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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."
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.
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
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.
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.