Ballmer Turns To Geeks For Salvation

jfruhlinger writes "One of the critiques of Steve Ballmer as Microsoft CEO is that, as someone who came up through sales, he doesn't really get what running an innovative tech company is about. With the company board starting to question his performance — he didn't get his bonus last year because of the Kin debacle, for instance — it appears that Ballmer is planning to install engineers in high places to turn the company around."

Comments

It sounds like...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hello! This is the captain of the Titanic.. do we have any iceberg engineers on-board?"

Re:It sounds like...

[click2005]

Shouldn't that be deckchair engineers?

Re:It sounds like...

[Cronock]

Ballmer is the iceberg.
The company flopped years ago, but has been burning through everything they have trying to keep itself afloat.
Patch the hole, ditch Ballmer. Get a real leader. Profit (again).

Re:lolwut?

[Luthwyhn]

Developers, developers, developers, developers!

This won't work

[watanabe]

Microsoft is dominated by high-end market-consuming business strategists at the top. Bill could do both; Ozzie stepped down because he couldn't replace Bill in that role. There's just no way that there's an internal tech person with the force of will to push the business guys around and all he or she needed was Ballmer's okay to make more impact.

Much less five of these folks. I just don't see it -- in my opinion, Microsoft needs to acknowledge it's becoming IBM, and move on gracefully to another stage in its corporate development.

Re:This won't work

[h4rm0ny]

There's just no way that there's an internal tech person with the force of will to push the business guys around and all he or she needed was Ballmer's okay to make more impact.

Why not? If the head guy says: "invite this engineer guy into your strategy meetings" when he wasn't otherwise, that's a potentially very good thing.

Re:This won't work

[Skuld-Chan]

Except its largely what google does right now (they have a lot of engineers working in management) - which is what I think this change comes from.

Any business who's tried to setup a contract with google knows what I'm talking about - they are a much harder company to interface with than Microsoft.

Re:This won't work

[LWATCDR]

I think they could turn it around if they where willing to be humble. That will be the problem can the suits give the geeks the respect they need to get good products.
Windows Phone 7 is a disaster at this point in time. If it had come out when the iPhone one hit the market they would have had a chance but it is behind in features.
1. No cut and paste. "releasing it to developers doesn't count. It will count when customers have it".
2. Less multitasking than the iPhone.
And The excuse that it is a now OS really does ring hollow... Windows Phone 7! it isn't Windows Phone 1. Microsoft has been in the market for around a decade folks.
Then you have the marketing side. I am really into tech and I know next to nothing about Windows Phone 7.
Does it have seamless integration with exchange? Better than or equal to Blackberry?
Does it have seamless integration with Hotmail? As good as Gmail is integrated with Android?
Voice commands as good as Android? Hey they seem to work really well with sync which is a Microsoft product.
What about Evernote and Dropbox? Pandora?
What about bar code readers?
What about shopping apps?

I am picking on Windows Phone but it seems to be a big part of the problem. Tablets? Well Microsoft pushed them for years but they failed to catch on. Apple knocked it out of the park.

What they need to do is make a dream product. Be bold and push the limits. They have a big pile of cash still and they better start investing it in some blue sky projects that will just blow peoples socks off.
Or maybe turn the tablet and phone projects over to the XBox team.

Re:This won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Ozzie stepped down because he couldn't replace Bill in that role

Huh? I thought Ozzie finished with Microsoft because they couldn't help him with his mind.

Re:This won't work

[DrgnDancer]

It's rarely that simple in large organizations. The head guy can say "Invite this engineer guy to your meetings", but that in and of itself doesn't mean much. Did you chose a good "engineer guy"? Did you chose someone with a strong will, who is willing to stand up to bunch of alpha male type business people? Did you give the "engineer guy" any teeth? Or just throw him in to "advise" (read: give advice that we will ignore becasue he can't do anything about it)?

Merely putting engineers into senior positions isn't enough if he doesn't pick the right engineers with the right vision; and make sure they have the will and corporate backing to make the vision reality. GP's post simply states that he doesn't think MS has that kind of engineering leadership sitting around waiting to be picked. That may be true, they've bled a lot of visionary engineers over the years. On the other hand they have a ton of money, and (love them or hate them) lots of interesting work going on. If they really went all out to find the right people (ignoring seniority, going out side the company, etc), and then empowered those people to really make decisions, it could work.

Re:This won't work

[Angst Badger]

Microsoft shouldn't even be in the phone market. Or the console game market, or tablets, or web search, or any of this ephemeral consumer crap. If they took all the money, time, and energy they've poured into these tar pits and put it into their core business, we wouldn't have monstrosities like Windows Vista. Ballmer's obsession with competing on every imaginable front is spreading them too thin. Apple and Google know this, and despite a certain propensity for the shotgun approach at Google, both of them know good and well where their core businesses are and act accordingly. Apple isn't even interested in enterprise computing, and Google, for all its prowess in other areas, isn't much of a threat. MS needs to stop looking for blue sky projects and realize that they're a mature company in a mature industry and act accordingly, or someone will eventually eat their lunch.

Re:This won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been that engineer. Turns out they are so fucking brillant, they won't listen to anyone that actually knows what is going on. Then when they fail, as always, they attempt to blame anyone and everyone round them. The end result is rarely any different and the engineer makes no impact.

Simple fact is, most corporate leadership in the us is completely disfunctional. They refuse to learn from their mistakes, and make it a matter of pride to screw everyone around them so as to avoid admitting to themselves they are root problem.

The fatal flaw is, engineers are all too frequently not granted the authority to push their side of the debate and are all too often punished if the are able to document the real source of the fuckup. Made worse is the all too often, engineers originate from the socially broken, and are simply unable to effectively do anything other than engineering.

Its a tough problem, but the easist solution is all too often to ensure no one from marketing or sales have any input whatsoever.

Re:This won't work

[elrous0]

Going from marketing guys to engineers isn't going to help. It's just exchanging one problem for another. It might be better to put in some people with common sense who are beholden to neither side and able to mediate a sensible strategy somewhere between those two extremes.

Re:This won't work

[saider]

Inviting them to meetings and giving them authority over the project (and diluting your own authority) is not going to happen easily, even with orders from above.

It is more than putting some engineering window dressing in the spot. What they need are people who can visualize how the entire system should work. This typically spans various products. This is why Apple is successful. They realize that in order to make the iPhone appealing, they need to have iTunes clients that run a certain way and connect to a large store of data in the iTunes store. Also, Apple is more than happy to have one of their products kill off another. They had no problem letting the iPhone kill the iPod. It is better for your own products to do that then your competitor's.

At Microsoft, you'd have the device engineers, application software guys and the backend store folks all fighting each other to increase their division's profit and relevance. Old established systems would never die and they would also kill any up-and-coming projects that might unseat them by eating all of their resources.

Re:This won't work

[gstoddart]

There's just no way that there's an internal tech person with the force of will to push the business guys around and all he or she needed was Ballmer's okay to make more impact.

"Why not?"

In part because of the sheer number of shares Bill Gates owned.

If you throw around your "force of will" to senior management, and you own a huge chunk of the company, they don't have a choice but to listen. If you're "just some engineer", they'll push back if they don't like what they hear.

In many ways, Microsoft was a bit of a "cult of personality" in terms of running the show -- and that isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as it moves you forward. From the sounds of it, Ballmer didn't know nearly enough about tech to make things happen.

I think it's going to be very difficult to get out of the rut of being a huge megacorp ran by business-types -- those guys don't know how to create shiny new technology. They know how to do a different set of things.

Once you no longer have a tech company being led by technologists, it becomes difficult to get the real work done. I'm sure more than a few people around here have been the ones who make product that goes into the field, but the admin staff walks all over you because they feel their job is more important to the company and you're just the guy in the back room who does the fiddly bits.

When your company is the fiddly bits, losing sight of that can be a bad thing.

Re:This won't work

[MickyTheIdiot]

He wanted to wear a Tron suit and be in a commercial with Justin Beeber.

Re:This won't work

[Drethon]

The problem is while engineers look for the right way to do things, business people look for the low cost way of doing things. Engineer led companies go broke but people love their products while business led companies make money but are roundly hated. (ok, over simplification but still).

Re:This won't work

[kent_eh]

There's just no way that there's an internal tech person with the force of will to push the business guys around and all he or she needed was Ballmer's okay to make more impact.

Why not? If the head guy says: "invite this engineer guy into your strategy meetings" when he wasn't otherwise, that's a potentially very good thing.

Apparently you've never read Dilbert?

Re:This won't work

[SniperJoe]

Sensible? Mediation? In this day and age? Now that's just crazy talk.

Re:This won't work

[h4rr4r]

To "interface" with?

You mean deal with or talk to or what? It sounds like you have some brain damage from being too near business school product.

Re:This won't work

[flappinbooger]

Engineers? How about users.

From all aspects of user-dom. Geeks who want and understand security and power. Grandmas who don't understand the difference between right and left click. Everyone in between.

Free thinkers who might give them ideas so they do what /. says they never do - innovate.

What good will Engineers do? Code-jockeys are idea people now?

this is MS not apple. or google.

Re:This won't work

[mikeytag]

Ok, I work with both as the CTO of an internet advertising firm. We spend in the 6 figures a month with both MSN/Bing/Binghoo/whatever and Google. I would rather work with Google any single day of the week. Dealing with MSN behind the scenes is like trying to teach Japanese to my dog. He may be able to respond to a few commands with immense repetition, but he never really gets the big picture of what I am trying to communicate. Don't even get me started on how painful it is to work with the MSN API vs Google's.

Re:This won't work

[kdogg73]

The problem is while engineers ... make money but are roundly hated. (ok, over simplification but still).

I don't know why you are modded funny, as that is truly an insightful perspective.

Re:This won't work

[Pinky's Brain]

The XBOX division is a money pit ... yes, they are making decent cash on Live and the Kinect marketing was stunning ... but very likely by the time the third XBOX rolls around they will still be in the red when looking across the entire history of the XBOX division. Also their lack of focus in PC gaming has offered companies like Valve a huge opportunity in what should have been their back yard.

Windows is core business, PC gaming is an extension of core business ... consoles are actually competing with their core business ... it was a huge mistake to ever go this way. They should have had standardized remote administrated windows PCs which ran games completely foolproof (just like a console). That would have made sense.

Re:This won't work

[zdepthcharge]

"they are a much harder company to interface with than Microsoft" This. And typical for programmer and engineer driven projects, the end-user is the last considered aspect of the system. Consider the Nexus 1 customer service fiasco. That's Google all over.

Re:This won't work

[Riceballsan]

Well I can half agree and half disagree. Microsoft's core business is in jepordy. Cloud computing and other technologies are looking to completely change the game, and microsoft's stabs to work in those fields have not been very succesful, no the desktop and the active directory servers aren't going away this year or next year, but 10-15 years down the line OS may no longer matter and they may need a new market to survive. Better to figure that out now when they have billions to throw away on trying and failing, then waiting until they are desperate and having to throw one succeed or die project out the door.

Re:This won't work

[bberens]

AJAX.

Re:This won't work

[LWATCDR]

The there is nothing wrong with Microsoft not making money on a product line from the start. The 360 I believe is now turning a profit. It is well liked and doesn't have the "old dull boring" stink that other Microsoft products have. They also see it as a gateway to the living room and the TV. I see it as Microsoft's attempt in the future to become your cable TV provider.
AKA pushing shows to the X-Box for fun and profit while making Comcast and others into the dumb pipes they should e.

Re:This won't work

[LWATCDR]

You mean like how DEC, Control Data, and Wang kept to their core business and didn't get distracted by things like PCs?

Re:This won't work

[NiteShaed]

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with letting the average folks design their own products?

Re:This won't work

[HaZardman27]

When did C# and .Net flop? I must have missed that memo, because it seems to me those are doing just fine.

Re:This won't work

[kevinNCSU]

Microsoft shouldn't even be in the phone market. Or the console game market

So your suggestion would be to focus on the business area that is slowly losing ground and abandon those that are becoming very profitable?

Revenues at its entertainment and devices division, which produces the Xbox and Kinect grew by 55%, to $3.7bn, and profits by 83% to $679m. But revenues were down 30% at its workhorse Windows division, to $5bn, and profits fell by 40% year-on-year to $3.2bn. The principal cause of weakness was slow growth in the PC market, which only grew by 3% during the year; the Windows division relies on sales of its Windows operating sytem. Microsoft Profits

Re:This won't work

[Pinky's Brain]

They lost focus with the consumer side of their OS division and XBOX is partially responsible for that ... lets for sake of argument assume they could have avoided the Vista clusterfuck if they had not gone adventuring with consoles, then clearly that would have been the better decision. Can't turn back the clock and run that experiment of course, but I personally think the XBOX has been one of their greatest mistakes ever.

PS. the XBOX division is in the black year on year, not cumulatively.

Re:This won't work

[OldHawk777]

Ideas...Money, Thinking...Deciding, Innovation...Stability... what get respect and what gets the funny/weird look in any meeting.

Business will always be ass-backwards, until management and budgets can manage the realities of business, and creativity and productivity can be respected with equal respect, pay, benefits packages.... Business are all marching and marking time to their point of failure, because business managers (C*Os) almost always are clueless about what is next for creativity and productivity direction/evolution. Good/Bad Time Economic realities are at the center of all reward/blame-storming, actually it is always good/bad decisions made by very average people crowned with the C*O, Leader, Rank titles.

Re:This won't work

[Drethon]

My input to that is just personal non researched experience as a SW Engineer. My first answer is always for the best solution for the long run (from my perspective) but often get shown why that will cost too much in the short run to make good business sense. Sometimes for reasons I can understand and other times making me want to hit the business type person, similar to the recent Dilbert http://www.dilbert.com/2011-02-03/...

Re:This won't work

[Burning1]

Good business people look for the approach that's going to bring in profit. That's not always the cheap way of doing things, and corporate culture can have a big influence on what the business people see as being profitable.

For example, Carly Fiorina felt that the most profitable approach for HP was to cut into development budget, and outsource as much as possible. You can see how well that approach worked for them. Contrast to Steve Jobs who took a totally different approach from Apple - one where the company maintains as much control over their products as possible, while also attempting to deliver a product that is perceived to be of incredibly high quality.

I think the biggest mistake we make as engineers is that we focus too much on building a product or infrastructure, and not enough on how that product is going to help the company. When you can explain to a business person who a multi-million dollar IT budget is in the companies best interests, you gain a lot of freedom to build the infrastructure you want to build.

Re:This won't work

[Drethon]

Agreed. As I said, my comment was an oversimplification and you've captured it more completely.

Re:This won't work

[Belial6]

The biggest mistake concerning XBox was that they didn't PC it enough. They started out right by making it an x86 system running basically NT. If MS had sold a $30 wireless keyboard/mouse combo, made sure there was at least 1 or 2 must have games required it, and got a few targeted PC applications ported, they could have turned the huge consumer desktop market into an even bigger money machine. What do most people use their PC for. Web browsing, word processing, Quicken, Turbo Tax, maybe a spreadsheet here and there, photo editing, desktop publishing, and maybe a spreadsheet or two. Not much more. MS makes half of these in house already. If MS had ported their key apps, and gotten Quicken and Turbo Tax on the XBox with a keyboard and mouse, they would have converted most home PC systems to consoles. This would allow them to collect fees on every piece of software sold for the home computer market. They would never be able to make that transition with traditional windows. If MS tried to charge software makers for every copy of their software that was sold for the desktop, they would have a revolt on their hands. Then the whole monopoly issue would resurface. The console market on the other hand, has a long history of monopoly lock in, and it is staunchly defended by the very people it abuses.

Re:This won't work

[LWATCDR]

I don't think one had anything to do with the other. Vista was a huge mess but it sure wasn't from lack of resources. Microsoft figured that it could do no wrong and people would just buy it. Well they really blew it on so many levels but I do not think that XBox had a thing to do with that but that is my opinion.
The thing is that Microsoft could end up in a world of hurt if they do not keep up with the way people use communications. Computers are very rarely used as computers any longer. The total time used "crunching numbers" is really very small. Computers have become communication and entertainment devices. People are now using mobile devices more and more for that. Microsoft almost lost the netbook market but decided to keep selling XP. In fact Microsoft could have massively failed if they had not retreated on XP sales. Now they are at risk because of tablets. Just how much of todays work load could be done with a tablet docked with a keyboard and a touch pad?
At home I would say that solution would work for 95% of the none gamers.
It could also work for a lot of office work. Once that happens Microsofts core business is at risk.
Today Microsoft's strength in the OS space is based on being cheaper than OS/X for the home market and it's ability to run legacy software in the business market.
That is a terrible position to be in. What if Apple decided to go nuclear and offer a $599 notebook or a $299 desktop?
What if more and more people decide that they don't need a PC because a Tablet will do what they need?
No they must explore other options or risk becoming another DEC.

Re:This won't work

[Fulcrum of Evil]

They actually do that. Specifically, they do things like build prototypes intended for non computer users and go find them and see what they do with it. Of course, part of the problem with letting users get too much power in designing the product is that the product needs to do something different, and most users will operate within their own paradigm.

Re:This won't work

[theolein]

Best post I've read on this topic. It takes more than engineers, it takes people able to see and implement the big picture. Microsoft's biggest problem is their departmentalisation.

An example, today, after god knows how many years of using Windows, I discovered that Windows doesn't natively support more than 4 styles of one font. This is 2011 and that isn't rocket science. I was simply appalled. It's no wonder that creatives flock to the Mac.

Re:This won't work

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The 360 I believe is now turning a profit.

Has it made back the R&D/marketing cost yet? Consoles need to pay for themselves within their own cycle at the very least.

Re:This won't work

[h4rr4r]

Nope, never will odds are. The XBOX stuff is only in the black on the current year. The 360 will never pay for itself, much less the debt left from the first one.

Re:This won't work

[denobug]

um...what about Ford? Mullaly is an engineer, and Ford is doing much better, under his leadership, than they have in many years.

Mulally has engineering background. He's been in management for years. He's more of a manager with a common sense in manufacturing than an actual engineer. Nevertheless he's been able to turn the company around since he was able to show the top level executives what kind of crap they were making and not able to admitting to even have a problem in their company culture.

Re:This won't work

[NoSig]

From context it would make sense if he meant that you can't just get to be friends with the person in charge and then expect that to make up for an inferior product. You can't pull the wool over their eyes by exploiting their ignorance of what you are trying to sell them really does. Because they know what the product is supposed to do in detail and therefore they can spot the issues immediately. He might also mean that Google management smells bad and is hard to communicate with. It's hard to tell.

Re:This won't work

[Pinky's Brain]

Their core business would remain stronger if their new ventures integrated with it. The XBOX does not, but the incompatibility of a fool proof gaming system with predictable performance and windows is of Microsoft's own making ... there was no need to make a console other than their lack of focus in adapting windows to the market consoles fill. The XBOX could simply have been a dual install windows on standardized hardware with one install locked down completely and running the "console" games (which would be nothing more than PC games signed by Microsoft to be installable in the console mode, games which could also run on normal windows installs for people who want to build their own PCs).

Instead they compete with themselves and attack the strongest pillar keeping windows PCs in consumer households (gaming).

They must explore other options than shooting themselves in the foot.

Re:This won't work

[nametaken]

I get the feeling that they have brilliant people making these kinds of things, and the mini-ballmers are quashing everything.

Think about surface... MS was pushing into cool multi-touch interfaces before anyone had even heard of Apple multitouch. Never became anything "for the rest of us".

Or the Courier. A genuinely cool idea that lots of people thought would be a real, serious, tablet-esque device that appealed to creatives and business people alike. They'd have sold a gajillion of those things. Shelved.

There's a long list of really neat things that microsoft has done, not just in hardware, that ended up being neglected and eventually canned. I don't know who makes the decisions around there, but I think they could really help themselves by getting more intelligent people up top in the decision-making process so they can actually capitalize on the great things they already generate in the background.

Re:This won't work

[clueless_penguin]

When you're dealing with the borg, "interface" is the proper term.

Re:This won't work

[LWATCDR]

There isn't a gaming PC on the market for $299 that is worth using. Add in the cost of a big monitor and controllers and it is a none starter. And I would say that you are not correct about what is keeping PC in peoples homes. It is the Internet that is keeping the PC in the home. Notice that Microsoft didn't put a browser on the 360.
PC Gaming has a lot of issues, hardware costs and piracy are the two big ones. Thing is that some games will always be better on a PC and their will always be people laying games on the PC.
Now where they did shot themselves in the foot is that PC games to not work with Live seamlessly.
That is a real issue an one that I blame more on the PC side than the XBox side of things.

Re:This won't work

[painandgreed]

I don't know why you are modded funny, as that is truly an insightful perspective.

I'm sure he was modded "Funny" becuase he said "engineers look for the right way to do things". Of course, they do, from their standpoint. just as business guys look for the right way to do things which means low cost way of doing things. If you let engineers run things and we'll all end up with arcane command line interfaces again or at best GUIs built by engineers for engineers. I'd really like to see evidence that engineer designs products are actually liked by consumers rather than products designed by designers which were later given to engineers to make happen.

Re:This won't work

[JustNilt]

Also, Apple is more than happy to have one of their products kill off another. They had no problem letting the iPhone kill the iPod. It is better for your own products to do that then your competitor's.

They traded the iPods with some level of lock-in (iTunes purchases only and then only for those who didn't want to bother moving them to CDs) for a device with more functionality that's locked in via a contract with AT&T. That's the key here; they got all the benefits of an upgrade path with the added perks of new market share added also.

Not to mention that it certainly didn't kill the iPod at all. Apple is run by marketing gods; it's fascinating and sickening at the same time.

Re:This won't work

[_0rm_]

What these techs need to realize is that with this new power comes the ability to (more politely that I will put it) tell the sales guys "Alright, you're a fucking idiot." Bring them back down to earth rather than go by the buzzwords.

Re:This won't work

[Skuld-Chan]

Like when you write a contract to outsource your email service to google. Microsoft really really really wants our business and they had people come out onsite to write up a proposal. Google is like meh - we have the best cloud software - you'll use us eventually (and we probably will oddly enough). I was just surprised how much more eager MS was to fix the contract so we could do business with them legally, where as with google it took a lawyer from our organization to get them to alter the contract here and there - and even then the deal still seems like its a long way off.

Re:This won't work

[QuantumBeep]

Active Directory is fucking excellent.

Re:This won't work

[ThePromenader]

Microsoft has always been 99% marketing, and on the innovation side, far behind in the game. Now things are moving forward at such a pace that they ~need~ to innovate something to survive, at the same time as Balmer wants to keep his job, so the 'new' Balmer strategy is: hire underlings that will do the needed job, then take all the credit for any innovation because it was created by the underlings you hired.

Balmer obviously doesn't read Dilbert.

Re:This won't work

[SomeStupidNickName12]

You do realise that there are lots of alpha male type engineers out there?

Most geeks tend not be alpha male types but that doesn't mean you can't be a geek, engineer and alpha male. Its this profile that tends be very successful career wise.

Re:This won't work

[DrgnDancer]

I don't see where I said otherwise. I said that to succeed, they'd need to chose engineers with guts, vision, and backing from on high, I never said that those traits weren't possible to find. Indeed in my second paragraph I mention that if Microsoft really pushes they likely will find them. The problem isn't that engineers lack guts or will power, it's just a question of whether Microsoft current has any senior engineers with the right combination of vision and guts, and whether they'll actually be willing to empower them if they do. If you were that guy, would you have stayed at Microsoft this long? Knowing that the business side has been more and more running the show for years if not decades now?

Re:This won't work

[Angst Badger]

So your suggestion would be to focus on the business area that is slowly losing ground and abandon those that are becoming very profitable?

Profitable for now. The gaming market is notoriously unstable. Gaming companies rise to great heights and then go bankrupt quite abruptly. It's a danger inherent to any business that deals in what are essentially fashion luxuries. It can be very profitable, but it's not a long-term business.

Windows isn't losing ground because personal computers are going away, contrary to the latest round of thin-client cloud computing hype. Windows is losing ground because Microsoft spent years investing mainly in enhancing vendor lock-in instead of improving the actual product. If Microsoft had spent all the time and money they've spent on a dozen dead-ends on making sure Windows was the best possible product, Steve Jobs would still be focused on phones and mp3 players. Instead, while they still have time to turn it around, it's going to be an uphill battle at best.

Re:This won't work

[Pinky's Brain]

The PS3 and Kinect showed that price isn't that big an obstacle. A PC can connect to a TV just fine, a monitor is not a necessity. Web access has been moving towards mobile platforms for a long time now ... even before the iPad the death of this use case was very clear. The use case of gaming has longer legs.

If they had pushed a standardized "fool proof" PC they could have pushed a dedicated hardware DRM approach at the same time (with existing or custom build PCs needing an expansion card).

Re:This won't work

[Gilmoure]

Yup, corporate life at the top is really weird and almost disconnected from main business at times. Ever wonder why Fox cancels or moves shows to dead time zones? From what I heard from friend at Fox affiliate; whenever there's a management change at Fox, the new guy goes through current projects and makes changes as a way of marking territory. And if there's any bit of animosity, they'll try to kill off previous manager's pet project. The Simpsons is about the only sacred thing there.

Re:This won't work

[LWATCDR]

Normal people do not hook up PCs to TVs.
Also who would want hardware DRM on a PC? Wow that flames that would cause would be huge.
So what you want is a PC that has Hardware DRM and hooks to a TV? That is a console. PC Gaming will not save the PC and I would say the lack luster sales of the PS3 in the US show that price is a big obstacle since the Wii and the 360 both out sold it even before the Kinect.
Just about the only "game" I really play is PC only. I am a big FSX fan. I just do not see that coming to consoles. But as I have pointed out gaming on the PC is a niche market and as you pointed out more and more computing is moving to mobile, Microsoft had to get in to both consoles and mobile and is failing at mobile.

Re:This won't work

[SomeStupidNickName12]

Fair enough, but take into account that your average "alpha male" type engineer wouldn't care if business was running the show. They would simply grow their power base/influence/etc with in the organisation until it gets to a point where they can start challenging senior business execs. The mindset of a large company doesn't switch from being business focused to engineering/technical focused because the CEO says so. It engineers and other technical people enforcing their authority and opinions.

Re:This won't work

[Pinky's Brain]

It would not really be a PC ... it would be a Microsoft box with a console form factor which can function as console, PC and mediacenter.

In could function as a console for the same reason that the xbox can function as a console (hardware DRM and a completely locked down windows install is Microsoft administered and only runs certified software). It could function as a PC because it's still a PC (it also has a non locked down windows install).

It wouldn't fragment the their market in the way the XBOX does. Basically there would be two types of games for the box ... games which used the hardware DRM and are certified by Microsoft which can run both in console mode and PC mode and games without hardware DRM which can run in PC mode, including legacy games. All of them would push their core business into people's homes, windows.

If they had gone this way they would not have been in the position where they want PC gaming because it's important for their windows market, they literally agree with me on that, while at the same time seeing each PC game sale as a lost XBOX game sale, they literally agree with me on that as well ... they are between a rock and a hard place and it's a position of their own making.

I'm pretty sure Valve has made more money off Steam than Microsoft has made cumulatively off the XBOX ... that should have been them really ...

Re:This won't work

[LWATCDR]

"It would not really be a PC ... it would be a Microsoft box with a console form factor which can function as console, PC and mediacenter."
But why? The 360 is a Mediacenter and a console. Why add in the extra cost of making it a PC as well and loose the extra income from a separate PC sale? Add in that Microsoft can not make their own PC because they would then compete with all their partners. Steam does make money for Microsoft because it runs on PCs and Windows. I agree that not doing better with Live on the PC was a huge mistake on Windows part and that could have been Microsoft's answer too steam.
But none that that has anything to do with Microsoft really had to push into Consoles and Mobile. PCs are becoming more and more of a commodity. The margins are shrinking and more and more of the time people spend on PC is spent on the Web.
Here is a good case study. I work at a software firm that develops software that runs on Windows. We started to work on an iPad application so we got some Macs in the office. Our founder started to use a Mac. He is now completely converted to the Mac. He discovered that outside of Office the only things he used where web based and OS/X works just fine for him.
That is what Microsoft fears the most. Not just OS/X but now HP is going to start putting WebOS on desktops and notebooks.
Microsoft needed and still needs to have a strong product in the Mobile space. They already have the dominate position on PCs and pushing gaming isn't going to help PCs stay at the top of the heap. Smartphones have now out sold PC for the first time and Microsoft is a total also ran in that market.

Re:This won't work

[LWATCDR]

Really?
I listen to these Podcasts, Buzz out loud, Engadget, Engadget Mobile, Dialed in, Tech News Today, and Floss weekly.
I read Arstechnica, Anandtech, Slashdot, Engadget, and several other websites.
But why you say I know nothing you provide no answers?
So let me restate my questions to you?
Does it have seamless integration with exchange? Better than or equal to Blackberry?
Does it have seamless integration with Hotmail? As good as Gmail is integrated with Android?
Voice commands as good as Android? Hey they seem to work really well with sync which is a Microsoft product.
What about Evernote and Dropbox? Pandora?
What about bar code readers?

Do you know?

Tech Company...

[Nethemas the Great]

taking cues from tech savvy people. What a curious concept.

Re:Tech Company...

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers? In a tech company? How wonderfully decadent. And just as I was switching to linux.

Re:Tech Company...

[blair1q]

Technically, the Google Nexus One is a beautiful, high-performing, genius-simple device.

But as a business it was a total flop. Why? Because Schmidt assumed that if you make a better mousetrap people will beat a path to your door; that is, until they realize it's not the same as their previous mousetrap and it doesn't work perfectly and they can't get hold of anyone in your company to tell them how to deal with their issues. At that point it doesn't matter whether it's a Google Phone or an actual mousetrap, the technology part is over and the business part is going to determine if it goes anywhere.

Meanwhile, over at Microsoft, they're still selling buggy, vulnerable Windows NT in a 7th-generation wrapper and kicking the shit out of every other operating-system company on Earth.

The moral: You can make a little money off your technical skills, but you can make a lot of money off your business skills.

Re:Tech Company...

[buybuydandavis]

Technically, the Google Nexus One is a beautiful, high-performing, genius-simple device.

But as a business it was a total flop.

How many android phones are out there now? I think all Google wanted was to spread android phones, and in fact preferred to do it without making phones themselves. Nexus was a prototype loss leader that got the ball rolling. Looks like a winning strategy to me.

Re:Tech Company...

[denobug]

Technically, the Google Nexus One is a beautiful, high-performing, genius-simple device.

But as a business it was a total flop.

How many android phones are out there now? I think all Google wanted was to spread android phones, and in fact preferred to do it without making phones themselves. Nexus was a prototype loss leader that got the ball rolling. Looks like a winning strategy to me.

You realize Google isn't making a cent off Android OS directly right? Their revenue/motivation is to still sell more ads.

Re:Tech Company...

[Jello B.]

They make money from every app they sell in the market.

Re:Tech Company...

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Meanwhile, over at Microsoft, they're still selling buggy, vulnerable Windows NT in a 7th-generation wrapper .....

Hey you insensitive clod! I'm using Windows right now and all the bugs are long gone. I think you need to take a hard look at lkj;aou9i 'fwo9u ...............Carrier Lost ...........

Re:Tech Company...

[xtracto]

Technically, Google Wave was the Social/Networking/Web-Interaction killer app. But Google just did not know how to sell it to anyone. So yep, that kind of reinforces your point with another Google product :)

Re:Tech Company...

[recharged95]

Engineers running a company creates lots of products, but no sales.

Google works as is because of freakin AdWords -- something invented somewhere else and then bought in as the main business model by Schmidt.

The rest of Google is either a cluster mess of an R&D shop (grant super, super smart people) or a decent integration shop that integrates purchased technology, like Maps, Translate, Android, or YouTube.

9 out of 10 startups end up doing this (making engineers VPs) and end up out of business or sold. Ballmer, what were you thinking?

Re:lolwut?

[PickyH3D]

Business people. This is oddly similar to Apple actually, where they finally turned things around with Steve Jobs who, like Steve Ballmer, is not an engineer.

Steve Jobs may be all about sales, but he effectively placed smart people with the engineering mindsets where they needed to be.

I look forward to Microsoft doing the same, but I hope that they don't just promote/hire engineers for the sake of having an engineer in the position and actually find someone capable of doing both.

What is happening to america?

[box4831]

he didn't get his bonus last year because of the Kin debacle

A CEO performed badly and *didn't* get a bonus? What kinda crazy topsy-turvy world do we live in now?

Re:What is happening to america?

[rubycodez]

that's the old way, the new chic is to do so badly one needs and gets bailout, then to spread the bonuses around

Re:What is happening to america?

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Probably one that got smacked by reality.

Re:What is happening to america?

[3vi1]

He *did* get his bonus. In fact, he got 100% of his bonus ($670,000). What he didn't get was the 200% max-possible payout that he could have gotten MS not screwed the mobile pooch.

Re:What is happening to america?

[Anonymous Coward]

He *did* get his bonus. In fact, he got 100% of his bonus ($670,000). What he didn't get was the 200% max-possible payout that he could have gotten MS not screwed the mobile pooch.

So that's the problem - Microsoft thinks a half-done job is 100% complete.
   

Re:What is happening to america?

[danbeck]

Yeah, why the fuck else would shareholders give a damn? You think it's a charity?

Re:What is happening to america?

[RockDoctor]

he didn't get his bonus last year because of the Kin debacle

A CEO performed badly and *didn't* get a bonus? What kinda crazy topsy-turvy world do we live in now?

While you're clawing back Ballmer's bonus from his cold, dead hands, would you stop by the advertising department and mug a few of those animated shit piles too.

It wasn't until I saw a comment below that I had any idea what the "Kin" was, or why it was a debacle. Now, from the "screwing the mobile pooch" comment, I have reason to believe that Microsoft have launched some innovative products aimed at the male canine beastialty participant.

Straps, or something?

Re:What is happening to america?

[sjames]

The cycle begins anew. The executive bonus used to be a performance based incentive. Now it's just another word for even more salary. I guess this is the double dog bonus that is (for now) for performance. I wonder how long until it also becomes a sure thing and they have to resort to the triple bonus.

Re:What is happening to america?

[3vi1]

Bonuses are often defined as targets, not as a "max possible" number (which in Ballmer's case is double the target - with the target being equal to his salary).

Ballmer's not hurting for cash either way. He's been selling off $2B in stock for the last few months - starting with $1.3B right before the Windows Phone 7 launch. It's a pretty good indication that he knew WinPho7 was going to tank and that he might be looking at forced retirement pretty soon.

Re:What is happening to america?

[Espressor]

Very good point. It's been like that in the financial world for a while where some business people manage to make their bonus guaranteed at a minimum amount. It just becomes inflated salary. Source: Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile .

Re:What is happening to america?

[sjames]

The guaranteed bonus makes for great math when the CEO wants to "prove he's one of the team" by including himself in a company wide 20% pay cut. Of course his bonus ( that dwarfs his salary anyway) is not included in the cuts. Likewise famously accepting a salary of $1 (and a multi-million dollar bonus).

Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[rsborg]

It's not like Ballmer doens't have tons of options as he was there from the beginning. Why doesn't he just bail on the cash like Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin? It's a wonder this guy is still around, but if he really wanted to do it right he'd lead by example and put some drive back into the company.

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[corbettw]

He most likely still believes in the company and wants to make his mark on it. Otherwise you're right, he would've followed his college buddies Gates and Allen and gone off to do something else.

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[synthesizerpatel]

A CEO not taking a $1 salary isn't a noble gesture demonstrating their commitment to the company and faith in the stock value going up.

It's a tax dodge to limit their 'personal income'

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[fermion]

To be fair, Jobs and many like him do not draw a salary because they have basic and serious equity with the company, i.e. they are founders. To be fair Ballmer should have enough stock with MS than any salary or bonus should be rounding error, but some people want money, even if it is chump change.

Also to be fair MS has had very few extremely great products. What they had was a closed system of interconnected adequate software products. it was cheaper for many firms to buy these parts or all of this closed system of highly integrated software and customize rather than go onto the open market and build their own. Individuals bought the stuff because the basics were cheap and they got free support and software through work. It is the same reason that small firms buy form Apple. They want an integrated systen that will let them efficiently complete a workflow. Both are 'good enough' and relatively inexpensive.

So the traditional MS business model has a limited lifetime because the gambit to continue the closed system using IE to close the internet, something that is Gates, not Ballmers, fault has failed. They are working on other closed systems of products that will provide some value. Clearly xBox is a success. OTOH, MS almost invented the smart phone, but has not been able to innovate to actual produce a product people want. If the could close the Echange barn door, they could conceivable put RIM out of business like they did to Netscape, but at the risk customers would move en mass to another platform, and MS would quickly become a shriveled husk.

MS could also try to be a services company like IBM, but that would kill the business as well. MS makes huge money allowing developers to work with it's closed system, VS with access to the database. If MS took over this business, then MS would look like the closed company it is and any positive myths would be destroyed.

So Ballmer is doing the best he can with the mess he was left with. Engineers are not going to help. Honestly might.

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Ballmer seems more concerned with a "scorched-earth" competition ethos than to actually compete. He seems to sincerely believe in destroying the competition to own the market. The problem is that he doesn't seem to notice that when the dust settles his competition is still standing if not charging him.

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[Fastball]

Wish I had mod points. As concise an assessment of Ballmer's M.O. as has ever been written.

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

He's making a mark, he just doesn't want it to be a bullet wound.

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[blind biker]

Ballmer seems more concerned with a "scorched-earth" competition ethos than to actually compete. He seems to sincerely believe in destroying the competition to own the market.

That's not specifically Ballmer's ethos, as much as it is Microsoft's. That way of thinking is so very deeply rooted in Microsoft as a whole, that whoever replaces Ballmer and/or the upper management at MS, they will be people who wholeheartedly embrace such ethos. After all, it worked for them so well in the past, and there is still no clear proof that it wouldn't work in the future as well.

Changing a huge company's mentality is very tough, especially if it isn't crystal clear that such mentality is counterproductive.

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[section321a]

Perfect example: I went to M$' website from here on Firefox and their website completely crashed Firefox. I'd bet money that's on purpose so I will think Firefox is unstable.

Re:Forget the bonus... why is he drawing salary?

[Lorien_the_first_one]

I've heard "there are good people who work for Microsoft" so much that I figured that it was just Ballmer and Gates promoting that attitude. It never occurred to me that the entire company is like that.

One can only hope then, that saner minds prevail.

cartoon gates?

[Bold_Cucumber]

Not tremendously relevant to the discussion, but what happened to the old borg-gates icon? I don't like the new one.

Re:cartoon gates?

[MightyMartian]

It's pretty bad. Gates retains far too much humanity. There's no frickin' laser beams.

Re:cartoon gates?

[denis-The-menace]

I thought it was just me.

The old icon was at least a bit menacing. This one just looks silly.

Re:cartoon gates?

[ColdWetDog]

Wait till you see the unicorns....

Re:cartoon gates?

[Anonymous Coward]

Time for something new. Maybe a broken chair or a sweat stain.

Re:cartoon gates?

[DigiShaman]

Give it a rest. It was funny then, but the joke has run stale for quite some time. I'd say we choose an entirely different icon for Microsoft. Suggestions are welcome.

Re:cartoon gates?

[Rudeboy777]

It became outdated as Gates relaxed control of the company. The replacement is several years overdue.

Re:cartoon gates?

[westlake]

Not tremendously relevant to the discussion, but what happened to the old borg-gates icon? I don't like the new one.

ST:TNG was cancelled in 1994. The world of Windows 3.1.

The borg icon, like the stained glass window, is a barrier to clear-headed thinking.

Windows 7 is a capable and - in many ways - a far more open platform than the Mac or the iOS.

While the Linux distribution - as a "community oriented" client OS - seems to be fading to black. The "killer apps" in FOSS are multi-platform and however open Android and Chrome may be in theory, they are both unmistakably Google branded.

Re:cartoon gates?

[losfromla]

Billy boy is that you? Just a paid astroturfer? Ok, fine, people gotta make a living I guess. I would rather propose that a newer more evil icon be chosen for m$, one with dripping blood, maybe broken teeth and glasses? Something like a Agrajag but more microsofty.

Re:cartoon gates?

[Tranzistors]

This is relevant how? Windows is as open as it was 15 years ago. Linux is not fading anywhere (it was never shining in this sense), it doesn't have a 'killer app', because it is free platform, so no one is locked in it, therefore those 'killer apps' get ported.
Gates was considered borg because of his business practice ('you will be assimilated' and 'resistance is futile'). I guess they are not borg now. Resistance is rather easy and they don't have the assimilation power of the past. I guess google is the new borg.

Lies, lies and more lies!

[Utopia]

Redmond doesn't have a Walmart....

Re:Lies, lies and more lies!

[Smivs]

Redmond doesn't have a Walmart....

...yet.

Re:Lies, lies and more lies!

[operagost]

If things go down the tubes, I'll bet Steve opens a BallMart. It will specialize in sturdy chairs and sweat-resistant dress shirts.

Re:Lies, lies and more lies!

[Frosty Piss]

Redmond doesn't have a Walmart....

But there is a Costco (the Yup equivalent of Walmart). He can check the membership cards at the front door.

Well good.

[History's Coming To]

I don't simply dislike MS on principle, there's a few good reasons. Shifty market practices, bloated and unnecessary software, security issues everywhere, slow to innovate...I could go on. But believe it or not I'd rather like MS. If getting a few engineers a bit higher up in the system improves things in even the tiniest way then good. Cynically, I don't think it will, but here's hoping.

Re:Well good.

[TemporalBeing]

For me to like MS again, not only would they have to resolve the issues you mentioned, but also completely and utterly abandon their EEE mentality; embracing standards for actual, real interoperability sake, not to modify them and make markets hostage to their will. MS could do very well as a company even on a level playing field if they really did (i) allow interoperability, (ii) didn't insist on everything being a MS only world, and (iii) actually started trying to compete on merits and good products as opposed to these cannibalistic tactics that they've employed ever since BillyG, Ballmer, and co founded MS.

Re:Well good.

[Locke2005]

No, what they need to do is split applications and operating systems into 2 completely separate companies. Much like the AT&T split up, this would increase shareholder value.

Re:Well good.

[ifrag]

I don't simply dislike MS on principle, there's a few good reasons. Shifty market practices, bloated and unnecessary software, security issues everywhere, slow to innovate...I could go on. But believe it or not I'd rather like MS. If getting a few engineers a bit higher up in the system improves things in even the tiniest way then good. Cynically, I don't think it will, but here's hoping.

Perhaps speaking in broad generalities, yes -- perhaps not always the best. In the end, it's really all about having developers for the platform, and having good tools to draw in developers. In my not so humble opinion, Visual Studio 2010 (VC++) is the best IDE I've ever used, full stop. Supports several great new features from the emerging C++0x standard (so at least one standard MS cares to follow), has very functional IntelliSense (auto-complete actually works like 99% of the time finally) coupled with real time error highlighting . The interface is the best I've seen in years, and very customizable. Floating code windows are great in two monitor setups. Compiler optimizations are even better than before (thanks rvalue references?). The debugger is full featured like always, with good support for STL containers as well. And in general it might look like MS fails at security but there has been a focus on improving security through better development tools and more error protection in libraries.

Of course I absolutely hate most of the new Office products, they are horrible interfaces -- the "ribbon" or whatever is completely useless to anyone who already knew their way around. Windows Phone 7, I don't even know enough to have a fair opinion but I'm fairly certain it's garbage. And to anyone who actually purchased Vista (guilty as charged, needed 64bit) -- Windows 7 was just a slap in the face, getting charged for what basically amounts to a Vista SP3 was just plain insulting.

So yes, I do have problems with MS as a whole, but I have to admit I like the direction VS is going. I'd guess that it is probably one of the few things really driven by engineers already.

Re:Well good.

[WATist]

I take exception to the cannibal comment. At least they eat what they kill. MS just hangs the rotting corpses up out side the gates.

Re:Well good.

[TemporalBeing]

Office for Macs exists solely to (i) reduce issues with anti-trust, and (ii) to get people on Office and then move them to Windows. Also, (iii) MS almost EOL'd Office for Mac, until Apple complained and then they signed an agreement to continue support.

Unix Services for Windows and the POSIX layer (posix.dll) only exist to get people to migrate their applications to Windows. It's heavily outdated and does not, by design, get the same performance as the native Win32 API - even though both are just wrappers around the NT kernel itself.

Most OS vendors do allow interoperability between other systems - e.g. authentication, file sharing ,etc. MS has explicitly gone out of its way to make sure those things are not possible, and if they do work only enough to get people to migrate to Windows. For example, MS has changed the CIFS/SMB protocol on nearly every release of Windows to force people to upgrade; while they do usually provide a backwards compatibility installer for older systems or (in Win7) to turn off a feature so that it can communicate with older systems (though you only find it by trial and error and searching the Internet, not from MS), this also provides a point of issue for those relying on other CIFS/SMB stacks such as Samba. Or you could talk about ActiveDirectory which is basically built upon standards such as CIFS/SMB combined with other standards, such as LDAP and kerberos; however, in all cases they make explicit extensions so that pretty much only Windows systems can participate in the Active Directory services. Again, other kerberos, CIFS/SMB, and LDAP vendors adhere to the standards so that their users can actually make full use of the system and have interoperability - regardless of whether the other side is Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, Unix, etc. Or look at the document space - MS pushing their binary formats (for historic compatibility, despite the lack of it) and OOXML as their future - despite the fact that not even MS implements the OOXML standard; meanwhile the rest of the world and governments are standardizing on the much smaller ODF standard which MS refuses to support, or support in any meaningful way. So while LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Symphony, and dozens of other vendors all compete on functionality of their office productivity software and use the same formats behind the scenes; only MS is trying to compete on the actual document format.

Now if you know your software is so bad that you have to resort to such tactics to keep customers; then there is a problem. Fix your software and compete properly. It would actually be very beneficial for Microsoft. Instead of having to spend billions of dollars on advertising, PR, etc; they would be able to put that money into developing the products to make good products that sell themselves, reaping much greater profits in the end.

So again, you point was?

Re:Well good.

[Curate]

Office for Macs exists solely to (i) reduce issues with anti-trust, and (ii) to get people on Office and then move them to Windows.

Office for Mac exists because it makes a profit, otherwise MS would stop making it. It doesn't reduce anti-trust problems; if anything it furthers the Office monopoly by strengthening Office document format dominance. It doesn't get people to move to Windows; if anything it allows them to avoid moving to Windows and stay on Mac.

Unix Services for Windows and the POSIX layer (posix.dll) only exist to get people to migrate their applications to Windows. It's heavily outdated and does not, by design, get the same performance as the native Win32 API - even though both are just wrappers around the NT kernel itself.

Firstly it's not the "native Win32 API". The native API is underneath the Win32 API. The Posix and Win32 APIs are on top of the native API, like you said, so both are equally "native". Secondly, do you have any hard data showing that one is more performant than the other? They should be fairly equivalent performance-wise. Some differences could arise due to specific semantics that are imposed by one subsystem or the other; to not adhere to the semantics would lead to incorrectness. Thirdly, you do have the option of using the native APIs directly, although they are harder to use and sparingly documented; feel free to try to implement your own Posix layer without the gross inefficiencies you allude to. Fourthly, to turn this around, can you say that WINE apps on Linux offers equivalent performance to native Linux apps?

MS has changed the CIFS/SMB protocol on nearly every release of Windows to force people to upgrade

These protocol changes have brought new features and massive performance improvements (particularly with SMB 2.0 in Vista). That's a good reason to continue developing the protocol. The new releases do not force you to upgrade, since if you have two different versions talking to each other they will negotiate down to a protocol version that both understand (ex: 2.0 talking to 1.1 will negotiate to 1.1). Also, NFS has also introduced several new versions over the years, currently on version 4.1. SMB and NFS are in ongoing competition.

Re:Well good.

[TemporalBeing]

Office for Mac exists because it makes a profit, otherwise MS would stop making it. It doesn't reduce anti-trust problems; if anything it furthers the Office monopoly by strengthening Office document format dominance. It doesn't get people to move to Windows; if anything it allows them to avoid moving to Windows and stay on Mac.

You still missed the whole "agreement with Apple" thing. At the time of the agreement, pulling Office from the Mac would have killed the viability of Apple. That has since changed, but that agreement is likely still in place. So the anti-trust issue isn't so much that of the office productivity software as it is the OS market - or was at the time. A lot has changed since then, but I would gather that Apple still likes keeping Office on Mac regardless, and would raise the issue again if necessary.

Unix Services for Windows and the POSIX layer (posix.dll) only exist to get people to migrate their applications to Windows. It's heavily outdated and does not, by design, get the same performance as the native Win32 API - even though both are just wrappers around the NT kernel itself.

Firstly it's not the "native Win32 API". The native API is underneath the Win32 API. The Posix and Win32 APIs are on top of the native API, like you said, so both are equally "native".

Semantics. As far as application developers are concerned - and as far as Microsoft is concerned on their behalf - the Win32 API is the native API for writing applications for Windows. They have full purview to change the NT-kernel layer API at any time without telling anyone - it's not documented and they have no stated goals of not doing so either. The POSIX API was only added to attrach Unix developers to Windows, giving them just enough to port, but not enough to have performant applications.

Secondly, do you have any hard data showing that one is more performant than the other? They should be fairly equivalent performance-wise. Some differences could arise due to specific semantics that are imposed by one subsystem or the other; to not adhere to the semantics would lead to incorrectness.

Microsoft own documentation on the POSIX API states that it does not get the same performance as the Win32 API, try writing a server application using the POSIX API and see how many clients you can manage; rewrite it to the Win32 API and count them - it'll be quite different.

Add to that the fact that they labeled it a "security concern" - so any Windows system that is trying to pass the government security clearances will not have the POSIX API, this despite the fact that the Win32 API has major security issues by design, unlike the POSIX API.

Thirdly, you do have the option of using the native APIs directly, although they are harder to use and sparingly documented; feel free to try to implement your own Posix layer without the gross inefficiencies you allude to.

As you said - it's sparingly documented since they really don't want you to use it the kernel level API unless you are writing device drivers or other in kernel functionality. That's the only time you should be using that API on Windows. The Win32 and POSIX APIs are user-space extensions of the kernel to enable applications to operate independently of the kernel itself, so they are not tied to kernel versions. Microsoft can change that API without telling you, and very well may quite often even through service packs.

This is similar to how the Linux Kernel devs release a "stable" set of headers. Those headers are essentially the equivalent of the Win32 and POSIX APIs, applications and devices can interface to them and then be a little more kernel version independent.

Fourthly, to turn this around, can you say that WINE apps on Linux offers equivalent performance to native Linux apps?

Re:Ballmer as a Walmart greeter?

[click2005]

or he'll just be shouting "Bananas! Bananas! Bananas! Bananas! Bananas!".

Re:lolwut?

[MightyMartian]

Nope... marketers, marketers, marketers, marketers.

Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[bjourne]

Come on. The icon is retarded and it was several years ago since Gates was with MS.

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[fred fleenblat]

One hopes for an animated GIF of a fat, sweaty, bald, dancing, chair-throwing monkey.

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[ElectricTurtle]

The only thing worse than people who whine about New Slashdot (waaaah Idle sucks waaaah I hate kdawson waaaah why isn't there a CowboyNeal option in every poll) are the people who whine about Old Slashdot. At least the former group has to come to grips with some kind of change, regardless of how petty or minor, but dude, really, this is what you signed up for. It's not a surprise or a secret. If you don't like it, there's the door. After all, if they ever changed it, it would just be another thing for the other group with no life to whine about.

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[operagost]

People have been telling them for years that the American flag icon is missing a red stripe at the top, but they don't care about that. Good luck!

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[Albert Sandberg]

Just an icon with a chair would be funny and insightful at the same time :-)

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[Mike Buddha]

Just an icon with a chair would be funny and insightful at the same time :-)

Actually, it would be neither of those things.

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[Merk42]

I think the GP is upset about the LACK of change. As in, why is it still Bill Gates when he hasn't been CEO in over a decade?

Also you're whining about slashdot users, so I guess "If you don't like it, there's the door"

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[BlueStraggler]

Parent is right - an empty executive chair would be funny on so many levels. Balmer's MIA business strategy, defecting MS executives, the CIO purchasing logic that keeps the company profitable, and of course it's the weapon of choice in the MS executive suite.

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[ElectricTurtle]

Old Slashdot = Lack of Change. Did I really have to spell that out?

And your attempt to turn my argument against me violates causality. If all the users whining about things changing or not changing had already left, I wouldn't be whining, so I wouldn't have to leave.

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[DigiShaman]

How about animation like in a Street Fighter 2 game where the character is standing in a fighting pose. Thrown the occasional hadouken...err, I mean chair-throwing and we have a winner!

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[Locke2005]

Would YOU want Steve Ballmer pissed off at you?

Re:Please get Rid of the Stupid Borg Icon

[bingoUV]

Slashdot IS about whining about other slashdot users.

so

[Ryanrule]

so you are saying salespeople SHOULDNT be running every company in the country? yes, i agree.

Re:lolwut?

[jonbryce]

Well Ballmer's previous work experience was as an assistant product manager at Procter and Gamble. That seems more like John Sculley's prior experience at Pepsi than Steve Jobs as founder of Apple.

"...running an innovative tech company..."

[John Hasler]

So what's that got to do with managing Microsoft?

The End is Nigh...

[coofercat]

I've seen this happen a few times, and it almost always fails. Either the top guys 'just get it', or they 'just get' that they need to equally represent finance, engineering, sales and administration by getting experts to help them. If he hasn't been getting it thus far, he's not going to now (probably), he'll just hire some people and make sure they're seen to be 'adding value', but won't actually achieve very much.

These 'top engineers' are going to come up with SuperWhizzo 1.0. They'll pitch it to him, and he'll either:
1) Accept it because he's got to accept some technical ideas
2) Reject it because he still just doesn't get it
What he won't do is evaluate it on it's merits, and then facilitate it's execution because he's actually on-board with it.

(Contrast this to what you know about how Apple works, for example)

News Flash!

[Un pobre guey]

Tech company CEO decides to put engineers in positions of responsibility.

Brilliant, Holmes, brilliant! Why didn't we think of this before!

Re:News Flash!

[blair1q]

Because it tends to be #fail.

Re:lolwut?

[Dracos]

Unlike Ballmer, Jobs is visionary. He has an aesthetic sense, really wants to be innovative, and has the drive to be.

Ballmer is just a pencil pushing, number crunching marketing drone who doesn't have a creative or innovative bone in his body. Because of this, nothing he does will get MS out of its slump. The MS board can only hope that Ray Ozzie is interested in the CEO job.

Why is Mr. Ballmer still running the place?

[QuietLagoon]

Once Microsoft's BoD realizes where the problem truly resides, then and only then will the problem be fixed.

Engineers making decisions?

[arikol]

Engineers making decisions?

Because that worked so well for Nokia....

Seriously, Nokia was an engineer driven company, which worked fine when all the issues were about new functionality and such, but when it came to fine polishing and figuring out non-engineering based problems they just stumbled around.

Software engineers suffer from the same basic issue. They tend to be so extremely technology oriented that they get completely lost in all the features that should be included, all the bells and whistles, and seem to regard an interface as something you paste on afterwards (inter-face, something which is the area where the user rubs against the technology), when the interface is the personification of the whole system, as well as the public face of the program and the company itself.

Palm got this for a while, so did RIM, so does Apple (at the moment) and so does that Shuttleworth fellow (Ubuntu). Microsoft has never got this, and giving the engineers more power is not likely to fix the problem. Each specialised class of people is likely to view most problems as being solvable by their particular brand of hammer, and one of Microsoft's problems has been too much engineering/marketing against too little understanding of what the user actually needs to do. Use the engineering hammer to solve this problem and it is likely to get even worse.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Nemyst]

You know "engineer" also covers a position known as UI engineer? It might be a stretch to think that Microsoft's execs will actually make a GOOD selection, but it's not absolutely impossible. With experts in all the required fields driving the company, it could just work.

Also, I'd much rather have engineer-driven companies than suit-driven ones. HP took a nosedive with the departure of Hewlett and Sony's products and policies have degraded with time as the founders left key spots. On the flip side, Google is still going extremely strong with Brin and Page having a hand in a large part of the company's operations and, while he has no degree beyond high school, Jobs has grown up as a geek and has a much more engineer-like mindset than traditional CEOs.

To me, it only makes sense that a company is driven by an expert in the field, be it food products or technology.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I see with Ballmer was he's merely a manager; he's not the leader that Gates was. He lacks the strategic vision and MS has been reacting to instead of leading the market the last 10 years. Take for instance the 'Vista Compatible' debacle. Some exec lower than J. Allard made the decision to reverse course and certify the Intel video chipsets as 'Vista Compatible' when they couldn't run Aero. This caused a lot of OEM grief and consumer confusion. Did Ballmer step in and address it before it became a PR blunder? No. He only stepped in afterwards. Same thing with the Kin.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Bob9113]

"Software engineers suffer from the same basic issue. They tend to be so extremely technology oriented that they get completely lost in all the features that should be included, all the bells and whistles, and seem to regard an interface as something you paste on afterwards (inter-face, something which is the area where the user rubs against the technology), when the interface is the personification of the whole system, as well as the public face of the program and the company itself."

I think this perspective is heavily colored by the rise of software engineering as a mainstream career, and the youth-dominance of the late 90's early 00's. When I was a 28 year old code cowboy in 1998 NYC, working with other late 20's code cowboys, I would have heartily agreed with you. Now, however, those same cowboys (and I) are significantly more focused on ROI, usability, and discovering the customer's desires. Software engineering is maturing, and so are software engineers.

Frankly, I have had as hard a time -- if not harder -- getting the sales people to put together a credible revenue projection to justify a new project as with getting engineers engaged in considering value for dollar. The engineers are interested in solving the problem once you show them it is just math and measurement. The sales people want to run with their gut and tend to be optimistic (admittedly; because that is important to successfully engaging a customer) about the probable revenue.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[korgitser]

Microsoft's problems has been too much engineering/marketing against too little understanding of what the user actually needs to do.

Maybe they should put an acutal user of ther software in charge? No, wait, they already tried it: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[digitalhermit]

There's a pervasive mentality in a lot of businesses that it's management versus engineers, or marketers versus engineers, etc.. Each group seems to think that they have a monopoly on intelligence. I've spoken with some managers who truly believe the real brains are the suits, and that the engineering groups are commodities that can be replaced. They believe that effective management is responsible for a great product, but that poor sales is the result of poor engineering. On the other hand, I've known more than a few engineers who blame all corporate ills and lack of sales on management. I know marketers who truly believe that they can sell anything; the type of product is meaningless as it's marketing that makes people buy the product. Thus, they are the reason the company does well. Of course, if a product fails they blame it on poor engineering or bad management.

Remember the dark days at Apple? Who was responsible? Ever try using the Apple offerings at the time? They were buggy, slow, overpriced and an ill-fit for businesses. Remember the clone/no-clone madness? The people spoke and decided that Apple wasn't for them.

Remember Sun back in the 90s? At first glance the technologies were engineering marvels... but technology cannot exist in a vacuum. Without high-speed and reliable networks, network based computing was bound to fail.

In short, everyone needs to do a good job. Engineers must design great products, and not necessarily direct the business. Marketers must listen to what the people want and not think of us as consumers instead of *people*. Managers must manage the engineers and marketers and set a clear vision for the company and not necessarily design products.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[syousef]

Engineers making decisions?

Because that worked so well for Nokia.... They tend to be so extremely technology oriented that they get completely lost in all the features that should be included, all the bells and whistles, and seem to regard an interface as something you paste on afterwards

This stereotype is being modded up on slashdot? Seriously?

Nokia's failures have everything to do with engineering. It's not just the UI. Symbian is out-dated, and it's not just the interface that's the problem.

What you need is engineers with a UI focus. They exist. They are not mythical. The marketing guys at Apple and elsewhere couldn't put together a coherent and consistent user interface if their lives depended on it. It's engineers there too, even if the marketing guys have more input than elsewhere.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[ColdWetDog]

What about pairing an engineer and a guy from marketing?

What are you trying to do? That's very dangerous. Like self-annihilating matter-antimatter dangerous. Your head asplode.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Nethemas the Great]

*gasp* Chimeras are the worst sort of evil. Have you not watched your Full Metal Alchemist episodes? You aren't proposing a bass with a frickin laser. What you're proposing is an engineer speaking out a sales person's a** and that's just not right...

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[getNewNickName]

Google going extremely strong? Looking at the stock price, its performance is only on par with HP in the last 5 years; yet you call HP a "degraded" company. Look at Amazon, Oracle, Apple, all of these companies have done much better in the same time period. It takes a visionary leader for a company to be great, engineer-driven is not the key ingredient.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Nyder]

Code cowboy?

Seriously?

Did you get on your horse and round up them code?

Seriously dude, you were/are a programmer, your job is boring, quit trying to make it should exciting. It's not.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[denobug]

I think you meant a designer. Someone who can sense/understand the overall bigger issue and balance the desire to get there through business, marketing, engineering, and operations. Innovation happens when someone with a vision can drive that vision through the rest of the divisions under his/her leadership.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[denobug]

Code cowboy?

Seriously?

Did you get on your horse and round up them code?

Seriously dude, you were/are a programmer, your job is boring, quit trying to make it should exciting. It's not.

Sorry but I am curious, so what do you do to earn a living? Why are you trolling /. community then?

He might be more passionate about programming than you do. That doesn't make programming more or less interesting. Someone might find car mechanics boring but there are people doing it as a hobby restoring older cars (I am not talking about antiques here).

It's nice to feel passionate about your job. It makes your life happier. Don't take that away from someone else especially you don't know what they do day-to-day. Any job can be fun given the right circumstances. Any job can be boring as hell if you let it.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Nemyst]

Sorry if I don't put much worth into stocks. Speculation drives the stock exchanges and speculators are so often wrong it's not even funny. Remember they're making Apple stock prices plummet every single damn time Jobs coughs.

Google is going extremely strong because it's ubiquitous. If you asked a random sample of the population what they thought of Google, you'd get largely favorable answers (granted, they might be a little confused and/or ignorant, but "google" has entered the common vocabulary and that should say something). If you did the same for HP, I'm not sure you'd get quite the same results.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Nemyst]

Hence why I said it might be a stretch. If any other tech company actually realized there's a demand for well-rounded products, maybe, just maybe, Apple would truly have a run for its money. As it is they're the only ones that seem to have "gotten it", and even then only to a certain extent. It's very frustrating to see good engineering get wasted by a few key components like UI being hastily thrown into the mix or quality insurance only being covered as an afterthought.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[arikol]

I just don't think UI engineers are the solution.
Take a well known UI expert, Jakob Nielsen. Visit his website. YES it is in many ways quite usable. NO it's not pretty and would never sell as a product. (I personally don't agree with his UI choices, but I understand his rationale)

You need leaders with a vision, you need engineers of the various sub-specialisations who are willing to listen to each other (mmhmmm...) and you need marketing people who actually understand what the engineers are saying and can buy into the leaders vision.
Not an easy balance to achieve.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[arikol]

I've recently worked with extremely clever and young programmers/software engineers. They are much more aware of the need for real UI development, and that not everything is done to make the programming simpler, but they still have a hard time understanding that the UI drives the requirements for the programming, that UI development should start at the same time (or even before) the code gets written, and that UI design is NOT the same as graphic design.
The older programmers I've worked with tend t think of proper UI development as something good to have on board to tell the client that they have one. They then seem to tend to go their own way, sometimes with less than stellar results.
Good and clever people, but somewhat blinded by their own field.
Heck, I sometimes think I understand graphic design and know some coding. That usually ends badly.

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[theArtificial]

For the last friggin time...they're not engineers! They're programmers.

And, no, there's no such thing as a 'Sales Engineer' either.

For the last friggin time... they're not hackers! They're crackers!

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Lunzo]

I'm interested why you bash nokia as features-driven and ignoring user experience. Got any justification for that?

I've only ever owned cheap, pre-paid nokias but they have well designed user interfaces. That's not just subjective analysis, that's based on the objective analysis techniques from my Human Computer Interaction subject at uni.

The menus almost always start on the function you want to access, or it's one up/down away. Buttons act consistently (they don't have different modes).

Re:Engineers making decisions?

[Bob9113]

I must apologize to the other trolls, as I only have enough food for one. You're just the cutest little troll I've seen today, so here ya go, little guy:

Cowboy coding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding

Also worth noting: Executive recruiters referred to as "headhunters" don't actually cut off people's heads, "bullet stoppers" don't actually get shot on the job (at least not as a standard business practice), and you are not actually a cave-dwelling mythical creature of Norse mythology also referred to as a Jotunn.

Not happening

[HangingChad]

>"it appears that Ballmer planning to install engineers in high places to turn the company around."

Except he won't listen to them. I'm wiling to bet people took risks with their careers to give Ballmer good advice over the years and he ignored them. I find it highly unlikely he's going to start listening now.

This is either for show or so he's got someone else to blame for the next Zune and Windows mobile.

Might work if he starts at the CEO position.

[ron_ivi]

Look at what happened to many tech companies (Intel, HP, Yahoo, etc) when they replaced the tech-founder-CEOs with suits. Growth stopped and the company stagnates. Same with Microsoft.

Re:Might work if he starts at the CEO position.

[styrotech]

Either that or the tech-founder loses interest when the company reaches the point where there aren't any more interesting ways to grow (ie their job becomes boring) and picks that time to step aside.

It could work both ways.

Re:Might work if he starts at the CEO position.

[Belial6]

No doubt that is closer to what happened with MS. Once it started becoming clear that MS had maxed out, Gates started talking about leaving. When things started getting worse, Gates distanced himself from MS more. I don't think Gates had any better idea on how to transition to a mature company than Ballamer. I think he was just aware enough that he could bail before things got really ugly.

Re:Might work if he starts at the CEO position.

[Gilmoure]

There's that whole leaked email where Bill blasts folks for the crappy download/patch process when trying to install an MS video editor. I think, by that point, he was pretty distant from the tech.

Steve Jobs started in electronics (was Re:lolwut?)

[WillAdams]

During high school he attended after-school lectures at HP and was later hired there (alongside Steve Wozniak), then after dropping out of Reed College he worked as a technician at Atari.

William

I'm shaping my degree with this in mind.

[Rifter13]

I am going to college and getting an IT Management degree with an emphasis in development. I am getting a minor in Marketing, and will go on for a Master's in Business Administration. I will have been in IT between workstation, server, and network admin as well as web development for 20 years or more when I get my degree. I am trying to get myself in a position to be able to interface well with developers and pitch the cool stuff to upper management to get buy in. I should have the business credentials to get management's respect, while having the knowledge of the tech side to be a valuable interface between the two sides. At least, that is my vision, at this point. :-)

Re:I'm shaping my degree with this in mind.

[Overzeetop]

Now all you need to do is be a genius _and_ understand what every 95 IQ knuckledragger finds appealing. I've taken marketing classes, and they're great fun. But they're useless unless you actually identify with your target market. Ever watched Family Feud? Did you get all the top answers right off the bat? Then you're in. No? Might as well pocket that marketing info so you can manage the people who knew all the Feud answers.

The geniuses who make it "like" lots of the same stuff common people do, but are intelligent enough to understand both the technical and marketing (or business) end.

For the record, I'm not dissing knuckledraggers, marketing majors, or contestants on the Family Feud. I happen not to be an any of those categories, nor am I in the genius category, so you could say there's a bit of envy in there. But, mostly, it's just observation of lots of successful and unsuccessful people.

Re:I turn the other cheek...

[camperslo]

Doesn't that take TWO cheeks?

IBM is diversified. Microsoft is a one trick pony.

[crovira]

IBM still makes mainframes as well as software consulting. They reinvented themselves and it worked.

I don't see Microsoft ever letting go of Windows and they'll crash holding onto 'em too. Microsoft's got an R&D division that the people selling product never talk to.

It costs to much if they do.

Microsoft Speak

[lymond01]

MS needs to toss its whole marketing team. The two best commercials they've ever done:

1) The rip-off of "I'm a Mac" adds where the guy points at the polar bear (or was it a whale?) and says, "I'm a PC. And I'm trying to save that." There were more "I'm a PC" examples in that commercial and while not original, they got the point across that it's about the effective tools that MS provides and people use.

2) The Windows 7 Phone "Really?" ad. Clever. 'Nuff said.

Most of their speeches and marketing use industry, not public, buzzwords. They're on the "Our users love the Windows 7 Phone because it allows them to consume content quickly" kick right now. I'm sorry, I don't consume content. I check email. I watch movie trailers. I read Slashdot. I'm a person, not the Blob. If MS wants to market to people and not businesses, they need to target their ads. Two different groups, two different commercials.

Re:Microsoft Speak

[RichM]

And how is email, video and reading Slashdot not "consuming content"?

Re:Microsoft Speak

[frank_adrian314159]

Because it's sending/reading email, looking at videos, and reading Slashdot. Only Web 3.0 dorks, idiot MBA wannabes, and clueless geeks use epically stupid words like "content". And, FYI, no one wants to be known as a "consumer" (see above).

Re:Microsoft Speak

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The "I'm a PC" ad was a joke.

It fought Apple's fight on Apple's own terms, and for someone who's supposed to be on top, it's a loss having to punch downward.

Not to mention those nonsensical Seinfeld/gates ads? What was that about?

Re:Microsoft Speak

[Jello B.]

you're a content consumer. sorry

Re:Microsoft Speak

[lymond01]

Those Seinfeld ads were weird. I did read that one of them, the one with the house full of people, actually represented the Microsoft family of products. I'll have to watch it again -- I think even Bob was in there. But yeah...too strange for the general populous.

Re:Microsoft Speak

[Gilmoure]

They wanted people to buy comfortable shoes and a sweater?

Yeah, right

[mewsenews]

Putting a few engineers in executive positions is not going to change a corporate culture that thinks stealing search results from Google is "innovation"

Re:I turn the other cheek...

[M8e]

'Ballmer turns to geeks to save his own butt' and you turn yours to fart in his general direction?

Help me don't sell me

[EmperorOfCanada]

Initially .net was sort of an answer to Java. It had features that made programming easier. It broke away from activex and that was cool. But then the marketing machine seemed to have guided it from then on. It became a tool to try and get my programming to use more and more MS products. This didn't work for me so I turned to more and more open source. Not out of some philosophy involving openness and free love but simply because the open source products help me solve problems. Then I switched to Mac because at its heart it works with most open source stuff.

So here I am a geek programmer with zero interest in anything MS.

So if MS wants me back then they have to give me tools that I can use to solve problems I have. Not their problem of crappy sales. Then maybe along the way I will use a product or two of theirs.

He think's he's copying Google

[alispguru]

And he is, except for one thing.

Google has always been about engineering excellence, with market dominance being a welcome side effect. When it works, you get Gmail, when it doesn't work you get Wave.

Microsoft has always been about market dominance through engineering mediocrity and barriers to entry. This has led to the teetering tower of kludge whose pinnacle is Windows 7.

Microsoft CAN'T be engineering-driven the way Google is. Google can change its search engine implementation and strategy continuously and overnight. Microsoft can only change Windows in big increments, with lots of concern for backward compatibility.

Re:He think's he's copying Google

[ScentCone]

Google can change its search engine implementation and strategy continuously and overnight. Microsoft can only change Windows in big increments, with lots of concern for backward compatibility.

Well, then it's a good thing for Google that their search engine implementation isn't the selling of an operating system that has to run on a virtually unlimited mix of hardware. You could hardly have picked two more apples/oranges things to compare. In fact, you've pointed out exactly why it's hard to by Microsoft, and exactly why it's never the year of Linux on the desktop. Building an OS that works in a commodity computing world, while also serving complex corporate environments: it's hard. And you have to sell it, and suppport it. Google doesn't have as part of its legacy the need to deal with such scenarios. Google's search strategy doesn't have to deal with the fact that people will still be using IDE ribbon cables, floppy drives, and dial-up serial-connector modems for another decade or so. And there's a reason that people are plenty scared of trusting all of their word processing and spreadsheet eggs to Google's basket.

You're better off looking at MS and Apple - that's a far more appropriate comparison. Apple refuses to support the wide universe that MS does, and charges far more for what they provide, while they're at it. And in the meantime, I can't go to Apple or to Google for full-fledged accounting systems able to run huge and small companies alike, and I can't go to either of them for widely embraced, reasonable priced scaleable database servers, etc. If your mental map of Microsoft doesn't get you past Win 7 (which ... works quite well, actually), then you're really misunderstanding the landscape.

Re:He think's he's copying Google

[fred fleenblat]

Your skill at pretending Android doesn't exist is remarkable.

Re:He think's he's copying Google

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

Doesn't Android run in a virtual machine since it's mostly Java? :) Ok yeah they make the virtual machine too. It is one of the "least clean by nature" engineering projects they have though, I'll grant you that.

Re:He think's he's copying Google

[ScentCone]

pretending Android doesn't exist

Why make yet another apples v. oranges topic distract from the original bad comparison? Google isn't out there supporting Android installs on ten year old PCs with tens of thousands of peripherals. Of course, you know that.

Re:He think's he's copying Google

[fred fleenblat]

In a way, you're just supporting alispguru's original point. Legacy device support, while I wouldn't use the word mediocre as he did, is at least by definition not cutting edge. It's also a barrier to entry because of the nearly abritrary complexity of some of these devices.

Android (and iOS, etc) don't support these old devices because it simply doesn't make sense to connect your tablet device to an IDE cable. It does make sense to connect to a bluetooth keyboard, an onboard 3G chip, your in-dash multimedia thing, etc. If in 10 years, there is legacy support for connecting to a 2011 ford focus as part of android, then you'll know that google is paying attention to their customers' legacy needs.

And if you'll recall, windows 1.0 didn't exactly support a lot of legacy stuff either. Even 3.0 couldn't use an ethernet card without a heck of lot of work.

Remember what has happened in the past, imagine how things will play out in the future...do not simply focus on the state in which things are today.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Here's a clue for Microsoft

[dadelbunts]

The only reason there are so many viruses for Windows its beacuse its the most widely used OS anywhere in the world. Any other OS with the same level of popularity would have viruses.

What's taking them so long?

[Locke2005]

If I was on the board, I would have screamed for Ballmer's dismissal in September 1999, when he drove the MS share price down by 3.8% in a single day by saying "There is such an overvaluation of technology stocks that it is absurd. I would include our stock in that category." Ballmer might be a good business person, but as far as setting the corporate culture, he is an epic fail. The big question is, who should replace him as CEO?

Re:What's taking them so long?

[Locke2005]

The fact that he was correct doesn't matter. As an officer of the company, it is his reponsibility to protect the fiduciary interests of the corporation, NOT to drive the stock price down. So while he gets credit for honesty, from the viewpoint of shareholders, what he did was a real no-no.

Re:What's taking them so long?

[gtall]

"The big question is, who should replace him as CEO?" Foghorn Leghorn.

Re:What's taking them so long?

[gstoddart]

If I was on the board, I would have screamed for Ballmer's dismissal in September 1999, when he drove the MS share price down by 3.8% in a single day by saying "There is such an overvaluation of technology stocks that it is absurd. I would include our stock in that category."

Except it was, what, October of 1999 when the value of tech stocks crashed because they were grossly overvalued. (OK, maybe it was a little longer than that.)

There was a time when simply registering a .COM in Silicon Valley would get you millions in VC money if you had anything like a business plan (or at least a concept). I remember watching people leave for out west in the new gold-rush of pre-IPO options. In the early days of the .COM-era, some people did make money. By the end, a lot of people ended up holding the bag, and with leases/car payments they'd never realistically be able to afford.

Companies were 'worth' 100 years of projected revenue because they had ... well, nothing really. After the collapse when Herman Miller Aerons would go on the auction block in lots of 100+ at a time it was fairly obvious, because those self-same .COMs which were failing in droves. Investors would just buy any IPO in the hopes that it would do what Amazon, Red Hat, and a few others had done. Speculative investment run amok.

Ballmer may have damaged MS stock when he said that, but in reality, the emperor did have no clothes. It was a big house of cards (not MS per se, but the whole tech market).

Re:What's taking them so long?

[vgerclover]

Of course, registering a .com is highly regarded as evil nowadays.

I mean, who uses ActiveX anymore?

Re:What's taking them so long?

[el cisne]

How about body double Young Frankenstein's Monster ?

Re:What's taking them so long?

[h4rr4r]

And as we all know money is the only thing that matters in this life.

People who can afford MS shares can deal with a 4% drop.

Re:What's taking them so long?

[Nyder]

If I was on the board, I would have screamed for Ballmer's dismissal in September 1999, when he drove the MS share price down by 3.8% in a single day by saying "There is such an overvaluation of technology stocks that it is absurd. I would include our stock in that category." Ballmer might be a good business person, but as far as setting the corporate culture, he is an epic fail. The big question is, who should replace him as CEO?

The dude who does the PS3 commericals. I like him. They should put him in charge, at least he's sort of funny.

Re:lolwut?

[TheLink]

There's a difference: Steve Jobs is an asshole with taste.

So when he yells at an engineer because something is not "insanely great" enough, that engineer knows that Steve Jobs is right.

If some other asshole CEO was doing the yelling, the engineer would be thinking "when can we get this over with, I have stuff to do".

Yes you need engineers, but without someone with taste, the end product would look like a Dell or a Thinkpad. The stuff works, but...

Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not bad

[Joe The Dragon]

Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not bad engineers. No it's some cost cutter who put the cheap ones in

Most good engineers want no part of management

[PolygamousRanchKid]

That's been my experience with 25+ years in a major IT player. What engineers want, is someone that will listen to them. And someone who will grab them under the arms and pull them up and support them when things get ugly, and they get knocked out cold. It's quite simple actually, but it's quite amazing how few managers can do it right. I have seen a few cases exemplary performance. When I was in southern France, doing some firefighting on a project where the shit had hit the fan, and knocked the damn thing over. A couple of the employees there told me that they were coming in on the weekend to work on problems. This was not an order from the management there. Their attitude so impressed me, that I said, "I'll be in with you guys!" The second line manager got wind of the renegade action and showed up in the lab on the weekend. She didn't ask any questions about progress, but just discretely sat at a terminal, and did manager email stuff. And brought pastry snacks for the folks. But you had the feeling that she was there for us, in case we needed anything. One manager did a great job of filtering us from nasty emails about bad management decisions, that would be reversed anyway. Some folks in another department asked us, "Hey, did you see the email about capping our overtime pay?" There was another email a week later, that it was retracted. So our manager had tried to shield us from some unnecessary stress.

On the other hand, my manager left the company. A manager from another department was appointed as his successor. He did nothing for a month, aside from forwarding management and policy notes that he received to us. He didn't even come by to introduce himself. Well, duh! I started the rumor that he didn't exist, but was actually some kind of ELIZA type forwarding engine. Then he invited is to a meeting.

One brilliant engineer colleague of mine had excellent people skills, but declined to be put in the manager career path. He told me, "I don't want to explain to employees all day, why they can't have a bigger monitor."

So, back to the point, Ballmer has a very aggressive ego. I'm not sure if he will be able to take advice from a "mere" engineer. And I'm not sure that good engineers will be able to take his abuse for long.

Re:Most good engineers want no part of management

[_0rm_]

Reminds me of my manager. I work as a Software Engineer / UI designer for a defense contractor -- very small, only about 35-36 employees -- and for the most part our manager is pretty hands off. He's mostly off doing sales stuff anyway, so he almost never has time to bug us. The Senior Software Engineer who also works as part of our four person team is the same way. She stops by every now and again and we get to show off our progress, but then lets us be. A good Manager realizes that we as Engineers want two things -- ideally three things: 1) A deadline. 2) To be left the fuck alone until then. 3) And ideally a limitless budget.

Too bad Ballmer (obviously) doesn't read Dilbert..

[rgbatduke]

Or he'd realize that the instant he puts his tech people in positions of corporate power, they will grow pointy hair.

Actually, Microsoft-and-squishy is so bloated that at this point, the only thing that can rescue them from themselves is being broken up into lots of little Microsofties. Or is that Microsoftettes? How long has it been, after all, since MS last had an actual Idea, all by themselves, that they didn't just steal and then use their usual moves of creating FUD, yanking the OS-level code base around to give the FUD some basis as they break competitors' code, and finally leveraging it into their contracted market on a preferential basis until they dominate the market and people gradually forget that it wasn't MS's idea in the first place. Word processors? Spreadsheets? Integrated development environments? Web browsers? Mail clients? Windowing interfaces? Java? Windowing interfaces with multiple desktops (ooo, forgot, they still haven't figured that one out, have they)? All NIH.

Wait, I know! Vista!

I guess they've still got it...

rgb

following the suit of Google

[nigeljw]

They seem to be following in suit of the changes made by Google. http://search.slashdot.org/story/11/01/20/2244202/Eric-Schmidt-Out-Larry-Page-In-As-Google-CEO

Look,

[SethThresher]

All I want from Microsoft right now is Windows Phone 7 to be on Verizon, as soon as possible. While I'm at it, a free version of Visual Studios 2010 wouldn't hurt either.

Re:Look,

[Gilmoure]

Why the hell would MicroSoft give away an IDE for folks to create Windows software? That would be lowering quarterly profits!

Re:Look,

[SethThresher]

Hey, I figured since I was asking for things that weren't going to happen anyway, I might as well shoot for the moon!

Re:Ken Olsen?

[John Hasler]

> I hear he's not doing much of anything these days.

Being dead will do that to you. Might still be a step up for Microsoft, though.

Apple does it right

[hilldog]

While I am not a fan boy of Apple and don't run their stuff I must admit they do it right. The combination of innovate ideas, first out of the shoot and an eye to style has always had MS drooling. Now add Google in the mix and Android and just what is left for MS? They run a distant 3rd at best and frankly if they did have tech at the helm its too little too late in my opinion.

Re:Apple does it right

[Actually, I do RTFA]

While I am not a fan boy of Apple and don't run their stuff I must admit they do it right. The combination of innovate ideas, first out of the shoot and an eye to style has always had MS drooling.

What? Apple has always arrived second or worse (well, with the exception of the 80's.) They're just very very good at taking the bleeding edge and exposing it to other users. I had a touch-screen (Windows) smart phone several years before the iPhone. It worked great, and ran Office and other apps. Apple just was very good at taking a geeky thing and bringing it to the masses. See also: MP3 player, tablet PCs, *nix.

Now add Google in the mix and Android and just what is left for MS? They run a distant 3rd at best and frankly if they did have tech at the helm its too little too late in my opinion.

Oh how short your memory. Remember when the XBox was an also ran behind Sony and Nintendo. And frankly, Android took off in large part because the iPhone was AT&T exclusive. Otherwise Apple would have that market so locked down that Google would be at the window looking in as well. But MS will build that market share. I doubt the Windows 7 phone will do it, but the Windows 8 phone....

Since I'm getting a new phone soon, and you seem to be an Android fan, what's the advantage of Android over an iPhone?

more of the same problem..

[romanval]

Like it or not, computers are becoming appliances, so everything in the future needs to be designed with a UX in mind... which is why Apple places UX and OS designers in the top position, while all the engineers and salespeople work below them.

Sounds Like Egypt

[mattwrock]

Getting some heat from your "constituents"? reshuffle some underlings and call it change. Ballmer isn't going anywhere anytime soon...

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[v1]

Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not bad engineers. No it's some cost cutter who put the cheap ones in

The iceberg was the instigator, the bad fasteners just allowed the iceberg to do a great deal more damage, "unzipping" the hull.

Either by itself probably would not have sunk the ship. Both were required, and so both deserve a share of the responsibility. There was also an idiot that didn't know his "port" from his "starboard", and a bigwig that insisted on "full speed ahead" after the collision. No one single thing sank the titanic, it was more a comedy of errors.

Re:Ken Olsen?

[Cheeko]

Maybe he's only MOSTLY dead?

Sorry, nothing will change with all the arrogance.

[frog_strat]

I was a blue badge there for a while. In six years not once did I see a senior exec walking the cubes / offices, asking for input, concerns or suggestions. That feedback loop is very important if management has the humility to consider input and integrate it.. Success generally comes from hard work, good principles, and luck. I'm sorry but as long as senior management is stifled by corporate arrogance, there can be no effective feedback loop.

Now if we could only do this with Congress...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

...the USA might actually survive a few more decades as a single, unified country.

engineers?

[geekoid]

no, MS needs a CEO with at least SOME vision. Ballmer has no vision, no concept of what could be. Only what is and to try and jump on trains as they go by.

I can get MS moving again. I can see the looming techs MS should already be capitalizing on.

Yes, I could run MS better then Ballmer, and I'm sure there are others.

Shoving an engineer into a meeting is fine, but without vision, direction and the ability to redo until done it won't change a damn thing.

missing the point

[Tom]

It's not about who is nominally in charge of a company. That's always been a secondary matter.

It's who commands the respect within the company, and who gets listened to when he's got something to say.

If marketing listens when engineering says "uh, that's actually not a very good idea", then things work out just fine. Oh, btw. - and vice versa.

Problem with many CEOs, most C*Os and almost all management on the VP/director level is that they think they know everything, that business is a power game and that making your things happen is more important than making good things happen (or being unable to see that these are not identical).

I've seen my share of these. My general take is that most low management people are heroes, even if they're assholes at the same time. Lots of top-level management is bright and cares, though most will gladly stab you in the back if it gains them anything. But middle and middle-to-high management is where they dump all the idiots, psychopaths and outright dangerous people. If you find a good person there (and they exist, I know a couple!) by all means hold on to them, they're an endangered species.

So, Balmer, it's not what kind of people you put on what kind of chairs. It's if anyone listens to them, and that takes a lot more than giving them a nicer office.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[Scrameustache]

No one single thing sank the titanic

Hubris sank the Titanic.

Re:lolwut?

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs is an asshole with taste.

That explains why Apple users have such a taste for an asshole.

how it goes...

[AliasMarlowe]

If the head guy says: "invite this engineer guy into your strategy meetings"

and continues "so you'll have someone to laugh at." Or maybe to throw chairs at.
That's the way large companies often operate: the business managers and marketers claim all the glory for a successful product, and blame the engineers if a product fails.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[tophermeyer]

Loose women with tightly fitting hoop skirts made God angry.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[ColdWetDog]

No one single thing sank the titanic

Hubris sank the Titanic.

No, it was a committee. Just like everything else in life.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[Obfuscant]

Either by itself probably would not have sunk the ship. Both were required, and so both deserve a share of the responsibility.

That's like the drunk blaming the telephone pole for jumping out in front of his car. Both were required for the collision ...

Re:Here's a clue for Microsoft

[shutdown -p now]

You can't eliminate the need for anti-virus (and, more broadly, anti-malware) software so long as the users are happy to run any random executable in their mail so long as it promises them riches and/or boobies.

Re:lolwut?

[lostmongoose]

Like the monkeys writing Shakespeare, they need more time to copy proper security?

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[darkpixel2k]

Loose women with tightly fitting hoop skirts made God angry.

Then why didn't he sink the lifeboats containing (mostly) women and children?

Re:lolwut?

[darkpixel2k]

Unlike Ballmer, Jobs is visionary. He has an aesthetic sense

Exactly--call me back when Ballmer starts wearing a turtle neck and I'll ditch Linux.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[BlackSnake112]

Wasn't the Titanic one of the first ships where to turn left you turned the wheel left? Earlier ships you had to turn the wheel right to turn left. One story was that the people at the wheel at the time were new and were not fully aware of the change.

I'm not sure engineers are the silver bullet

[obarthelemy]

Disclaimer: I'm sales. And I've worked in a few large PC Corps.

I'm not sure putting engineers in charge is a silver bullet. It will be better than office politicians, but basically companies succeed by
- taking care of their customers. engineers are not an evident choice for that, as they may be too invested in pet projects or technologies, and too removed from customers, especially if they never do any on-site work. having for example witnessed developers designing user interfaces, I can attest... those were neither cute nor functional.
- taking care of their company. office politicians are notoriously bad at that, as they'll push their own agendas even if it is detrimental to the company as a whole. I'm not sure engineers are much better placed to handle either the global picture nor the internal conflicts of interests.
- taking care of their own people. I don't see what advantage engineers have here.

From the outside, I see MS as having issues in all of those, the worst being office politics. Apple seems to avoid that thanks to Steve Jobs acting as a dictator as short-circuiting would-be barons.

The one case in which putting engineers in charge is an asset, is if the company is very technology-driven. I'm not sure that's the case for MS any more.

Re:lolwut?

[badran]

What is wrong with Thinkpads?

Re:lolwut?

[Pinky's Brain]

Steve Jobs is no more or less of a visionary than Bill Gates (I think though they are both very clever they just got extremely lucky, for Gates everything flowed from DOS and for Jobs everything flowed from the iPod).

Re:cartoon ballmer?

[psithurism]

What's with the gates icon in the first place? He hasn't been working with Microsoft for a year and a half.

Reminds me of a Movie

[Ribbons Almark]

"Killed for Code"

I must be missing something here

[Presto Vivace]

I am just struck by the fact that Balmer did not get his bonus. That means bonuses actually mean something at Microsoft, unlike the financial industry.

From my limited exposure to Corporate America

[GodfatherofSoul]

This is a major cultural issue with tech companies. By structure, the sales/marketing/accounting guys are the ones that migrate up the ladder; unless your CEO is still your founder. You end up with internal power brokering that pushes the less socially-saavy techies into a development black box.

Back in the Dot Com days, I remember articles from brash sales guys almost proud to know little about the technical side of the business as it was some sort of a badge of honor to say "I'm so good I can sell crap and not even know what it is." It takes quite a bit of humility (or shame) for someone in that culture to bring in techies at a highly visible level. Top-level employees should either have their own tech skills or have access to people that do, but it doesn't seem to happen enough. We've seen way too many CEOs playing musical chairs in tech companies and running them into the dirt.

I hope they figure it out soon

[bunhed]

I am no MS fan. I haven't run an MS OS since windows 3.1 but I do hope they get it together. If they don't then Apple will be the only real game for the proprietary OS world and anyone who looks can see where they headed and how well that worked for the people with MS's years of dominance. Apple is building a wall, brick by brick so I really hope MS figures it out and doesn't die anytime soon. If this adds some savvy into their myopic, top-heavy world then bring it on.

He needs someone to blame

[phonewebcam]

After delivering so many turkeys. How about this guy?

Re:lolwut?

[camperslo]

Yes, Apple has had smart engineering/design people in the right places, but even in the marketing related areas, Apple seems to have done much better.

The business/marketing people at Microsoft have done a number of things differently.

1) regular use of F.U.D. Very misleading statements when comparing security with other platforms
2) Not shipping when announced
3) Shipping things with major (and not quickly patched) flaws
4) Shipping things without some of the preannounced features. Preannounce and underdeliver is quite the opposite being somewhat secretive and providing some surprise with pretty well polished products at release.
5) Overstating user excitement/demand. Lines at stores due to free concert tickets instead of the new product? Subsidized launch parties. Quoting shipments to channel as sold (instead of actual end-user purchase/activation). Citing "sold out" when supply available was very low.
6) Some really strange ads. (At least they've gotten better)

So while one can criticize Microsoft for lacking other skills in key upper management, even the business/marketing skills and vision has been lacking. Encompassing many skillsets good people are needed in EVERY area of a company including those doing things the end-user can't see directly.
Of course if the end-user isn't the one paying companies like Microsoft or Google directly, there's not only the added difficultly of ensuring an optimal experience on hardware someone else makes, but perhaps less incentive as well. It's a bit like looking at the quality of commercial t.v. entertainment and news programming. The problem is better understood when one realizes that the customer is the advertiser, not the viewer. These things cause goals to differ from what consumers might expect.

Some have gone too far in crediting "cool" as being behind Apple sales without looking enough at the user perception of value. (plenty of power, loads of easy to use functionality without a bunch of on-going headaches). More "cool" wasn't enough to get many people to buy the Apple G4 cube when Apple delivered the other attributes in other cheaper products. The Dell Adama laptop was (still is??) marketed as cool, but relatively few PC users have been willing to pay a premium price for it. I noted a Best Buy with some pretty powerful 17" laptop configurations from Sony and Asus, but with battery life of 2 hours or so while the Mac shown (admitted not Apple's fastest 17") got 9 or 10.
I suspect some doing things like playing WoW or working with video while on A.C. power still like those, but really, how many can tolerate such awful battery life? What were they thinking?

I'm not sure how much blame Microsoft deserves for end-user systems that excel in some ways but fall flat in others but it seems apparent that much of that doesn't spin very well as "user choice". Maybe with more geeks in MS management their planning and testing for the end-user experience will look beyond simply minimizing crashes.

Microsoft seems to be learning it is better to shut up when they don't have a good product. They certainly didn't have much to say about tablets/slates at CES this year.

Re:lolwut?

[HaZardman27]

Apparently they don't look pretty enough. I have no interest in a product designed more for aesthetics than functionality.

Developers = Managers??

[maddmike]

While on the surface this sounds like a great idea, I can't help but look back on 15 years of developing software and realize that the people who were the best at with the technical issue were usually the worst at handling the personell and political issues. Just because you good at something doesn't mean you are good at getting other people to do the same thing. It seems that there is a balance point somewhere between business people and tech savy people they need to find.

Re:Here's a clue for Microsoft

[Eggplant62]

Add in the clueless security model that Microsoft uses, where anyone and everyone can gain superuser privileges on the OS, and there's your recipe for disaster. Implementing browser functionality that runs random scripts with elevated privileges on a whim is another problem. Please tell me, how does this get successfully executed on a platform with adequate system security principals in use, like Linux, BSD or OSX?

Re:IBM is diversified. Microsoft is a one trick po

[Archangel Michael]

Basically, you're saying what I've said for a while now. Microsoft is a "Windows" company. That is their product. Everything they do is based around "Windows". But even here they fail, because they aren't just a "Windows" company, they are a "Microsoft Windows" company.

Take a look at Android, is there any Microsoft software available for Android? Exchange/Outlook ? Office? Sharepoint? Anything?

Why would a Tech company with entrenched tech products ignore MILLIONS of devices simply because its "not invented here"? And everything I've said also applies to Apple iPhones as well.

The point is, people are not getting a look at Linux through Droid, and seeing first hand that you don't need "Windows" to be useful. And when you compound that the Windows 7 Phone edition looks sucky compared to the others, it tarnishes Windows 7.

Heck, if I were Google, I'd start marketing Android Desktop OS (base it off Chromium OS) to OEMs and see how it goes. People know the Android name now, use it.

Re:lolwut?

[blind monkey 3]

Hoes, hoes, hoes, hoes?

oh dear...

[microcuts]

i predict this making things worse for MS. design and innovation will be bogged down by the old hats. in my experience things get done with crazy ideas, kind of like architecture on construction sites. ...bring on the flames

Re:Microsoft is really a bunch of tech companies

[Fastball]

Yes, conglomerates are going out of style lately. Investors have good reason, because the sum of the parts would be worth more instead of languishing under the same roof. You've got MSFT split out similarly to how I see them. Some of the businesses (desktop and business) are mature cash cows with good cash flows and should have rich dividends. Others (consumer products and internet) should be freed from the conservative yoke and strive for accelerated growth. All would get a boost from an announcement that Ballmer was stepping down to "spend more time with his family."

$41 billion in cash and short term investments and no material debt. Love 'em or hate 'em, they have considerable resources to make gains for consumers and investors alike.

Ballmer turns to geeks for salvation...

[John Pfeiffer]

...and then acts surprised when they crucify him. :)

It'd be terribly amusing-- albeit not terribly productive --if all his years of, well...being Ballmer...finally caught up with him. :3

Re:Ken Olsen?

[Locke2005]

Dead... And yet he still smells better than Ballmer...

Re:lolwut?

[Kelbear]

Whatever you think of Jobs from a technical or creative standpoint...it would be foolish to dismiss his success.

There's plenty of room for debate on how he achieved that success, but what's clear from his string of repeated success across multiple projects, is that he's making a little of his own luck.

Even if you think apple products are overpriced locked-down garbage...you should still recognize the fact that he's managing to sell such products in tremendous volumes.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[RobertM1968]

No one single thing sank the titanic

Hubris sank the Titanic.

I thought it was the iron...

Ismay: [incredulously] But this ship can't sink!

Thomas Andrews: She's made of iron, sir! I assure you, she can... and she will!! It is a mathematical certainty.

;-) Gotta admit that had me cracking up when I watched that scene... ummm... not that I watched the movie... or anything...

Re:lolwut?

[Idbar]

Nope. Cybercheaters, cybercheaters, cybercheaters, cybercheaters

Re:Here's a clue for Microsoft

[ocdscouter]

But they've at least partially addressed that, haven't they? The "security essentials" aren't perfect, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.

Engineers or programmers?

[plopez]

There's a difference. Knowing what I know about how programmers work, this may just hasten MS demise. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Re:Engineers or programmers?

[_0rm_]

You mean our "when it's done" attitude that is hard-coded into us by default?

Re:IBM is diversified. Microsoft is a one trick po

[Archangel Michael]

I use and continue to use the best tool for the job, be it Mac, Linux or Windows. I'm happy with just about anything that doesn't get in my way.

Why? Does that surprise you?

Re:lolwut?

[westlake]

Because of this, nothing he does will get MS out of its slump.

If this is a "slump," I'll take more of the same.

In the second quarter:

Revenues: $19.95 billion.

Business software profits up 35%
Server and tools profits up 22%
Entertainment group profits up 86%.

Kinect is a winner.

Windows revenues down 30%. But with Win 7 approaching a 25% share of the global market for a client OS, that is not the end of the world. No, the iPad Is Not Killing Microsoft's Business

That's one way to solve the problem...

[nilbog]

If you're incompetent, just hire a bunch of new people that are too dumb to realize it. Problem solved!

Re:lolwut?

[mug funky]

1) regular use of F.U.D. Very misleading statements when comparing security with other platforms

hi! i'm a mac!

2) Not shipping when announced

any of their editing line (FCP, Color, FC studio, DVD studio)

3) Shipping things with major (and not quickly patched) flaws

quicktime has had the same gamma correction errors for about 7 years now. there are volumes of complaints about it, and though there's workarounds, most users have no idea how to avoid it.

4) Shipping things without some of the preannounced features. Preannounce and underdeliver is quite the opposite being somewhat secretive and providing some surprise with pretty well polished products at release.

RED support in Color.

a reset button wouldn't go amiss either.

5) Overstating user excitement/demand. Lines at stores due to free concert tickets instead of the new product? Subsidized launch parties. Quoting shipments to channel as sold (instead of actual end-user purchase/activation). Citing "sold out" when supply available was very low.

sell-through stats are unreliable and hard to obtain. those are the breaks. Apple has the same dilemma and to say they don't is dishonest.

6) Some really strange ads. (At least they've gotten better)

i have some Apple VHS tapes that would make you spit coffee at your monitor, even if you didn't have coffee on hand and weren't at your computer.

a company is a company is a company.

even opensource zealots spread FUD thicker than Pollock spreads paint, and they're not even paid for it.

Re:lolwut?

[bonch]

Bill Gates and Microsoft just got lucky with an IBM contract that put them on every commodity PC. It wasn't because Gates had some great product vision. His 90s book about the future originally mentioned nothing about the Internet.

Jobs is a designer. He's the kind of guy who took LSD, attended calligraphy classes, and preferred aesthetically-pleasing motherboard designs just for the sake of perfection. I think Microsoft needs more product designers and less engineers--they have so many APIs and product editions and lab experiments that engineering is quite well covered there, in my opinion.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[DinDaddy]

Would have gotten their shirts wet. He does not approve.

Give Up.

[crhylove]

Start saving money now and plan on moving into a completely different market.

Open Source has you beat on every product.

Windows Linux particularly Linux Mint 10.
IE Firefox AND Chrome for that matter
Office Libre AND Google Docs

If there weren't entrenched apps built on windows like Dentrix for dentists, MS would have lost it's hegemony some time ago. With apps moving to the cloud: The writing is on the wall. You guys need to switch strategies altogether. YOU CANNOT compete against FOSS long term. Millions of coders are always better than thousands, eventually.

Are you guys making money on the Xbox? That seems to be doing well, despite heavy competition from both Nintendo AND Sony. Maybe get into electric cars or something.

Other than games, software is all going to be FOSS in the next 10 years. It's inevitable.

Re:Here's a clue for Microsoft

[dadelbunts]

Its easy to find vulnerabilities when EVERYONE is looking for them. Linux and BSD is nowhere near as widely in use as Windows. The people that use those two also generally have greater know how than an average windows user. Oh look someone sent me notavirus.exe let me run it. Car analogy. I see more broken civics than f430s. Not beacuse the f430 engine lasts longer but because there is a high number of civics around and a high percentage of that high number doesnt take care of them. Do you think that OSX for instance is so locked down that if the same number of people tried to find exploits they wouldnt be able to? When any other OS has equal market share with Windows then i can agree with you.

"he'd lead by example" Bwahahaha.

[crovira]

He is leading by example.

Unfortunately, he's a barker at a circus side-show.

He's riding this gravy train until it runs out of steam.

Hopefully he'll die* or retire** soon or he'll be ousted like Darl " I'm not dead yet " McBride and the courts will put him out of misery.

* Throwing chairs around can lead to heart attacks.
** But then again, Aeron makes for pretty light chairs.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[Cronock]

James Cameron sunk the Titanic.

Re:IBM is diversified. Microsoft is a one trick po

[_0rm_]

Why does Nolan Bushnell come to mind when I read this comment?

Re:lolwut?

[Korin43]

Sales people apparently..

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[Fiduciary]

Loose women with tightly fitting hoop skirts made God angry.

Then why didn't he sink the lifeboats containing (mostly) women and children?

The devil's in the details.

Re:Titanic Sunk Due to Weak Rivets and Bolts not b

[tagno25]

Because of the children

Re:Here's a clue for Microsoft

[Nocturna81]

I'm going to skip on a comparison between OSX and Windows, mainly because I haven't found any reliable sources but since the architecture for OSX isn't that different from Linux I'm just going to put them on the same heap in the next bit. For the usage levels: that depends on what and how you`re measuring, according to this Wikipedia article Linux is actually on the same usage level as Windows on servers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems (depending on what and who's usage numbers you believe). I haven't heard of a string of vulnerabilities found in Linux however. Also, I think you`re correlating two facts (more users = more vulnerabilities found) that are really two separate issues. Linux has a decidedly different security model then the Windows family of operating systems which makes it more resistant to attacks (the default user on Linux isn't administrator for instance). Increasing the number of users will undoubtedly trigger more attacks but it's not a certainty that this will also increase the number of vulnerabilities found. For instance, the number of bugs that are found but not fixed are much higher on the Windows platform then the Linux one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Windows_and_Linux#Security). Now this could entirely be possible that because more people are looking for them that more bugs are found. However, the speed of with which the bugs are fixed in the respective operating systems to me says something about the security mindset. And for Windows this would indicate a relatively low priority. I agree however that a more cluefull user will have his security locked down better then Joe Average.

Re:lolwut?

[TheLink]

From an engineering perspective (at least for the old IBM ones) they're OK.

But they'd look rather out of place next to a designer handbag, or in one of those "interior designer" apartments/houses. Whereas a Mac might not. My self-assembled PC would certainly stick out like a sore thumb in those environments :).

Returning to the topic of Microsoft , watch this video to see one of the differences between Microsoft and Apple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0
So what's wrong with that final box? It works doesn't it? As you can see it's a matter of taste :).

Apparently the video was done by Microsoft employees. So perhaps it's not just the engineers who aren't being heard by management - their own designers might be getting overridden for "business reasons".

Re:IBM is diversified. Microsoft is a one trick po

[Archangel Michael]

This just in, Smartphones outsell computers for the first time. And almost all of those are NOT Microsoft smart phones. They are replacing computers for many people, and yet Microsoft is not targeting any phone save for the ones labeled with "Microsoft" on them somewhere. Take a look around your office, look for a Windows Mobile phone, see any?

Ignoring an entire market space because it doesn't have "Microsoft" on it is just plain stupid.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jv0mxMUeIcToktm19cnHdHqGEiLg?docId=5a76d0b346bd4162a17079ed98ac44b8

In related news, Apple is slated to become the #1 Company in the world.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41473211

If you call that "success" for Microsoft, great. I don't.

Re:lolwut?

[Gilmoure]

We're gonna' need more monkeys.

Re:lolwut?

[Gilmoure]

Jobs just copied everything from Microsoft, who copied it from IBM.

Re:lolwut?

[Gilmoure]

I bought a pair of shoes because of the Jerry/Bill ads. I think their marketing is working.

Re:Here's a clue for Microsoft

[UnknowingFool]

Linux and BSD is nowhere near as widely in use as Windows by consumers.

Fixed that for you. I'm not sure that you're aware that businesses use Linux and BSD for their servers. In some areas, Linux/Unix is the only machines that companies will use. In the supercomputing field, if you use Windows, people will laugh at you. Even the NSA hardened Linux. Why didn't the NSA harden Windows? Probably because they can't.