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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

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Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#591

Post by scholia »

microtonal wrote: post #470
potatolicious wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, I think Apple's software is pretty good - note that this is speaking as someone who writes iOS apps for a living. Where they fail is web services. Apple cannot engineer a decent web service to save their sorry lives. The Cocoa API is pretty well thought out, generally well-documented, and pretty well-engineered. Then you get into things where you have to talk to Apple via a network. StoreKit? [ shudder ]. iCloud…

The Cocoa API is pretty well thought out, generally well-documented, and pretty well-engineered. I agree, their APIs are generally very nice. But the last few releases of OS X haven't been great. Multi-monitor support will finally be fixed in 10.9, after having been broken in 10.7 and 10.8. Also, recent releases have become very slow. A 2009 Mac Mini running 10.8 is unbearably slow, while the same machine is on 10.6…

Apple didn't invent Cocoa, it was bought in with NextStep to replace Apple's failing Copland development.

And along with NextStep, Apple got its new iCEO, its new head of hardware, and its new head of software ;-)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#592

Post by saraid216 »

criley2 wrote: post #556
erikpukinskis wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand that some of us, who were around and writing code through the 90s, are still a little PTSD about Microsoft. Back then, when Microsoft did control computing, it was easy to wonder if maybe they would control it forever. It was a shitty period. There was a sense of futility to building software. You could build small software, but as soon as you reached a certain scale, particularly if you were a…

"It was a shitty period. There was a sense of futility to building software. You could build small software, but as soon as you reached a certain scale, particularly if you were a platform company, Microsoft would decide that they'd like to take your revenue, so they'd box your software out of their operating system with incompatibilities, launch their own competitor, and eat your lunch." Sounds like Apple and the 00…

> Who will be the MSFT of the '10s, I wonder.

I thought Google had already established themselves there by pulling all the free APIs that people had built businesses on top of.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#593

Post by lttlrck »

tomkarlo wrote: post #559
mandeepj wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Enterprises will replace their Windows with tablets" really? What can you do on your tablet in enterprises? You can have them only as an additional device. They don't even have any port where you can plugin something. And, you will have your tablets interact with whom? At the end of the day, you need real machine running full blown OS to get shit done and not devices meant for playing with those face painting apps.

Ten years ago, were you saying the same about laptops? Given that there are already enterprise users out there today on Android and iOS devices, this is a pretty bold claim. (And you can, in fact, plug things into tablets with both operating systems - they have USB support.)

Its just as bold to say you can run enterprise on a tablet. Are there any enterprise running soley on laptops? No servers?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#594

Post by scholia »

adventured wrote: post #373
lbarrow wrote: post #23

He'll be remembered as a terrible CEO. Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000. In the 13 years since then, Apple has experienced an unprecedented resurgence. Google and Facebook have gone from being obscure startups to giants. The tech industry went through the bubble, recovered, and today is stronger than ever. What happened to Microsoft? While the rest of the tech sector exploded and prospered, it stayed still. A MSFT sh…

You're judging the share price coming out of the greatest stock market bubble in world history. 1) The stock was closer to $57 in January 2000 if you average the trading days, not $35 (high in Jan was $64 at the end of the month, low was $42 at the beginning of the month). 2) They generated $22.9b in sales and $9.4b in profit in the fiscal 2000 year. Ballmer inherited about a 45 PE ratio, which is a massive multiple…

Best post in the whole discussion. Sorry I have but one upvote to give ;-)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#595

Post by jacalata »

hkarthik wrote: post #504
specialist wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT position in enterprise space is in much weaker position comparing... Is that true? Microsoft's ActiveDirectory, Exchange, and SharePoint are every where. Perhaps they have different parts of "enterprise" pie.

If you were to look at how much money these products make, it's a pittance. Most of the money is made on Windows Server licenses and many of these things get thrown in.

That's certainly not something I've heard. Sharepoint alone is supposed to be $2 billion in revenue.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#597

Post by niels_olson »

SiVal wrote: post #506
EthanHeilman wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT. It might already be true, how do you distinguish between a lumbering giant and not without the help of hindsight? The public consensus on such things lags a few years behind reality. What signs have you seen in 2013 that Google is not a lumbering giant?

Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. Others would come up with new stuff, and Microsoft would "embrace and extend" whatever got traction in the market by adding it to their near-monopoly OS/app stack at whatever price served the purpose of eliminating the inventor and taking their market. This strategy always made Gates paranoid, because the risk was that some alternative to t…

Does anyone still use Facebook? Seriously, I'm medicine. It doesn't even come up anymore. The only thing that reminds me is HN. My daughter and her friends seem unimpressed.

The only reason I haven't deleted my profile is that I don't want to cede the namespace. Don't cross the street to get your ass kicked.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#598

Post by rayhano »

lbarrow wrote: post #23

He'll be remembered as a terrible CEO. Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000. In the 13 years since then, Apple has experienced an unprecedented resurgence. Google and Facebook have gone from being obscure startups to giants. The tech industry went through the bubble, recovered, and today is stronger than ever. What happened to Microsoft? While the rest of the tech sector exploded and prospered, it stayed still. A MSFT sh…

It's easy to criticise, and it may even be pertinent to point out on missed opportunities.

However, you really should not quote Microsoft's share performance without detailing the dividends they have been consistently paying: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft/dividend-history

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#599

Post by scholia »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #335
simonh wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that IE was just a clone of Netscape and XBox was an attempt to duplicate PlayStation. Neither of these were original or ground breaking products. In fact with IE 6 he so badly misjudged the market that he assumed the game was over and didn't even bother continuing development. IE 7 didn't come out until 4 years later! Gates founded Microsoft's online businesses, which have been losing money ever since. You co…

> Except that IE was just a clone of Netscape and XBox was an attempt to duplicate PlayStation. Neither of these were original or ground breaking products. This is completely irrelevant. By the same logic, iPod was nothing special, just another mp3 player. IE and XBox managed to muscle into an established market. This is harder than making a new market, and should very much be congratulated. > In fact with IE 6 he so…

Originally, of course, Netscape was a rewrite of Mosaic (they even tried to rip off the name) and Microsoft licensed the Mosaic code to get a quick start in the browser business.

Microsoft did a complete re-write to componentize the browser and after IE3 (I think), IE was generally better than Netscape. At least, Walt Mossberg said so.

Hard to know why Microsoft stopped developing IE6 and you may be right. However, the next browser was scheduled to appear with the next OS, which was Vista, which turned into a debacle. If Vista had come out on time then it might not have been so bad.

You will recall that the US gov sued Microsoft on the basis that the browser was a separate market from the OS, whereas Microsoft argued it was a part of the OS. This gave Microsoft no incentive to develop IE on the sort of separate fast-track schedule that would have been best for the industry, and for consumers.

That's probably just one of the ways the anti-trust action helped harm consumers. Another was that it gave OEMs complete freedom to install crapware, which also harmed the whole PC industry.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#600

Post by seanmcdirmid »

johnward wrote: post #415
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is big on R&D in India...and squeezing money out of customers for projects they can't build anymore. I work for Microsoft, I don't want to work for IBM.

I was acquired by IBM and not sure I would want to work for either by choice.

Whatever you think about Microsoft, IBM is just a worse experience from an employee perspective. I did two stints at IBM as an intern, the first in Boca (!!) and the second at Hawthorne. IBM Research is almost dead, with most of the researchers having moved on to academia and Google NYC. I work for MSR(A), which is still a very good research lab and probably the last big industrial one.
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