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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

#721

Post by marincounty »

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.

Yes--I use a fake name in order to comment on news articles. I very rarely go to the site. I wonder how many people do the same thing?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#722

Post by jlgreco »

tanzam75 wrote: post #655
aceperry wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a friend who owned a MS phone (winphone?) around the time that iphone began. He was really happy that he could integrate exchange, use excel and word and do lots of other things with windows. After a month of living with the phone, he told me, "you won't believe how much I hate this thing." It kept crashing, freezing, and locking up on him and he returned it 3 times already. He said that if he had to retur…

> I remember a friend who owned a MS phone (winphone?) around the time that iphone began. ... It kept crashing, freezing, and locking up on him and he returned it 3 times already. The problems with your friend's phone were probably caused by non-Microsoft code. And just like bluescreens on XP, Microsoft got all of the blame. Around 2006, I had a Windows Mobile phone that was freezing up almost every other day, as it…

The root cause is important to engineers and product managers, not consumers.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#723

Post by goggles99 »

windexh8er wrote: post #623
laureny wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You had me until the Google / Apple remark. My feeling of Microsoft is that they didn't understand their innovative success; XBox - or how to capitalize on it going forward. The 360 was likely the last product of theirs I will ever buy. The new console - not innovative and if they weren't paying attention to the fall out around the Sim City debacle then that's just added injury to insult. Baller is a bad CEO by today…

Microsoft is a dead brand. I started saying this in 2004. I still believe it today.

Really, even after the era of huge success with Windows 7 and the Xbox 360 you were still saying this? Is that when you bought the Xbox 360 from the "dead brand". Do you always throw down hundreds of dollars for products from dead brands?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#724

Post by marincounty »

marcosdumay wrote: post #640
CamperBob2 wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they had to do was get mobile right. To do that, all they needed was one manager who kept an eye on the state of capacitive touchscreen development and moved to lock it down before his/her counterpart at Apple did the same thing. The iPhone could have been theirs all along, with all that that implies. But first they ignored the underlying technology, then Ballmer laughed at it (on national TV no less), then they…

> all they needed was one manager who kept an eye on the state of capacitive touchscreen development and moved to lock it down before his/her counterpart And they did move. I was trying to create a startup based on PDAs at the early 00's (no luck, they were too expensive - the idea was flawed from day 1). There was Palm, and the two entrants: Windows and Linux. Palm had a once nice system that nobody wanted to progra…

I loved Palm. I wondered why more people didn't buy them. I once looked up a price of Halo 2 at 9 p.m. on a library Internet access( open at the time), and bought 500 copies of Halo 2 for $2.99 each. I sole all of them on ebay for at least 30 a piece. I knew nothing about vid games, but I knew they were priced to move.

I felt like I was the only one in the world who realized how great having Internet access was in my pants pocket. Now Everyone is connected.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#726

Post by marincounty »

geoka9 wrote: post #387
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…

Being a terrible CEO at Microsoft is being a hero in my book. As someone noted below, "Microsoft used to control the future of computing". This was a very bad proposition, as we all know how evil they are in general, and incompetent whenever it comes to actually doing something new, as opposed to copycatting and driving out of business their competition. I will always remember and be thankful to Ballmer for making MS…

Yea--that's the best way to look at the argument.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#727

Post by amenod »

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.

Yes, Microsoft innovates. Their innovations just don't stick.

For instance, MS had a "PC tablet" (WinXP based) much before Apple, but it took iPad to make a revolution.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#728

Post by jabr »

zero_intp wrote: post #684
jabr wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Gates wanted to leave a mark on the world he'd buy back pieces and parts of the behemoth and set them free for the open market I agree with most of your comment, but that line bothered me. In my opinion, the single worthwhile accomplishment of Microsoft was that it led to the formation of the Gates Foundation. I don't even agree with many of their objectives, but simply providing funding for "unprofitable" medic…

This is a dangerous thought, imo. Robber Barons turned philanthropists are still evil old men trying to buy social indulgences. I argue that the weight these monopolists tied around their industries had larger negative impact on GDP and innovation than the positive value of the 'works' their charities re-invest in society.

Oh, I completely agree. The point I was trying to make was simply that increasing funding for medical research on malaria, tuberculosis, etc. was more significant than anything he did (or could do) with Microsoft.

But regardless, I agree that the world would be a much better place if addressing our solvable problems didn't require the support of a retired billionaire first.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#729

Post by jabr »

specialist wrote: post #485
tlogan wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should compare MSFT against other companies in enterprise space. So lets take, for example, ORCL. From 2000 till today, ORCL become the clear leader in enterprise: they acquired PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA, Sun, etc. On the other hand, MSFT position in enterprise space is in much weaker position comparing to competitors such as ORCL. Enterprises will replace their Windows with tablets, but I don't see them rep…

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.

I'm mostly a startup type, but I've worked in some fairly corporate environments and I've never used any of those.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#730

Post by jabr »

WayneDB wrote: post #691
nl wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to disagree with sarcasm on the internet. But in this case you are absolutely correct. Microsoft used to control the future of computing. Now they are yet another enterprise software company with no apparent mission except to make money. The lay somewhere on a continuum with IBM, Oracle, SAP all the way through to companies like CA. At one end of that spectrum they do research and produce software that peop…

Yeah right, Microsoft is just another enterprise software company . Gimme a break. What other enterprise company has major footholds in even half of the markets that Microsoft has? Who else has Windows?

In a single day, I routinely use up to four different operating systems and none of them are Windows.
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