“So what does Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer do when he faces a room of press and financial analysts toting a bunch of Macs? He counts Apple logos,” Larry Dignan reports for ZDNet. “During his talk about search, netbooks, Windows 7 and the business climate, Ballmer took a detour into Apple-ville and how Microsoft tracks share versus Apple.”
Excerpts from Steve Ballmer’s speech:
We have low share, by the way, in the investor audience. I can see the Apple logos versus the PC logos. So we have more work to do, more work to do. Our share is lower in this audience than the average audience. Don’t hide it. I’ve already counted them. I have been doing that since we started talking.
Anyway, we got a bank them right here in the middle. I know where they all are. One over here on the side. But anyway… that’s okay, feel free as long as you are using Office to go right on ahead.
The primary attack that comes from Apple is, hey, at the end of the day, we have the coolest hardware. When you see the hardware, the PC design that is am come out this Christmas with Windows 7, I think that conventional wisdom can begin to really change. There is some really amazing, amazing work. So it is possible to get great hardware innovation, even when hardware and software comes from separate companies.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
By SteveJack
This, of course, is exactly what Ballmer wants his investors and his customers to think. Concentrate only on the hardware, not on the OS, which, BTW, is what Microsoft makes; not PC hardware. This is one of Microsoft’s weakest attempts to freeze the market in recent memory. Does he really think we’ll believe that Dell et al. are building factories to mill ultra-thin, precision unibody laptops out of solid aluminum like Apple? Puleeze. Not with their margins (or lack thereof). And, besides, no matter what they produce, they’ll still have crappy Windows and tons of other assorted crapware pre-installed. And, stickers; don’t forget the stickers.
So, why, some may ask, doesn’t Ballmer just say, “Hey, Apple makes cool, quality hardware, so run Windows on it!”
The reason he doesn’t say such a thing, especially in a room full of press and financial analysts, is because he knows that it’s death. If people did that, buy “cool” Macs to run Windows, then they’d also get to dabble in Mac OS X. In Microsoft’s land of mediocrity and worse, this is A Very Bad Thing™. The Very Worst Thing Of All™, in fact.
Obviously, as many of you know firsthand, Windows-only sufferers who are confronted with Mac OS X routinely and quite joyously end up dumping Windows. In fact, the Windows-to-Mac switchers end up being some of Apple’s very best salespeople. Ballmer knows all this, of course, but he can’t say it, so instead he pretends that this whole Apple Mac thing is only about “cool” hardware, as if Monkey Boy were actually capable of discerning cool. Ballmer’s spiel only works on those who’ve never really tried a Mac; the rest of us just laugh.
This is how Microsoft makes their money, it’s really the only way they’ve ever made their money, on the backs of the ignorant. Ignorance is the key to Microsoft’s success. Just look at their commercials in which Microsoft peddles cheap, junky, thick, heavy, and uncool (one of the actors even says she’s not cool enough for a Mac) laptops that they don’t even make. Microsoft ignores the OS – the actual part of the “PC” that they make – altogether. Microsoft avoids the Windows vs. Mac operating system comparison for one simple reason: They cannot compete. So, sticker price is all they have left. Ballmer, like the rest of us, knows that if you give people both Windows and Mac OSes to use, they overwhelmingly choose Mac. That’s why in a room full of people in-the-know, he’s facing a room full of Macs with glowing Apple logos.
This situation, of course, is why Microsoft will ultimately lose and Apple will win. In a head-to-head matchup of Windows vs. Mac, it’s no contest. Microsoft’s only remaining technique it to try to keep as many sheep as possible in the dark. Microsoft’s last refuge is to pretend that the people who buy Macs are somehow glamoured by a glowing Apple logo and not making a sensible choice, “paying $500 for a logo,” etc. Basing your business on a lie guarantees failure. Unfortunately for Microsoft, there are too many Apple retail stores, too many satisfied customers who talk way too much about their satisfaction, and far too many roomfuls of Mac-toting financial analysts and members of the press.
Oh, BTW, not content to merely fleece the ignorant sheep, Ballmer also promised to rape them, too:
Gavin Clarke reports for The Register, “Ballmer said Microsoft had got it wrong by selling low-priced Windows – Windows XP – on netbooks. These run Windows XP and account for 11 per cent of Microsoft’s PC business, but Microsoft’s tactic of using low price to win market share against Linux has hurt its revenue.”
“With Windows 7, Ballmer vowed prices would go up, and Microsoft had a ‘great chance’ to up-sell customers,” Clarke reports. “It sounded like the upsell will come from Windows XP on netbooks to Windows 7 on netbooks and from Windows 7 on netbooks to Windows Home Premium on ultra-thin machines. ‘In Windows 7, we are going re-adjust those prices north,’ Ballmer told analysts looking for the bottom line and dismayed by the impact of netbook sales on Microsoft’s business.”
Full article here.
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer and a regular contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section.
Congrats to iPhoner …. your story is told thousands of times across America as folks take the plunge after being totally frustrated with Windows and Microsoft. I convinced my son-in-law to switch about 3 years ago and he told me again last week how absolutely happy he is that he made the switch. He also went for an iPod and iPhone recently. Now … that’s the power of a great brand ! There truly is a difference.
In other words, Ballmer said (breathlessly),
“Don’t Switch to Apple yet! Our next operating system is really going to WOW you! But the really great thing is the hardware that’s coming out at Christmas time. Oooooo, you won’t want to be a disappointed Mac-dork then! Think of how silly you’ll feel, sitting there with an over-priced piece of hardware, just because you want to have a cool logo, when the Windows computers start coming out with, with, with … flames painted on the side! And stripes! I’m talkin’ totally awesome racing stripes, like, like, um, a super speedy fast race car!! Yeah, and, and .. uh, really neat, uh, really neat shapes! Yeah, the new Windows hardware will have colours, and shapes, that, … uh, … that will be really cool!”
I recently needed a DSL filter and dropped into a nearby Office Depot. Out of curiosity I took a stroll down their laptop aisle. I was amazed and appalled at the garish, clunky, crap on display. My all aluminum MacBook is a Formula One car next to these 1987 Buicks. Yes, they had better specs on paper, but then my MacBook doesn’t use half its CPU capacity running anti-virus software, and the slightly smaller hard drive isn’t filled with a bloated OS and non-removable crapware. You really do get what you pay for.
Three pages of comments and not one good political one. All touting how MS’s marketing is built on ripping off good design and f’ing it up. Then they lie about it with propoganga and not on play with, but rely on the ignorance of their coustomer base. And Apple is so great all you have to do is expand you mind, try it out, and you will quickly see how truly great they are.
All of which I agree with. But let’s substitute MS with Liberal, and Apple with Conservative and I belive the same arguments can be made. So anyway, just wanted to toss in some politics, have a good day . . . er, night.
“Don’t hide it.”
don’t hide it? ballsac, come on. i doubt anyone is trying to hide their Mac from you.
i wish my switcher story was as cool (or involved as much money) as the one iPhoner told, but it doesn’t. however, i can tell you that it ends exactly the same. i’m never going back, ever.
Apple only targets a small percentage of the market… It will never “take over” the desktop market. Regardless of how much people hate Windows, they hate spending money and will never put any kind of value into a computer purchase. These are the people that own a computer because everyone else does and there’s no reason to spend any real money on one. Unfortunately by doing so, they never get to experience what it is like to actually enjoy using a computer.
Remember it would be hard to fire Ballmer. He’s already a billionaire and a huge stockholder (2nd biggest maybe)? Huge in other ways as well.
“Don’t hide it.”
It’s funny how the audience was trying to go easy on Balmer by hiding their Macs… So that he doesn’t feel threatened, offended, small…
The thing that I’m amazed by is that, standing in a room full of financial analysts, he said out loud that his company’s strategy is to screw people – that’s the bit about the “prices head north”. He’s saying that “our clientele are too dumb to understand that we’re selling them cheap entry-level software that won’t get the job done, but once they’re hooked, we’ll take them for all they’re worth.”
Had I been an analyst at that meeting, I would have posted an immediate SHORT THIS STOCK notification to all and sundry. Any company whose strategy is to grow profits by holding its customers hostage is long-term doomed.
Zune Tang,
“http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/01/27/zune-sales-down-54-percent-will-microsoft-fight-to-save-its-digital-music-player/”
Zune sales down 54%, and they weren’t good beforehand. You’re delusional. And you even follow ====Rob Enderle==== on twitter. That’s really sad…
Steve Ballmer demonstrates how top executives can be PR people’s worst nightmare. I’ve been through media training and I can just hear them telling Steve, “it would be more effective to say it this way….” And he’s thinking, I run the company, I know how to do this. Really, Steve? You look like a slob and an idiot every time you make an appearance. Even Gates had a geeky charm, much better speaker.
The Microsoft adverts put the emphasis on cheapness and try to dismiss Apple computers as too expensive.
But Ballmer’s master plan is to hint at higher quality PCs ( presumably at higher prices ) and to charge more for the OS too. Meanwhile Apple’s laptops keep coming down in price.
There seems to be a flaw in this strategy.
“So it is possible to get great hardware innovation, even when hardware and software comes from separate companies.”
Really? So where is it??
“A lot of us switchers were morons…”
Mostly you
I’m a little late to this party, but here’s my friend’s non-switcher story and why Ballmer doesn’t reach him even though he’s a Microsoft fan.
My buddy rolls his own computer and is always bragging about how little he paid for it despite the fact that it’s a gaming machine, so the graphics card he updates costs hundreds of dollars, then add the high-end sound card, the surround speaker system, and, well, you get the point – it’s not that inexpensive a machine.
And he runs Windows XP. He has this souped-up, high-octane machine running an almost-nine-year-old OS. He’s not buying Ballmer’s lines about how great 7 will be, because he’s afraid it won’t mesh with his system’s drivers. And he’s not interested in hardware innovation, because he’s a do-it-yourselfer. He’s stuck. Microsoft has buried him and his ilk entirely.
By the way, his machine still doesn’t function well despite all the high-tech. His microphone rarely works when we play online together, he can’t get ports to open sometimes for Teamspeak, and of course he has to turn off his anti-virus to play or it fires up at midnight and he has to stop playing while he shuts it down. Meanwhile, my Mac-using friend and I never have any issues at all when we all play online. Now my hope is that with Apple’s ascendance, more developers will port games to Mac OS. No way am I putting Windows on my Mac.
We know for a fact that there is no new hardware coming out from PC manufacturers this Christmas, because the announcements weren’t made the requisite 2 years in advance. Jesus, how far ahead was the Big Ass Table announced? Can you buy that commercially yet?