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Steve Ballmer: We Won't Be Out-Innovated By Apple Anymore
An anonymous reader tips an article about comments from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer regarding Microsoft's attitude toward Apple. It seems Microsoft is tired of being behind the curve in most areas of the tech market, and will be trying very hard to prevent Apple and other companies from beating them to the punch in the future. From the article:
"In a recent interview, Ballmer explained that the company had ceded innovations in hardware and software to Apple, but that the-times-they-are-a-'changin. 'We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple,' Ballmer explained. 'Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.' ... An admirable goal, but it's fair to argue that attempting to innovate everywhere results in innovation nowhere. A big part of the reason Apple has been so successful is that they devote the bulk of their attention to only a few select market areas. By trying to innovate everywhere, so to speak, Microsoft runs the continued risk of spreading itself too thin and not really having a fundamental impact in any one market."
Sorry, Apple has a patent on innovation.
Oh, crap. Is this the real definition of "innovation", or Apple's definition? Because if this means Microsoft is going to go MORE on the offensive with asserting dodgy patents, we could be in for a rough ride...
"we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple"
all that really says is they will be following Apple into any market even ones that aren't right for Microsoft. it actually sounds to me like they are doubling down on copying Apple.
Ballmer to MS board: "Please let stay as the CEO"
Why am I reminded of this Dilbert cartoon from last week?
A decree from the CEO to be more innovative largely means nothing if they can't actually make the change in a meaningful way and bring out products.
If Microsoft has been innovating and not creating products, they're idiots. If they haven't been innovating, well, that's the fundamental problem, isn't it?
Microsoft has been so mired in the "copy someone else's product badly" mentality for so long, I question if Balmer understand what needs to be done to fix this. Certainly not just a speech.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ballmer seems to be citing the ongoing (prior?) battles as areas where MS intends to fight... That's great and all, assuming MS delivers, but they should instead be focussing on the next battles.
they're going to do something that is completely against/opposite any and all products or direction they have ever made or gone? I'll believe it when I see it!
They don't have the best track record on original products :)
Work smarter, not harder: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-07-06/ .
Because innovation is the same way - Ballmer doesn't want to be out-innovated in any of the established "hot" areas but he doesn't know what he doesn't know.
Why? Because Jobs is dead?
All Microsoft has to do is focus on improving the support for Businesses, and Apple will always be the little man. Keep Microsoft OS on work desktops, Microsoft Office products, and Microsoft on servers (including better virtualization), and Microsoft will keeps its Monopoly.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
"Innovation." You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You want to out-innovate Apple? Don't make a goal of going head-to-head with them everywhere - that's copying, the exact opposite of innovating. Compete where you actually have a newer, better product than they have. Compete where they have no product. Let them win where you cannot create a better or more innovative product. I'm sure Sun Tzu had something I could quote here, but I can't remember anything offhand.
So if a team of 20 build a new widget, which rockets into fame (yes this is a work of fiction), then the 2 people will get all the credit, 16 will get credit for being there, and the other 2 will be blow standards. I don't think we have to worry about Microsoft changing.
"then they laugh at you"
"then they fight you"
"and then you win."
It looks like Ballmer has decided to proceed from stage 2 to stage 3. This is really the first time I recall him doing anything to admit there's a problem. Usually the MS stage puppets just keep up the brainwashing with how MS is doing so well and owns the market and is the leader in everything and how the new blablabla is going to be such a smashing success. You know the gloves have come off when Ballmer admits they're behind.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Thankfully, all it takes is a declaration from the CEO to turn everything around. (At this point, sarcasm should actually condense out of the air around you.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
"Well, we are the most focused company that I know of, or have read of, or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number, so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose, so that we can deliver the best products in the world. In fact, the table that each of you are sitting at today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, and yet Apple’s revenue last year was over $40 billion. I think the only other company that could say that is an oil company."
Microsoft is too large and unfocused to sustain innovation. They will continue to be fast followers, and still make plenty of money doing it.
We're at a stage in the computer industry where innovation is the LAST thing we need.
What we need is bug fixes and "refinement". Microsoft didn't need to force Metro on us...they just needed to perfect Windows 7. Apple isn't redesigning OS X every 2 years. They're tweaking it an making it better.
The endless push for NEW products is what screws up the computer industry. Nothing is ever actually *finished*.
...it's too late.
They've got a lot more zeros and commas and stuff in their bank account balance than me, that's for sure. They ought be be able to afford to spread out quite a bit before risking being too "thin" anywhere. When you have that much cash in the bank you ought to be able to draft a memo and toss it in the air and a month from now there's a new large building somewhere staffed full of talented people with one purpose, to make what you just wrote down happen. Why should we think MS can't do that?
I don't think the coverage is the problem. You have to have brilliant minds at the top to toss out memos like that to provide direction in the first place. That's where MS has been failing for so long. They're like a troll, big and powerful, and truly a scary thing to be up against in theory, but it's not the muscle that's the problem.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
this only shows that he doesn't actually know what innovation is...
sounds more like marketing told him what innovation is all about
If Ballmer thinks that his problem is being 'out-innovated' by Apple, his attempt to respond is going to be about as effectual as a fish out of water.
Apple doesn't really do innovation as much as they do polished, decisive, takes on things that were previously relegated to niche status or mediocrity. They've also shown a historical willingness to murder even their popular products in order to introduce something that they like better(ipod mini being the most notable recent example: killed at the height of its popularity in favor of more expensive and lower-capacity flash-based products, because rotating media were deemed sufficiently inelegant.
If 'innovation' were the problem, Microsoft could trivially bury Apple in wacky stuff coming out of MS research. As it is, though, they can't even refrain from eating any of their own young that don't play nicely enough with Windows/Office, and they have a veritable talent for squandering even the technical superiority areas that they do have by making them too expensive or too complex for individual users(eg. MS had volume shadow copy in full working order since server 2003, and has substantial clout in terms of getting OEMs to build things, plus an embedded OS to license to them for the purpose. So why is it that they let Apple beat them to releasing a usable-by-morons home backup system(based on a rather more primitive and hacky architecture) 4 years later?)
There isn't a definition of innovation that people agree with. Everyone expects some radical change that no one has thought of, but that has never ever happened in the consumer space. A good definition that most rational people can agree with is to improve existing ideas in some way or another. This improvement can be major or minor (both being subjective terms). The consumer space is a volume business which relies heavily on scale/margin economies. Nobody is going to make ultra expensive cutting edge cool tech for mass market use.
I am sure that like most companies MS has improved upon existing ideas. Though the key here is what OTHERS think of as innovative. e.g. No one cares about kernel improvements in NT - Not one person is going to write an article about them. They have always had cool tech inside their OS - but hidden under closed source licensing. All they have to do for people to simply think they're innovative is to add some visual flair - which is decidedly non innovative - since almost every UI is based upon ideas that are familiar to users in one form or another.
It is. It's an easy thing to say. And very soothing to stockholders I'm sure. But how are you going to do it? It's sort of like saying "I'm going to have an innovative idea by 3pm tomorrow!" Ok, that's great. How exactly do you do that?
Innovation isn't something you simply decide you're going to have, and then you have it.
What you can do is to change your culture, foster ideas, hire people and don't abuse them. Make your environment a place where innovation can happen. I'm looking at you forced curve. People who think "outside the box" do not like being put in one. If you set up your environment to where only drones do well, then drones are what you'll have. Any real rogue thinkers in the Microsoft structure would get crushed like ants. Need I remind you Einstein did some of his best work while he was getting poor reviews as a patent clerk?
And innovation isn't something you can really buy, either. Although MS tries. The current MS policy of borg-like assimilation of any outside company that might have a good idea isn't really working, is it? It's a wonderful tribute to the amount of money you have, but it hasn't produced any sort of good results I can think of in a decade. Hell, you guys couldn't even keep Hotmail working. They were the #1 gold standard, and Google waltzed right into that space with Gmail and it's a done deal now.
In short, if you want to lead you better change. Your culture is all wrong for innovation.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Then use Eric Cartman marketing (telling everyone they can't have it). The problem with MS right now is that it has no quality control over what its software is put on, and it's perceived as common and cheap. Apple markets itself as the exact opposite.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Microsoft is always talking about what they're gonna do. They need to just shut up and actually DO something. Their last innovative product was when they created the GUI version of the spreadsheet and called it 'Excel.' Since then, the innovation has been a little slow. The problem starts with Ballmer. He is not thinking about cool stuff that can be done with tech. No, he's thinking about how he can make money doing cool stuff that others are doing. As they say in Texas, Microsoft is all hat and no cattle.
Can I compare this to Khan's tunnel vision on the incapacitated Reliant as he's still going after the Enterprise at the end of Wrath?
Let's face it, most of us are scoffers. But moments before zero hour, it does not pay to take chances.
Innovation does not mean buying out new startups with promising technology.
It means investing in people, technology, and software, building towards a hoped-for future.
Neither Apple nor MicroSoft have done much innovating in the past 25 years. All they've done is fine tune, repackage, and buy startups that were promising or a threat.
Until the bottom line is the corporate future instead of the shareholder payout, it won't change, either.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
When you go back a while, when die Microsoft ever really "Invent" something?
DOS bought from Seattle Computer Products, idea for Windows in general nicked from Xerox, Browser taken over from NCSA Mosaic, PSTools acquired from Sysinternals, etc....
The only difference now seems to be that Apple isn't willing to be bought up and/or hoodwinked into giving up their innovation to MS.
Perhaps he also should have mentioned that he intends for Microsoft to sell more, higher value products and to earn more money!
How do they think of these things? They just must be thinking all the time over there at Microsoft!
Honing a "few products" has worked out pretty well for them. That is even including cannibalization of some of their big winners like the iPod. I may not like how Apple does things, but they do a lot of things right especially from a user design perspective. Every time I have picked up one of their products just to see what the big deal is, I have been able to immediately "get it" and see how to use them. They have innovated in a few very important ways.
By the way, how can a device be narcissistic. Me thinks you are just as spellbound by their marketing as the dirty hipsters you seem to be trying to disparage.
Frankly, I don't even want Microsoft to be "innovative." At this point, they're pretty much like a public utility – I prefer when they're doing their work in the background, and I mostly only notice if they screw something up.
The fundamental problem is that Microsoft should be transitioning from a high-growth company to a stable, mature company – from a financial perspective, less emphasis on stock appreciation and more on dividends. People – and more importantly, businesses – rely on Microsoft for un-sexy features like backwards compatibility, familiarity, installed base, and stability (some of the older Slashdotters may laugh, but Windows 7 really is a rock-stable OS, and even a fully patched XP isn't bad.) The fact is that Windows became "good enough" for most users years ago, and everything since then has been either incremental improvements or actual degradation. There hasn't been any major positive "paradigm shift" on the desktop and there won't be. Some users will find that they don't need a full-fledged PC and will transition to tablets, but many, perhaps a majority, still need the power and/or flexibility that only a complete desktop OS can offer. This is Microsoft's niche. They need to focus on it and stop chasing phantoms.
I completely agree. The way they have things set up, it's a race to be that top 1 in 10 not to go out on a limb and risk being label as the loser. Stick with what you know, make sure you only color inside the lines, refine something that worked in the past (or for someone else). But come up with wildly new ideas and get them out the door? Nobody is signing up for that.
I know why they have this system in place, but it's so completely misguided them up to now that I don't know if they could recover from it (from a "OK, from now on we innovate!" perspective) even if they ditched it tomorrow.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Not on our watch
Does he include the 12 years he has already been CEO, or does he mean starting now? Starting next year? Starting on an as yet to be released starting date?
There's still time!
And I am sure that Apple will soon release an Apple TV product that shakes up the market and makes Microsoft look stupid for being there already (media center, xbox), but not actually ever having a product that was compelling.
Home theaters are just begging for simplification – and I don’t expect that Microsoft will be the one to deliver.
Yeah, right. I'm behind you all the way Steve-0.
Well, he might as well order the waves to stop, like King Canute. Or follow the more recent example from North Carolina, ordering the Atlantic Ocean not to rise non-linearly.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Going after Apple and then telling in which areas MS won't be out-innovated anymore is not the same as innovation. Innovation doesn't mean to be better than others in the same markets. It means creating new markets and new product categories. Just being as good or better than Apple would mean shit if Apple then comes with the next big thing MS had never even wasted a thought on.
Of course this is pure theory, since I don't think we will see that much innovation from Apple anymore. Still, these are laughable comments from a CEO. It's pretty clear that Ballmer doesn't even know what innovation actually means.
Have gnu, will travel.
He demonstrated his stunning visionary abilities a while back - how'd that work out for you, Steve?
A big part of the reason Apple has been so successful is that they devote the bulk of their attention to only a few select market areas.
Apple without Jobs almost went bankrupt once. They probably have another year or so to complete projects he had going. After that it might be easier for Microsoft to be as innovative as the post-Jobs Apple.
it's fair to argue that attempting to innovate everywhere can often result in innovation nowhere. A big part of the reason Apple has been so successful is that they devote the bulk of their attention to only a few select market areas. By trying to innovate everywhere, so to speak, Microsoft runs the continued risk of spreading itself too thin and not really having a fundamental impact in any one market.
Doesn't seem to stop Google. Lots of companies have diverse portfolios and still manage to be successful. Look at those giant Korean industrial outfits like Hyundai and Daewoo. I suspect that corporate culture plays a bigger role.
On a more stylistic point:
let's be honest.
Sure,...
Granted,...
If anything,...
"too little too late"
And it goes without saying that...
Now,...
you can't deny...
it was abundantly clear
it's fair to argue that
If I submitted an article with this many clichés and redundant filler I'd expect my editor to send it back to me and tell me to clean it up.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
"Not going to happen. Not on our watch".
did Ballmer jump around like a monkey when he said that???
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It seems Microsoft is working hard on innovating themselves out of the market... they seem to have confused "different" with "innovative".. Windows 8 will be... different
Apple has apparently acquired Microsoft.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Microsoft seem almost becalmed and bereft. Windows 8, apart from some good baseline (read unexciting, but sound steps) engineering has a crippled, useless, featureless, desert of a UI. Its also seemingly an assault on Win32 and much of Windows infrastructure, in exchnage for untested WinRT/WinRT, and at least on the surface, a limited, confined, controlled new API and an Empty house as far as software goes.
And I'll be blunt. In desktop terms, Apple was wrong when it went full screen nuts, and so are these idiots. The desktop is a rich, diverse, interesting environment. Its not a phone and its not a tablet.
Windows 8 deserves to actually die and have its journey terminated, at least in this incarnation. And no, taking a failed zune base and trying to make it your computational universe was very stupid.
And its been matched by the stupidity on display in countless windows 8 blog posts where they show their unhinged ideas are based on the feedback from the wrong people (hint, savvy windows users shut off the feedback, they tend not to want or accept MS poking around). The endless idiotic postings about not enough people used the start button, so we deleted it are legion. Die Die Die.
We`re all equal
I'm sure they are very good at innovating in their business, it is just that their business is turning office workers into drones. We already are all drones, there's no more expansion.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
And yet Apple literally has more money than it knows what to do with. You can blame it on narcissism, on hipster doofuses or whatever you like, but while Apple's market share on those devices is going through the roof, and on Google's side where Android is showing up everywhere, Microsoft is still month's away from an OS that will run reasonably well on tablets and other such devices. Microsoft is literally two years behind Apple and Google, and if this follows the same trend as Microsoft's other attempts to get into the mobile market, they'll be left with the best mobile OS that runs on a PC.
I don't think Microsoft is going anywhere. The Office-Exchange beast dominates in the corporate world, but let's face it, as the PC fades in importance as a consumer device, Microsoft has a serious problem, and in the mobile/device world of smartphones and tablets, it does not have the dominance that it used in the late 1980s and early 1990s to become the powerhouse it is now. And as those devices get embedded more and more in the corporate world, there's a trojan horse waiting.
It's all well and good that Microsoft is going to start innovating. The problem is that they're probably five or six years too late, and are saddled with all kinds of pointless cruft like the XBox division. If Microsoft can't regain some ground, Ballmer's time will be seen as a long period of stagnation. It doesn't matter how much Microsoft Research cranks out if the marketing boys lack the imagination to see its application.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Historically, Microsoft has taken other innovations, including Apple, and beating them with them. Considering that their own innovations have been Clippy, Bob, and Metro, they should probably stick with what works.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"...great artists steal."
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Firstly - as many people have said, MS needs to pull back from the markets it's contesting. Over the last few years they've taken on portable audio, search, the cloud, phones, hands free interfaces, and now finally a tablet. The Surface is still up in the air, I don't think they've even talked prices yet(?) That's going to be a deciding factor, I don't think consumer demand has capacity to support TWO luxury players in the mobile market, and Apple aren't just going to roll over. Kinect is well implemented and can provide a boatload of functionality, but it might be hampered by being shackled to something that isn't quite yet considered an "entertainment" device, as opposed to a games console.
The point being, MS doesn't surprise me with a new offering any more, and they haven't made much impact in any of the above fields. They're always the "me too", and lately they're turning up in third place on a lot of things.
That said, praise where it's due: With all that on top, MS hasn't lost sight of their desktop OS, easily their most important product outside of/in hand with Office. (I don't think I can even say that much for Apple: Lion seems like the dumbing down of OSX to attract iOS users.)
They're in a strong place with the XBox right now, which is probably still their most significant offering outside of general computing. I think if they leverage it correctly, they could really push the old "digital home" angle again, talking to your console, sending YouTube videos from your tablet to your TV, etc. and actually make something cool in the process.
Do you see what I did there?
"Not going to happen. Not on our watch."
LOL. This piece of history (Ballmer's "watch") has already been written.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I would be quite happy to see Microsoft become competitive again. I really enjoyed switching over to Apple products for home use because of how user friendly they are. But, they've been getting to be too closed of a shop. It would be fantastic to see some honest competition in the market again as it would force both of the major players to produce better quality products at more reasonable prices. Apple became a better competitor because of how dominant Microsoft was. Hopefully now Microsoft can become a better competitor again as they have a major contender out there in Apple.
"Innovation" get used in the tech field for the same reason that "Journalist" gets used in the news field. It used to be that we used "Invent" and "Reporter", but when companies didn't want to be held to the standards that these words held, they found synonyms. Synonyms that matched the original words enough that the general public would hear the original when the replacement was spoken, but that had just enough leeway to claim they are not lying when they were called on the table to live up to to those standards.
So, in modern English, "Innovate" means "We marketed ideas that other people have had for a long time, and want you to give us credit for inventing it."
We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in Tablets, we shall fight on the Apps and Stpres, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the tablet market, we shall defend our franchise, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight in the consumer market, we shall fight in the enterprise space, we shall fight in the developers hearts and minds, we shall fight in Corporate IT; we shall never surrender!
Make your product the coolest there is and make no compromise to compatibility with previous products.
Then support that product for it's entire lifecycle, including real updates. If you drop support for phones sold less than a year ago that run your current latest telephone OS, you will never get anyone to believe your product is worth spending 150% of the competitors price on. You can't have your cake and eat it too, if you drop support for older hardware, make sure the older hardware has served it's purpose and is probably worn out as it is.
Make sure your product only comes in one or two flavors. How many versions of windows are there again? There's 4 versions or so of 2008R2 server, 7 or so of windows 7? Just make "server" and "desktop" and give them the same name and API. Put some server centric apps on the server and desktop centric apps on the desktop, but the OS API should be uniform amongs the two versions.
Make sure there is a "support" that just gives support for that machine. Again, 2 options, desktop support and server support. Nothing more, nothing less.
People like the simple proposals that don't give them more chances to pick the wrong option. How frustrated do you think your customers are when they get told that their "genuine" windows version doesn't have that feature that their neighbors or work PC has and not only that, since they bought OEM they should get support from their vendor and not MicroSoft? Really....Stop coming back for a glass of milk when you already got the cookie. if you want more, charge a whole cake in advance and then just give people what they want for the cake in return without telling them no after they already paid.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Great Steve, how about getting your teams to do some actual innovation on Windows Media Center - before you lose that to Apple too?
(note: adding de-interlacing, a bunch of codecs and then shoving it in a pay-for additional pack for Windows 8 isn't innovation)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
No. The Balmer comments are completely surended to Apple. The post does nothing more than echoing that.
Rethinking email
being named "Steve" too, doesn't quite get you there. You, Steve Ballmer, must understand that YOU and Steve Jobs are very different people with completely different goals and objectives, and your company's [Micorsoft] performance reflects these differences. Accept your path for what it is: Microsoft is not a company hell-bent on enabling the individual person exploring and enhancing creative endeavors, Microsoft is a very corporate-business-driven entity best suited for large scale business operations, such as Office and networking. MS has a track record for failure in the consumer segment [who the hell owns a Zune? - a clunky brown piece of shit - if it was worth having, the market would have selected for it] except for the X-box platform. Stop wasting investors' money and stick with what you're [MS] is good at: business software and integrating it together. Face it Steve, Jr., you're not even close to Jobs and you're getting yourself into an area where you're going to fail again. No one is ever going to put an MS logo on their car, college office door, laptop, etc... MS doesn't have the "coolness factor" and never will, YOU'RE ALL MISSING THE POINT, YOU NEVER HAVE 'GOTTEN IT', AND NEVER WILL! Apple doesn't compete in your market, why do you think you can accelerate past some of the brightest minds in the tech industry? Being a pharmaceutical scientist, I can liken Apple as the Discovery Research aspect of the high-tech world, Microsoft is more the Development segment of something that is passed through the pipeline, something more established. Microsoft would have to completely disassemble its way of thinking and come around to opening truly creative thinking and implementing it without being diluted and combobulated with the current MS corporate culture. What you seek you do not possess - it's like an average student wanting very badly to enroll in honors courses, yes, you want it, but you don't have what it takes to succeed or get there, you are pursuing an area completely out of your league. And "developers, developers, developers, developers" isn't going to cut it, MS is certainly not on the cutting edge of creativity or technological [both software and hardware] innovation. No college graduate is beating down the doors of Microsoft screaming "I want to beat down Apple! Just give me enough money an I'll do it." Rather, those graduates are employed by Apple, until they burn out, then the next crop comes in. You're going to continue to get second-hand A-players who are either burnt-out from working at Apple, or who never made there to begin with. Stick with what you're good at: MAKING BUSINESS SOFTWARE. Pursue market areas where MS is going to have dominance and continued success - FOCUS, DON'T DILUTE. I can always make a ruckus at the next shareholders meeting, and believe me Steve, I'll step up to the microphone and give you a piece of my mind.
Blackberry didn't spontaneously die, people stopped using the platform for a reason. If MS had sought to fill that gap, they'd barely be able to get their foot in before it closed up.
Do you see what I did there?
I came here initially wanting to write about Microsoft's position and Apple's position and how it all kind of makes sense.
Here's the thing though. We've all admired Apple for how agile it is. It creates all kinds of attention-getting, waiting-in-line-for-a-week kind of stuff. But their markets do not really include anything which might include the word "vital" in its description.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's software, for better or worse, is the foundation of business everywhere on the planet. "Vital" describes the core of Microsoft's products... that being Windows and Office products.
What does this mean? Well, if Apple makes huge changes, they aren't going to upset business or the global economy. If Microsoft does, it REALLY causes problems. Get the picture? Microsoft CAN'T make major changes without major risk. Vista and 7 were major risks. Vista's mistakes caused reluctance to go to 7. And this Metro interface thing? Holy crap! I just don't want to hear about it and neither does any other IT people. We'd rather it just not exist and Microsoft tweaks, tunes and improves 7.
Microsoft is out of touch if they think they can be like Apple (or better) without major changes. For them to pull this off, they would have to split up into "business" and "other" where they continue down two roads... you know, kind of like Redhat and Fedora. If they do something like that? Maybe...
LOL
Rethinking email
> Ballmer explained that the company had ceded innovations in hardware and software to Apple, but that the-times-they-are-a-'changin. 'We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple,'
So they are going to innovate by copying Apple.
You go Steve.
MS brought us the optical mouse, the original tablet PC, smartphones that were document-compatible with the desktop, MS Bob, and thousands of other innovations; some of which caught on, some of which vanished into the mists of time.
The problem is not that MS doesn't innovate with technologies, it's that they don't innovate in sales, marketing or production. They seem unwilling to be the pig in any enterprise, and would rather be the chicken.
Remember, when a CEO talks innovation, they're usually not talking technical innovation. Where does Apple innovate? In design and marketing.
This is actually a problem, because all those things you mentioned, from SCP, Xerox, NCSA and Winternals/Sysinternals are cases where MS took a risk on producing and marketing someone else's innovation. With stuff coming out of their own labs, that rarely happens (the MS optical mouse being one of the few exceptions) because there's no push (someone can say "see that great product X over there? We could buy that and make money off of it!" but the MS culture wouldn't get people behind "Lab Y has come up with this really neat tech -- if we give it to this design team, they might be able to produce a wonderful product we can make money off of!").
This is classic microsoft.... They have their eyes focused on their competition, examining what the competition is doing, trying to figure out what they're thinking and wondering how to counter (or block) their next move... Although they consider themselves pro-active it is really a very defensive posture...
And while they're looking at the competition, they ignore the customers ... So we should not expect their reaction to consider customers - simply to target (however accurately) the competition...
As a supporter of Free Software and Open Source, we should watch this carefully - we need to understand what to expect from Microsoft - and possibly Apple: Probably lots of patent stuff and other "Intellectual Property" noise. But we should always keep in mind that the most effective countermeasure is to write good software: stay on top of bugs and listen to the users! That way, everybody wins. Microsoft seems to be forgetting that.
Microsoft is finally getting out of the computer business then.
Remember Sony? Remember when Sony was cool? Remember when there were "Sony Style" stores? Remember their cute little robot dogs, their cute cell phones, their audio players? Sony was known for their cool design and loyal users.
Ever see an Xperia? No? That's Sony's latest smartphone. Who won in game consoles? Microsoft. Sony has lost money for the last four years, and the losses are getting bigger, not smaller. $5.7 billion last year.
Good product design didn't save Sony. Further back, it didn't save Olivetti, maker of some of the most beautiful typewriters and calculators of the 1970s. You'll see them on display in museums.
Microsoft does well at hardware. Their big weakness is online services.
> Your definition of "innovate" is apparently so narrow that even somebody building a fucking rocket isn't "innovating" because "you know...
No, I'd say it wasn't too innovative if you just bought rocket motors, gyros, etc. off the shelf and stuck em on a slightly differently shaped body and launched it AFTER Sputnik. Which was what the iPod was. They bought hdds off the rack, put em in a bog standard plastic body with a quite typical display and added in a scroll wheel they licensed from somebody else. They introduced it into a market already full of portable digital music players of various sorts. All they added was the look of the case, the software, the iTunes store and a big heaping helping of the patented RDF. The rest was, as I said, productizing and marketing.
Which was why we have the meme around here "no Wifi, less storage than a Nomad; lame" Cmdr. Taco underestimated the power of marketing over innovation just like Steve Jobs did all those years ago when Microsoft's inferior products were kicking his butt. Steve learned from that.
Democrat delenda est
Your use of "decisive" is probably the best word I've heard to describe Apple. What set them apart as far back as the gumdrop iMac wasn't their ability to say "no" to things or to innovate so much as their ability to say YES to things without qualification.
That's Apple's unique strength. While everyone else is hedging their bets and keeping pokers in the fire, Apple bets the farm over and over again. They never doubt. They never second-guess themselves. A decision is made and that's that. They put every . last . resource . into the things that they run with, and as a result, those things carry the weight (the embodied human knowledge, labor, energy, research, refinement, etc.) of the entire organization within them.
So often in the tech industry you get the feeling that every other company is watching the stats about every product in their lineup, just waiting to kill them at the first hint of weakness and loathe to invest in them further once they're out the door. They keep thirty or fifty or a hundred product lines just barely alive but perpetually on the chopping block, none of them ever named "do or die" for the company, which makes consumers hesitate to use them in "do or die" situations in real life.
The only other product line that ever seemed even close to as "committed" as the iDevices was IBM's ThinkPad series back in the day, but even then it wasn't at the same level.
Every time Apple launches a new family of anything (OS, computing device, consumer device, service) there is a vast geography of scoffing from all of the other industry players, and a lot of critics saying they've got it wrong.
But Apple doesn't care whether they've got it "right" or "wrong," they care that they execute and perfect whatever it happens to be that they've got. In the end, that focus on execution and perfection tends to make it "right" within a product cycle or two.
I don't know why, but I get the distinct feeling that what Ballmer means is that he wants Microsoft to make competing products better than Apple does. That means faster, more reliable, prettier, and able to do more stuff at once. That requires that Microsoft plays the same game
But that's not innovation. That's improvement.
Innovation is doing things differently. If Microsoft wants to do things differently than Apple, then they can create competing products that actually offer different services and options.
Let's take MP3/Media players for example. The MS Zune bombed because it tried to be an iPod with different styling and different proprietary programs. What Microsoft should do instead is create an MP3/Media player that sheds the playpen style of the iPod. Instead of competing for the same "I just want something pretty that I don't have to think about" audience, Microsoft should target the "I want to make it look exactly how I want it... and then customize how battery power is prioritized... and then share those settings with a bunch of other people" crowd.
Most people who stick to Windows machines do so because of the greater immediate control over the system that the OS offers as compared to MacOS. Fight for that population. Fight for those that want to have it their way. Offer developer tools with the launch of a new device to, at the very least, modify user interface and file handling. "Oh, the player didn't ship with an equalizer? Let me see if I can make one!"
Innovate for something different. Stop chasing the same audience. Target those who want to do a little work on their own (or just use other peoples' work!) to make a product vastly superior to what iOS offers.
OneNote is a pretty novel way of organizing and taking notes electronically. Much more intuitive than anything I have tried on Android or iOS. That is a Microsoft original product. The Metro UI is another Microsoft first UI/UX with some especially compelling features versus the "grid of [static] icons" we have had for 25 years. The ever popular Google Street View is a clear offshoot of Microsoft's original Photosynth research. Sharepoint existed long before "the cloud", Dropbox, et cetera, and has mostly failed to garner a huge consumer following because it is not a cheap (free) service nor is it aimed anywhere near the consumer market.
Acknowledging there is a time and place for a stylus on a touchscreen (Surface Pro) when the popular tech press will crucify you for it. Definitely have to give them props for realizing there are more use cases than playing Angry Birds and shooting off 2-3 line e-mail replies for the tablet market.
And of course you see a lot more Apple devices in coffee shops. Besides the douchbag hipster side effects, you have a place where people want to socialize and relax (in theory at least). Of course a content consumption device makes more sense than a content production and work device. At a sports bar you would expect to see LCD TVs everywhere, right. You don't see batting cages, chalk boards, and workout equipment at normal sports bars, the use case does not dictate those tools.
Apple has been and always shall be a passing fad. Right now we are at another zenith of popularity, but by the end of the 2nd quarter of 2013, their tablet market share will be in a nosedive and they will once again be folding in the face of stiff competition. Heck, even most people who have used Windows Phone 7 are happier, have fewer crashes, and a more seamless experience than iOS. Though, in all fairness, even Android is statistically more stable than iOS (scary, but true).
And look forward to innovative new ways to throw chairs at us using both hardware and software.
Fifteen security patches on a Win 7 box.
Yo ho ho and an innovative bottle of Rum (tm).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
because Steve Jobs is dead
love is just extroverted narcissism
Subject says it all...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Looks like the kibitzing that Microsoft's endless stream of me-too products "isn't the effort of 'I can do it better!' but merely "I can do it, too." finally struck a nerve.
Still, I'll believe it when I see, er, uhh, buy it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Actually, Microsoft just purchased the right's to Monty Python's Flying Circus.
That includes a copyright for "And Now for Something Completely Different".
This predates Apples patent. Microsoft is now going sell off all of their current products.
Their business model will now focus on licensing "New" and "Different" in all new products in the last 30 years.
Volume licencing will be available as well as live licences for anyone using the catch-phrase "Dyn-O-Mite!" in casual conversation.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
Apple doesn't have to lose for Microsoft to win.
Don't burst an artery
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Isn't that what the US did to the USSR in the Cold War? Make the Soviets (with their Potempkin economy) spend everywhere trying to keep up with DARPA and the rest of the DoD?
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Apple has always shown the willingness to cannibalize its own product line. Microsoft has not.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Steve Ballmer's statement is based on the false premise that Apple is innovative.
They are not. However, they are very clever and skilled IP thieves.
I'm trying really hard to not fall for you trap but maybe you could give us an example of what you think innovation is, an example of an innovative company and examples of how Apple steals rather than innovates.
Perhaps you are not aware of the Apple Newton and how it is a predecessor of graphical PDA like Palm put out by a couple of years. It introduced the concept of handwriting recognition on a tablet form factor and rows of icons on a stylus controlled resistive touch screen device.
Apple has made numerous contributions to open source projects over the years and even created some new open source projects.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The problem with Microsoft (and other companies) that Apple didn't have is that they are slaves to market research. Apple did what they thought the consumer wanted, instead of researching the consumer and then making the same crap that they were already buying.
This is the thinking that lead to the cancellation of the Courier (google it, it was awesome).
By chasing trends, you will never be leading. I think this quote is quite apt:
"There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them."
- Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin
...won't breathe life into Microsoft.
But Ballmer obviously hopes for that. Best case scenario is that Cook won't cook up anything, and probably just repeat what has been done before, with higher resolutions, more ram, faster CPU & Com. Nothing new under the sky.
Someone completely different will come up with something new, but it wont be the "big two"...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Just try to visualize Ballmer in a black turtleneck.
Something just doesn't compute, eh?
"There are NO Apple Infidels in Microsoft's marketspace! We are re-soundly defeating them! They are nothing when face with our superior products! The are worth no more than an old shoe! Those are not Apple products, those are Microsoft products! I tell you, they lie!! We have them surrounded in their Ipads!!"
Winning a race is not done by focusing on your competition; although, keeping tabs on what they do is probably wise. Winning a race is done by being better/faster/stronger than your competitors. You can only do that if your focus is on your own performance.
If your performance is not good enough, you have lost. Stop crying and learn to be better. If you can't be better, lie, cheat, steal your way to the win (not recommended). Focusing on your competitor just detracts from your efforts to win.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
It's last thing at night, my wife is immersed in some fictive on her Slate, and i've been watching TV, a rebuild of American Pie on mine. For a few years it was lame - it really didn't age well - but the rebuild is funny, because an AI has been spicing it up, and it's got Marilyn Monroe in it now, and she's still hot. And the soundtrack with New Beatles is kinda good too; John Lennon II - the AI clone - is really getting it right, and the music is going places it didn't when the Beatles were alive.
Boris, our AI housekeeper, has realised that I have to be up by 6am tomorrow, and I take it as a subtle hint that we should be turning in when he starts dimming the walls. "Hey, Boris", I mutter, "hang on for ten minutes." The walls brighten a little, he's bumped up the lightness of the wallpaper pattern. I say he, but I guess he's not really he. "Also, I've just remembered, I'm going to need the Mercury file on the plane tomorrow." No need to worry about that now; Boris will talk to my desk and get that moved to the slate I'm going to take with me tomorrow. I watch the last few minutes of the movie, and then get ready for bed. Liz is still engrossed in some historical fictive. Her and a bunch of friends have been writing a community set in the 18th century. It's not my cup of tea, but it's been getting great reviews from all the people following them. It's better soap than soap to be honest, and some of them are getting really famous now. A real bonus is that it's desperately hard to sneak product placement into historical drama. Lol. But they were offered trips to Vegas if they'd name a character in reference to the new Audi Scoot. I decide that it would be nice to have a glass of juice before bed, so I help myself to one, and then climb into bed next to Liz. At least I don't have to brush my teeth anymore. Not since I had that DentaZ treatment; all my enamel has been renewed, I've been vaccinated against caries, and my oral bacteria have been repopulated with a healthier batch. I give Liz a kiss and drift off to sleep to the sound of Liz subvocalising the plot for the next day for her character, Charlotte.
I wake hugely refreshed. Boris has organised the room lighting so that it's timed to my sleep cycle. The interesting bits of the news are cycling up the wall, and there's a note that I wrote to myself to take a phone. That's not something I normally carry, but I'm going to need some privacy. After showering, it's straight into the car. It will arrange to pick up breakfast on the way. I work while it's driving. It's pretty quick once we join the cartrain. I forgot my work Slate at home. I guess I was still dozy, but I get the car to pull the Mercury file up onto the windscreen, and the dash screen. I start by reading the summary that the office AI has provided. It's also given a tree of the most important bits, so I have a look through the tree. About half way through I realise that I don't understand how the deal is structured, so I call the office AI, and ask. She explains that she has spoken to Mercury's AIs, and they've come up with 3 scenario deals, and that this one is the primary. I ask her about how we'll be handling things going forward if we can agree the deal, and she flashes some graphs to my car screen. We agree to chat later in the day.
By the time I get to the airport, it's only 15 minutes before my flight. I've been precleared for everything. It's a bit weird actually getting on a plane. It's been at least two years since I had any face-to-face meetings but this one is too important to leave to tele. I walk straight to the gate. I've been scanned thoroughly ever since we reached the road to the airport. I've been profiled, the car vouched for me, Boris has, my movements over the last 4 years have been analysed. The airport know I am me.
After I've boarded the plane I get my phone out, and flick it at my seat screen, so it knows that I want to use that. It's not as smart as a Slate, but it can talk to the seat adequately, and it was keeping an eye on what was going on with the car
/sarcasm We invented Microsoft Bob! And, uh, Basic! That has to count for something, right!? Why are you guys laughing?
Seriously though, there is a good list here:
http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/microsoft.html
e.g.
* Direct3D was started after Microsoft bought RenderMorphics in 1995
* Excel started after Visicalc
...I was hearing it when I read Sony articles, and now this one.
Before there were Tablet PCs, there was Windows for Pen Computing which MS copied from Go's PenPoint OS --- see Jerry Kaplan's _Startup_.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
"New, from Microsoft..."
"Sweaty Pits 8"
Of course, Apple will have that covered already...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I think I've heard of them. Didn't they have a BASIC program for the Apple II?
-- I speak only for myself
There isn't a definition of innovation that people agree with.
Are you in marketing? Have you heard of dictionaries?
All they have to do for people to simply think they're innovative is to add some visual flair - which is decidedly non innovative - since almost every UI is based upon ideas that are familiar to users in one form or another.
Does Windows do multiple desktops yet? Can you imagine how long I've been able to enjoy using multiple desktops, with my choice du jour Window manager? Do Macs do this yet (I honestly don't know)?
FYI, I like this one (Wordnet):
2: being or producing something like nothing done or experienced or created before;
Note there's no value judgement there. Hitler was innovative, as was Stalin.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
. . .but they won't be out-innovated by Apple any less, either . . . :)
hawk
Apple will happily kill off a profitable dominant product if there's an opportunity to expand into new territory with a new product.
Microsoft will happily kill off opportunities to expand into new territories with new products in order to protect a protect a profitable dominant product.
You have been deprecated.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I keep getting iPads as gifts and I think people are regifting them. I have at any one time 3-4 of them sitting on my desk and I can't even give them away to family members. They don't have any use for them. The only fun use for an iPad that someone told me lately was to train a cat to use it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. - Percy Bysshe Shelley
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Famous last words. Apple and Microsoft are two completely different and conflicting cultures of corporatism. There is something more profound happening here.
Hell, you guys couldn't even keep Hotmail working.
As little as I care for Microsoft, it does keep Hotmail working.
It was innovative, and while the first one was not great, Apple kept at it. The Newton 2000 and 2100 were great machines.
I hope he's not referring to Steve Job's passing, there any many young minds that are ready to move forward. Microsoft has established itself as a follower, a buggy one if I may add. They should first establish themselves as a stable software developer then we can talk, and I don't even own ANY Apple products.
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You know what the difference between Microsoft and the rest of the tech world is? Microsoft tries too hard and doesn't succeed. It's probably not because they don't have the expertise, but it's because they are the archetypal spotted geeks that don't get the girls.
Simple example: I was watching the show Ridiculousness on MTV. The hoster said "let's Bing this".
Of course Microsoft are paying MTV to use the word "Bing". And then it is used in such a lame way that it will never catch on.
You're looking at it wrong. Ignore the devices; look at what's behind them.
Apple's big innovation was iTunes - making it easy to buy a huge range of media in one place. The iPod was just a good-enough device for this to work.
It was staggeringly brilliant, and I say that as someone who feels claustrophobic just thinking about walled gardens and hates the iTunes ux. For the mass market, Apple's innovation was brilliantly conceived and superbly executed.
Apple replicated iTunes with its App store. Now, they're about out of ideas. There are things they could do, but they require too much investment.
Well, I laughed when I saw it. If you hadn't posted as AC you might have got a mod point.
I'll believe that Ballmer is serious about innovation when I read that he spent one full, uninterrupted day in an innovation workshop. That he committed 0.5% of his working year to it.
Ballmers opinions are about as useful as used toilet paper.
Sorry but i can't do anything but laugh anytime Mr Ballmer makes a statement about "seriousness".. I still remember this over the top promo ad he did for windows 1x (or was it 2x).. it was perhaps meant to be a satire on TV hucksters, but he pulled it off so convincingly, that one could not help but see him as a TV huckster himself.. Does ANYONE remember this ad, and where the heck did I see it?
Everyone knows that those who talk, talk, but those who do, do, and don't talk until after they've done.
Standing on a stage with a cardboard cutout of a tablet is not doing, it's just talk.
Social Credit would solve everything...
Your arguing with the wrong person. oh_my_080980980 and richard.york are the ones claiming that it was the HARDWARE that was innovative. Richard feels so strongly about it that he needed to repeatedly swear at me to make his point.
Long live the Steve!
Sorry Mr. Ballmer, you have forsaken your name, by lacking Stevie-ness. Please examine the achievements of the following Steves who demonstrate(d) the best qualities of Stevie-ness and you might learn how to redeem your name:
(in no particular order, as they came to mind)
Steve Tyler
Stevie Nicks
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Stevie Wonder
Steven Wright
Steve Madden
Steve Martin
Steve Perry
Steve McQueen
Steve Vai
Steve Wozniak
Steve Irwin
Steve Winwood
Steve Jackson
Steve Jobs
I think Steve Ballmer is suffering from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger
Casteism
When I was working in corporate I had a windows 7 laptop, and I'd be damned if win7 wasn't so clumbsy.
I used to let outlook book while I grabed coffee.
on ubuntu with gnome-shell running evolution, email is up in 3 seconds. Seriously.
Because Apple's rate of innovation is about to drop past the rate of Microsoft's innovation?
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
The CEO knows where the puck is at all times. He knows this because he knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), he obtains a difference, or deviation. The skating subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands that drive the CEO from a position where he is to a position where he isn't, and arriving at a position where he wasn't, he now is. Consequently, the position where he is, is now the position that he wasn't, and it follows that the position that he was, is now the position that he isn't.
It's not about whether or not Microsoft is going to "innovate everywhere" and fail (I don't think they are that stupid as to overdiversify and one can argue that Apple is trying to play everywhere too) but rather if they can out innovate period.
Microsoft's problem is it's self-destructive culture. Like other companies, say Dell, their internal policies around employee evaluations, politics and programs that drive creativity are completely lacking or are totally destructive.
Microsoft needs to adopt a "Google like" culture that rewards innovation "outside of the chain of command". Any reward program that is drives management rewards up the chain at the expense of the actual author is doomed to fail. This is the heart of Microsoft's problem. It doesn't pay to innovate as what's more important is how you make your boss look and your bosses advancement, and so on.
Exactly. Half of Microsoft's problems are caused by trying to keep everything under the Windows banner. It's another symptom of the total lack of innovation at this company.
It takes a culture, Steve. And yours aint it.
Every rule has more than one consequence.