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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

#611

Post by laureny »

niels_olson wrote: post #597
SiVal wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Does anyone still use Facebook?

1.1 billion people.

Which makes you part of the majority on the planet that doesn't use it. Does that make you feel good or were you going for the hipster angle?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#612

Post by seanmcdirmid »

MichaelGG wrote: post #607
Yuioup wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.NET and C# are the brainchild of Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of Delphi who moved from Boland to Microsoft. Kinect was invented by an Israeli company before being bought out by Microsoft. Your point still stands though :-)

C# yes, but claiming .NET (aka COM+ Runtime, the CLR, Project 7, all that stuff) is his is a slight overstatement. Generics, one of the CLR's major distinguishing features over the JVM, came entirely from MSR, at considerable resistance from MS Corp.

Just a minor correction: Mads Torgesen was never in MSR.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#613

Post by lucasjans »

kjhughes wrote: post #61

What were the key Ballmer era highlights? == Negatives == * Clashes with Gates during CEO transition of power: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261241035146237.html * Developer relations / motivational speaking (thanks mathattack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc * Employee retention (thanks JonnieCache, Ziomislaw): http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/microsoft-ceo-im-going... * Windows Phone: http://…

Lost here is Steve's wasted money chasing success in the media space. Failed advertising platform acquisitions (aQ), billions spent trying to get MSN and then Bing off the ground.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#614

Post by laureny »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #403
nl wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may well be true. That doesn't make it any less sad.

No sadness here - Microsoft has been a stain on the last decade of the computing industry. The only sadness is that their trajectory of circling of the toilet might change, with a new CEO. But I doubt it.

> Microsoft has been a stain on the last decade of the computing industry.

Wrong decade. Microsoft has made a lot of positive changes these past ten years.

If anything, I'm betting that we are going to uncover some pretty dirty business practices exercised by Apple this past decade (I'm predicting that the e-book price rigging is the tip of the iceberg).

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#615

Post by com2kid »

corresation wrote: post #545
com2kid wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aside from the odd "Apple has better hardware" bit (they use the same binned devices that other OEMs like Dell do, so not sure where that comes from) Apple pushed IPS screens when PC OEMs were happy with the lowest quality TFT panels available. For years Apple insisted on having a proper GPU in their machines, until Intel finally was able to offer a competitive IGP. And finally Apple also moved forward with SSDs ea…

Apple pushed IPS screens when PC OEMs were happy with the lowest quality TFT panels available. For years Apple insisted on having a proper GPU in their machines, until Intel finally was able to offer a competitive IGP. And finally Apple also moved forward with SSDs early on. There have always been a diversity of options available in the PC market, and those who wanted to pay the premium for an IPS screen (you know, A…

> and those who wanted to pay the premium for an IPS screen (you know, Apple still sells devices with TN screens...), GPU, or SSD could.

In the laptop arena? Not so much.

When buying my last laptop (~2 years ago) I wanted a 14" laptop, 1080p IPS screen, and a quality dedicated GPU.

I was out of luck, NO ONE made a machine like that. I could get any of those two, but not all three. I ended up with a 14" 1080 TFT and a GPU.

A few laptop manufacturers have started pushing the boundaries of quality, but it is by no means universal. Even today getting a well build (e.g. not Clevo) 14" machine with a GPU and a good screen isn't easy, you have a couple of options to choose from.

Suffice to say for my laptop purchase I bought my own SSD and installed it myself, much more powerful and lower cost than anything the OEM was offering at the time.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#616

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#617

Post by novaleaf »

laureny wrote: post #609
SiVal wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. XBox, Surface and ergonomic keyboards would beg to differ. Not mentioning the countless other innovations that didn't become as popular as these ones. I know the Hacker News hive mind likes to perpetuate the myth that Microsoft doesn't innovate but it innovates at least as much as, if not more than, Google and Apple.

xbox is msft embracing and extending the console market, if only to further their "3 screen" initiative. that's why you see xbox devs moaning about how msft is loosing touch with gamers... it's because msft was never in touch with gamers. they wanted the consoles to get into living rooms.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#618

Post by parasubvert »

roel_v wrote: post #502
acchow wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you grow .NET into the most widely adopted application development platform in the world? More than iOS and Android SDKs?

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm? Are you seriously suggesting those two are even of the same magnitude?

There have been 1.5 billion iOS and Android devices activated worldwide.

There are 1.5 billion PCs world wide.

Are all of them running .NET?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#619

Post by jimmaswell »

potatolicious wrote: post #334
eykanal wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for missing search. And for missing social. And for insulting OEMs. And for his failed Windows Vista launch, and Windows 7, and Windows 8. For one man, he sure has a lot of failures on his plate.

I'm no fan of Ballmer, but I think "insulting OEMs" is one of the good things he did. The OEMs carry a great deal of blame for the collapse of Windows. While Apple was shipping beautiful metal enclosures with great convenient features like MagSafe and magnetic latches, OEMs like Dell were shitting all over the Windows brand with plasticky (and still expensive!), heavy, unreliable, loud-as-shit laptops with terrible s…

Just exactly how imaginative can you be designing a phone's external appearance? It's just plastic (or metal in some cases) around a screen in a somewhat rectangular shape. Hard to get that wrong. What do you mean plasticky? Is plastic a bad thing? The lower density makes the phone take less damage when dropped.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#620

Post by RWeaver »

gregors wrote: post #417
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten. He will be remembered for missing mobile. He will also be remembered for caring a lot about developers and about d…

.Net and C# are prime examples of Microsoft waiting until someone else invented something (Java) and then doing it again. The problem is that it seemed that was the strategy for everything! Very little innovation mostly just copying and one upping.

Remember MS-Java? As I recall it was a superset of Java. So you could migrate your java programs effortlessly towards MS, but couldn't get away!

I'm glad they lost that lawsuit

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