“Microsoft already embarrassed itself by being five years late with Windows Vista. In a properly run organization, those responsible would have been fired by now. Bill Gates would be gone, Steve Ballmer, his high-school buddy and longtime Microsoft pal, would be gone, and a half-dozen others would be fired, too,” Al Fasoldt writes for Technofile. “A company like Apple wouldn’t let incompetents stay on like that. Is this ringing a bell? Steve Jobs would know how to turn Microsoft around. Microsoft’s stockholders don’t want failure and delays. They want results. Right?”
Fasoldt writes, “So they ask Steve to take over as CEO. He retains his position at Apple. He ceases development of Windows Vista and instead unveils a version of Windows his own engineering team has designed, based, as is OS X, on Unix. It’s compatible with all previous versions of Windows from Windows 95 to Windows XP, yet the compatibility is achieved through Rosetta Stone emulation. Rosetta, you might already know, is the emulation layer built into Apple’s version of OS X for Intel Macs. Rosetta Stone will be its emulation layer for Windows Unix. (And, no, the name would not have been chosen for the condition you’d have to be in to run an operating system with 210,000 active viruses.)”
“Oh well. You think I’m just dreaming, don’t you. Nothing like that could ever happen,” Fasoldt writes. “But consider this. If I told you in early spring of 2006 that Apple would soon come up with a way to turn Intel Macs into Windows PCs, you would have thought I was dreaming. Let’s hear it for dreams.”
More in the full article here.
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Keep on dreamin’
Please, not while I’m eating.
Sell the company and return the money to the shareholders?
This is the only scenario that actually has a chance of bringing innovation to Microsoft.
It’s still never gonna happen, but it’s a thought…
Uhhh… Or Microsoft could die.
Was an interesting article until the author suggested that the new Unix-based Windows would use Rosetta to run old Windows applications.
Rosetta is a CPU emulator, not a software API/OS emulator. Wouldn’t it make more sense to maintain compatibility with Windows 95/98/XP via a “Classic” mode like Apple already did for OS 9 when they switched to OS X?
This guy doesn’t know too much.
Absolute drivel.
What is a slow news day this must be!
Not even steve could fix that trainwreck
It will be interesting to revisit Microsucks economic health in 5-10 years.
“I get paid to make shit up, the more worthless the more I get paid. Next i predict Bill Gates will replace Jonathan Ive and Bush will actually do something to help people who make less than us$1M/year.”
I don’t know… a move like that might cause minds all over the world to fuse in a mass systems failure. Would Apple fans suddenly have to like MS because of the Steve factor? Would MS fans have to stop bashing Apple? Arghhh.. urghh… can’t reconcile paradoxes….
maczealot – right on! Nice dig at Mr. Dell & Co….
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Seriously, though, we wouldn’t want M$ to “die” – just who would we set our sights on to bash, ridicule, deride, snort and just throw general darts of nastiness at, then?
“Seriously, though, we wouldn’t want M$ to “die” – just who would we set our sights on to bash, ridicule, deride, snort and just throw general darts of nastiness at, then?”
Michael Dell
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Rosetta Stone is Language Training Software. Rosetta is Apple’s version of Transitive’s Dynamic Binary Translation. Obviously, the author either doesn’t know what they are talking about or does not have an editor that knows what they are talking about.
Enough said.
Unless you’re a Microsoft shareholder, this article wasn’t written for you.
It doesn’t have anything to do with Steve Jobs really. No, really.
Someone needs to ask why Microsoft shareholders have been so complacent about the company’s continued failure. To a certain degree shareholders have punished Microsoft, which is reflected in the declining share price. But there have been no management changes. The same team that has failed for over 5 years to release the flagship product is still in charge. And that flagship product is increasingly looking as if it will only reach half mast when it is released. The XP service pack 3 joke is only funny because it’s true.
Microsoft needs to clean house. Not just the management team, but the disastrous Windows code base as well. I’ve said before that Microsoft should buy a Linux distribution and emulate the Apple model. Shareholders and customers should demand radical change or they should severely punish Microsoft in the markets and marketplace.
Now, I know this is MacRumors. Let’s not kid ourselves. A strong Microsoft is GOOD for Apple. Competition spurs innovation. Without Microsoft the incentive for creating the wonderful Apple products we enjoy daily would be diminished.
I think it would be much more funny to give the MS CEO position to Scott McNealy.
I can tell you what would happen….
half or 2/3 of microsoft employees would be fired…or “let go” or “downsized” or whatever you want to call it. He would be looking for cream of the crop employees, simplify the place from the gigantic burocracy that it is.
Obviously this is a piece of fluff fantasy, but it’s an interesting idea. Personally, I’d prefer it if Microsoft reformed themselves into a decent company instead of going out of business. If they would put their resources into achieving technical good instead of evil, the world would be a much better place. Unfortunately they seem to be driven by dominance and the almighty dollar as opposed to the desire for being “a yardstick of quality”. Jobs as the head of MS would be fascinating.
Rosetta Stone is software that helps you learn other languages not Apple’s emulation layer.
What would happen? Not much, which is why Jobs would never take the position. A corporation (by definition) is much, much more than just one individual, even when that individual is the CEO. There is a unique corporate culture that is built up over many years of doing business a certain way. Microsoft’s corporate culture is a big part of its problem, and that culture won’t go away just by replacing one guy at the top. Jobs would have to fire half the management or more, essentially gutting the company and rebuilding it in his image. Even then, the new company probably wouldn’t be up to snuff.
When Jobs took over at Apple, he was taking over a company that already had a corporate culture of innovation and technologic trail-blazing. The company had just lost its way.
We keep hearing about how Micro$oft should buy Apple — I think it far more likely that Apple would buy Micro$oft. They could phase out the Windows development team, keeping the best and brightest to work on OS X for Windows (which would include Boot Camp to run all the legacy Windows software), and allow Micro$oft to concentrate on Office, Access, and other software. Perhaps even move OS X Server development over to the new AppleSoft division…
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Bill would have more time to devote to his foundation — maybe have him be a co-presenter of OS X for Windows to show how to break it…
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MW=Deal, as in, “Hey, Bill, let’s make a deal…”
What if…
George Bush bought the moon?
Osama bin Laden gets elected president of the US?
please, stop asking what if… questions. This leads to nothing.
And Apple is not turning Macs into Windows machines, it just adds a feature to OS X.
He wouldn’t.
Stupid story of the month award.