballmer.

I find myself needing to "install" some moonshine before I can handle watching Ballmer.

Re:Thanks for the insight, Ballmer

[VGPowerlord]

He's feeding it Raid of course!

Re:Change for the sake of change

[Chowderbags]

You forgot ME... I envy you for that.

Re:Microsoft is still way behind

[Bemopolis]

A Microsoft jetpack. Oh that sounds like a GREAT idea.

"Where do you want to go today?" "Let's cut out the middleman and go straight to the emergency room."

Re:Microsoft is still way behind

[AltairDusk]

Now that's taking the BSOD to its literal conclusion.

Re:way to understate a quantity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except these weren't normal man hours, these were the innovative ones. Not that anyone at Microsoft understand what that word means anymore.