Ballmer Tells the BBC There's More MS Hardware On the Way

Microsoft has made hardware for quite a while, but not much of it as visible as the Surface; now, it looks like there's more where that came from. Dupple writes: "Steve Ballmer told the BBC: 'Is it fair to say we're going to do more hardware? Obviously we are... Where we see important opportunities to set a new standard, yeah we'll dive in.' The chief executive's comments came ahead of a Windows 8 launch event in New York, following which Microsoft's Surface tablet will go on sale. News other devices are likely to follow may worry some of the firm's partners. Mr Ballmer caused a stir when he revealed in June that his company was making its own family of tablet computers — one offering extended battery-life powered by an Arm-based chip, the other using Intel's technology to offer a deeper Windows experience."

Comments

Re:Microsoft Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Who. Fucking. Cares.

It's boring hardware with a boring OS from a boring company that's spamming Slashdot with boring Slashvertisements that're making Slashdot boring.

Stop it! Stop it now!

Copying Apple

[geoffrobinson]

Company that was focused on copying Sony and then turned to copying Google is now trying to copy Apple. If Chipotle captivates the stock market again, they'll start making burritos. Or maybe they'll start making coffee if Dunkin Donuts goes into a growth phase.

Re:Microsoft Hardware

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They still make the mice, not sure about joysticks(which seem to have fallen off a cliff in terms of popularity of late, except for console thumbsticks), and said mice are still a decent deal. In OEM packaging they are substantially cheaper than the 'fancy' opticals; but the fit and finish are markedly better than the $3 "Inland" and other mystery mice.

What I'm more concerned about is the possibility that Microsoft's hardware plans are basically going to boil down to some unwholesome mixture of Xbox and Apple: reasonably well polished; but indifferent or downright hostile to anything except the firmware it shipped with and the increasingly tightly integrated set of first-party online services and 3rd party products officially blessed by the vendor...

For all its messiness, the seething pit of Wintel gear has(if at times only through apathy, and the need to make sure that WinXP doesn't freak out despite being a decade old) been a great boon to our ability to run free software on hardware with a useful price/performance ratio and good absolute performance without playing a risky cat-and-mouse game with an overtly hostile vendor.

It would be a great pity indeed to see MS start xboxing the Wintel world into a bunch of opaque appliances.

Translation:

[TheRaven64]

In a BBC interview today, Steve Ballmer said to his partners and customers further down the supply chain 'we've started competing with you in some small niches, but don't think we're going to stop there. We're going to keep expanding down the supply chain until we've completely destroyed your business model. Oh, and please keep buying Windows 8 licenses from us!'

Re:Microsoft Hardware

[jellomizer]

You had me going until your bought up .NET and ActiveX. .NET is really a failure. It wide use isn't in the .NET but in the quality of Visual Studios.

ActiveX is worse. Much worse, very bad. My mild mannered self in public will open ridicule anyone who thinks ActiveX was a good idea. ActiveX was a blatant attempt to take the thunder away from Java Applets. They touted it faster but that is just because it was for Windows and Intel Platform and IE only. in essence it is a windows application that runs in the browser. ActiveX opened the door to a lot of very bad and serious malware. It locked businesses into using IE for application and once IE had too many security flaws they were still stuck, because there were too many idiot vendors who were MS shills that put their technology in their systems.

I am fine with most of Microsoft products. but ActiveX is the choice of Idiots.