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Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

dcurt.is

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Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#91

Post by hedgie »

tobtoh wrote: post #52
jarrett wrote: post #48

"Microsoft makes an endless quantity of software that is alluring to big businesses, like Office, SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, etc..." Let me offer some perspective on this. I worked for a number of years as a programmer at a large (read: "enterprise-scale") entity. Being in closer physical proximity to the general workforce than our IT department, I was often the go-to guy when employees needed tech support. An…

You've never used Lotus Notes then ... you have no idea what non-intuitive counter-productive UI is until you use Notes.

i consistently ask myself how the fuck IBM sells anything to anybody.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#92

Post by Drbble »

Steko wrote: post #14
reidmain wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only recently started making money with every sale of a Xbox 360. Typically console makers sell their hardware at a loss to get it into as many hands as possible and then make money with software. That is why Nintendo is taking such a bath this generation. People buy a Wii for the novelty and only get one or two games where Microsoft and Sony are much more about the games they have on their consoles.

Nintendo's taking a bath for multiple reasons but in regards to the wii (1) they rode it for too long and (2) all it did was games while the more robust hardware in the PS3 and Xbox made them more useful.

And people got bored of the gimmick controller pretty quick, and it was too uncomfortable to use for standard game controls.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#93

Post by brg »

laconian wrote: post #23
owlishness wrote: post #9

I used to work for Microsoft, and while I now work for a "cooler" company, it's good to see people doing some actual analysis about it instead of blind M$ bashing.

I used to work for them too. The atmosphere just got worse with every passing year. I don't think Ballmer's done anything to rejuvinate the culture. It just keeps getting more cutthroat and political.

Another way of saying this is that the employees are well tenured.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#94

Post by gnaffle »

dcurtis wrote: post #35
mrb wrote: post #30

"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…

This isn't really an issue that you can take an extreme on. Even in relative "failure," Microsoft has executed correctly in mobile. Actually, their execution has been way better than I would have expected. It is losing money, sure, but short term losses are not important when you're talking about entering a market as large as the mobile phone market after the existing players are firmly entrenched. The traditional me…

What I expected was for Microsoft to react as quickly to the iPhone as they did to Netscape. They didn't. Google did that however, and today Android has a chance at getting the 80% market share that Ballmer talked about when he laughed about the iPhone and said that he was pretty happy with their efforts in the mobile industry (Windows Mobile).

Not seeing what they were up against with the iPhone was not "executing correcly", it was incompetence. The same kind of incompetence that is killing Nokia today.

In order to dominate the mobile space now, Microsoft has to not just make something comparable to iOS and Android, they have to out-innovate them.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#95

Post by antidoh »

mrb wrote: post #30

"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…

They should make a stripped down, Windows-based feature phone. Something simple, like Nokia used to be famous for, solid and simple.

They could even partner with Nokia ...

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#96

Post by tallanvor »

CubicleNinjas wrote: post #70

"While Microsoft is no disruptive force in tech today, the truth is that it has never been." This is so false it is painful for me to read. I'm embarrassed for the author. "The company's core competency is a process it uses for entering and consuming existing industries. After it enters a market, it rides off the innovations of its competitors, uses its existing brand power and sheer size to tackle a large surface ar…

You're focused entirely on the consumer space, completely missing one of Dustin's big points. Where is Microsoft still doing big business? The Business Division, which is not only Office products like Word and Excel, but also SharePoint. They do huge business with SQL Server and Exchange, and products like Lync and Forefront are still growing. --Consumers could care less about those products, but obviously businesses have chosen to continue investing in them.

Comparing Microsoft and Apple is silly. Microsoft is still primarily a software and services company while Apple has always been a hardware company - the only reason they're in software at all is to help sell their hardware.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#97

Post by gnaffle »

fleitz wrote: post #43
mrb wrote: post #30

"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…

Can you give us a realistic game plan that starts with the iPhone launch & WinMo6 and ends better? After iPhone excellent execution gets you failure, that's just the current state of the market. They've made awesome deals with companies like HTC, even convincing HTC to pay them $15 for every Android phone they sell, etc. They've pretty much got Nokia on lockdown almost exclusively WinPhone7.

A realistic game plan would be for Microsoft to immediately recognize iPhone as a threat and immediately start improving or rewriting WM6, just like Google did with Android.

Remember, Android looked more or less like WM6 and Symbian before the iPhone was introduced, and you can hardly call Android a failure today. Basically, Android is exactly where Microsoft would have loved to be with WP7, but it's pretty much not going to happen now unless they pull a bunny out of a hat with WP8.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#98

Post by aerique »

tobtoh wrote: post #52
jarrett wrote: post #48

"Microsoft makes an endless quantity of software that is alluring to big businesses, like Office, SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, etc..." Let me offer some perspective on this. I worked for a number of years as a programmer at a large (read: "enterprise-scale") entity. Being in closer physical proximity to the general workforce than our IT department, I was often the go-to guy when employees needed tech support. An…

You've never used Lotus Notes then ... you have no idea what non-intuitive counter-productive UI is until you use Notes.

Thanks, I had repressed my memories of Lotus Notus for many years :-|

Now I have to make an appointment with my shrink again.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#99

Post by simonh »

If MS had thrown all their weight behind WP7 and made it their base platform for mobile computing going forward, with no compromises, I'd say fine. They missed the boat in 2007 but they're doing all the right things to catch up.

But their'e not. WP7 is a technological dead end that will be replaced within the next 12 months by a phone version of Windows 8. Current Silverlight apps will run on that, but in reality developers will need to rewrite for the WinRT platform to get the benefits of full native performance and functionality. Meanwhile you can't develop WP7 apps in C or C++, it's .NET/XNA only.

Cluster#@&

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#100

Post by nikcub »

But Ballmer really is clueless. When I was at Techcrunch, we were preparing for an interview with him a couple of years ago and decided to throw in a couple of fun questions. Mike and I were both Age of Empire fans, so we decided to bring up the gaming division and ask why Microsoft got rid of Ensemble Studio's.

He had no idea what we were talking about. Here was a major company decision that affected millions of customers world wide and it was obvious that he didn't know what we were talking about because he gave a generic 'sometimes you have to make tough decisions' answer after a long pause and no real explanation.

When it came to asking about anything else, such as Google, he would ramble on for minutes about how they suck. Nothing deep, all just threats and insults about how Microsoft are kings.

The problem is that all the smart people at Microsoft have left. The guys who could steer the company through the technology space - like Gates, Ozzie, Allard, etc. These guys were visionaries, Microsoft is now run by MBAs. The Ballmer group of business guys forced out the smart geek kids and are now running the camp. It has gone from being a leader to just reacting to competitors and then ranting about them.

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