“The word ‘intense’ was invented for [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer, who met with us in a green room that had a paper sign with his name taped to the door. While he was at first warm and engaging, a question about security features shifted his mood. His eyes, soft when he smiles, grew dark. The usually boisterous Ballmer became unexpectedly quiet and soon exited the room without saying goodbye. Still, he had a lot to say… before he did,” Dyan Machan reports for SmartMoney Magazine.
A few choice snippets:
Machan: Steve Jobs’s iPhone announcement stole the thunder from Bill Gates’s keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show. Do you wish you had the iPhone?
Ballmer: No. Apple has put its brand into a new category. That doesn’t mean it’s a good product. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of our partners came out with a device that looks exactly the same at a lower price in six or seven months [near the time when iPhones will ship]. There’s a notion that there’s magic with Apple. iPod is a hot brand — not Apple.
Machan: But Apple is in the home, winning in the very place Microsoft has identified as important to its strategy — that is, entertainment.
Ballmer: It’s a romantic notion that Apple has the lead. People who build overpriced, underpowered equipment and then market it in an edgy way do not have a formula for broad success. In the home there are PCs; Apple has no presence. There are videogame machines; Apple has no presence. TVs: Apple has no presence; Microsoft has some presence. Music: Apple has a very large presence [via the iPod]; Microsoft has an interesting presence in the high-end market.
Machan: You mean the Zune? Please.
Ballmer: We don’t kid ourselves. We won’t come out our first Christmas and take over. There will be a phase two and three. But at the end of the day, entertainment devices will be a very good business for us.
Machan: People complain about feature bloat. Most of us use 5 to 10% of features. People won’t buy for features.
Ballmer: No. They will buy for features. People use more of these products than they think. Maybe you couldn’t write [a great PowerPoint presentation]. But now you can read it. The user interface is sexier. Sex sells.
Machan: What part of Bill Gates’s job stretches you the most?
Ballmer: There’s no replacing Bill Gates. I gotta go.
More in the full interview, including the security questions, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dave” for the heads up.]
Certainly, any Microsoft shareholder with a brain would concur with Ballmer’s last sentence. Selfishly, we hope he stays long enough to ride the ship all the way down to its well-deserved watery grave. Microsoft has an interesting presence in the high-end music market? Please, indeed. Kudos to Dyan Machan for going at Ballmer hard. The Zune is a joke. Vista is a bloated, messy joke with an interface that even the most-delusional know is trying to look like Apple’s Mac OS X. Hey, “sex sells,” right? Ballmer’s hope to compete with iPhone is the same old, same old Microsoft business-as-usual: make it “look” like an Apple product to fool the ignorant. What’s really interesting about this is Ballmer’s Gates-like hasty exit: even they seem to be so tired of hearing their own B.S. that there’s no point of continuing their charades. For their shareholders, Microsoft really ought to keep Ballmer and Gates off the interview circuit until they get their Apple envy under control.
Related articles:
AT&T has received 1 million Apple iPhone inquiries so far – March 27, 2007
Train wreck: Windows Vista flaw locks up PCs when users try to delete, copy, move files – March 27, 2007
Bill Gates not amused when asked about Apple’s ‘Get a Mac’ ads – March 15, 2007
Gates dumps Microsoft stock – March 05, 2007
Why Apple’s smart ‘Get a Mac’ campaign drives Bill Gates crazy – March 04, 2007
Microsoft CEO Ballmer talks infected feet, profuse sweating, and Windows Vista – February 21, 2007
Ballmer says pirates to blame for poor Vista sales – February 19, 2007
Bill Gates: Vista is so secure it could run life support systems – February 16, 2007
Ballmer calls Apple ‘cute, little tiny niche guy’ – February 15, 2007
Microsoft’s Gates tries FUD to keep people from switching to Apple’s secure Mac – February 12, 2007
Bill Gates unhinged with Apple envy; Microsoft on path to become high profile casualty – February 06, 2007
Bill Gates has lost his mind: calls Apple liars, copiers; slams Mac OS X security vs. Windows – February 02, 2007
Microsoft’s Windows Vista: Five years for a chrome-plated turd – January 30, 2007
Bill Gates lists Microsoft ‘innovations’ that Apple has offered Mac users for years – January 30, 2007
Gates bristles over Vista, Mac OS X comparisons – January 29, 2007
Apple #1 brand in North Amercia, #2 after Google in global rank – January 26, 2007
Microsoft CEO Ballmer laughs at Apple iPhone – January 17, 2007
Bill Gates confronted by glowing Apple logos as every single blogger at meeting uses Macs – December 15, 2006
Ballmer: ‘Zune halo effect’ will help Windows Vista – December 06, 2006
Microsoft’s Zune selling like snotcakes – November 15, 2006
Ballmer: I’m Microsoft’s ‘primary champion of innovation’ – July 27, 2006
Microsoft CEO Ballmer spends two days unsuccessfully trying to clean Windows PC malware – June 05, 2006
Couldn’t you just buy a Mac and run Windows? Microsoft CEO Ballmer: ‘No, we prefer real PCs’ – April 29, 2006
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admits to brainwashing his kids not to use Apple iPods – March 28, 2006
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 03, 2004
Ballmer is a revolting person. No doubt.
Makes you wonder if that goes for Gates and other seniors at the company too.
” . . . who met with us in a green room that had a paper sign with his name taped to the door.”
—-
Microsoft employed 200 marketing consultants @ $500 per hour, 8 months and 42 proofs at board level to get that paper sign approved.
In the same time frame, Apple invented the iPhone…
LMAO!!!
Just how many shades of dishonesty are there at Microsoft?
Uncle Fester
I gotta go…
Ballmer is learning to control his behavior, he moves to another room before throwing a chair now.
Just how many shades of dishonesty are there at Microsoft?
—
Too many!
There is’nt a colour expert on the planet that can answer that one!
“More and more are seeing that the Emperor has no clothes.”
That’s an image we do NOT need! Think of the children.
Machan: Spam and viruses exist at Microsoft’s tolerance. Security is a selling point for Vista. Have you held back security improvements to force people to upgrade?
Ballmer: Quite the contrary. Our strategy is to get rid of it. We’ve done our best. Bad guys have to be right once. We have to be right all the time.
This is a hoot! Several hundred thousand bad guys have been right. M$ has been right never.
MDN MW: minutes. How many minutes does it take a VISTA computer to be infiected once connected tot he internet?
“There’s no replacing Bill Gates. I gotta go.”
What they missed was Ballsy bursting into tears seconds later over the thought of losing his shiny pet, Turtle Boy.
Re Microsoft and honesty. From the article:
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Harvard pal Jim Cramer of TheStreet.com. “No one could lead this next leg up for Microsoft as well as Steve,” Cramer says with his typical, hyperverbal exuberance. “Tenacity, loyalty, rigor and honesty all rolled into one great guy.”
WTF!
He’s right about one thing, sex sells. How else would a buffoon like him have children?
Scumbag.
“I gotta go.”
as in Ballmer saying, “I gotta go take a Zune before I Zune my pants”
When your entire business “innovations” have either been stolen or licensed from somebody else, your weakness is bound to come out. Gates and Ballmer are perfect examples of common thieves and liars. When their lies come back to haunt them, they run away like the playground bully punched by the smart kid. I really like the “…overpriced and underpowered…” comment. What a complete dork. I guess a quad core computer with fast dvd burners, bluetooth, wireless, etc. are so trumped by the quality PCs out there with their state-of-the-art floppy drives and nothing else. I guess what I’m really trying to say is, “PC users quit being sheep and try a Mac for yourself. Unless you are opposed to having a little fun and a lot of productivity.”
In closing, I guess that turd brown Zune (which zucks) is sexy. Please people think for yourselves. Microsoft is all out of lies.
Those competitors in Apple’s target reticle do say the most stupid things, because for them to say anything not screamingly stupid would be the equivalent of saying, “We’re f*cked, just f*cked.”
OMG, he’s crazy.
Sex sells??? Apart from the fact that man (and woman) have known this since money was invented, does this mean that MS is looking at a new market segment? A new entertainment division?
“I really don’t know why Microsoft and Mr. Bill haven’t gotten rid of Balmer years ago.”
Hint:
Microshaft stinks… Ballmer… stinks… a match made in h….ell
Sex sells??? Apart from the fact that man (and woman) have known this since money was invented, does this mean that MS is looking at a new market segment? A new entertainment division?
—
YUK!
Imagine that – Balmer and Co nude in Microsoft Porn.
The ‘M$ porn download service’ will cost $200 a download. and be full of virusis.
It will feature an ‘innovative’ new concept – sex! (which Microsoft will patent of course, along with air’, ‘the wheel’ and the amazing idea of ‘drinking’ and not forgeting Microsoft’s most original concept to date: ‘breathing’.
There is one thing positive about it though… at least they may make some money from all the web pervs and paedo’s out there…
I think MSFT really needs a visionary at the helm. Someone who will inspire and knows how to communicate a message. Also, someone who knows how to deliver. And deliver a quality product.
Only if MSFT gains a leadership asset like this will Apple have the ability to reach greatness yet unseen. Apple needs stronger competition to get even better than they are today.
You gotta bet that Ballmer has pictures, perhaps even a video, from their college days, of Bill in a compromising position with certain members of a local flock of sheep.
Working closely with sheep was their major training for running Microsoft. Those two can really relate to their customers as a result of their college sheep training.
Ballmer already has bold, new ideas for taking squirting to the next level.
Duct tape, a pink Zune and a Super Soaker? Or something MUCH more bold? You decide.
Man, if they ever need to cast an Uncle Fester for a new Adams Family movie, give Ballmer a call. Great pic!
It should be illegal to use the words Ballmer and sex in one sentence. I have to take a shower now.
“Machan: You mean the Zune? Please.
Ballmer: We don’t kid ourselves. We won’t come out our first Christmas and take over. There will be a phase two and three. But at the end of the day, entertainment devices will be a very good business for us.”
Interesting! “very good business”? Really. I walked through the Toronto Eaton Centre on Monday. The mall is in central Toronto and is a big destination for locals and tourists alike. I started on the top level in the Apple Store that was pretty busy for a Monday. Then I walked all three levels of the mall past and through a variety of tech and electronics stores. I was purposely looking for a Zune.
Nowhere in this large and popular mall could I find a single Zune! I wonder what pahse two and three are? Zero times any number is still zero!