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Steve Ballmer's Big-Time Error: Not Resigning Years Ago
Nerval's Lobster writes "Any number of executives could take Ballmer's place, including a few he unceremoniously kicked to the curb over the years. Whoever steps into that CEO role, however, faces a much greater challenge than if Ballmer had quietly resigned several years ago. Ballmer famously missed the boat on tablets and smartphones; Windows 8 isn't selling as well as Microsoft expected; and on Websites and blogs such as Mini-Microsoft (which had a brilliant posting about Ballmer's departure), employees complain bitterly about the company's much-maligned stack-ranking system, its layers of bureaucracy, and its inability to innovate. Had Ballmer left years ago, replaced by someone with the ability to more keenly anticipate markets, the company would probably be in much better shape to face its coming challenges. In its current form, Microsoft often feels like it's struggling in the wake of Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook."
In an interview with ZDNet, Ballmer said his biggest regret as CEO was in how Windows Vista was developed. Opinions are divided on both the nature of his resignation and what it will mean for Microsoft. While the stock price is up, BusinessWeek and others suggest the purpose of the transition is to find somebody better able to anticipate future trends. That would certainly lead to more organizational changes within Microsoft, something employees suffered through just last month. Ben Kuchera at the Penny Arcade Report points out that this could mean Microsoft will try to re-enter markets it has abandoned. He asks the company to "stay the hell away from PC gaming."
In an interview with ZDNet, Ballmer said his biggest regret as CEO was in how Windows Vista was developed.
The aftermath of Vista is precisely when he should have resigned. CEOs of other tech companies have resigned for lesser debacles.
Ballmer resigned. Stock went up 7.29% in a big jump of about $20B in value.
So Microsoft without Steve Ballmer is worth $20B more than a Microsoft with Steve Ballmer.
That is the legacy of a great man.
Steve Ballmer the -$20B man.
Which 'splodes first: RMS, or MS?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
What challenges do those companies pose for MS?
The only reason I run Windows at home at all for is gaming, Stevesie is clearly trippin'
Maybe they should take him to that "farm" out in the country where he can "roam free" with other useless CEOs a little sooner?
Long ago (around the first IE anti-trust lawsuit installment) I heard the argument that breaking Microsoft into separate companies along the OS, Backofffice, Office, Database, and Internet (this was before XBox) areas would be best for the company's overall innovation and net profit. Ballmer never did that, either.
The theory was each element would be more free to do what it needed to do for itself, without the weird requirements to interconnect with the software and rules of the other groups, and as separate companies more of an "invisible hand of the market" could guide decisions instead of management. Collaboration and interoperation would still be allowed and encouraged because the sub-companies would all be wholly-owned subsidiaries, but management control would not span any two of them.
This break-up theory would address a number of things Ballmer seems to have said he was trying to fix over the years.
I mean, come on !!
MORE of that SNOWDEN !!
The question isn't if he should have been let go years ago, the questions are when he should have been let and what the hell took so long? Defenders like to point out that Microsoft has become more profitable and larger under Steve Ballmer. Ballmer had disaster after disaster at the helm of Microsoft, imagine what the stock would have done /without/ all the disasters the Ballmer created?
Personally I'm of the opinion he should have been let go after the fiasco that was Vista.
Will the SEC investigate who the big "winners" were today?
... the main culprit responsible for the state of PC gaming. The entire game industry shit on PC because it was easier to sell to console kiddies. Valve shit on PC with steam (and those who love it are defending sugar covered crap). Id Software shit on PC by farming out Quake 4 and not doing it themselves, not to mention enemy territory (which was overall a really bad rip off of battlefield).
Then there is the dumbing down of games generally for the console audience. It was an industry wide trend. Everyone saw the success of Call of duty and the trend was to make games more like movies and less like games. If MS actually knew what it was doing it would have created something like good old games (www.gog.com) + best features of steam without the DRM and required integration/login with friends/tools/platform/IM/level editors and have community all in one place but without the giant middle finger that gabe gives gamers.
The answer has been obvious for a long time, a platform like steam without steams obnoxious DRM and the ability to de-couple games from the mothership (i.e. OWN and modify them). Almost all STEAM Integrated PC games have suffered except a few with regards to mods and level editing.
the good-bye gift to the world is the source code to MS DOS 6.22. AWESOME!
(prolly not because it's tooo embarrassing?)
As long as DirectX is a thing, Windows has an app store and the Xbox is binary compatible with the core OS, you're never going to escape Microsoft in gaming.
Why? That's patently stupid. The XBOX is basically a PC! Free money!
Steve Balmer is a wealther man today for not resigning.
Microsoft's error, on the other hand, is that they did not fire him.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Folding chairs throughout the northwest can breathe a little easier easier.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
when he is making a mistake.
I volunteer. I'll take his place.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
I have nothing to add.
Apparently, just like him.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No one takes a nearly $1 billion write down and lives to make more humongous mistakes another day. There's got to be a line somewhere, and Steve finally crossed it.
With their brutal monopolistic behavior from 1985-2000.
Not customers, who happily continue to buy MS Windows, Office and Visual Studio, but partners such as PC OEMs, handset vendors, telecoms and application developers. Everyone said "We won't get fooled again."
Also, the "architecture" they devised to make Windows so complex for anyone to successfully clone, also became a 2000 lb boat anchor when they tried to change direction. They're stuck with the old codebase for compatibility. Even if Ballmer and Gates had both left, they would have to deal with this part of the problem. It'll be up to a new guy now.
The retirement announcement impacted Microsoft's stock value so much that Ballmer's now worth about a billion dollars more than he was on Thursday. A MarketWatch story even said Ballmer could buy himself 27,000 gold watches for retirement based on the difference in stock price. Ouch. Talk about not being missed.
What he probably means is that Microsoft should not try to produce its own PC games.
What he should mean is how Gamers where shit on by Microsoft over the Xbox One, and bringing that same madness to the PC market, would probably be a bad thing. Not that I can tell, the penny arcade report was pretty offensively a love fest to Microsoft Nasty Practices at announced. I found the way they have discussed the second hand games particularly offensive.
In its current form, Microsoft often feels like it's struggling in the wake of Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook
Microsoft still has 90% of the desktop operating system market share in one form or another. It can afford to make a lot more mistakes yet, desktop machines aren't going anywhere.
Yes, Ballmer is leaving behind problems to clean up, but how often does an executive get the chance to inherit the power & reach of a company like Microsoft...and the chance to turn it in a direction s/he wants?
I'm sure more than a few talented high power types will be eager to apply for Ballmer's spot.
...Microsoft's future directions are so obvious. Microsoft needs to"
Give away all those extra Windows RT tablets to developers in exchange for a promise to deploy their app on the platform.
And so on. All of these things are obvious to a casual observer. Why they aren't obvious to Microsoft is beyond my comprehension. It is as though they have been managed by somebody who has been on vacation for the past decade, left to continue doing what they have always done, in the vain hope that somehow their previous offerings will become relevant again. They won't, and the longer Office is managed under the same bozos, the more likely it is to become completely irrelevant in the same way Windows has in the mobile space.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
would be good for Nokia to get rid of him and Microsoft will continue it's journey into irrelevance. Double Bonus!
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
... the main culprit responsible for the state of PC gaming. The entire game industry shit on PC because it was easier to sell to console kiddies.
Actually there is a revolution in PC Gaming. I should say gaming in general driven by an army of small indie gaming outfits. That amongst a multitude of pleasant surprises a move to DRM Free, Ethical Pricing, Cross Platform (Linux/Mac and Android), they have started putting the "Game" Back in Gaming with interested untried genres themes and inventive and challenging gameplay...rather than the usual tired franchises.
Welcome our new Window-less future.
I use to work there and can relate to much of what the article says. It's a good place for a well paying stable developer job but definitely not for innovation. There is a group think there that has saturated the company, and if you are not with the prevailing group think people are dismissive of you and you stop getting invited to the meetings where strategy is discussed. I'm not bitter... The wife and I just started having kids at the time, so I certainly didn't make an effort to rock the boat--I just quietly did what I was told and took the paycheck because I had more important things going on in my life than trying to fight company politics and business tactics.
A while back, a slashdot commenter made the observation that Microsoft has a generation of leadership now that has never experienced the realities of running a business that faces the risk of failing and going under. I think this is true and it has negatively affected the company. I don't claim to be a rock star developer, but I saw a lot of smart and visionary developers at Microsoft. Unfortunately, however, being a leader and visionary wasn't rewarded--being a fun guy to have scotch and cigars with was the way to climb the ladder.
As long as DirectX is a thing, Windows has an app store and the Xbox is binary compatible with the core OS, you're never going to escape Microsoft in gaming.
DirectX isn't the selling point it once was...It doesn't run on Android for a start, That is half your potential market...In money terms a much greater market Increasingly game engines with the promise develop once publish everywhere are what games are developed in. The xbox is not as big an influence as you think it is, and definitely not as much as Microsoft thinks it has after the backlash from games being treated badly by Microsoft, going to the loving arms of Sony.
Okay, so I'm a clearly-labelled "Microsoft Hater." I haven't always been this way. I got really comfortable with Win3.11 and then Win95 came out I experienced a level of computer excitement I haven't had since I started using OS-9 level two. (I am still quite fond of OS-9 though... just been a very long time.) I loved what Microsoft did. The advancements were terrific and long-awaited and all the precious knowledge I had acquired and accumulated over the various versions of DOS and Windows still applied so I was still relevant and loyal.
But then Microsoft started souring things. They tried to take over Java... tried and failed. They started pulling some extremely dirty stunts with their "partners" and such to the point it harmed so many other out there. I couldn't see those immoral acts without my opinion changing about the company behind the products. Some people just saw money and work. I have always seen more and I can't unsee it. When I see an OS user interface or go over source code or anything that goes into the design and engineering of such systems, I don't just see objects, I see ideas and what people were thinking when they put it all together which invariably results in a sense of knowing something about the people behind the creation of all of these things. For me, it was pretty easy to tell when something was a cludge or if real planning and design work went into things or how much respect one party had for another when parties worked together on a project. To me all of those things were the human element of what came together in creating these things. I may be pretty unaffected by fine art, but when I saw what when into computing back in the earlier days, I found myself quite moved by some of the things I saw. It was my world.
Microsoft slowly destroyed my world and all the things I loved about it. Microsoft started out making really cool things but when they really started getting big, they were increasingly about destroying others and less about creating cool things. If you want to understand why a Microsoft hater hates, I think my case is pretty clear by now.
And a new Microsoft could also rekindle all the new and cool things all over again. Sure, it may not be a "wise business decision." Most cool things aren't. But I think we're all ready for something really new and cool. We aren't going to get it from Apple. Google and Android is pretty much levelled off already as far as I can tell. A new Microsoft holds an opportunity within itself to recapture the love and awe it once had. So why haven't they done it already?
We know why... I just wish they would.
What would have happened if Blamer wasn't in charge will never be known. For all we know, they could have put someone in charge who would have divested out of the OS and Office businesses and put everything into the mobile and gaming consoles - THAT would be a disaster.
MS is still extremely strong and profitable in corporate IT stacks and Balmer was smart in strengthening that business.
We _I_ think he made a mistake was investing in consumer (mobile and other tech) technologies. He should have concentrated on the business/corporate IT stacks and to hell with the consumer devices. Because as we are starting to see, the consumer devices (tablets, phones, etc ..) are becoming increasingly commoditised and the margins will start going into free-fall or market will plummet - as I predict will happen with Apple.
We shall see but I think the next CEO will probably turn MS into a business services company - leveraging their software - in other words, going all "IBM" and "Oracle".
Microsoft often feels like it's struggling in the wake of Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook.
That's because Microsoft has basically been a monopoly for so long they lost whatever entrepreneurial spirit they once had. For two decades now Microsoft has been about protecting Windows and Office which to this day remain their big money makers. It's really hard to blow everything up when you are making billions in profit every year. Balmer is a classic example of the and the company seems to be a case study in the innovator's dilemma.
Worse the company has to fight against the law of big numbers as well. There simply aren't that many projects available to you that are going to move the needle for a company like Microsoft. Microsoft brought in around $77 billion in sales last year with a profit of $21 billion. That means for them to grow just 5% a year they will have to essentially build a company that sells nearly $4 billion each year and next year the hurdle is even higher. To do that while maintaining a 27% net profit margin is absurdly difficult.
They have the bankroll to survive but it is not at all clear how they will find another opportunity remotely as profitable as Windows/Office. It's also not clear if Windows/Office has a long term future. Short term, nothing is going to hurt them but long term things are quite unclear. There are some serious competitive threats to Windows/Office out there. I think Microsoft management is aware of the problem and I think they are equally mystified about what to do about it. The fact that they offered over $30 billion for Yahoo speaks volumes about how empty of ideas they have become. (It speaks bigger volumes about how stupid Yahoo management was that they didn't take the deal) Even when they get the direction right (Surface Pro is a sound concept - integrating tablets and PCs) they tend to screw up the execution. They even tend to screw up when they try to buy their way into a market. It's taken them so much money to make Xbox competitive that I doubt they'll ever actually recoup the investment. Microsoft might be able to grow through acquisitions though I'm not sure they have the culture for it. I really don't see most of their acquisitions thriving. Anyone think Microsoft is going to do anything amazing with Skype? Didn't think so.
Frankly I think whoever takes over the reigns next is not going to have an easy time of it. I'm not ready to say Microsoft is doomed but turning that ship around is going to be a herculean task.
They need someone who can create new trends, as happened with Apple.
Microsoft didn't miss the boat. They inadvertently helped create the very circumstances which led to them being excluded from the current tablet and smartphones we have today.
Back in the PDA days, it was a two-player game: Palm vs WinCE (later renamed Windows Mobile to get rid of the awful abbreviation). As with Netscape vs IE, Microsoft competed its heart out until it won, then dropped the ball. After Palm was more or less vanquished, Microsoft rested on its laurel. Windows Mobile pretty much went nowhere (and some would say it even went backwards with Microsoft trying to foist the Windows Desktop interface paradigm onto it). Everyone could see phones and PDAs were going to converge (and those who couldn't should've gotten a wake-up call from the Blackberry), but Microsoft made no real effort to add phone capabilities to Windows Mobile. So in the end PDA features ended up being added to phones, instead of phone capability being added to PDAs. And when PDAs went away, so did Windows Mobile.
Microsoft was a major driving force behind the Tablet PC. The Tablet versions of Windows were actually pretty good, especially the handwriting recognition. But where they erred was they wanted to make sure every tablet sold was also a copy of Windows sold. So they focused on making sure tablets were high-end PC notebooks which converted into the tablet form factor. While companies were ok with buying a $2500 tablet, regular people weren't. The immense popularity of netbooks should've been a wake-up call that there was a huge untapped market for a small, (relatively) cheap consumption-only device. But Microsoft did its best to steer manufacturers away from these low-end devices which didn't use Windows (and in fact killed off the Linux-based netbooks by making "Starter" versions of Windows). So tablets were relegated to high-end high-cost devices.
When you manipulate a market like this and steer people away from the direction the market wants to go, you create a lot of invisible pent-up demand. Apple managed to latch onto that demand with a tablet which neither used Windows nor Intel CPUs. Microsoft (and Intel) only have themselves to blame for trying to steer the market in a direction more favorable to themselves, rather than producing what the market wanted. That may have worked in the 1980s when computers were predominantly bought by businesses who could justify their high price by the additional profit they'd help generate. But once people began buying them for home use, the market became much more price-sensitive. I mean what was the point of buying a $2500 tablet PC, when you could buy a $800 laptop and a $500 iPad?
I'm sad to see Balmer go, he has been giving MS what it deserves. Enterprises don't innovate, they buy companies or products that do and then extract the value out of them. MS is a red giant headed for a black hole. That's physics. It's inevitable.
If the new guy can make 8.2 POSIX compliant, maybe license a better FS from Oracle or some shit, & BRING BACK THE DESKTOP METAPHOR, their problems are 80% solved! Don't get me wrong, Metro CAN work under the right circumstances, but it should be either an extension of or maybe even just a meta representation w/ some HTML5 thrown in for liveliness. (oh yeah, fix IE too) Ballmer said himself DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS (& blew out his voice box trying to get his point across) when windows essentially supported any language or programming environment. then he drops a heaping pile of Windows 8 on us & gives us a single SDK? Oh but you can go back to the Desktop & program on anything you want. Just don't expect to run on RT.
Never seen such a wonderful job of visonless fuck up, rear guard battles,
and monumental undisruptive monopoly read we'll sing this song till death
do us part thank you.
Sorry to see him go,
Thanks. Mr. Liberty
-- Linux since 1991 (floppies).
Who are they kidding?
Rule #1 for a large company: you don't anticipate markets with an eye to joining or ruling them. You kill them before they can start. If you can't do that, you play catch-up, or you use legal weight to try to stop them.
They were behind on phones and tablets in 2010 just like they were behind on the internet in 1995. They got *lucky* in 1995 that they could buy their way into it (at great expense: giving away IE and then all of the legal fees involved for the anti-trust cases in just about every country in the world...).
They simply couldn't get that lucky now 'cause everybody knew they would try and so could out-innovate knowing that was the one thing they could do that M$ couldn't (and never could, not since day one...).
Large companies, unless you're Apple (willing to sacrifice one generation of customers for another), or Google (able to get most of the products to drive eyeballs back to your core income stream), simply don't innovate. They simply don't try to take over businesses they aren't already in (except by buying their way in, a-la Oracle). Microsoft had all the brains in the world but would NEVER have actually let them create a new product line if it ever put Windows or Office at risk. Never. Just like Xerox could never market the desktop workstation because the paperless office was a threat to their copier business.
Microsoft simply would never have been able to compete here. Ever. Internally they couldn't muster it, externally the other companies knew how to handle them.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
..but also Ballmer peak.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
They have a much richer set of offerings and ecosystem for end-users as well.
Despite years of trying, Amazon has done what Microsoft STILL could not: make solid inroads into the music market dominated by iTunes. And every item you purchase on their site (electronic or not) ends up in your cloud player collection, making it a very attractive deal.
And Amazon has the entire e-book market locked-up, an impressive competitively-priced competitor to Netflix (Microsoft has no such offerings), and don't forget the successful Kindle/Kindle Fire tablets to enjoy all that content on!
Even though it's not the standard on Android, I have a feeling more people make use of the Amazon App Store than Microsoft's Windows Phone Store. Microsoft can only wish they had made all these right moves years back, instead of letting everyone gallop ahead of Win Mobile.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Lets remote sysprep.exe and telnet.exe, require .NET layer to stick it to our competition.
"It's a little too little, it's a little too late..."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Mobile was 100% obviously the future 10 or more years ago. If Microsoft had any idea what was going on it would have relentlessly pursued mobile for the last 10 years. Yet everything they did was always a bit off. Windows CE and friends were bizarre experiments on how to annoy developers. Things like Vista were just symptoms of a company that didn't seem to understand that to thrive they need to win hearts and minds, not just strong arm people into complacency. Take MS Office. Most people would be completely happy with office 2000 or maybe something older. Most people would be happy if XP were to have just been kept up to date. I am not saying Windows 8 is bad so much as for most people just don't care. Even things like the Metro interface could just be larded onto XP if that were something desired.
.Net had so much potential, Vista was a hot mess. The new Windows servers along with MSSQL had such complicated licensing that Linux was the only way for me.
Just about the only MS thing that I have wanted in years was an XBox. That is pretty poor output for the last decade. But if we go back in time MS did put out useful products one after another. Windows 95 was a huge leap, 98 another, NT 2000 was fantastic, and XP after a service pack or two was solid. But then it sort of went wrong.
Now just about the only MS products that I use (until I can find a secure replacement) are Skype and my XBox 360. Even the XBox One isn't catching my attention. I feel pity for anyone with a MS phone and when I hear people using MS servers I just wonder what has kept them away from Linux.
So quite simply prior to Balmer MS was doing some interesting things. But during the entire time Balmer is there they have done almost nothing interesting. Boring has continued to make them bags of cash because so many companies out there were unable or not interested in switching. So where Balmer has been shockingly lucky is that there has been no real competitor to MS Office. Google docs has been making some inroads, and some people compromise with the various OpenOffice products but the simple reality is that once you get complicated with your documents these other product begin to show their incompatibilities. In a business environment it is just not worth futzing with the software when the MS product can be so readily purchased. But my long standing theory is that if someone comes out with a solid word processor/spreadsheet then MS is then going to begin to die.
The one that I had hopes for was Apple's iWorks product but that seemed to have been abandoned 4 years ago plus they never ported it to other platforms. Now if they opensourced iWorks for the world to build on then something exciting might happen.
So my prediction on MS's future is based upon Balmer's replacement's relationship with the Office Division. If the replacement comes from the Office division then MS is dead. But if the replacement recognizes that office is a cash cow but that the company can't rely upon it for ever then there is some hope. If the replacement comes from their R&D division it will probably be exciting even if completely crazy.
I am not sure why the Knives are out. He saw the end of anti-trust in Europe when it clearly wasn't deserved. He bought out ISO during the OOXML destroying the reputation of a standards body in the process. He kept the threat of Linux creeping in on netbooks by killing them with Intel(Admittedly leaving a vacuum for tablets). He managed the Xbox 360 failing with red rings, and painted its third place as a success story(Live truly was one). He got Nokia to take all the risks and consequences, as a cost in European jobs, Hardware Reputation from European Manufacture on a wink and small change. There is a smell of failure over Microsoft Bing; Surface (and yes both kinds), Office 365, Metro everywhere, Windows 8(Phone, Desktop, Tablet)...and its deserved because they are all pretty crap, and saying otherwise has not fooling real consumers, but there is a desire evolve its static product line with these products, reinvent...and there are some good (great perhaps!?) ideas in places. The competition was(And is) simply better...and first...and
The bottom line is although not perhaps a nice man(not telegenic certainly), he did successfully preserve the monopoly on the Desktop through abusive means...Micro$oft still take a 70% Gross Margin, His only real failing is not catching the (now) larger computing market(with its own products, or software sold to OEMS) which includes mobile, when it was both obvious...and they had products in the area years before, but how much of that is really Steves Fault, Unless compared to the mythical ghost of Steve Jobs(He was the second coming). I can't see anything changing with his departure.
would be good for Nokia to get rid of him and Microsoft will continue it's journey into irrelevance. Double Bonus!
Ironically it wasn't that long ago Elop was a serious name in the hat as a replacement for Balmer. Ironically as well Nokia is now worthless even to Microsoft, after the damage done by selling their phones on the back of Microsoft Product Exclusively. I personally thought it was one of Balmers better moves was to get Nokia to take all the risks. If Windows Phone had been a better product things might be different today.
"I don't have time to spend actually even thinking about what comes next."
Steve Ballmer — CEO, Microsoft
With Steve Ballmer at the helm, sure they had Vista, but they didn't fuck everything up. Granted that it probably would have been difficult to sink the ship, and he could have been doing worse than anyone else in that position... but Microsoft is still alive and competing in its bread and butter OS market and now the console market. What would a great CEO have done differently?
He held on to an extremely high-paying job for which he was abjectly unqualified. He got paid hugely for fucking up year after year. Now, tell me exactly how it was a mistake on his part to hang on to that job???
Which 'splodes first: RMS, or MS?
Multiple Sclerosis wins!
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
There are already enough viruses on Windows; it doesn't need the GPL.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
the day of everyone having a desktop (and a little later a notebook) running Windows is dying, and dying very rapidly. Tablets and smartphones are rendering the PC pointless.
There are a lot of things that one can't do without a desktop or laptop PC. These include the free version of Hulu, the free version of Spotify, videos on YouTube that say "The content owner has not made this video available on mobile", or creating a nickname, Page, or ad on Facebook.
my Nexus 7 and iPhone are the email workhorses the rest of the time
Did your Nexus 7 get upgraded to Android 4.3? If so, did you have to root it to rename Vendor_0a5c_Product_8502.kl in order to keep using a Bluetooth keyboard?
DirectX isn't the selling point it once was...It doesn't run on Android for a start, That is half your potential market
For a game designed with a keyboard or an Xbox 360 Controller in mind, I don't see how Android is so relevant. Only a few Android devices come with a controller, such as the Xperia Play phone and the OUYA console. The rest have only a touch screen, which isn't so ideal for genres that aren't point-and-click. Or are people really willing to buy a $40-$60 clip-on controller to play a $3 game?
I expect to see WindowsRT open-sourced
I don't. It's almost the exact same code as Windows 8 as I understand it, just with some settings flipped to require that applications be signed by Microsoft and that devices refuse to run any other OS.
Consumers are already abandoning PCs for tablets, and they're not coming back.
They will when they frequently see things like "The content owner has not made this video available on mobile" (YouTube) or "You'll need to log into a desktop computer to create your Page" (Facebook) or absolutely nothing playable (Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds).
despite how superficial and thus lame the integration of touch into the os experience is, the win 8 apis are actually the best around for developing graphically demanding multi-touch applications, i.e., better than mac, ios, android. c sharp is a better language than obj c or java. they use the graphics card in really small ways.
alas, this has not so far resulting in good products from microsoft. steve ballmer, we will not miss you. we hope your successor is better. soon!
Step one: Get into a position where, politically, you know that it is impossible to be fired.
Step two: Purposely fuck over the company's stock over a period of years, by making shitty decisions.
Step three: On the basis of the company's de-valued stock, re-negotiate a higher number of options for your retirement package.
Step four: Announce retirement, watch your retirement package's value skyrocket. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
For a game designed with a keyboard or an Xbox 360 Controller in mind, I don't see how Android is so relevant. Only a few Android devices come with a controller, such as the Xperia Play phone and the OUYA console
...and I own both. You left out GameStick; Mojo by mad catz; Nvidia Shield; GamePop; A range of tablet consoles from JDX; Archos Gamepad...and this is before heavyweights Amazon and Google both rumoured to step into the ring. That is only for games "designed" or Playstation Controller first, those designed for screen input first will obviously have even less of a problem.
He's leaving, but too soon, his pride would have been hurt if he left after vista, you know....kinda like what Cartoon Network's old President did after ATHF prank on Boston
People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,
But don't count Microsoft out. They are in much better shape than Apple was BJS (Before Jobs Second coming). Take a wait and see attitude. I still an eager to see them embrace Linux... or at least acknowledge it exists... or at least include a ssh client....
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Interoperability and Openness with best solution on the market vs Walled Ecosystem.
Let's look at the state of the art circa 2013. Terabytes of storage everywhere locally : cloud a nice option for distributed storage of personal data that you need to be able to access in different locations to the home or office, with automatic backup as part of the service but far too expensive to be an all or nothing choice due to limited / too expensive internet access everywhere you go.
Processor power incredible, only an issue for home users these days if you are forced to work with an OS that gets more bloated faster than Moore's Law (e.g. Vista)
Answer : A Slim ultra fast OS that runs virtual machines that support as much software as possible from whatever OS / language, combined with a massive permanently free giveaway of the best development tools on the planet to support this. Virtual Server / PC architecure to achieve this (how quiant that an ultrapowerful PC these days doesn't offer this out of the box). Android style app permissions to limit what installed native software can do (no I don't want to check for updates / send you ANYTHING unless I tell you to IF I feel like it, which I won't by the way), One version of this OS (No Home, Enterprise, etc editions) which can also run headless to minimise the UI bloat, and a big price cut for home users, offset by increased license fees for the enterprise users who would buy this in bucketloads.
Do this, you might have a chance. Keep going the way you are now, and Android Home / Enterprise Edition, which does everything OSX and current windows does, along with the increasing dominance of Linux on servers in the datacentre will finish you off in the next decade.
that was on its last legs. He could do anything he wanted because the company had little to lose. MS is still an 800 pound gorilla with a byzantine bureaucracy,turning that ship is a Herculean task. Of course, with their cash and income streams they're not close to being dead yet, so there's more time and room for error. But their failure to admit their mistake with Metro does not bode well, a culture of denial doesn't breed success.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Don't know about other people, but I kept trying to find some cool factor that would make me like Win8 with the screwy tiled interface. Never did. Could tolerate it on my Win2012 Server mostly because I don't have to touch it every day (thankfully). But dang, what does a server need with ringtones? A GUI is dubious enough... And the 12 hour migration of a simple six machines AD domain was just unbelievable. It was quicker to type it in again... made me long for the days of paper tape... I can believe the groupthink problem -- sounds like management spends so much time staring at their own navels that they have forgotten who the customer is.
Those words were from Jobs. Jobs was just as prone to being wrong as anyone, but those particular words carry a lot of insight. It was not Jobs being dismissive of competitors - it was from direct experience with the Newton.
The Tablet versions of Windows were actually pretty good, especially the handwriting recognition.
No, sorry, they actually sucked quite a lot. Really good handwriting recognition is like being pretty darn good at finding land mines. It's a fine skill if you need it but few people are willing to follow you to where the skill is useful.
Microsoft missed the boat because they didn't build a Tablet - they built a PC with a touchscreen and called it a tablet. They were unwilling to fully commit to touch for input.
Even now with the Surface RT they have the same issue. It's nice for those that want a stylus - like artists. It's even more useful because they spent a lot of time building a fantastic keyboard. But for anyone but a tiny minority what Microsoft has built - again - is not a tablet. It's a PC with a touchscreen, this time much more literally.
Apple managed to latch onto that demand with a tablet which neither used Windows nor Intel CPUs.
It is insane to think that is why Apple has succeeded. It has NOTHING to do with processor or OS, neither thing most people care about even slightly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you actually read the link, what he means is "Windows is already great for gaming
Let me just stop you there. Windows has been an awful place for gaming. Its console ports, watered down challenges, Short Gameplay, Multiplayer focused, DRM ridden, Paid add-ons. etc etc Thank the Lord that Cross platform (indie) gaming is back.
At least the guy is consistent.
Late to smartphones, late to tablets, late to...
He had to resign 1 decade to late.
This reminds me of the '80s guy episode of Futurama.
Did you buy that four-digit ID on eBay? You've combined Microsoft's favourite word into the same sentence with the most geriatric of all derisions.
Microsoft innovated a metric butt unit, but very little of this advantaged the end consumer. They innovated business methods more so than technologies, especially the business method of crossing the legal and ethical line and getting away with it long enough to sip fine Champagne with one foot on Netscape's corpse while confined to the corner of the room wearing a pearl-crusted dunce cap. Vlad the Impaler tips his hat.
Speaking of Vlad, are you man enough to tell Vlad he can't innovate? To his face? Do you wish to wear the outcome of that assertion? Just because he's never much bothered to tweak the recipe for making Damascene steel or grafted on a lickable hilt (one that actually looks attractively lickable)? No, he just sits there thinking "no matter the sword, they all bleed the same way". Admittedly that's not the hallmark of innovation as celebrated among the proletarian ranks, but it works the gutters and coffers just fine.
One would think given his methods that more of the population would elect to somehow slip between his masochistic fingers. And yet they didn't. That's not what happened. Tell me it doesn't take innovation to become that sadistic and not have your entire empire relocate itself to the next valley over. Are your heirlooms and golden geese locked away in a proprietary chest for which only Vlad possesses the master key? You might have suspected something sooner, but you really liked the gaily-painted wooden wheels and the decorative hollow horse head. Steve never managed to sell that, yet somehow Bill was manning triple shifts under the lash to slake demand.
Wolfram Alpha just made me this nice chart in under sixty seconds and a permanently shareable link. Innovation, or just trying harder to please because you catch more flies with honey than vinegar? [when lacking Vlad's henchman army]:
appl msft profit over time
Microsoft had Apple's number for pretty close to twenty years, and without ever suffering cardiac arrest. Apple is cool like Lance: it's amazing what one can achieve sans so many testicles when clad in relentlessly promoted, well-branded apparel. Apple burned through five heart-lung machines before they regrew their permanent hair, but what flowing fleece it was.
Tell me what company in their right mind would deliver innovation to the end-user riding on top of a such a long, gracefully ascending line? Yeah, it faded a bit over the past five years. But Microsoft had it coming. Boy did they have it coming. A hectare of discarded Champagne bottles began to cultivate a mirulent strain of black mold. And right in their own back yard, less than a stone's throw away. Dang, what a mess to have to clean up.
Apple's time is coming, too. The migrant consumer is already beginning to scout valleys even further afield. People only pay through the A$$ for so long before they wise up, unless they're fleeing from fresh horrors of ruthless innovation in the sprawling valley of the damned.
A kinder, gentler Microsoft won't do anything to help Apple sustain its insanely high profit margins. At the same time, a return to form of the old ruthless Microsoft could turn into an expensive tactical nightmare, with the Koreans nipping at their other flank.
Much depends on the new Khan. Personally, I hope their first agenda item is to take a giant bite out of Oracle's rapacious backside. Later they release M$inx in a master stroke of branding genius with all the tedious and uncool APIs of XP's cooling corpse completely open sourced and unencumbered. Just think, you can continue running your old copy of Turbo Tax 2005 all the way to the n
I'd be happier if many titles from ms that went xbox only came out for pc. "Stay the hell away from PC gaming" is a stupid and short-sighted comment. I can't really argue with perhaps MS feature-freezing DirectX and embracing OpenGL.
How could Steve Balmer have known, that he should have retired? Only in hindsight.
If Microsoft wants to desinfect themselves they need to remove Gates and Ballmer from any influential positions.
back when it was win 95 or NT, the was no large established ecosystem that relied on a API and any changes to the UI were clearly better. 20 years later there are billions of users all dreading the thought of something different - and win 7 counts as different. there are hundreds of thousands of developers all thinking the same. your customers don't want change - but you only make money if you change. the only thing stopping MS becoming altavista is that MS enables so many critical businesses processes using VBA and until processes change, that won't change.
Hey! I'm an autistic sociopath, you insensitive clod.
I strongly suspect that the pre-order numbers for the Xbox One have just made their way through to board level action. We're hearing from everywhere that they are terrible. I don't think Ballmer had enough political capital to survive another disastrous product launch after Zune/Vista/Surface/Win8 et. al. and so had to go.
Clear proof of leadership failure: While Google is working on self-driving cars, Microsoft is busy trying to prevent people from being able to sell Xbox One games.
Maybe, it's time for Ballmer to find a new CEO. That not to say he is or has been unsuccessful. He has managed one of the largest companies in the world, and he managed it went Bill Gates was in charge. Much of what Ballmer is managing is the legacy of Bill Gates. Much of what he's managing is his own legacy. Microsoft is a technical company. It's a software company. It's transitioning from a software company to a software, hardware and services company. They're trying to catch up the Apple business model. The biggest question is not is Microsoft successful. It's a tens of billions of dollars behemoth, and it's stock values is worth hundreds of billions.
and I own both
It's about how many other people own both.
You left out GameStick; Mojo by mad catz; Nvidia Shield; GamePop; A range of tablet consoles from JDX; Archos Gamepad
Assuming that by JDX you mean JXD, maker of the S5110 gaming tablet: What are the sales figures for these product lines? I'm occupied this weekend, but I'll make a note to ask for these brands in both Best Buy stores in my area this week and get back to you. But I suspect the answer will be "look for them online", which doesn't help gamers become aware of these devices' existence in the first place. Something not sold in stores isn't likely to build up an installed base big enough to convince the big players that a port is worth the investment. It's the same reason that few to no commercial games were made for the GP32, GP2X, Wiz, and Caanoo.
and this is before heavyweights Amazon and Google both rumoured to step into the ring.
Anything official yet, as of late August 2013?
That is only for games "designed" or Playstation Controller first, those designed for screen input first will obviously have even less of a problem.
How would you recommend designing a Mega Man or Castlevania style platformer or a Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat style fighting game "for screen input first"? I tried playing Tetris on my aunt's iPhone and I couldn't see how one could achieve anywhere near the TPM that one can get on, say, Tetris DS. Then I tried playing the demo of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure on my first generation Nexus 7 tablet, and the controls were so uncomfortable and gave so little feedback as to the position of my thumbs that I wished I had an NES controller to phone adapter. I couldn't even make a jump near the beginning of the second (or third?) level because of this. Platformers in Nesoid had similar problems. So ultimately, as I see it, the input method for which a game is designed first should depend on the genre. But well-known devices that ship with a gamepad have historically had far higher barriers to entry. In fact, some people have told me that it's actually the other way: the genre should depend on the size of the company, and indie developers should keep their ideas for games in gamepad-centered genres to themselves and make games in point-and-click genres until they're big enough to qualify for a Sony or Nintendo license. But I'm open to evidence otherwise.
I am wondering about Tin Cook of Apple. I don't see the stream of new vision that we got from Jobs. Am I wrong about that?
Balmer strikes me as a more typical CEO, businessman, lost in the day to day, lost in the details, not minding the vision and the future of the company, and not repairing the fraud that is Microsoft. The whole idea that Microsoft gets to O.E.M its OS on X86 systems should have been put a stop to by regulators long ago. It is the only reason Microsoft has the market share it retains, that and because it has a captive market, it doesn't believe in educating its users as to the effective and safe use of software. Every time its business partners, Norton and Symantech get to nag you, uninvited, to buy their security products, creates a huge hole for hackers. he very idea that an entity that you don't allow in can get in to try to sell you something that should have been shipped with the base OS invites exploits.
Microsoft has missed the boat and I realize that the mobile technology it has missed is poised to totally replace the desk-side computer, notice I didn't say desktop, and by that I mean that the low power chips needed for mobile with the memory sizes and storage capacity of desk-side boxes of as recently as three years ago can totally make the traditional desk-side box obsolete and permanently so. A set-top box the size of your palm coupled with a USB hub to connect your existing peripherals, already exists, and it doesn't run Windows, at least not well. It runs Android, or IOS, or Linux. In this time of concern about government snooping and closed platforms, FOSS and Linux may become the premium, and Windows left to legacy systems. Microsoft would then decline or go out of business, and maybe that is what it deserves. Oh, I know how conservative American businesses are. I'm not saying that they will ditch their Windows Servers, but Microsoft may be relegated to supporting legacy systems and not leading change and new adoption, which is a huge market, especially if the software for it is open sourced. I can't say that I feel sorry for Balmer and Microsoft; maybe they have screwed their customers long enough, too long anyway.
Except in Nebraska...
This is happening less and less
Citation needed that the big three record labels are placing fewer and fewer copyright claims with the PC-only option on YouTube. I'm still seeing this error message for a lot of videos on my tablet. And the mobile versions of Hulu, Pandora, and Spotify already either charge more or cap mobile use or both.
the services not catering to tablet users will get left behind.
Sounds reasonable. So in the post-SWF era, what replaces Newgrounds and Kongregate as a hosting service for web games created and uploaded by users? And what replaces Facebook as a platform for hosting a page about an organization or topic on a social networking site?
Good riddance, Ballmer, and don't let the door hit your fat butt on your way out.
Also, I hope MS itself doesn't take too long to follow you out of History's door.
Psycho CEO of a dishonest company selling crappy products, no one will be sad to see any of you go (except perhaps the suckers that invested in your stock).
Best Regards,
Durval Menezes.
I have never met a computer that didn't like me.
Maybe i'm using different youtube content to you, but i haven't run into an inability to play anything on youtube on my ipad for 9 months plus now.
Videos blocked from viewing on Android are also blocked from search in the YouTube app for Android, and I think the YouTube app for iPad works the same way. But if you search for videos through Google Search, or someone shares a link to a video with you, you may end up on a "not available on mobile" screen. Does this play?
As far as a replacement for facebook goes.... uh... facebook? They have a number of mobile apps.
According to Facebook's own help pages, Facebook still doesn't let mobile users create a nickname or create a Page, whether through the mobile web or the mobile app.
there are plenty of proper tablet games for both Android and iOS that are promoted via facebook.
True, but "plenty" doesn't help when the specific game that your friends are recommending to you is unavailable. As for bugging the developer of this specific game to port it to iOS, I thought it cost substantially more for tools to develop a game for iOS than for SWF. For one thing, you will likely have to replace your current computer with a Mac.
I imagine that a lot of people are going to want to inspect a device before they buy it, especially if the device takes user input. It's the same reason that the major console makers have their consoles on display in brick-and-mortar stores such as GameStop and the video game departments of Walmart and Best Buy: it makes the potential customers aware of the product and its capabilities and ergonomics. Sure, online-only sales are possible, but I don't see how an online-only strategy could attract a critical mass of customers to make the platform attractive to developers.
So today I went to Walmart.com and BestBuy.com and put each of these products into its search box. GameStick, Mad Catz Mojo, Nvidia Shield, GamePop, and JXD came up with nothing relevant. Archos GamePad showed up on both Walmart and Best Buy, but only as "ship to store: 5 to 7 business days". Then I tried GameStop.com. It drew a blank on Mad Catz Mojo, GamePop, Archos GamePad, and JXD. GameStick had "Release Date 9/30/2013". Nvidia Shield showed up out of stock online and 100 miles away in PickUp@Store.
I am wondering about Tin Cook of Apple.
I really want to make an Iron Chef joke here, but I can't think of one.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.