“As Intel plots its rebound, longtime partner Microsoft also hopes to get its groove back by unleashing what Chief Executive Steve Ballmer calls ‘an amazing wave of innovation,’ rolling out at least a dozen new products this year, including updates to Windows and Office, plus programs that run on smart phones and the Web. But the new apps boast so many tiny buttons and mind-boggling connections among myriad programs that eyes were glazing over at a New York event where Microsoft gave a sneak peek to 500 tech buyers. Forbes caught up with Ballmer right after the event,” Daniel Lyons writes for Forbes.
Forbes: Apple Computer now sells Intel-based computers with simple user interfaces. You’re going the opposite way with these complex programs. Do you think a regular person will be able to operate them?
Ballmer: The answer is yes. Can everybody do everything? No. But if you have one or two users who can do everything their work enhances the productivity of everybody.
Forbes: You took some shots at IBM. Why the smack talk?
Ballmer: Smack talk? I don’t encourage smack talk anymore.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A fish rots from the bald head down.
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Vista: wave of the future
Apple: download some tunes
‘Wave of innovation’?
Is Bullmer borrowing catch-phrases from rock bands now?
That sounds like The Pixies song “Wave of Mutilation’
Maybe the next song title he borrows from The Pixies will be their song “Where is My Mind?”
Ballmer=Idiot!!! He got luck to room with Bill. It is not what you know, it is whom you know. In Ballmer’s case, it is 1000% TRUE!!
Hey Stevie, lots of users are gonna give you the wave of innovation . . . it’s got one finger!!
You know, IBM doesn’t stand behind Linux. They promote Linux, but if there’s a bug in Linux, IBM is not the responsible party to fix that. It’s whoever in the community. And you know, let’s say that person has a death in the family.
Sounds like a threat.
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I’d be happy if he promised deodorant.
Microsot innovates nothing. Ballmer and Gates speak in superlative statements. Always talking of “their partners”. And then they deliver nothing or take advantage of “their partmers”.
I really think Microsoft is going to take a huge fall in the next two years.
Apple if done right will gain share to hurt MS. And open source will become more mainstream on teh PC platform. And Vista will definitely be the MS downfall. Vista is truly going to be a huge blunder of an OS.
And Ballmer is so in oaver his head as the CEO of MS. Why Gates has confidence in him, makes one wonder of Gates talents. I predict Ballmer is gone with months of Vista release and the disasters that follow as Vista runs peoples computers.
BTY, did anyone get any inspiration or insight on technology after reading the bald ugly vulture babbling? I didn’t. Waste of time!!!
He looks like the Reaper from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Can someone Photoshop the pic to make his skin white? lol
Wave of innovation right from the front steps of Infinate Loop he means
All I want is for Apple to get 20% market share and I will be happy.
No apple news anymore…just Microsoft crap here.
Why is everyone so obsessed and paranoid about Microsoft?
Start lighting a fire under Steve Jobs to get some stuff out. Ooops, sorry he is too busy transitioning to his new job at Disney.
Rasterbator: “All I want is for Apple to get 20% market share and I will be happy.”
Why? How will this make you happy?
I think Ballmer could run France okay. He sure reminds me of Jerry Lewis, and France LOVES Jerry Lewis. I think that would be win-win for both Ballmer and France.
Steve Ballmer is the software industry’s Tony Soprano, running Microsoft’s protection racket.
I don’t know whether this is funny or sad. Seriously. I mean, my first impulse was to thank MDN for making me laugh, then I read the excerpts.
Ballmer is one sad, deluded fsck. He actually believes he’s a brilliant leader. He’s not lying when he says there will be a “wave of innovation” — he just has no idea what he’s talking about. I am certain that in his mind, Vista is going to be just awesome. After all, he’s seen the tech demos and they looked totally rad!
This is what Jobs was talking about when he said companies start their downhill plunge the moment they put a sales guy in charge of the company. Ballmer doesn’t know how to invent anything. He doesn’t know what’s good. All he knows how to do is sell.
Play that funky monkey music right boy. Stocks soar for Apple every time the monkey boy leaves his cage. Hail to Monkey Boy!!!!
You all have such short memories!
You’re all wrong in stating or implying that Microsoft only copies and never innovates. Microsoft did innovate something.
Did you all forget the “BOB” interface?
No company, other than Microsoft, would have ever come up with that and actually shipped it!
Maybe they are planning several innovations in 2006 that are the equivalent of BOB. (But Melinda, then program manager over BOB IIRC, no longer works for Microsoft she went on to marry the boss. So… maybe even such innovative things as BOB won’t materialize.)
Innovation ? I remember having to use Windows Office for the first time and seeing a talking paper clip trying to help me. OMG!!!! WTF?!?
Silly Ballmer, Tricks are for kids !
Someone send them a dictionary with a bookmark set to the page where it defines what innovation is.
The difference between Apple and a company like MS is that MS uses the word innovation as some marketing speak BS. Apple lives it as a philosophy.
He needs to pull his pants up.
A ‘wave’ of innovation? More like a mud puddle I’d say.
The guy is all those negative things, but he is all those negative things with 11 billion dollars in the bank. I doubt anything said here is gonna keep him up at night.
Well, one more post before I head for the door today as fast as I can.
“Uh, I had not done that demo before. But, you know, could I have? Yeah. With the little notes he had up there, I could have done that demo.”
– Steve Ballmer
If you’ve read my other posts the last few days, you now know what I am talking about. Not firsthand, as we do here, but at least you can get a strong sense of it. In other words …
Can you believe the interview? Doesn’t it just strain the mind to fathom that this person is running one of the largest companies in human existence? With answers such as these?
I’m telling you, the mood back here after the demonstrations last week in New York was just, suicidal. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it is fairly on target. ‘Suicidal’, as in the company-wide sense. And perhaps on an individual level for some of the people working here, too, I suppose.
My Department head attended the presentation, and to hear him sum up the ‘vibe’ from the tech press and others attending the thing, it was truly, truly depressing. A gigantic ‘THIS is what you’re trying to knock our socks off with’ reaction was the general consensus.
I don’t know if the other poster above is genuinely inside here, but I know that I am. It is honestly a tiring, draining, exhausting, depressing, seemingly-futile endeavor to come to work here. NO ONE seems to know what to do, and as I wrote prior, nobody has a vision.
Steve Jobs may be given to occasional exaggeration and may have indeed earned the entire ‘reality distortion field’ reputation, but about one thing he is ABSOLUTELY DEAD ON CORRECT: NEVER let a salesman run a technology company.
I can’t wait to get off this sinking ship.
Ballmer’s behavior reminds me of the sword play between Arthur and the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”– with the Black Knight being Ballmer. Come on Steve — Jobs that is. Carve this arrogant jerk down to size.