“Declaring that Microsoft and its partners had in the past ‘ceded some of the boundary between hardware and software innovation’ to Apple, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told CRN in an exclusive interview Monday that the company’s Surface tablet marks a new era in which the computer software giant will leave no “stone unturned” in its innovation battle against Apple,” Steven Burke reports for CRN.
MacDailyNews Take: The man is a genius.
“‘We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple,’ said an exuberant Ballmer in a 30-minute interview after addressing some 16,000 partners at the company’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. ‘We are not. No space uncovered that is Apple’s,'” Burke reports. “‘We have our advantages in productivity,’ he said. ‘We have our advantages in terms of enterprise management, manageability. We have got our advantages in terms of when you plug into server infrastructure in the enterprise. But we are not going to let any piece of this [go uncontested to Apple],’ shouted Ballmer. ‘Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.'”
MacDailyNews Take: A genius, we tell you! (Despite the fact about all that’s gone on during his “watch” at Microsoft is an unrelenting, merciless ass-kicking administered by Apple.)
Burke reports, “Ballmer did not even discount the possibility that Microsoft’s innovation offensive could include its own smartphone to compete against Apple’s wildly popular iPhone. When asked if Microsoft might make its own smartphone, Ballmer paused and then replied: ‘Right now we are working real hard on the Surface. That’s the focus. That’s our core. Look, we’ll see what happens. We have good partners with Nokia, HDC [sic] in the phone space. I love what we’ve got going on with the Surface. We are going to focus on Surface and our other Windows 8 Tablet partners and see if we can go make something happen.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Nokia is a “good partner.” Good partners are always gasping for air like fish on a sidewalk.
Burke reports, “As to whether partners will eventually be able to sell the Surface, which is slated to be available from Microsoft.com and Microsoft retail stores, Ballmer said Microsoft’s initial emphasis was to put ‘one foot in front of the other’ and get the product ‘out the door.'”
MacDailyNews Take: A certifiable genius!
Burke reports, “The Surface marks the first time ever that Microsoft has tried Apple’s long-successful strategy of tightly integrating its own hardware and software together in sleek products.”
MacDailyNews Take: You know, because the Zune and the Kin never happened. Oh, right, Burke typed “sleek” products. (Are either of the Surface vaporlets really that “sleek?” Is a silly kickstand sleek?)
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs’ longterm plan continues to unfold with precision. It’ll be a sad day when Ballmer T. Clown finally bites the bullet.
May Steve Ballmer remain Microsoft’s CEO for as long as it takes!
Related articles:
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HP said to dump Microsoft over Surface; to cozy up to Google Android for tablet efforts – July 2, 2012
Bad news for Microsoft’s iPad killer? – July 2, 2012
Dear Microsoft, Steve Balmer and Bill Gates: What is up with your obsession with keyboards? – June 28, 2012
Jason Schwarz: Top 10 reasons why Microsoft’s Surface is DOA – June 22, 2012
Why I love Microsoft’s vaporware Surface tablet – June 22, 2012
Microsoft’s Surface tablet said to be Wi-Fi only at launch; no 4G, no 3G, no 2G, not even 1G – June 22, 2012
Microsoft outsources Surface assembly to Pegatron; prices above $799 for Windows 8, above $599 for Windows RT expected – June 21, 2012
Acer founder: Microsoft will quit making tablets soon – June 21, 2012
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Thanks to Apple, Microsoft is doomed in the era of mobile computing – June 20, 2012
Why wouldn’t Microsoft let anyone touch its Surface tablets’ keyboard cover? – June 20, 2012
The cost of Microsoft’s Surface tablets – June 20, 2012
Apple’s revolutionary iPad vs. Microsoft’s anti-tablet ‘Surface’ – June 20, 2012
Microsoft’s Surface tablets provokes ‘sense of betrayal’ among Windows PC assemblers – June 20, 2012
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Microsoft’s Surface tablet destined to be as successful as the Zune – June 19, 2012
Surface: Why Microsoft’s big mystery turns out to be a big mistake – June 19, 2012
Microsoft’s Suicide, er… ‘Surface’ – June 19, 2012
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Microsoft previews own ‘Surface’ tablet – June 18, 2012
Microsoft touts ‘major’ June 18 event said to showcase Windows RT tablets – June 15, 2012
ZDNet’s Kingsley-Hughes: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is an awful, horrible, painful design disaster – June 8, 2012
Analyst meets with big computer maker, finds ‘general lack of enthusiasm’ for Windows 8 – June 8, 2012
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More good news for Apple: Microsoft previews Windows 8 (with video) – June 1, 2011
That’s the right nut speaking.
hey my neighbor to my left, its not me talking… its our neighbor behind us thats an ass because clearly ballmer is talking out of his ass with these statements. dont blame that shit on me…lol
iLol’d hard. 🙂
You’d think he’d learn to stop saying these things in pubic. MDN has iCal.
So does anyone with an iOS device.
Which is a lot of people. Certainly more people than ever bought a Zune, the launch of which is the last time I remember Microsoft management including Ballmer and Dave Fester coming up with this kind of deluded triumphalist nonsense on the basis of the perceived value of being able to ‘squirt’.
Nokia is just one more company who will suffer dearly by embracing Microsoft. A deadly embrace at that. How stupid can all those “partners” get?
Microsoft’s initial emphasis was to put ‘one foot in front of the other’…. Even Ballmer should be able to manage that….
Not necessarily, he could be chewing gum at the same time.
Too true. Too true.
That apparent movement seems induced by pressure from the MS Board to do something…anything. With these types of hyper-comments, MS stock price will plunge once reviewers get their hands on a Slate.
Hey it’s trickier than it looks!
But yes, the man is a genius. May he remain CEO for as long as it takes!
When he threw down the gauntlet, did he hit himself in the foot?
Nah, that would mean that he was throwing it at his mouth, wherein his foot was firmly planted!
No reason left to put Bulging Ballmer on a Mac website with a comment that only made sense if it was uttered 5 years earlier.
Right on. Therein will always lie the difference between Microsoft & Apple. Ballmer is on a 5 year tech delay and only because he has to.
Wish Steve was alive to enjoy this comedy.
+1111111
He’s brilliant ! you don’t turn over stones in order to innovate. You create!
Ballmer can relate to stones. He was found under a rock.
And his head is full of ’em! 😉
+1
And when the iPad starting taking off with no Microsoft or Microsoft-loaded competition slowing it at all, he probably shat crushed rock and clay baked in a kiln in roughly rectangular prism-shaped pieces.
I love Ballmer! Honestly, I’ve never seen such an incompetent buffoon last as long as that guy has. What on earth does he have to do to get fired?
Forget I said that; may Ballmer remain CEO for as long as it takes!!!
You’re crazy! Balmer is a very kind an decent man who will make it worth the shareholders’ while. I can not believe you do not see how much the Mac folk are in trouble. Balmer is smart, funny, experienced and dedicated to seeing this through and I for one will be waiting in line for the Surface.
Windows 8 will easily beat OSX Mountain Pussy.
Smart money says it will be a line of one!
=:~)
Worth shareholder’s while? Under Ballmer’s long reign, MSFT been dead money.
The phony “Zune Tang” act has been done before, and the original was actually entertaining every now and then… but once you’ve seen it, it’s really quite the bore after that. Just saying…
Well if confirmation was ever needed…Microshaft is worried…
REALLY WORRIED
Apart from not mentioning Google who really should be their target, this is unbelievable stuff from the giant Microslug.
Oh yeah, he’s not fooling around now. The jig is up. They woke up from their deep slumbers and now have their eye on the ball. Nothing ‘s going to stop them now, except err umm, maybe Apple and Google…
So sad too Apple’s ALREADY left no stone or space uncovered except maybe an 8″ iPad (which will probably be out in few minutes). And I’m afraid your clumsy “watch” is about over. Consumers no longer believe you.
“I love what we’ve got going on with the Surface” just like you “loved our stragedy, I like it a lot” before?
“Ballmer said Microsoft’s initial emphasis was to put ‘one foot in front of the other’ and get the product ‘out the door.’” All that one foot in front of the other is doing is crossing and making you trip. Yeowwww!
“That’s our core.”
No it isn’t! Software is your core; this will be “the first time ever that Microsoft has tried Apple’s long-successful strategy of tightly integrating its own hardware and software together.”
MDN is correct about Zune and Kin. I don’t have proof of this, but I hear that the Xbox was around for years before it turned a profit. No stone unturned == money wasted everywhere. If Windows and Office continue losing influence and sales, that will cut-off the cash source.
“Ballmer said Microsoft’s initial emphasis was to put ‘one foot in front of the other’ ”
actually, that’s a good start for a monkey to evolve.
Burke reports, “The Surface marks the first time ever that Microsoft has tried Apple’s long-successful strategy of tightly integrating its own hardware and software together in sleek products.”
Not really, maybe the second effort to sell MS’s version of sleek without shovelware.
http://signature.microsoft.com/
Did you note the strengths that Ballmer listed? They are all strengths pertaining to enterprises and businesses from a centralized point of view. Microsoft excelled in that command and control arena.
The problem is that the rushing trend is towards consumerization where end-users are making individual choices for devices that work like a toaster.
There was a time when horses were far more popular than cars as a mode of transportation. The excerpts from his speech sounds more like a buggy maker going after Henry Ford by making a horse drawn buggy with a motor in it but touting its history making barns, hay balers, and feeding troughs.
“We have got our advantages in terms of when you plug into server infrastructure in the enterprise.”
No advantage with English and communication. 😛
The double speak knows no bounds. I believe, “WTF”, was born after listening to the bombastic buzzword blowhard, baffle ’em with bullshit.
I wonder if there is a Hari Seldon chamber at Apple? If so, already laughter can be heard….
My Prime Radiant says “Yes”.
*raises glass and cheers* AS LONG AS IT TAKES!!!
Microsoft has to keep the hype going while they slap together something that can be sold as the “surface”.
As a sales guy, all Ballmer knows how to do is bluster, exaggerate and yell.
I actually think non-mac fans are catching on and becoming suspicious of microsoft. Yay.
DANCE MONKEY BOY DANCE!!!
Microsoft is completely unable to merge hardware and software together like Apple does. They use off the shelf components! They will never be able to marry the two together and get near the performance or looks or even the deman that Apple gets from their products.
I have a Xbox 360 and the menu system is completely stupid. Family controls are limited and cumbersome. Same with the control panel in Windows. If Balmer could pull his head out of his ass long enough, he would see that he better not just put one foot in front of the other, but instead , he better start running!
I think Ballmer remains only because he was anointed by Gates. If they had done a regular CEO search and gotten him, he’d be long gone.
The best thing Ballmer could do for himself and Microsoft is to shut his cavernous mouth.
We’re way into farce territory now.
This is so much like watching IBM during the PS/2 era.
Worse, actually, as John Akers had a great deal more going for him than Steve Ballmer.
I honestly think that, outside of the business market, Microsoft is destined to be an also-ran.
Buffoon, for sure. BUT… Windows 8 is in the process of being discovered by those of us abandoned by Steve Jobs when he converted Apple into a mobile device company. When looking for powerful, real computers that will run robust, professional software we’ve no choice, for the first time since 1984, other than to see if idiot Ballmer’s company is interested in us as customers.
I’ve been running the Win8 betas since day one, and while Metro looks nice, it’s a terrible start menu replacement and desktop interface. It will hurt my productivity. IT guy at work has done the same, and we’ve decided we’ll never go Win8. Hopefully, by the time Win9 comes around, Windows will have lost so much market-share that it will be irrelevant.
If you feel abandoned by Apple, discover Linux.
You enjoy that.
I you are unable to get work done on OS X, you’ll never get anything done on Windows 8.
If MS wants to get ahead of the game, they need to start manufacturing toilets.
That way all the MS money that they waste on crappy MS products can be flushed down MS toilets.
That’s what I call hardware and software integration!
Balmer and all the comments here are so entertaining. May the MicroSoft ship continue to take on water as captain Balmer steers the ship to the rocks so he can wave at everybody on shore.
I assume you are referring to the Italian cruise incident, right? 🙂
With a sales pitch like that, how did he ever get hired as the sales guy, let alone elevated to CEO? By putting one foot in front of the other? And did he bring in a singing elf, reindeer and yeti for the presentation?
I slightly feel sorry for the guy. Jobs had almost OCD type dedication to practicing his presentations . He practiced each detail with such focus it appeared as though he was speaking off the cuff. Perhaps, that is where the copying should begin.
So far I don’t see any changes from what he said. There surface tablet didn’t even have a working keyboard to show when they debuted it. They announced it, but they never let anyone near it to try it out. They didn’t even demonstrate it themselves. So for such a supposedly great product, they don’t even have a working keyboard yet. Yea, Apple is really scared now. NOT!!!!
wow.
human stupidity never ceases.
esp. at the top!
is it not so damn flabbergasting how so many corporate heads are delusional & downright impractical and stupid?! how do so many boards & share holders accept their firms to be run down?! are we all that dumb?
Ballmer is as much a hypocrital idiot as the conservatives who tried to save the country from Clinton’s White(house) Blowjob! the staunchest bitchers (complainers) are the biggest culprits of hypocrisy! as now with Ballmer, who can scream all he wants about Microsoftian Greatness, yet all he has to show for it in over a decade is SoftBrain-microvened into petrified insignificant stone…
it’s easy for us laymen to criticize.
but come on, if to be or not to be relies on intelligent decisions, god help us on top…
MDN take always ends, “May Steve Ballmer remain Microsoft’s CEO for as long as it takes!”
Didn’t Ballmer say that he was going to remain CEO at least until his kids finish college? If they are as stupid as their old man, I think MDN got their wish!
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Sgteve-Ballmer-Bill-Gates-Microsoft-Windows-8-Xbox,14480.html
Thanks, Ballmer. I haven’t laughed this hard in years. Comedy gold!
Wow
This story just made my day. 🙂
I am very upset with MDN right now. I saw this story break last night and got on MDN at 6:00 AM to see your response. Nothing, until late in the day and I was at work when this appeared. Were you under Balmer’s reality distortion field? Did his exuberance throw you off your nose for news? Was the sweaty excitement too much? Just when I thought the Mole was replacing Balmer as a public buffoon, the man comes back riding high on the Courier…er, Surface (wasn’t that the name of the Big Ass Table? Yeah, that’s the ticket, it’s an ecosystem). This story is BIG, BIG I tell you! This requires more exploration, more commentary.
Calm down mike, it’s just the same old Ballmer doing the same stupid things he always does, Really Microsoft is old old old news, you know microsoft a living a Has-Been trying to recapture stolen fame.
Grab a breath and or a beer and just relax and watch the baboon known as Ballmer rub his ass against the carpet a few times…
It’s like the Sunday Funny papers all over again in real living color, except with allot of armpit sweet and despair. It is big, well at least Microsoft thinks so, but we have seen this show before.
Dance Monkey!!!
Ballmer is a genius…. anyone that can be such an idiot… and screw up as much as he and Microsoft has…… AND still has a job ……. well, I am beside myself…. I find it hard to believe they haven’t ousted him….. I wish I was like him….. all that pay for simply being a BAFOON !
So he wants to star his “innovation battle” against Apple by copying the iPad ?
Remember that great quote by Alan Kaye offered up by Steve Jobs during the introduction of the iPhone — “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” Ballmer now sees the wisdom of that philosophy after years of Microsoft being content to reap riches by selling licenses and avoiding dirtying its manicured fingers with the drudgery of hardware manufacturing. Times sure have changed!
A Seldon Crisis indeed.
I feel slightly guilty – but fascinated – watching this slow nervous breakdown happen in public.
I’ve had my iPad 788 days, and it still works perfectly. I use it 2 to 3 hours at least every day. I’ve dropped it dozens of times, it has fallen down the stairs. The battery life is still over 9 hours maybe even 10. I use it to stream radio so much that I have unplugged all the radios in the house.
Nothing Microsoft has ever done can match this quality and usefulness. Bring on the surface, let me see what you got.
Is that the grand finale of rambling or what!
Reading it fast it sounds like a revved up final boss about to ‘splode.
Visions of Donkey Kong…
Even the proportions of MS product look crummy.
We need a grand finale of Ballmer pics! Uncle Fester! I looove Uncle Fester! C’mon!!
Big hat, no cattle
If you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bullshit is ball ears (auto-correct has a sense of humor) mantra!
“Right now we are working real hard on the Surface.”
But under the hood we still are lazy, inefficient and clueless dinosour.
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but that doesn’t mean that it is easy to do or is even possible. Microsoft now realizes belatedly that Apple’s way of doing things is the right way. But can it execute? Microsoft has never had a Steve Jobs but has most been a copier that used its size and monopoly to forestall competition; it doesn’t have the managers that Steve Jobs hired and trained; it does not have Apple’s culture of unrelenting and uncompromising pursuit of insanely great products and services that people don’t know they want until they have it; it does not have Apple expertise and not merely integrating hardware and software but of viewing hardware and software as on thing, which is developed together, and it does not have Apple’s inspiring legacy of brilliant innovation. So Microsoft has a lot to accomplish and to prove.
Ballmer is the #1 nominee for The Laugh Of The Week Award. i can’t imagine anything being more funny.
This is so funny, in fact, that this may well be his ‘Waterloo’, so to speak. His Titanic. His last splash in the puddle. It will be sad to see him tarred and feathered and thrown out of beleaguered Microsoft.
– – – Kidding! 😆
I totally disagree!
why do so many hate so much this gorgeous, top notch quality nicely performing softwares !
I see lots of complaints about bugs which will be ironed out it is still an amazing software. I guess being able to code I have an appreciation of what they have done with it as I’m sure others on here will too!
Windows 8 , the newcomer,
it’s innovative, powerful, bold, beautiful, authentic,sleek & sexxxy, spectacular !!!
its fast, its fluid and well ,everthing feels just plain quicker and snappier!
dont let Modern UI fool you this workhorse is ready for anything
you can trow at it. from Facebook to Twitter integration it does it all!
no more endless searching the web for the right app.
thrill to over 650+ great appz & awesome games in the amazing new appz store.
with many more sure to follow!
run for weeks on a singal battery charge.
this is “the” Ipad killer, Apple is surely doomed!
BTW just installed on 386 with 1meg of ram and it rockZ man!
Ballmer T Clown amuses me
I like his strategy. I like it a a lot. That video just makes me laugh how pathetic Microsoft is. Please Ballmer stay CEO forever!!
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