“Ford CEO Alan Mulally says he will not leave the automaker for Microsoft and will stay at Ford at least through 2014,” The Associated Press reports.
“In an interview with The Associated Press Tuesday, Mulally said he wanted to end the Microsoft speculation. He wouldn’t say if he had talked with the software giant,” AP reports. “Mulally said he has no plans other than to serve Ford.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bring on The Flop™!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jeff.L” for the heads up.]
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What!!!! Being Captain of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg is not enticing enough to make you leave Ford.
Well, then Mulalley, since you are staying at Ford why don’t you get that MS Sync crap out of your vehicles so people like me might consider Fords again when shopping for a car.
Mulalley is sharp enough to avoid a Kamikaze task.
How would you like Bill Gates and SS Ballmer breathing down your neck?
Now, when will Ford part ways with MS sync. Have it on my new fusion but it doesn’t really do a whole lot.
Can’t you tell it to play specific songs? What more do you want it to do? That alone sounds awesome.
Just in case. /s
On the Ford Focus I recently got rid of, the Ford Sync system would sometimes lock up after a phone call in such a way that the unit completely stopped working. All buttons stayed unresponsive, not even the FM radio would work and even disconnecting and reconnecting the battery terminals did not sort it out. My dealer switched the head unit for another and the same problem persisted.
It was bad enough that the Ford Sync system was dreadful to use, had an ill-thought out system of commands and only superficially worked with my iPhone, but when it won’t even work as an FM radio, you know it’s crap.
I thought he was their best candidate to take over the reigns at Microsoft. Too bad for them. I would not want to volunteer to be the captain of a sinking ship either, so his decision is a very smart one. Can you imagine a man of his calibre being Ballmer’s understudy during the transition? I can only imagine what his thoughts on Ballmer are, but I’m positive they’re not good.
Microsoft better move soon, the bilge pumps can barely keep up and that ship is getting close to the sinking point. If they had half a brain, they’d try to tap Scott Forestall.
So he decided not to take his reward for fscking up Ford cars with Microsoft Sync™? What’s up with that?
Don’t laugh. He’s done huge stuff for Ford and I hear there’s an end-of-year secret in the works that will blow folks’ minds… Something he wants his name on.
Oh, you mean like Ballmer and the Surface?
Mulally has repeatedly said he intends to finish the job at Ford and by that time will be ready to retire from the daily grind of running a corporation. The only people pushing this are hacks in the business news and tech news world with a need to fill space.
It is kind of like the bullshit TV reporters practice when they quote “unofficial White House sources tell (your organization here) news that (fill in speculative bullshit here)”. The unofficial White House sources are other White House reporters speculating and BSing.
They’ll tell the new CEO, we turned down Mulally for you, just to pump a little sunshine up his skirt.
It didn’t make sense for Mulally to move to MS. His background is in big, industrial projects, i.e., head of commercial aircraft at Boeing and Ford, and he’d have been diving into a cauldron of Windohs spaghetti code flavored with bits of Zune and Surface. Sounds disgusting.
After his experience with Microsoft Sync, I don’t blame him.
Clearly Mulally doesn’t want the Microsoft CEO job, but neither does anybody else who would be any good, that’s why Microsoft are still floundering about trying to recruit somebody after all this time.
A properly run company would have a succession plan for a CEO, but in the case of Microsoft, either there wasn’t a credible succession plan, or the chosen successor declined the job.
Creditable successors were forced out of the company a long time ago.
Me too. I currently own a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid, pre-MS sync. I like the car. I’m in the market for a replacement, but I’ve written off Ford after asking the sales guy to show me how to use it to play music from my iPod. He couldn’t get it to work. That’s enough for me. No Ford in my future.
Apologies for having told this tale before …
My 2009 Ford wouldn’t work well with my iPhone and the dealer said that it was because the iPhone was too new and you can’t expect car manufacturers to support very new phones.
My 2013 Ford doesn’t work well with that iPhone either and the dealer tried to claim that it’s because that phone is too old. I then challenged him to show me which models built between 2009 and 2013 on his used car lot will work with that phone, but he declined to accept the challenge.
That same iPhone works very well with all the rental cars that I’ve paired it with. It’s Fords that have problems working with it.
If they were smart they would go grab Forestall. Someone with experience at a successful and innovative tech company. Good thing it’s Microsoft and that won’t happen.