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In the home there are PCs; Apple has no presence.

MS may be dominant but I believe Apples portion of the home market is higher than in the business market. It's significant.

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People who build overpriced, underpowered equipment

on the web I've seen numerous studies showing that the price premium for Apple is a thing of the past. You CAN build a machine for less but then it really IS underpowered. If you want to talk overpriced and underpowered, let's take a look at the Zune...

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TVs: Apple has no presence; Microsoft has some presence

I didn't know MS was building TVs.

Is it time to start measuring for a Ballmer Reality Distortion Field?

Sorry, you truly lost me right there.

That's where you lost me!

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geoduck wrote:

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TVs: Apple has no presence; Microsoft has some presence

I didn't know MS was building TVs.

Ballmer may have been referring to the Windows Media Center (or whatever it's called). That's not the same thing as the Apple TV, which, to quote myself paraphrasing someone else, is an iPod with a really big screen.

I suspect so too. It was just an awkward way to put it. Also as you point out Apple TV and Windows Media Center are really not similar at all. He's comparing Apples to fish sticks.

>Mr. Ballmer said that Microsoft is all about, "Leadership, responsibility and innovation."

I thought Microsoft was all about "developers, developers, developers, developers..."

Ballmer is so full of it. He raises some interesting points but shoots himself in the foot when he says Apple has no presence in homes.

And Apple has a hell of a lot more to get media out of the TV and onto devices that Microsoft has.

Apple has also heard about these "new fangled" thingys called Podcasts. Maybe they're too "edgy" for Microsoft.

Even Bill Gates isn't this arrogant. Bill has at least acknowledged Apple's better qualities in the past. Ballmer is too arrogant to admit that the competition can do some things well. It is this kind of arrogance that usually leads to a company's downfall.

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geoduck wrote:
I suspect so too. It was just an awkward way to put it. Also as you point out Apple TV and Windows Media Center are really not similar at all. He's comparing Apples to fish sticks.

Aw, I may be old and weird (well, I am old), but I like fish sticks, 'specially with ketchup and Tabasco. Takes me back to the halycon days of yore in the Dark Ages when I was in elementary school.

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kevdo wrote:
Apple has also heard about these "new fangled" thingys called Podcasts. Maybe they're too "edgy" for Microsoft.

MS won't have anything to do with anything with "pod" in the name. They probably say, "as alike as two peas in a Zune."

Steve Ballmer spends a lot of his time thinking about how he would run Apple or Google instead of being saddled with an-fun company he has to run.


Ballmer is BG's lapdog - it's not so bad, he's worth billions but now he wants to prove he can run as the lead dog but he is bereft of ideas because he had none to begin with. He's faithful and will bark when BG calls upon him to do so but now that the master is dead, all he can do is run around yapping. He states obvious thing but he think it's fresh & new from him. He only understands today and not tomorrow - he talks a good game because he read soemwhere a CEo is supposed to a visionary. There is a difference between a visionary and seeing visions.

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jbelkin wrote:
He states obvious thing but he think it's fresh & new from him. He only understands today and not tomorrow - he talks a good game because he read soemwhere a CEo is supposed to a visionary. There is a difference between a visionary and seeing visions.

I think that is an exact description of Mr. William Gates himself! I haven't heard or read him saying anything visionary, but perhaps he has had weird visions from time to time:)

The title said something about Ballmer's battle plan - I didn't see much of a plan in what he said. Actually, mostly when I read interviews with those two, Gates and Ballmer, I just read a lot of words but see little or no content. It looks like the emperor's new clothes to me. It is nothing exact there, if you look closer, only a lot of vapour and golden dust.

But poor man, he is being interviewed about what he thinks of Apple, Google and viruses on Vista! Don't they have any respect for the Monopoly these days?

And that comment about the Zune! Hahaha! Zune? Puh-leease:)

"I wouldn't be surprised if one of our partners came out with a device that looks exactly the same ... in six or seven months ..."

IOW, he's just admitted that everyone else is following Apple's tail-lights. Previously, he made out that the iPhone was nothing much. Now, albeit unconsciously, he's just admitted he was lying through his teeth.

Also by saying "exactly the same" he's also just admitted that the claim to "innovation" was also a lie, and innovation is emphatically not something likely to be found either at Microsoft or at the hardware companies Microsoft leeches off.

But, of course, its worse than that for him. Competing devices *won't* "look exactly the same", and they emphatically won't "work exactly the same". They'll be cheap rip-offs--although not necessarily much, if any, cheaper to buy, unless they do very much less than the iPhone does very much less well.

And they won't be running OS X; and the apps won't be built using the Cocoa Frameworks. They'll be running crappy Win CE, and will have crappy Java apps, and they will freeze and crash at awkward times. And everything will not synch painlessly via Windows Media Player in the way the iPhone will, undoubtedly, just synch painlessly with iTunes just like an iPod does now.

Someone like Nokia may have a nice device running on embedded Linux sooner or later. But Ballmer's "partners" will have to start from Win CE, which is not a good place to start from. Ballmer and his "partners" have got crap to sell and *their* stuff that is over-priced for what it is.

Ballmer wants to talk about "overpriced" does he? Let's start with the cost of Exchange licences:

"As comparison below shows, while Dell servers are comparably priced with Apple’s, the expense of Windows Server and Exchange licensing, along with CALs for 100 users, makes a basic Microsoft email server over three times as much as an Xserve, which includes unlimited use of Mac OS X Server: $17,200 vs $5500!"

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/685B09D3-950B-4B23-8B1F-A56D448F7208.html

Ballmer is an arrogant loudmouth. He's also a scared loudmouth. Look closely at his words and you see his fears peeping through them. He wouldn't badmouth Apple if he didn't *know* that what he wants to assure us isn't so about them is so.

I wasn't aware that "iPod" was a brand (name).

That's like saying that "Camry" is a brand of automobile!

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Guest wrote:
I wasn't aware that "iPod" was a brand (name).

That's like saying that "Camry" is a brand of automobile!

I hate to beak it to you, but they both are brands.

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Anonymous wrote:
I wasn't aware that "iPod" was a brand (name).

That's like saying that "Camry" is a brand of automobile!

It all depends upon what you mean by "brand." "iPod" is a registered trademark of Apple. Here's the beginning of the Wikipedia article on brand:

"A brand is a customer experience represented by a collection of images and ideas; often, it refers to a symbol such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme."

Thus, "iPod" is a brand as much as "Windows" or "Camry." With cars, don't confuse "brand" with "make." Brands can refer to companies and to products.

Advertising experts talk about "branding"--and they don't mean burning a symbol onto a cow's hide. They mean creating an experience that customers associate with a particular product and/or company. If you live in the US and watch television very much, you probably have a particular image when you hear the words "Zoom Zoom" spoken softly. We older folks remember "Snap, Crackle, and Pop," "Shot from guns," and "They're G-RRRRRR-EAT!"--all part of the "branding" of breakfast cereals. (Alas, while it's easy to remember advertising slogans from the 1950s, I sometimes can't remember where I put my watch.)

Ballmer's RDF has a radius of exactly 7 inches. Just enough to encompass his own head. In which case it should be called an SDF - Self Delusion Field.

Once you start lying to yourself about your competition, it's time to go. Your perception of reality is impaired and your decision-making will be horribly flawed. Then you'll start making colossal blunders like, like going to war in Iraq with insufficient manpower and no post-invasion plans.

Say it a few more times and you too will become a fat, follically challenged CEO of a multinational corporation, stealing most of it's product from others. Every now-and-then, you'll be given to "monkey dances" and vocal tirades based on the weakness of your product and superiority of others.

This dope is a clown, the products he sells sucks and if anyone takes what it is he says seriously, then they're the ones with the problem.

The upshot on all this is, Apple is a true thorn in their side. Yay for us.

So Ballmer is basically using the old Microsoft thing: "In six months we'll be building something like the iPhone -- wait for it!" Trying to cut the ground from under the opposition's feet, a tried and true tactic. It's a bit tired in the current situation, but who knows, it may still yet work....

how meny levl 70s Balmer got in Warcraft...he ben to Karahzn yet??? thes qestons ned to b told

SJobs and SBallmer reminds me of my ex-bosses in my advertising trade.

He was from the creative side of the business and during his time we produced our best works. Best in the sense not so much as Clio (but I have to admit we had three of those), more in terms of how much client's business goes up. His sense of taste and intuition of what works and what don't is like magic.True we don't make gigabucks turnover for the Agency, but it was profitable and the client sticks with us. This boss would be like SJobs.

Then there was a restructure, for the worse. Came this new boss who is from client servicing (sales). His style or rather lack of it was just to push client to commit more and more advertising dollars. He is brash, arrogant and a strong believer of "my way or the highway". When client complains from lack of results in their campaign, his standard answer, pour more money into the campaign. We lost clients and in no time too he ran the company to the ground. This would be SBallmer.

So my point is, it pays to read the market ahead and not "innovate" after the fact.

So who would you like to emulate? I'll do Jobs - anytime

The more I read about Microsoft, I can't help but draw more parallels to the Dilbert cartoon - especially the resemblance Ballmer has to the Pointy-Haired Boss.

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Anonymous wrote:
The more I read about Microsoft, I can't help but draw more parallels to the Dilbert cartoon - especially the resemblance Ballmer has to the Pointy-Haired Boss.

You might enjoy this article about management at Microsoft.