“Steve Ballmer was sobbing. He repeatedly tried to speak and couldn’t get the words out. Minutes passed as he tried to regain his composure. But the audience of 130 of Microsoft’s senior leaders waited patiently, many of them crying too,” David Kirkpatrick reports for Fortune. “They knew that the CEO was choked up because this executive retreat, held in late March at a resort north of Seattle, was the last ever for company co-founder Bill Gates, as well as for Jeff Raikes, one of the company’s longest-tenured executives. ‘I’ve spent more time with these two human beings than with anyone else in my life,’ Ballmer finally said. ‘Bill and Jeff have been my North Star and kept me going. Now I’m going to count on all of you to be there for me.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Dork. Supposedly, Microsoft is Ballmer’s “family.” If true, that’s really sad. See: Microsoft CEO Ballmer: I’m outta here in 9 or 10 years; as soon as my last kid goes away to college – June 05, 2008. “Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go… I owe my soul to the company store.” Ballmer can’t even manage his own priorities, much less a multi-billion dollar company. Maybe they’re not just crocodile tears, it could be that he’s really, genuinely crying — because he knows there’s no unprepared sugared water salesbozo around to sign away Apple’s company jewels this time.
Kirkpatrick continues, “What the executives were witnessing was the end of an era. On July 1, Gates officially retires from daily duties at the software giant. He’s leaving in order to begin a second life as a full-time philanthropist and to explore his dizzying range of intellectual interests.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, the vertigo is intense when you’ve spent the last 25 years staring 850 miles due south.
Kirkpatrick continues, “But his departure raises some obvious and very large questions about the future of Microsoft: Can the now $60 billion behemoth keep finding new ways to grow? Will Ballmer and his lieutenants be able to successfully adapt their products to an increasingly web-driven world? In short, does the company have what it takes to thrive without its iconic founder at the helm?”
MacDailyNews Take: No. No. And no.
Kirkpatrick continues, “And then there’s Apple. From the iPod to the iMac to the iPhone, its products have cornered the market on cool. Apple’s small share of the PC market in the U.S. is growing fast – it was 7.4% in the first quarter of 2008, up from 5.1% a year earlier, according to International Data Corp. (IDC). Perhaps even more alarming, its ubiquitous ‘Get a Mac’ TV ads have painted the personal computer loaded with Windows software – the central achievement of Gates’ 33 years at Microsoft – as a loser. To a lot of consumers out there, Microsoft really does seem like that bumbling nebbish played by Daily Show contributor John Hodgman.”
“The feud with Apple is mostly about honor. It pains Ballmer and his troops react viscerally when they watch those Apple ads – and when they see how much they’ve harmed Microsoft’s reputation. The consulting firm CoreBrand calculates Microsoft has declined from 11th among global brands in 2004 to 59th today, and reports that the two-year-old ‘Get a Mac’ campaign has almost certainly played a role,” Kirkpatrick reports.
Kirkpatrick reports, “The ads hurt even more because they strike a nerve… Ballmer does not intend to keep tolerating Apple’s insults.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Buy a Dell and get a Zune?” Sounds more like a prison term than a marketing promotion.
Full article, in which Kirkpatrick looks at Microsot’s plans to make Windows “cool” with a new marketing campaign, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “JES42” for the heads up.]
Apple has damaged Microsoft’s market share and it’s image, but not really due to the Mac. It’s more due to the iPod, iPhone and iTunes. That’s because Apple really doesn’t market OS X. It markets Macs, iPods, and iPhones.
Microsoft had done most of the damage itself. Vista is a nightmare product for MS. There’s no hiding it, no fixing it, and it HAD to be released.
As for Microsoft, Gates has been the de facto CEO all this time, even after he “stepped down.” Basically everything defaulted to Gates, even though he supposedly wasn’t making day-to-day decisions. You could tell in interviews about Vista that he was frustrated and that he was still heavily involved in “fixing” the mess.
Now that he’s retiring for good, the Board of Directors and Shareholders won’t put up with such substandard performance. While Gates was there, people had this belief that he could fix what was wrong with MS. Now that he’s gone, I give Ballmer another year at best before he’s ousted with his golden parachute.
And that’s actually bad news for Apple. Not because it hurts Apple, but it give MS a chance to be more competitive once Ballmer is gone.
Just curious. How many of you out there are squirting songs at each other?
gagravvar wrote:
“Biggest fscking error in history.”
I bet’cha Ponchus Pilot doesn’t think so….
@R5D4:
Have a nice life.
Buh-bye.
@ R5D4 and his sympathizers
you are a dork too
satisfied?
From the article. Two days a week this group drove to a special skunkworks away from the Microsoft campus in Redmond to work quietly on the project, code-named FTP168 (the “FTP” is said to stand for “free the people”).
Sure the ‘F’ doesn’t stand for a different word?
R5D4,
Pardon me for asking, but WTF is the significance of “11 PM PST” or are you just as fsckin’ nuts as I suspect you to be?
From the article: the company will launch a new version of Windows Mobile as well as a new version of the services known as Windows Live. For the first time, they’re going to be promoted as aspects of the same thing.
They are “going to be promoted as” in other words they will not be. When Steve Jobs canned Newton his reason was that one company couldn’t manage two operating systems. Think it through.
More like a Microsoft S.O. B story!
“The aim of the [Windows advertising] campaign will be to talk about things you can do with your PC that you could never do before.”
Assuming you can get it to work.
That’s where I think it will fail. First, they have to talk about the things that Windows can do that a Macintosh can’t. Most of those things are pretty esoteric to a typical consumer–I don’t really care about tuning my car via the ECU. So they end up looking like Apple–“Look, you can edit your home movies!”–and pointing out the stuff that Apple did 5 years ago.
That said, it will be interesting to see how Apple responds to this.
As I’ve said many many times, I believe MS’ mac envy is its biggest weakness, culminating (so far) in Vista. But then everything it does is reactive.
The biggest win of the commercials may be the way they get under the skin of MS execs. So Vista gets aero and the sidebar, when what MS’s customers NEEDED was security and WANTED was for drivers to work.
And in Snow Leopard, Apple is going to exploit MS’s cluelessness about its customers big time. Performance, reliability and “no new features” (thus no new learning curve, though, of course, no MacOS has had any kind of learning curve to upgrade since 10.0.) Now the IT department gets mac envy.
The shocking thing about MS… a company built on business acumen, not technology… is how they’re flunking Management 101… not knowing their customers and meeting their needs. Only a monopoly could breed such cluelessness.
All you guys would be crying if Jobs left and you don’t even work with him or know him. You don’t know Ballmer either. Do you assume he’s not capable of having actual feelings because of who you perceive him to be. Like it or not, MS changed the world once just like Apple is doing now. Stop being so bitter and enjoy it.
If you listened closely you probably heard a ” death rattle “.
That signifies the death of Microsoft. Vista was a disaster and MS is hoping to get people to forget it by announcing the scheduled delivery of the next version of Windows.
When will MS stockholders get wise and bot this bozo ???
@ Judge Bork
No real significance, but I figure that’s about the last time today I’ll bother to check back (I’m on the West Coast), and that gives MDN a lot of time to delete that part of their take.
And if you believe I’m nuts because I find comments like “Dork. Microsoft is Ballmer’s family. That’s what’s really sad” mean, uncalled for and valueless, then fine, I’m nuts and proud of it. Everone should be that nutty.
That’s it for me.
MDN’s takes contain the truth. That upsets and infuriates Microsoft sycophants to no end.
Keep up the great work, MDN!
@R5D4 and fans
Barmier has one skill (allegedly), he’s a salesman. When he has tears he does so because he thinks they will benefit him, they will add to the profits. Rather than not read MDN again you should not read Forbes again, or learn to read, or learn at least something.
Balmy bawls his eyes out over departing MSFT executives, but can’t wait to throw a party the day his last kid gets the hell out of the house.
MDN is right: “Ballmer can’t even manage his own priorities, much less a multi-billion dollar company.”
“A Microsoft sob story”
They could have capitalized S.O.B.
Oops, sorry Reclaimer.
Poor, sad little “The Great Apple Fanboy Massacre’s” posting on pro-Apple websites borders upon the sociopathic.
Perhaps instead of trolling sites that you obviously don’t like (your obsession is sign of mental illness), you should spend time ranting to a psychiatrist.
With Gates officially gone will they replace PC guy with a really fat bald anger management candidate?
Oh, and perhaps “The Great Apple Fanboy Massacre” should take remedial maths.
“100,000 ads”?
Not only are you unable to count, but your penchant for gross exaggeration proves you need to seek out help.
@R5D4: Don’t let the virtual door hit your vagina on the way out…
Snif snif.
Anyone see that one hour program om BBC2, in the UK, about Bill Gates, and his founding of Microsoft, and its challenges, and its naughtiness, with Netscape, and its competition with internet companies, like Google & Yahoo?
It was good
@R5D4
See
for the quintessential Steve Ballmer, hawking an EARLY version of Windows while wearing the tackiest used-car salesman plaid sports jacket you’ve ever seen.
He’s a bad salesman and he’s a dork. He’s also a very, very, very, VERY wealthy dork who got lucky as hell when they handed out college roommates. That doesn’t excuse his gross incompetence.
If you’ve ever had MS Windows inflicted on you, then your sympathy is misplaced. Stop sobbing and get over it. MDN’s take was just fine.