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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#691

Post by Kuraj »

71bw wrote: post #432
Kuraj wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think calling gaming on linux "possible" gives it the justice it deserves, with the arrival of the Steam Deck and all the improvements Valve contributed to the upstream. The experience is practically _seamless_. I agree though that linux _on desktop_ is pretty janky, or at least it always was for me, having tried daily driving numerous distros.

>The experience is practically _seamless_. IF you buy through Steam. IF you have an AMD GPU. IF by seamless you mean that regardless of the aforementioned BIG assumptions you still have to go and play with winetricks or whatever to get some stuff working and it can take you hours of tinkering.

Okay, that's fair enough. Though even if you have a game that you bought outside of Steam, you can add it as a non-Steam game to benefit from the compatibility layer and all the bells and whistles.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#692

Post by kranke155 »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #663
kranke155 wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right it is a bit all over the place. "The killer app is making calls" is me quoting Steve Jobs on the Iphone 1 presentation. I get that it doesn't sound true now, knowing all we can do. It's true Iphone was a lot more, but that was his conviction at the time, and I think it makes sense. Their aim was to make the best phone in the world. I also think yeah, it is a bit like Macintosh in the sense that this is a…

Want the whole premise of the original iPhone keynote that it was a fusion of three things - telecommunications, an iPod and internet? (Is that right?) That seems to place "phone" as not the killer app, but rather a pillar of three things that made up a "killer app" when combined. I do remember the initial visual voicemail implementation being very appealing of course. Especially since it seemed they had enough lever…

That's true. I think his idea was to beat the competitors in every category - it was the better phone, it was the better internet device, and it was the better iPod (apparently that was one of Apple's main reasons for making the iPhone at the time, they felt like phones would start having mp3s).

I think we agree. All I meant is, yes LLMs seem to do a lot of things, but nothing quite perfectly. Yet.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#693

Post by kranke155 »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #553
kranke155 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would press X to doubt just because of profitability. It’s cute that we now have image and video gen AI. Also we have now Turing test passing chat bots (Id say). But although they are very impressive, and I know lots of people who use them for various tasks, I haven’t seen a “killer app” yet. For iPhone the killer app was making calls. It was the best phone you could get. Then it had apps. It was undeniably better.…

>For iPhone the killer app was making calls. What? Making calls was the killer app for Nokia brick phones in the late 1990s. The killer app for the first generation of smartphones (Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc.) was email and calendar. The killer app for iPhone and Android was the capacitative touchscreen combined with the ability to run 3rd party apps (yes, I'm aware there was an extremely brief moment in the his…

I was quoting Steve Jobs during the initial iPhone presentation. You're right it was not a good example.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#694

Post by spacebanana7 »

mysterydip wrote: post #493
rbanffy wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need persistence to win. You also need a plan. How would Windows Phone displace either Apple or Android?

Just a spitball idea, but rather than focusing on the consumer market, they could've been the new blackberry for businesses (that give employees phones). Native active directory and group policy integration would be a good solution for the myriad of third party apps/services/devices that attempt to control the other phones.

I could also imagine organisations like the military and police paying vast amounts for phones that could be governed like corporate PCs.

Even now, Microsoft has a great advantage over Google and Apple in getting meetings with the procurement people in those organisations.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#695

Post by bravetraveler »

paulddraper wrote: post #686
bravetraveler wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, now what do we do? Which of us controls the language?

Whoever is able to use it to communicate ideas.

Alas, we are no further. Remember how we got here: you opened with what barely qualifies as an anecdote. Not remotely an idea. I'm trying to be fair.

How about we go with the rock-paper-scissors suggestion?

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#698

Post by garaetjjte »

actionfromafar wrote: post #690
garaetjjte wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WP7 was the first misstep with extremely limited API and no native code for apps.

Sure, then making WP8 phones incompabitle with WP7 apps was the second misstep. Developers, developers, indeed! Not wanted here.

WP8 was compatible with Silverlight (ie. WP7) apps. The problem was splitting app model into half-abandoned Silverlight and new WinRT, and not providing WP8 upgrade to any WP7 phones.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#699

Post by rbanffy »

nl wrote: post #675
rbanffy wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GCP is the best of the three I must have very different needs. In my perception, AWS is the best of the three, Azure is second, and Google would be #3. Depending on your unique news, you might choose different CSP's, from Digital Ocean to Oracle or IBM (the only place you can get AIX, IBMi, and z/OS)

Interesting. Do you do cross-region work in AWS? For me that is just bad . I usually want to work at a service level and see across all regions, where as AWS wants me to work at a region level and see everything I have running there.

The web UI makes that easier with GCP, but the main "UI" for me is Terraform, with only occasional usage of the "human-rated" interfaces.

BTW, I hate Terraform with a passion, but I don't have the energy to write something that can describe infrastructure in Lisp.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#700

Post by fakedang »

rightbyte wrote: post #548
fakedang wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is VS Code a moat when it's platform agnostic? Plus the developer market is just a fraction of the overall market. MS Office is the real moat, as is Windows XP/7. Everyone use MS Office because Google Slides/Docs/Sheets is a silly contender to the MS Office suite. Windows XP/7 because that's what a huge percent of the human population using computers grew up on today, so they're most familiar with it. And let's b…

> And let's be honest, that's not going away, even as MS enshittifies Windows 11, simply because no Linux build can apparently mirror the Windows XP/7 UI Windows 10/11 does a really bad job at emulating XP/7 UI. It is about as foreign to XP users as Debian or whatever. I made a XP VM the other month to run some insane software I had to run at work. I felt so much at home. It was so nice. Everything was awesome. The c…

Now you just gave me the itch to learn how to make a Windows XP VM.
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