“Declaring that Microsoft and its partners had in the past ‘ceded some of the boundary between hardware and software innovation’ to Apple, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told CRN in an exclusive interview Monday that the company’s Surface tablet marks a new era in which the computer software giant will leave no “stone unturned” in its innovation battle against Apple,” Steven Burke reports for CRN.
MacDailyNews Take: The man is a genius.
“‘We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple,’ said an exuberant Ballmer in a 30-minute interview after addressing some 16,000 partners at the company’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. ‘We are not. No space uncovered that is Apple’s,'” Burke reports. “‘We have our advantages in productivity,’ he said. ‘We have our advantages in terms of enterprise management, manageability. We have got our advantages in terms of when you plug into server infrastructure in the enterprise. But we are not going to let any piece of this [go uncontested to Apple],’ shouted Ballmer. ‘Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.'”
MacDailyNews Take: A genius, we tell you! (Despite the fact about all that’s gone on during his “watch” at Microsoft is an unrelenting, merciless ass-kicking administered by Apple.)
Burke reports, “Ballmer did not even discount the possibility that Microsoft’s innovation offensive could include its own smartphone to compete against Apple’s wildly popular iPhone. When asked if Microsoft might make its own smartphone, Ballmer paused and then replied: ‘Right now we are working real hard on the Surface. That’s the focus. That’s our core. Look, we’ll see what happens. We have good partners with Nokia, HDC [sic] in the phone space. I love what we’ve got going on with the Surface. We are going to focus on Surface and our other Windows 8 Tablet partners and see if we can go make something happen.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Nokia is a “good partner.” Good partners are always gasping for air like fish on a sidewalk.
Burke reports, “As to whether partners will eventually be able to sell the Surface, which is slated to be available from Microsoft.com and Microsoft retail stores, Ballmer said Microsoft’s initial emphasis was to put ‘one foot in front of the other’ and get the product ‘out the door.'”
MacDailyNews Take: A certifiable genius!
Burke reports, “The Surface marks the first time ever that Microsoft has tried Apple’s long-successful strategy of tightly integrating its own hardware and software together in sleek products.”
MacDailyNews Take: You know, because the Zune and the Kin never happened. Oh, right, Burke typed “sleek” products. (Are either of the Surface vaporlets really that “sleek?” Is a silly kickstand sleek?)
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs’ longterm plan continues to unfold with precision. It’ll be a sad day when Ballmer T. Clown finally bites the bullet.
May Steve Ballmer remain Microsoft’s CEO for as long as it takes!
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With a sales pitch like that, how did he ever get hired as the sales guy, let alone elevated to CEO? By putting one foot in front of the other? And did he bring in a singing elf, reindeer and yeti for the presentation?
I slightly feel sorry for the guy. Jobs had almost OCD type dedication to practicing his presentations . He practiced each detail with such focus it appeared as though he was speaking off the cuff. Perhaps, that is where the copying should begin.
So far I don’t see any changes from what he said. There surface tablet didn’t even have a working keyboard to show when they debuted it. They announced it, but they never let anyone near it to try it out. They didn’t even demonstrate it themselves. So for such a supposedly great product, they don’t even have a working keyboard yet. Yea, Apple is really scared now. NOT!!!!
wow.
human stupidity never ceases.
esp. at the top!
is it not so damn flabbergasting how so many corporate heads are delusional & downright impractical and stupid?! how do so many boards & share holders accept their firms to be run down?! are we all that dumb?
Ballmer is as much a hypocrital idiot as the conservatives who tried to save the country from Clinton’s White(house) Blowjob! the staunchest bitchers (complainers) are the biggest culprits of hypocrisy! as now with Ballmer, who can scream all he wants about Microsoftian Greatness, yet all he has to show for it in over a decade is SoftBrain-microvened into petrified insignificant stone…
it’s easy for us laymen to criticize.
but come on, if to be or not to be relies on intelligent decisions, god help us on top…
MDN take always ends, “May Steve Ballmer remain Microsoft’s CEO for as long as it takes!”
Didn’t Ballmer say that he was going to remain CEO at least until his kids finish college? If they are as stupid as their old man, I think MDN got their wish!
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Sgteve-Ballmer-Bill-Gates-Microsoft-Windows-8-Xbox,14480.html
Thanks, Ballmer. I haven’t laughed this hard in years. Comedy gold!
Wow
This story just made my day. 🙂
I am very upset with MDN right now. I saw this story break last night and got on MDN at 6:00 AM to see your response. Nothing, until late in the day and I was at work when this appeared. Were you under Balmer’s reality distortion field? Did his exuberance throw you off your nose for news? Was the sweaty excitement too much? Just when I thought the Mole was replacing Balmer as a public buffoon, the man comes back riding high on the Courier…er, Surface (wasn’t that the name of the Big Ass Table? Yeah, that’s the ticket, it’s an ecosystem). This story is BIG, BIG I tell you! This requires more exploration, more commentary.
Calm down mike, it’s just the same old Ballmer doing the same stupid things he always does, Really Microsoft is old old old news, you know microsoft a living a Has-Been trying to recapture stolen fame.
Grab a breath and or a beer and just relax and watch the baboon known as Ballmer rub his ass against the carpet a few times…
It’s like the Sunday Funny papers all over again in real living color, except with allot of armpit sweet and despair. It is big, well at least Microsoft thinks so, but we have seen this show before.
Dance Monkey!!!
Ballmer is a genius…. anyone that can be such an idiot… and screw up as much as he and Microsoft has…… AND still has a job ……. well, I am beside myself…. I find it hard to believe they haven’t ousted him….. I wish I was like him….. all that pay for simply being a BAFOON !
So he wants to star his “innovation battle” against Apple by copying the iPad ?
Remember that great quote by Alan Kaye offered up by Steve Jobs during the introduction of the iPhone — “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” Ballmer now sees the wisdom of that philosophy after years of Microsoft being content to reap riches by selling licenses and avoiding dirtying its manicured fingers with the drudgery of hardware manufacturing. Times sure have changed!
A Seldon Crisis indeed.
I feel slightly guilty – but fascinated – watching this slow nervous breakdown happen in public.
I’ve had my iPad 788 days, and it still works perfectly. I use it 2 to 3 hours at least every day. I’ve dropped it dozens of times, it has fallen down the stairs. The battery life is still over 9 hours maybe even 10. I use it to stream radio so much that I have unplugged all the radios in the house.
Nothing Microsoft has ever done can match this quality and usefulness. Bring on the surface, let me see what you got.
Is that the grand finale of rambling or what!
Reading it fast it sounds like a revved up final boss about to ‘splode.
Visions of Donkey Kong…
Even the proportions of MS product look crummy.
We need a grand finale of Ballmer pics! Uncle Fester! I looove Uncle Fester! C’mon!!
Big hat, no cattle
If you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bullshit is ball ears (auto-correct has a sense of humor) mantra!
“Right now we are working real hard on the Surface.”
But under the hood we still are lazy, inefficient and clueless dinosour.
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but that doesn’t mean that it is easy to do or is even possible. Microsoft now realizes belatedly that Apple’s way of doing things is the right way. But can it execute? Microsoft has never had a Steve Jobs but has most been a copier that used its size and monopoly to forestall competition; it doesn’t have the managers that Steve Jobs hired and trained; it does not have Apple’s culture of unrelenting and uncompromising pursuit of insanely great products and services that people don’t know they want until they have it; it does not have Apple expertise and not merely integrating hardware and software but of viewing hardware and software as on thing, which is developed together, and it does not have Apple’s inspiring legacy of brilliant innovation. So Microsoft has a lot to accomplish and to prove.
Ballmer is the #1 nominee for The Laugh Of The Week Award. i can’t imagine anything being more funny.
This is so funny, in fact, that this may well be his ‘Waterloo’, so to speak. His Titanic. His last splash in the puddle. It will be sad to see him tarred and feathered and thrown out of beleaguered Microsoft.
– – – Kidding! 😆
I totally disagree!
why do so many hate so much this gorgeous, top notch quality nicely performing softwares !
I see lots of complaints about bugs which will be ironed out it is still an amazing software. I guess being able to code I have an appreciation of what they have done with it as I’m sure others on here will too!
Windows 8 , the newcomer,
it’s innovative, powerful, bold, beautiful, authentic,sleek & sexxxy, spectacular !!!
its fast, its fluid and well ,everthing feels just plain quicker and snappier!
dont let Modern UI fool you this workhorse is ready for anything
you can trow at it. from Facebook to Twitter integration it does it all!
no more endless searching the web for the right app.
thrill to over 650+ great appz & awesome games in the amazing new appz store.
with many more sure to follow!
run for weeks on a singal battery charge.
this is “the” Ipad killer, Apple is surely doomed!
BTW just installed on 386 with 1meg of ram and it rockZ man!
Ballmer T Clown amuses me
I like his strategy. I like it a a lot. That video just makes me laugh how pathetic Microsoft is. Please Ballmer stay CEO forever!!