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Steve Ballmer Blew Up At the Microsoft Board Before Retiring
mrspoonsi writes with this excerpt from Business Insider on Steve Ballmer's final months as Microsoft CEO: "Ballmer decided to announce his retirement a few years before anyone expected him to. It all came to a head in one board meeting with Ballmer in June 2013. According to Businessweek, Ballmer got into a shouting match with Microsoft's board when directors said they didn't want to buy Nokia and start making smartphones. Ballmer told the board last June that if he didn't get what he wanted, he wouldn't be CEO any more. Businessweek said Ballmer's shouts could be heard in the hall outside the conference room. In the end, the board compromised with Ballmer. Ballmer wanted to buy both Nokia's handset business and its mapping platform called HERE. Instead, Microsoft ended up buying just the handset business for $7.2 billion and licensed HERE maps from Nokia."
Ballmer seems to be regretting not getting into hardware sooner (although given that not making hardware propelled them to success in the 90s...)
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Damnit. :P
His amazing salesmanship skills:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
At the end of that, I feel myself pulling my wallet out and going "NO, IT CAN'T BE JUST $99, let me pay more!"
It's like killing two turds with one flush!
I think Ballmer is going to take an extra flush.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
The problem with Microsoft and Nokia, is that nobody really wants a Microsoft Phone, and Nokia was driven into the trash heap by going the Microsoft Route exclusively (among other notable awful choices).
Microsoft has been a "Windows Company" for so long, they don't know how to do anything else besides "Windows". And now, with the dawning of Google Apps and Libre/Open Office, and ChromeOS / Android / iOS as choices to compete, there is a huge problem for Microsoft Windows ... it isn't even a good choice any more, it is just another choice. Microsoft is stuck, being a Windows Company.
Anything they do now, is too little, too late. They needed to change 10 years ago (yes, 2004) when the tide started to change. I saw it then, and knew the end was near. Microsoft has no new products, no new vision. It is dead.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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It would have made more sense to have the mobile GUI run as an application over a desktop system, and just give users the choice.
Agreed. But Microsoft got greedy. It wasn't just about getting into the mobile market, it was BEING a market. Metro is a vector for the Microsoft store, where they get to take a cut of every app sold. Bean-counters saw the revenue of Apple's App Store, and demanded that Microsoft get in on that racket by leveraging their market-share of the desktop.
They figure if Metro wasn't front-and-center on every desktop as a non-option, people would opt out and the Store might take too long to take off and generate the apps needed to persuade people to switch from iOS or Android. Trouble is, these things can't be forced.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I'm not clear. Why is Metro the right thing for the staff of my company, who have basically been using the same GUI for the better part of 20 years now? What exactly does Metro offer my staff that they don't already have, and aren't already familiar with? Why should I spend my company's IT and training budgets on:
1. Teaching them a new GUI paradigm?
2. Investing in new technology like touch screens to actually use this GUI?
3. Invest even more money in new licensing costs to take advantage of the advantages you plan on specifying?
Here's what I think, if you want my 2 cents. Metro offers absolutely fuck all that wasn't already available, is a retard's GUI on a desktop, fucks up the kinds of multiasking that the taskbar makes easy, and has done fucking to sell Redmond's mobile offerings.
Here's what I want, if Microsoft ever wants to see me spend another fucking nickel on their operating systems. I want Metro if not outright removed, then made so that it can basically be ignored. I want the GUI that my staff have known for two decades back right in front where it fucking belongs.
Otherwise, we'll just keep using our Windows 7 licenses until January 14, 2020, by which time the last software that requires Internet Explorer will have been updated and discarded, and we can abandon Windows on the desktop.
You see, in the business world, conservatism tends to reign over "the latest fucky dunky dunky" GUI set that the Redmond developtment teams seem to masturbate to these days.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But the Board is just as worthless. They and Ballmer are why microsoft is second banana now.
"Developers developers developers"..... FUCK Developers.
Users, Users, Users and more importantly.... CORPERATE USERS. Windows 8 and 8.1 and from what I have seen 9 are worthless steaming turds. Whoever is in charge of the Windows OS division needs to be not only fired, but locked in stockades in front of the corporate entrance as a warning to the other executives.
The Dumb asses screwed things up so bad that most businesses are STILL on Windows XP in the corporate world and Server 2003-2007 Then the dipshit move with Office will break that lock on the market they had for decades.
Steve Ballmer destroyed Microsoft. Everything released in the past 3 years is complete crap, complete and utter crap and it is ALL his fault.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.