“I think it finally happened. We’d all been expecting it for a while now, but not quite so suddenly or emphatically: Steve Ballmer has gone completely insane,” Robert X. Cringely writes for Infoworld.
“It happened at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference. Somebody must have asked him why Microsoft waited three years before attempting to take on the iPhone and Android with Windows Phone 7,” Cringely writes. “According to CNN, Ballmer replied: ‘We’re early; there’s no question we’re early…. I think we kind of nailed it. When you see it, you just go ‘ooooh.””
Cringely writes, “I suppose if we’re talking geological time, then Ballmer’s right, Microsoft is on the cusp of the smartphone epoch, and the dinosaurs just went for a dip in the tar pits. But in a market where a three-month-old device needs to be checked for liver spots and signs of dementia, spotting the competition three-plus years and then coming up with something that almost meets the smartphone standards set in 2007 is not exactly being early. It’s certainly not ‘nailing’ it — unless we’re talking about a coffin.”
“If I had an office anywhere near the C-level on Microsoft’s campus, I’d want to make sure all the sharp implements were carefully hidden and all the chairs were nailed to the floor,” Cringely writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sadly, over what will certainly be a major hit to the humor quotient, we don’t believe that even Microsoft’s investors are in deep enough comas to allow this buffoon to survive as CEO after Windows Phone ’07 fails to set the world on fire in 2011. To have a realistic shot at catching a whiff of Apple’s fumes, Microsoft needed Windows Phone ’15 in 2011, not Windows Phone ’07. They’re already eight years behind. Ballmer chances of remaining CEO after this plays out are not good.
MacDailyNews Note: This is the first post to MacDailyNews from one of our new 11-inch MacBook Airs (1.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 128 GB) and we are officially in love!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “krquet” for the heads up.]
He must have meant “we’re early” in the Windows Phone “07” development cycle, because not even Steve Ballmer is crazy enough to believe (or even say) that Microsoft is “early” to the smartphone space that Apple reinvented in 2007 with iPhone and again in 2008 with the App Store.
The sad thing for Microsoft is that there WERE actually “early” to the smartphone market (pre-2007 definition of “smartphone”), along with Palm. They just wasted the advantage, just as they wasted being “early” to tablet PCs.
He must have meant “we’re early” in the Windows Phone “07” development cycle, because not even Steve Ballmer is crazy enough to believe (or even say) that Microsoft is “early” to the smartphone space that Apple reinvented in 2007 with iPhone and again in 2008 with the App Store.
The sad thing for Microsoft is that there WERE actually “early” to the smartphone market (pre-2007 definition of “smartphone”), along with Palm. They just wasted the advantage, just as they wasted being “early” to tablet PCs.
He seems to always go nuts at the Developer Conference.
He seems to always go nuts at the Developer Conference.
Have to admit, that the windows 7 phone is very nice and functions much better than crAndroid phones.
However it’s too late, and feels more closed than the iPhone.
Have to admit, that the windows 7 phone is very nice and functions much better than crAndroid phones.
However it’s too late, and feels more closed than the iPhone.
I guess if you want problems get this phone. Haha iPhone all the way.
I guess if you want problems get this phone. Haha iPhone all the way.
Late, as in the late Steve Ballmer. It’s a sort of threat, you see.
Late, as in the late Steve Ballmer. It’s a sort of threat, you see.
How has he not been fired yet??
How has he not been fired yet??
Ballmer is awesome! I say let him run MS forever!
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Ballmer is awesome! I say let him run MS forever!
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Ugly Ass Phone …..
Ugly Ass Phone …..
Good luck with your new MacBook Air. I’m jealous.
Good luck with your new MacBook Air. I’m jealous.
First it’s the ordinariness of Steve Ballmer like he just as easily could be managing a supermarket somewhere on that skill level. (Jobs you could never say was ever ordinary.). Nothing about him suggests he was born to be the CEO of Microsoft.
Then it’s the poor presentation skills where he manhandles products like a ham-fisted Chimpanzee and grunts out incomplete, uncompelling and apparently unrehearsed speeches about said products. I’ve seen greater presentation skills at the L.A. County Fair product booths.
Then it’s his tendency too to look as though he bought his Keynote wardrobe “off the rack” at the local Salvation Army and tried to find as many contrary mix ‘n match pants, shirt and sweater combinations he could muster. Yep, plaid pants, red sweater, purple tie, all set! (And so “His failure is now complete.”)
Then there’s the lack of polish in the man’s personality or at least such unbridled brilliance on view that we could forgive the eccentric “crudity of the model.”
At last there’s the way he got where he is – the luck of the draw on room assignments in college bunking with Bill Gates. Not years of toiling and honing his skills in all parts of the tech industry and genuinely earned the respect of an industry but at one place where not having had a more varied and worldly view has stagnated his mental processes. Essentially he never grew up living in Redmond’s Never Never Land.
I have a feeling like Dick Nixon, “we won’t have Steve Ballmer to kick around anymore” real soon. OR, as long as it takes.
First it’s the ordinariness of Steve Ballmer like he just as easily could be managing a supermarket somewhere on that skill level. (Jobs you could never say was ever ordinary.). Nothing about him suggests he was born to be the CEO of Microsoft.
Then it’s the poor presentation skills where he manhandles products like a ham-fisted Chimpanzee and grunts out incomplete, uncompelling and apparently unrehearsed speeches about said products. I’ve seen greater presentation skills at the L.A. County Fair product booths.
Then it’s his tendency too to look as though he bought his Keynote wardrobe “off the rack” at the local Salvation Army and tried to find as many contrary mix ‘n match pants, shirt and sweater combinations he could muster. Yep, plaid pants, red sweater, purple tie, all set! (And so “His failure is now complete.”)
Then there’s the lack of polish in the man’s personality or at least such unbridled brilliance on view that we could forgive the eccentric “crudity of the model.”
At last there’s the way he got where he is – the luck of the draw on room assignments in college bunking with Bill Gates. Not years of toiling and honing his skills in all parts of the tech industry and genuinely earned the respect of an industry but at one place where not having had a more varied and worldly view has stagnated his mental processes. Essentially he never grew up living in Redmond’s Never Never Land.
I have a feeling like Dick Nixon, “we won’t have Steve Ballmer to kick around anymore” real soon. OR, as long as it takes.
I love it when dumbasses talk, especially with Mondo Cane playing in the background…
I love it when dumbasses talk, especially with Mondo Cane playing in the background…
I love mine, too. I believe that, like ‘Mothers-in-law’ and ‘Attorneys General,’ it should be ‘MacBooks Air.’
I love mine, too. I believe that, like ‘Mothers-in-law’ and ‘Attorneys General,’ it should be ‘MacBooks Air.’
First your a dumbass for buying the dame windows phone