“Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s reaction to Apple Computer’s decision to use Intel processors can be summed up in two words: ‘What’s changed?’ Speaking Monday at Microsoft’s TechEd customer conference, Ballmer questioned whether Apple’s move to Intel for its PCs changes the competitive dynamic between Microsoft and Apple,” Martin LaMonica blogs for CNET. ‘Will there be more device drivers because of this? No, Apple has their device model–we have ours. Will there more hardware manufacturers that build Apple machines other than Apple? That’s a whole business model change. No reason to believe so,’ he said. ‘Frankly, if people wanted to do that, they could have been buying parts from IBM. What changed?’ Ballmer also suggested that the chip change could reduce the number of applications available on Mac OS.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ballmer has “no reason to believe” there will more hardware manufacturers that build Apple machines? What about Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, Acer, etc.? Jobs don’t need no stinking machines, if he wished, all he’d need to do would be to sign deals; Mac OS X already runs on the world’s PC hardware. If Jobs did this, Mac OS X’s drivers (and applications) would increase, Windows would hemorrhage operating system market share, and Ballmer would be out of Microsoft within months, if MS can even move on large issues that quickly anymore. Of course, Ballmer knows all of this, but he can’t show it in public. In our opinion, Microsoft has been floundering under Ballmer ever since he became CEO. The longer he stays around ignoring Apple and presiding over OS rewrites that easily strip, but never ship, the worse things will get for Microsoft.
