“Microsoft’s CEO emphasized the importance of attracting talent and urged shareholders to be patient with the amount of time it might take the company to pursue its various business models, speaking during Microsoft’s annual financial analyst meeting on Thursday,” Nancy Gohring reports for Macworld UK. “‘Vista doesn’t get done by three people in a garage in three days,’ said Steve Ballmer.”
MacDailyNews Take: It just feels like it to the end user.
Gohring reports that Ballmer said, ‘We are hell bent and determined to allocate the talent, resources, money and innovation to become a powerhouse in the advertising business.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Well, his first four words are certainly the truth.
Full article here.
Daisuke Wakabayashi reports for Reuters, “Ballmer said the $1.06 billion charge the company took to fix problems with the Xbox game console was ‘painful,’ teaching it a lesson about hardware design.”
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, it taught consumers a lesson, too.
“The company said it expects the total installed base of the Windows operating system to hit one billion — which Microsoft noted was more than the number of cars in the world — during the current fiscal year,” Wakabayashi reports.
MacDailyNews Take: The Dark Ages of Personal Computing ain’t over, yet, folks.
Full article here.
Jim Goldman reports for CNBC that also at financial analysts meeting, Bill Gates attempted to demo “Suface,” that “Big-Ass Coffee Table” that Microsoft trotted out earlier this year in a failed attempt to sap some PR from Apple’s iPhone. Goldman reports, “Says our source who was on hand for this: ‘Gates’ first demo on that ‘table’ Surface display (the one Microsoft made a big deal about) didn’t work.’ (Remember this product, unveiled earlier this year? The coffee-table sized computer that, um, acts as a coffee table?) ‘Supposed to be a ‘touch screen’ control but Gates touched it and tried to move things on the screen; nothing moved, it was frozen.’ Gates’ quote, according to our tipster: ‘It’s a lot more fun when they work.’ He added: ‘Gates looked kinda embarrassed, but he’s still talking…'”
Goldman reports, ‘He later got it fixed,’ our tipster writes, ‘but it took two tech guys 7 to 8 minutes to fix it.’ It gets worse. The same analyst says the crowd can’t connect into Microsoft’s own network to view slides on their laptops during the executive presentations: ‘IT guys running around like crazy here trying to get things fixed… Whenever you are tempted to buy Microsoft, just pinch yourself really, really hard, and buy Apple instead.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We can’t wait for the YouTube video of Gates’ Surface demo! We also pray every single day that Ballmer staves off golden parachute deployment forever.
They built their foundation on clay. Things are shifting and getting more and more unstable…
you guys are too funny. LOL!
Eh, I wouldn’t mind seeing a competently run Microsoft that would focus on their customers and give Apple some competition.
Ain’t gonna happen tho’.
…didn’t Ballmer say something to the effect that it was done under some sort of secret development, via ala iPhone, to generate the buzz for Surface. The only thing that Surfaced was…hilarity:-) Sachdenfreud at its best.
Have you ever noticed that every time Bill Gates demos their product(s), it never works on the first try. Sad isn’t it?
“It just feels like it to the end user.”
Has to be in the top 5 of the MDN takes ever.
Yeah, but they have Digg now in their Dark Empire…….
“It is a lot more fun when it works”
MS always touts vaporware to compete against what Apple has already produced.
But the lemmings will buy their crap.
Ballmer is not an executive hire. He’s the second largest stockholder, worth many billions of dollars. He has no need for a “golden parachute”. But he is a great symbol for a dysfunctional corporation.
That so many “smart and talented” people enter Microsoft at one end, and yet second rate crap comes out the other end, suggests there’s something wrong – irredeemably wrong – with the management and culture of that corporation.
Everything seems to be bloated when discussing micro$oft; hardware, software and Ballmer.
MW: window-should be removed from the mw list.
Advertising, advertising… what, what, what. No wonder their core business sucks. They would rather waste their time on trying to be in advertising then create great software. Sheeeesssssss, what a bunch of monkey jumpin’ fools.
As an example of the type of people working at just the Redmond, Washington, headquarters, 1,000 employees there speak Russian, he said.
So a whole lot of people are speaking russian behind Ballmers back. You know he cant understand a word.
Someday, MS may completely overhaul their OS like the transition between OS 9 and OS X. I hope that day is at least 10 years away for OS X to pick up more marketshare.
Apple, stay focused on your strategy and keep creating awesome computers =) But beware to let success go to your head and groom someone to take over Apple in case something happens to upper management.
It just looks that way…
BongBong– yes, their core business dos suck because they want to rule the world. Lately, Ballmer’s been spotted walking around yelling “I’m the king of the world” while Gates hums Celine Dionne songs behind him on a kazoo.
Sad, really.
Where’s that ZuneTang guy?
AJ- That’s ‘schadenfreude’, mein Herr.
MW=aid
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“‘Vista doesn’t get done by three people in a garage in three days,’ said Steve Ballmer.”
It doesn’t get done by 7500 people in 7 years ether.
Vist would have been a much better product had it been done by three guys in a garage
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tz, you called it right!
It sure would be nice if Apple had a desktop between Mac Mini and Mac Pro. iMac is not enough and does not support second internal HD.
MS is the ultimate bad example of American engineering. They dominate their market space with crap design.
I expect an innovative Chinese company to make a quality version of Linux which they give away. That will screw MS. Unfortunately, they will put it on a rip off of MacBook.
In the mean time, gotta love the AAP appreciation, GO APPLE!
That picture of Gates and Ballimer kills me. Are they wearing the clone uniform? I don’t know if it was taken of them at the same time but it tell volumes about their own individuality or otherwise “cloneness”. It’s reflected in their “Me too” products as well.
Nerds to the end.
About the article:
“become a powerhouse in the advertising business.” Are you kidding me? Only people that are ignorant or not serious about advertising and design would work on a Windows box. Holy cow.
“1000 programers who speak Russian!
And that’s just the team working on Vista malware!
Vista bot-nets are going to be a big earner for us. They will really add to Microsoft’s bottom line.
If you can’t beat them, join them.”
I wish someone would have gotten Gates demo on tape, MS learned, no cameras
“We are hell bent and determined to allocate the talent, resources, money and innovation to become a powerhouse in the advertising business.”
I thought you were in the software business.
Ballmer said, ‘We are hell bent and determined to allocate the talent, resources, money and innovation to become a powerhouse in the advertising business.'”
I assume this means that they intend to compete with Adobe for the graphics world? Great. I’d love for Adobe to get some competition here (I’m really saddened by how buggy CS3 is), but it needs to be REAL competition – not MS putting out their typical crappy, sub-par software and buying their way into the industry. That’s the last thing we need.
As for Gates showing off Surface – that’s just too funny! It seems like he’s always having problems giving demos. You’d think that with all the trouble he’s had, he’d decree that the only product he’ll demo is Office for Mac!