“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.
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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
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Ballmer calls Apple ‘cute, little tiny niche guy’ – February 15, 2007
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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
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“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]”
Yea– It’ll be brown: will run some virus-plagued version of Windows Mobile; and will “squirt”– except when it doesn’t.
Idiot. There’s already a hunk of junk that fits your description–LG has one out now.
And about all that can be said for it is , it sort of “looks the same”
Saying Apple is not a hot brand is like saying Ballmer is not a hot head. What a dolt.
MDN MW: “thats”, as in “Thats the facts, Jack!”
Of course sex sells. And in Microsoftland the newest centerfold is a 600-lb woman who doesn’t shave, has missing/crooked teeth, is missing a limb, a mustache, whose hair is falling out, and who has a tattoo of Spongebob Squarepants right above her cootch.
BALLMER SUCKS TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF ALL THAT DOES SUCK!
@ Tommy Boy
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Just spat coffee everywhere!
Why are Microsoft executives so damned sensitive?
This is awesome. For months now I have been watching Microsoft’s top people let themselves be chased out of room after room, as if THEY are the ones doing the rejecting.
BALLMER: Wanna dance?
REPORTER: No, thanks. I’m taken.
BALLMER: What do you mean, you’re taken? I said you look fat in those pants!
(dances away blithely solo, revealing massive sweat streak down back of shirt)
…maybe Geppetto should start carving a new executive for Microsoft …….someone with a wish to find a little bit of reality when Ballmer implodes and gets sold off into the cosmetic products industry …or something like that. Someone who knows when to say, ‘man, I’m really f*kd up ..I should stop doing interviews.” …..or someone who could say, “man, I should probably check in with the puppetmaster.”
If Microsoft’s executives (namely Gallmer, new word for Gates and Ballmer since they’ve got “gall”) were Pinocchio, their noses would’ve impaled Pluto by now. If Geppetto did carve a Pinocchio to lead Microsoft, he’d probably end up with a pickled liver or dead of alchohol poisoning within a year.
Apple is the new “world” order.
To amyhre: That sure would be a sad end to Mickey’s dog! (j/k)
Yeah, Ballmer, Sex Sells.
Vista is your inflatable lover to… well, we’ll not embarrass you further, fat boy.
Look, it’s easy for people who favor to Mac to badmouth Microsoft it’s CEO. But there is something serious going on here.
When you are the leading brand, you should never mention the brand trailing you. No matter what position you hold, it’s bad policy to bad mouth the competition. Much better to talk about your unique strenghts. That’s one of the reasons I was ticked off with the Apple CFO who made some snide and disparaging remarks about Microsoft about 2 to 4 weeks ago.
But listen to what’s coming out of Ballmer’s mouth. This goes beyond defensive. He is clearly threatened.
Ballmer: No. Apple has put its brand into a new category. That doesn’t mean it’s a good product.
Ballmer: There’s a notion that there’s magic with Apple. iPod is a hot brand — not Apple.
Ballmer: It’s a romantic notion that Apple has the lead.
Ballmer: People who build overpriced, underpowered equipment and then market it in an edgy way do not have a formula for broad success.
Ballmer: 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.
What Ballmer is rally saying is: I’m afriad that people think that if Apple makes it it’s a good product, that people see the Apple brand as magic, that people perceive Apple to have the lead, that Apple has a formula for success and that they are eating into our markets. Notice, he wasn’t asked any of those questions. Instead of answering the questions he was asked, he’s attempting to answer his own misgivings.
Check out this “iZuned shirt here: iZuned I would get one if I actually knew someone who owned a Zune.
Tommy Boy:
(But seriously, I thought it was a tattoo of Squidward above a down arrow.)
No, there’s no “replacing” Dr. Evil, that’s for sure.
But Monkey Boy is capable of giving us something to laugh at all on his own.
My favourite:
“People who build overpriced, underpowered equipment and then market it in an edgy way do not have a formula for broad success.”
Microsoft already lost the battle for the lucrative high-end consumer desktops to Apple; it’s nowhere in the mobile music player market; Win CE devices are a standing joke; and just watch Sony and Nintendo whack its arse in the console market.
You want to know about cost, Monkey Boy? The next area that Microshaft have to worry about is the enterprise. Dell equipment is roughly equivalent to Apple equipment, but look what happen when you add in Microsoft’s licensing costs for Exchange:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/685B09D3-950B-4B23-8B1F-A56D448F7208.html
Apple’s calendaring solution, which uses open standards, is *included* in the price of the server. If you’ve got 100 seats you’d be paying $17, 206 for a Windows solution and $5, 495 for an Apple solution. And guess how much of that seventeen thou is going in Redmond’s pocket?
So who’s “overpriced” now? Get lost, Ballmer, you lying tosser.
Somewhere there’s a village that’s being deprived of it’s idiot. Thanks Microsoft.
Keep pumping out the same Anti-Apple FUD that you have been doing for years, Ballmer. One day you will wake up, look around, and wonder WTF happened – where did it all go wrong.?
Ballmer doesn’t get it.
People would most likely say that they are edgy. I doubt that many would admit to being frightened, blind, sheep.
Ballmer and Pencil neck have zero tact. Steaming and lying to the press and on camera, too.
I loved Gates’ little Daily Show performance where he runs offstage after the interview.
These bastards have more money than god, can’t they buy themselves some public speech TRAINING?
Where do you get these photos of Monkey Boy!
A face only a mother could love.
Now that both Gates and Ballmer have flounced out of interviews, it’s going to be open season on them. Reporters can either let them give their standard speech and publish a story that’s boring or else they can ask challenging questions and prompt some sort of newsworthy response.
Microsoft has many weak points and journalists are aware of them, so it’s only a matter of time before Gate and Ballmer find themselves in a situation where things are not stage managed in the way they’d like them to be and storming out isn’t a realistic option either.
The personal weaknesses displayed by Gates and Ballmer, the weaknesses in Microsoft’s business and the embarrassing failures of a number of recent Microsoft launches add up to a very tempting target for a certain type of journalist. Things might be getting very bumpy very soon.
They don’t even have the option of saying nothing for the next few months. Leopard will be with us within weeks and the iPhone shortly after. Comparisons will inevitably be made with Microsoft and it’s inconceivable that they won’t want to comment, but doing so will open the door for critical questioning.
I glanced at the picture and at first thought it was a Youtube clip of the Adam’s Family.
I am so happy that “idiot Balmer” is in charge of MS. No one else can help like he can and not even work @ . Walk away Bill, just walk away.
“The iPhone isn’t a very good product, but we’ll copy it anyway.”
Microsoft needs new leadership, badly. Vista ships on almost every PC sold, except for those sold by Apple. Apple has the “monopoly” on the “commercial” (not counting Linux) OS that doesn’t suck. Apple could just keep using Tiger and continue to succeed, but Leopard will arrive in a few weeks. If that’s not a killer advantage for the next five years, I don’t know what is. It’s no wonder Balmer is ticked off; Vista and Zune are the best things to happen to Apple since… maybe ever.
Ballmer: “In the home there are PCs; Apple has no presence.”
Apple has no presence in the home?
Does he mean consumers? How can that be?
The PC world has been telling us for about a decade that Apple has no presence in business. It has to be in the home (consumers) by a process of elimination. There’s really only two options here.
If Apple has no presence in business and it doesn’t have it in the home (consumers), then where is it?
Is Ballmer trying to say that Apple is a figment of the imagination?
In his dreams.