Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli at Microsoft’s professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles last week. One of Galli’s questions provoked Ballmer to comment on Apple and Mac OS X.
Galli: Some Microsoft critics say that many of the features in “Longhorn” already exist in other operating systems. How do you respond to that?
Ballmer: I don’t hear that from enterprise customers. They don’t look at the Mac. They just don’t. Some people will say some of the features are kissing cousins to features they’ve seen elsewhere, and that is true. I’m not apologetic about the fact that we should, in a way that doesn’t offend anyone else’s intellectual property, study and learn and benefit from the work others have done.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Galli didn’t specify Apple’s Mac OS X, so it’s telling that Ballmer brings up Apple and the Mac immediately. Microsoft’s enterprise customers who “don’t look at the Mac,” presumably will think Microsoft developed many of Vista’s features on their own and won’t even realize that they could’ve have most of Vista’s upcoming features for 5+ years already – if only they’d looked at the Mac. Certainly, Microsoft won’t mention to their customers where they got the ideas for Vista, they’ll instead trumpet Vista’s “new” features as “Microsoft innovation,” oxymoron be damned.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
PC World: Microsoft innovation – an oxymoron – September 15, 2005
Microsoft debuts Dashboard Widgets, er, ‘Microsoft Gadgets’ – September 13, 2005
Microsoft appropriates Apple’s ‘brushed metal’ look for Office 12 for Windows – September 13, 2005
Windows czar Allchin says Apple copying Microsoft’s Windows Longhorn – April 27, 2005
Microsoft employees leaving due to (and blogging about) malaise smothering company – April 25, 2005
eWEEK Editor Coursey: Longhorn so far ‘looks shockingly like a Macintosh’ – April 25, 2005
Due in late 2006, many of Windows Longhorn’s features have been in Mac OS X since 2001 – April 25, 2005
Microsoft’s new mantra: ‘It Just Works’ ripped straight from Apple’s ‘Switch’ campaign – April 22, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Microsoft’s Longhorn: ‘They are shamelessly copying us’ – April 21, 2005
Microsoft’s Windows Longhorn will bear more than just a passing resemblance to Apple’s Mac OS X – April 15, 2005
Silicon Valley: Apple CEO Steve Jobs previews ‘Longhorn’ – June 29, 2004
Apple CEO Steve Jobs: Mac OS X Tiger ‘is going to drive the copycats crazy – June 28, 2004
Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs previews Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ to ship in the first half of 2005 – June 28, 2004
Apple takes dead aim at Microsoft, ‘Longhorn’ with WWDC Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ ads – June 28, 2004
PC Magazine: Microsoft ‘Longhorn’ preview shows ‘an Apple look’ – May 06, 2004
Microsoft concerned that Longhorn’s look and feel will be copied if revealed too soon – August 25, 2003
Windows ‘Longhorn’ to add translucent windows that ripple and shrink by 2005 – May 19, 2003
Apple leads; Wintel follows as usual – November 11, 2002
Kissing. What? Is that the nice way of putting it?
They’re going nasty business!
Steve Ballmer looks like a product of a lot more than just “kissing cousins” if you ask me.
Image growing up in a family where your mom calls your dad “brother”.
All they can do is jump around and mimick others.
creepy analogy… these are the geniuses working on longhorn? cant wait…
More like shagging cousins.
Seems to me Ballmer’s justifying stealing Apple’s intellectual property by saying they’re too small for people to notice. It’s still copyright infringement either way you slice it monkey boy. Guess being inbred makes you stupid. Maybe he should stick to dancing.
has the man ever thought about using the phrase, “no comment”? This ain’t laundry detergent you’re selling, fool, this is serious!
Apple Legal, start your litigators!!
Am I biased towards Steve Ballmer? Or the guy always says / do things that come out being just plain dumb or stupid? Things that a 60 billion company CEO shouldn’t be saying?
I mean, for instance herel, he just go ahead and mentions the Mac exposing himself and his company that they copied features from OS X. While somewhere else, he starts shouting like a crazy monkey, sweating his fat off and jumping up and down? In another occassion he sends a chair spinning in the conference room while cursing and making death threats to the CEO of a rival company?
Doesn’t Microsoft have a PR / Press department that prevents their people from making / saying things that could compromise the company?
I really would want to see Ballmer being cross quetioned in a courtroom. Just think about all the compromising info that he would reveal about Microsoft if being interrogated by a slick lawyer…
MW: “end” as in “Is Microsoft’s end near? Will Steve Ballmer accelerate the proccess?
Monkey Boy is a perfect example of why we need an international agreement banning GMO’s.
The day M$ makes a product that doesn’t suck, is the day they start making vacuum cleaners.
I folded up the washing from the clothes line tania
are you happy now?
oh yeah comment…
why dont m$ get sued by apple?
Finally, confirmation about the things we’ve been arguing with PC apologists for years.
fef: I think Ballmer quite rightly recognizes that he could show up for a trade conference listening to an iPod, pack the iPod away and pull out a PowerBook for his show presentation, tell everyone he prepared the presentation himself with Keynote, and then close with a movie he made in iMovie with a soundtrack he pieced together in GarageBand, and it wouldn’t budge Apple’s market share up or Microsoft’s down a single percentage point.
SB, go to hell.
Goes to show what happens when you put a sales guy in the CEO position. Can’t keep their mouths shut.
The only thing that could possibly stop my company from using OS X Server is the fact that we need support for meeting management and conference room booking that we currently do using Exchange+Outlook combo. Otherwise I maybe would have made the switch already. SQLServer 2000 is easier to switch.
Can we have Andrew Kantor do a review of this so we can flame him again???
Don’t you people ever sleep? Do you just hover and wait for MDM to post something, anything?
MS is in trouble. People will laugh but any person working on the inside will realize the level of staff discontent. Managers flying all over the place trying to cross develop this and that. Morale is low and BOMBLAST is one helluva an egghead.
Theo
did u ever hear of timezones…
the world isnt just USA
lemmings?
theloniousMac
Sep 19, 05 – 01:45 am
Don’t you people ever sleep? Do you just hover and wait for MDM to post something, anything?
What? you mean you dont?
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Corporate mudslinging, good clean fun!
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CT ======]————- get some goggles, while your at it
Good thing Ballmer has a big mouth. That way it will be easier to fit his foot in.
Sleep?
Who can sleep?
Monday will be here soon and a new crop of juicy stories and clueless product writers will attempt to spew the virtues of the Creative Zen or Sony Walkman over the iPod or Microsoft products over Apple products and we get to rip them a new a$$hole.
Oh what joy!
It’s 2:30 AM and 9 AM is almost 6 hours away. 😀
*cue Carly Simon song “Anticipation”*
[Don’t you people ever sleep? Do you just hover and wait for MDM to post something, anything?]
Thanks for getting out of bed to notice.
If morale is low at MS why don’t they all just divy up the money between themselves (the staff of MS) and go live on an island somewhere. I island they could buy. They gotta get a couple of billion each surely.