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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."
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!
Microsoft was just a vendor of some software utilities. "Everyone knew" all the real money was for IBM, manufacturing the hardware.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
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.
I like .NET but ActiveX is an atrocity.
That wasn't a shill, that was a good troll. The clue is the use of ActiveX as an example of an innovative technology.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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!'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That's because most of it was made by Logitech under contract, who made quality hardware back then. Sometimes they were identical items, just with a Microsoft logo and different model number.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Dude, it's been *7 years*. The standard life cycle since the Atari days was 5 years, and you haven't even ANNOUNCED a new console generation yet. And frankly, the 360 is looking a little long in the tooth.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The XBox was a loss-leader to sell games. It had to be cheap. The new tablet isn't cheap.
I think Microsoft has a weird advantage here. They're "competing" with their customers. If they create a flagship device to set the bar high, it keeps the market from becoming a race to the bottom.
All sales profit Microsoft, so it doesn't matter if *their* hardware doesn't get deep marketshare, as long as the combined market is large. Currently, the race to the bottom hasn't done well for PCs, creating shovelware minefields and overall bad user experiences.
That said, I'm sure Ballmer will find a way to screw up. He always does.
Many forget that one of Microsoft's hot products in the 80s was actually a piece of hardware called the Softcard. It was a card that allowed Apple II users to run CP/M software on their computer. the card was so popular that it was widely cloned by other companies.
Input: "Where we see important opportunities to set a new standard, yeah we'll dive in."
Output: "We'll copy any product if it's a chance to make money. And if we can figure out how to squirt Windows into it, we'll do that, too."
The IBM Blue Ballmer Project is an artificial intelligence computer system capable of translating statements made in the unnatural language of Microsoft Chief Executive Orificer Steve Ballmer.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Nokia is all in, however. If Microsoft releases a Surface phone, it's a vote of no-confidence in their main Windows Phone partner's ability to get it done. Or in it's ability to survive, given how well WP7 went for Nokia.
You do not, suddenly in six months, find the ability to develop phone hardware. Building up basic radio competences took Apple about ten years. This is one of the reasons they spent a long time doing iPod type, WiFi only devices.
This is a deliberate and reasonably long term plan to kill Nokia. It may have been a conditional plan; they thought that if Nokia went well enough they would let them continue as a partner. More likely, the whole thing was a set up as with Sendo. They've planned from the beginning that Microsoft should displace Nokia as a leading phone manufacturer.
Think about it from a simple brand damage point of view. If Microsoft allows Nokia to continue in competition with them then there is a direct comparison between Microsoft and Nokia (and the other partners). If Nokia does better than Microsoft then this sends a message: Microsoft is a Loser company. Nokia is better. This will come back to Microsoft's other products. The other partners may be better off. Microsoft may figure that the Chinese manufacturer's will take the bottom end (equivalent to current consumer PCs) whilst they take the high end. They will figure on having a better brand position. With Nokia being a Scandinavian brand which had a long term association with high quality, solid products that's never going to be nearly so clear.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I was going to say something similar. If the ghardware companies got together with RedHat, Canonical, etc, and put out a polished version of Linux that their hardware supported perfectly, it would be good for them in the short and long term. It would be very bad for Microsoft in the long term, which is really just an added bonus. This would also finally get the video card vendors on board with providing proper drivers, and provide the extra push needed for games to be ported. Having Office, etc would likely be a non-starter though, so open document formats would need to much more acceptable.
The fact that this is modded insightful shows the groupthink of anti-MS hatred without even looking at the facts. .NET is wildly successful, even if you believe it not to be true.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
This appears to be Microsoft's gamble. The problem is that a huge amount of their profit margin comes from the enterprise, where the PC still reigns supreme, and I wonder how thrilled many corporate and government customers will be to suddenly find that to keep using Windows, they're now facing a future with a single vendor.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.