“On Tuesday, September 13, 2005, Microsoft announced to its employees and that it was reorganizing the company into a simpler organization in which executives much further down the chain would have direct decision-making capabilities, allowing the company to move more quickly in this ever-changing market and compete better with companies such as Google and Apple. The reorg was announced publicly a week later, with Microsoft also announcing that group vice president Jim Allchin would retire once Windows Vista ships in late 2006. Succeeding Allchin is Kevin Johnson, who will oversee the new Platform Products & Services division. Jeff Raikes, the head honcho of the unit previous responsible for Microsoft Office, was named president of the Microsoft Business Division. And Xbox’s Robbie Bach was named president of Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division, which will combine the Xbox with Microsoft’s other hardware products,” Paul Thurrott reports for Internet-Nexus.
“To explain this change to employees, Microsoft hosted an internal event with CEO Steve Ballmer, chairman Bill Gates, Johnson, Allchin, Raikes, and Bach. Most of the discussion and Q & A that happened that day is largely irrelevant to Nexus readers, but the company did take one impromptu question about competition with Apple Computer that I thought you’d enjoy. Here’s a transcript of that portion of the session, and some photos taken from a video of the event,” Thurrott reports.
Q: Everyone wants to talk today about Google as a competitor, but Apple is resurgent as well and is doing some interesting new things, and moving over to the Intel platform. I’m curious about your perspective on Apple as a competitor, and also our Macintosh Business Unit is squirreled away in our games division, and, uh…
[Laughter from both the executive panel and the audience]
Q: … And I’m interested in that as an architecture. So what’s your perspective on Apple as a competitor and on our Macintosh business?
Steve Ballmer: [looking sideways down the panel and laughing]: Who wants to go first?
[Hearty laughter as everyone on the panel basically points at each other, offering choices other than themselves.]
Steve Ballmer: We’ll let Jim talk about Apple in general as a competitor, and then we’ll go from there.
The full spectacle, complete with the guy they’re firing forced to answer “the Apple question” first, and pictures that prove conclusively that we thought wrong: Uncle Fester actually can continue to get balder and fatter here.
Nervous laughter, condescending laughter, or just silly laughter? You decide. Does one part of Ballmer’s answers foretell a Microsoft ‘iPod?’ According to Thurrott, Ballmer said, “…obviously one of the keys for us in music and video is to make sure we have an integrated and strong portable device … [shrugs] business.”
After reading the whole exchange, it just never seems to end: Microsoft still wants to “deliver the same kind of end-to-end experience that Apple is able to deliver by being so vertically integrated,” but they never do. You can’t deliver a seamless user experience when you have too many cooks in the kitchen and you care more about controlling “ecosystems” that line your company’s pockets than you care about your customers’ user experience.
It’s too bad they weren’t asked about key employee defections, China, Microsoft’s flatlined stock price, and the company towel service. We’d have loved to see Balmer’s already-abused chair go sailing and the f bombs they’d drop en masse like a bunch of drunken sailors.
Related articles:
Microsoft’s Ballmer: It’s true, some of Windows Vista’s features are ‘kissing cousins’ to Mac OS X – September 19, 2005
Microsoft suffers from malaise, key defections, Windows Vista struggles, lack of towels – September 16, 2005
Microsoft’s Bill Gates’ prediction of Apple iPod market share decline fails to materialize – September 18, 2005
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
Microsoft CEO Ballmer: Apple’s moved to Intel? Ho hum – June 07, 2005
Bill Gates: ‘I don’t believe the success of the Apple iPod is sustainable in the long run’ – May 12, 2005
Bill Gates jokes about Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ and calls Apple ‘the super-small market share guy’ – May 03, 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
Microsoft CEO Ballmer: ‘Apple iPod users are music thieves’ – October 04, 2004
Microsoft CEO Ballmer on the digital home: ‘There is no way that you can get there with Apple’ – October 04, 2004
Bill Gates’ sarcasm regarding Apple iPod: ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that’ – September 07, 2004
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
Another Apple is dying story….
Let them laugh, they think Apple isn’t going anywhere, but M$ has done a few things.
1: they changed ugly longhorn to better looking vista
2: they supposely are improving the security in vista, but 5 viruses already have been written for it. so the jury is still out on that.
3: The iPod caught them by surprise, iTunes was especially invasive.
They were clearly scared, but got off their asses and now feeling a bit more confident.
Fact of the matter is Steve Jobs has not dropped the other shoe yet.
When Vista ships, Apple will have Lepoard ready to go.
Although I don’t expect a radical change from Tiger like OS 9 to Mac OS X was, it’s possible while on Intel chips Apple can invade the office space and run all windows software natively.
That would scare the hell out of M$.
M$ is laughing, but they are frightened, they have been mistreating too many buisnesses and people over the years.
People want a fresh face. Apple is that fresh face.
Microsoft should use the name VistaSOS
Of course, elsewhere on Thurott’s page is this:
“Did you actually believe that Apple was magically going to grab 10 percent of the PC market? If you did, you didn’t read my earlier dissertation on why that can’t happen (What will it take for the Mac to grab 5 percent of the PC industry?), no matter how well that Mac does (within reason). It’s all in the math, folks.
I wonder what rabid Mac sites would be like without thinking the world is conspired against them? Heads up time, guys. The world, frankly, doesn’t really think about you all that much. Sorry.”
What I think is funny about everyone’s discussion about MS and Apple. The only reason MS ever gained such traction is because of the amazingly stupid things Apple did at the time of the Windows 95 release.. like telling developers to f**k off, while MS helped them as much as possible.
I highly doubt this is going to happen again. Apple, and especially Steve Jobs, are too smart to let it happen again.
Even so, Leopard better fscking kick ass, and Vista better be as Virus-Prone and malware as XP, or these mass defections to the Mac will stop. Remember, all Vista has to be is “good enough”…
The people make as little sense as their products, no wonder there is an entire industry devoted to figuring out their stuff. To me, the amazing part is the language used to make their OS monopoly sound benign: ecosystem, as if there is a natural order and they’re mother nature itself.
Still, they have intent and resources and didn’t suck with xBox.
Bad Wolf
Allchin dropped his Nano into his bathroom’s basin right after he got home with it so he could claim a moisture problem.
Okay so how many people have claimed a moisture problem? Yes we have the screen breaking when the Nano is left inside your pocket or was it when thrown against a wall?
At least before all those the Nano worked as any device, say a cellphone, will break if you decide to see if it’ll survive having an 18 trailer truck run over it.
I can remember breaking my Walkman’s each time in less than three months after getting one.
MW: ‘products’ as in only Apple has the best products going and will for a long time yet.
I can just see all these people in MS who now have “decision making powers” pulling in every direction imaginable –
“Which way, this way?”
“No, this way.”
“No, no, that way.”
“No, you’re all wrong, over here!”
= Recipe for disaster.
And they are so neurotic about dominating everything – they don’t like competition, they hate it.. absolutely HATE it.
MS doesn’t create, it smothers and kills, and it’s e-diseased crap spreads further and further like a plague. But this plague is beginning to rot it from within. About bloody time too.
Ballmer gave Allchin’s nano a stress test. Rather than put it in his pants pocket and sitting down or doing the infamous monkey dance, he decided to put it under his armpit. Within a second, the nano stopped playing, and no amount of resetting would fix it. – anonymous report
New caption contest:
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Bill Gates: “Gawd, Steve, phewww! Save those for press conferences, where they’re used to that from you. This isn’t the board room, y’know?”
New caption contest:
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Steve Ballmer, “Vista is nothing but what?!! Hey, I’ve got your vaporware right here…”
Ballmer gave Allchin’s nano a stress test.
—
Gates “I heard they drove a car over this thing..”
Ballmer “Cars come in all shapes and sizes.. I’ll be the judge of this thing..”
*SSSSSSNAP
Ballmer “Bill, help me up.. “
One of the interesting things that the boys didn’t answer is that the Mac Business Unit has been squirreled away in the Games division.
Why?
I can only hazard a guess: The MBU makes money. The rest of the Games Division loses money. By hiding the MBU in there, it will make the games division look like less of a money loser.
An accounting trick.
Caption: Steve Ballmer takes an opportunistic peek at one of the products Bill Gates has in the ‘pipeline’.
Microsoft is sweating pigs these days! Google will by the hero of the day when the bring down the Redmond Empire.
Check out this funny commercial by Apple from 1995. It’s their response to Windows 95. Looking in hindsight, the problems Windows faced in 1995 are pretty much the same that they have now. Pathetic!
Follow the link here: http://homepage.mac.com/ericestrada/Movies/iMovieTheater59.html
Someday, people will learn.
Hahah….the pictures made me laugh…..hahah
I dont doubt his ipod nano only ran for one day, it because they probablly took it apart to see how apple did it!
Everyone wants to talk today about Google as a competitor, but Apple is resurgent as well and is doing some interesting new things, and moving over to the Intel platform. I’m curious about your perspective on Apple as a competitor, and also our Macintosh Business Unit is squirreled away in our games division, and, uh…
My question is; is MacBU being consolidated into another division???
I guess I haven’t been paying enough attention to Microsoft politics.
One interesting thing to remember: in a few months MS will have millions of Xbox360 devices (many with hard drives) connected to cable boxes (high bandwidth), TVs, home theaters and surround sound systems. Those systems could become TiVo-like devices, “digital lifestyle hubs” or anything in between. They may be more of a threat to Sony than Apple, but if this war comes down to who wins the living room, MS will have a big lead.
If Apple is trying to compete with Sony, they will also have to beat MS.
On the other hand, Steve Jobs keeps saying that TVs and computers are not going to converge…
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Bill: Can You Tell I Have An Ipod Nano Tucked Away In My Pocket?
Ballmer: How Dare You, If I Could Get My Fat Ass Off This Chair, Id Throw It At You You Bastard!
Bill: Sod This Im Going To Google.
“…they have an Apple ecosystem. They’re not helping build things for the music companies; they’re not helping build things for retailers. They’re doing things that are only good for Apple.”
errr… aren’t we forgetting about the end-user here, the consumer, the punter? so this is why microsoft innovates… to help their business buddies. bunch of wankers
Bill: Hey Steve, Come And Sit On My Lap, And Don’t Worry About The Lump, It’s Only My Nano.
Ballmer: What?! You Got An ipod?!
Bill: (Blush) You Can Call It Whatever You Want Baby!
AND AFTER READING THIS ARTICLE YOU FRIGGING OFFICEMAC COWARDS GO RIGHT BACK TO THE VOMIT
But wait “Oh if there was no OfficeMac there won’t be any Mac’s in the Office, oh boy meeeee”
Bullsquat, if someone else is editing your junk your a lackey.
PDF, Openformats, RTF, emails, even Appleworks reads and writes Excel and Word files.
The only reason the MacBU/OfficeMac is in existance is to con you into going to Windows.
Apple knows this but has compromised with the devil by not invading their turf in the office.
M$ needs Apple so it’s not a monopoly.
MEGA APPLE VIDEOS HERE
http://www.esm.psu.edu/Faculty/Gray/movies.html
If Microsoft is the fscking ecosystem, I’ll happily live off alternative food sources.