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[CartridgeBlower]

Why is Verge in the thread title if this was CBS story?

 

[Takamura-San]

is he calling from an iPhone?

 

[RedNumberFive]

Why is Verge in the thread title if this was CBS story?

Modern journalism.

 

[SlickShoesRUCrazy]

Balmer out, bring back Bill!

 

[quaere]

While Microsoft may never have been first, the difference between CEO's is that Gates knew how to enter a market, even late, and take it over. Well, usually. Ballmer does not know how to do that.

He entered browsers late. Netscape ruled the game. And... look what happened there.

He entered spreadsheets late, when Lotus ruled. Now... I can't even imagine using anything other than Excel.

He destroyed Borland in development systems.

If he was still CEO, Sony would be out of the console market.

To be fair to Balmer, Apple and Google are MUCH more competent competitors than the companies Gates vanquished.

 

[Razdek]

Besides the Xbox 360, has Microsoft produced anything in the Ballmer era (that wasn't a layover from Gates) that has truly dominated?

Anything at all?

I don't think there is any. Should be a Jeopardy question.

 

[Sanic]

Besides the Xbox 360, has Microsoft produced anything in the Ballmer era (that wasn't a layover from Gates) that has truly dominated?

Anything at all?

Their development tools showed immense improvement, and are basically undisputed best-in-class, at least VS.

Not sure if you would consider that a 'layover', though. Perhaps outside of your hip California/NY startups, their software continues to be relevant and, I guess, dominating.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

Since when? Windows Phone has issues with mindshare, not ease of use. And even then it's growing at a very fast rate YoY when you look at web usage stats.

It ended 2012 6th in installed base behind android, ios, blackberry, Symbian and bada.

In Q4 2012 it sold less than blackberry, ending 4th for the quarter.

I'd say its pretty boned.

 

[The Real Abed]

They should have jumped in at the same time Android did. So all three of them could be there from the start. Instead they waited 3 years while Apple and Google took over the market.

Sorry Bill, but you're the one who put Ballmer in charge.

After all, how long after the iPod came out did they wait to release the Zune? You'd have thought they'd learn from that mistake.

 

[Anton Sugar]

It ended 2012 6th in installed base behind android, ios, blackberry, Symbian and bada.

In Q4 2012 it sold less than blackberry, ending 4th for the quarter.

I'd say its pretty boned.

He's probably referring to this and the implied trend:

 

[Winterfang]

(MS Employee on Phone, disclosure).

This is surprising to me. Nearly everyone I know that has used Windows phone, or that I've showed the OS to has adopted very quickly to the environment. My interpretation lays more within the camp that most people haven't even heard of the OS, though I think that is changing.

I had an Optimus 7 for 2 years and while I used it I was constantly visiting WPcentral because some things where hard to understand. Mostly the use of the - - - and holding down the finger on the screen.

Why would they cover up options for the sake of looking pretty? When Windows Phone was more popular I had clients constantly clueless about how to do the simplest task on the phone.

 

[Maninthemirror]

Microsoft was and is hardly a company which brought innovative ideas into consumer products. They were and are always successful in using existing ideas and extending upon them

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

He's probably referring to this and the implied trend:

It can certainly overrun blackberry in sales for 2013, but will need 2014 and even 2015 to replace them in installed base..

But blackberry is in change. If BB10 doesn't work they will take a decision still.

Anyways, lets compare it to the market leaders: android 147M, iOS 47M, WP 5M (that's Q4, if we use full year....).

It is nothing but a rotund failure, despite what the die hards would like, the OS is condemned to irrelevance.

 

[GillianSeed79]

Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer. Bing, people are seeing as a better search product, Xbox."

Oh Bill. Wait? What? I don't hate MS or anything, but Bing is terrible unless you are searching for videos. Bing was the default search engine when I got Windows 7 and I really need to change it. Every time I accidentally end up on Bing, I just search for Google. Wasn't there a thread recently about some random Russian search engine overtaking Bing worldwide in popularity recently?

 

[FStop7]

Microsoft was and is hardly a company which brought innovative ideas into consumer products. They were and are always successful in using existing ideas and extending upon them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding

As someone who grew up using a command line this one blew my mind in Windows 3.1 and still continues to blow my mind when I really stop and think about it.

 

[The Faceless Master]

will it really be called a mistake when they abandon their platform for a third time and move towards the true Phone -> RT binary compatibility that should have been there in 8?

 

[Clear]

To be fair to Balmer, Apple and Google are MUCH more competent competitors than the companies Gates vanquished.

Also a lot of MS success was built off the back of MSdos/Windows' dominance in the PC marketplace.
Apple and Google have their own, successful, OS's, so in this instance Windows as whole is the latecomer. Big difference.

 

[SouthernDragon]

I can only imagine Bill Gates grumbling.

"I'm trying to save the goddamn world, can't you run the company for just a little while without screwing it up?"

 

[Risette]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding

As someone who grew up using a command line this one blew my mind in Windows 3.1 and still continues to blow my mind when I really stop and think about it.

The original implementation seems pretty primitive compared to NeXTSTEP object stuff, which came prior. Depends on which part you're referring to though.

 

[verbum]

Would a Kinect phone work?


MS has never had good PR. Why is that? I'm sure they must have changed agencies/VP in charge of PR/marketing team several times in the last 10 years but they get run over by the press every year. Even when they have a good review from the press they have a hard time getting people to hear it.

And then they have something like RROD or the current Surface Pro 128GB shortage which undermines their good deeds.

 

[ralexand]

But by then will it be too late? Windows Phone is going no where at the moment and no one seems to want a Windows 8 tablet either.

Nothing is ever too late in tech. Dominant forces can be wiped out in a couple of years time. Look at myspace, netscape, the iPad, the iPhone. Everyone assumed that those items would dominate and thrive but others came along and took a majority share. MS is on the right track if everything plays out for them like it looks like. Their three screens one cloud dream is almost here.

 

[trinest]

Congrats on being the last person in the universe to note that Windows Mobile went in the wrong direction, Bill.

Windows Mobile was good.

And 6.5 was the messy Android stuff you guys love anyway.

It was fine.

 

[Beer Monkey]

Lots of people still love those Zunes! I just checked Amazon and saw that I can sell my 120GB for basically exactly what I paid for it years ago, and I'm talking bare with a charge cable. I'm all iPod now but would have loved to have seen the Zune succeed.

Windows Phone seems cool to me. If they had something on par with the Nexus 4 ($350 contract-free) I'd probably give it a shot.

 

[saltywalrus]

You're all kinds of clueless.

The reality is MS is the company that's the closest to that one convergent device future while Apple claims there shouldn't be convergence and Google doesn't look like its trying to converge Chrome OS and Android. With Haswell and Broadwell, MS can get there.

If MS gets this right, they can continue their dominance in the industry.

I disagree. MS is terrible at converging. Almost all of the Windows Store apps are garbage. The only modern app I use in Windows 8 is the pdf reader.

Microsoft's idea of convergence often means having two versions of the same program on your computer (Internet Explorer, OneNote). Modern apps load much more slowly than desktop apps, and they have lots of limitations. Modern apps don't work on the majority of Windows systems (most people are still on Windows XP or Windows 7).

Google's idea of convergence is not running the exact same code and user interface on all devices. Their idea is to run the same services on all devices. I own a Windows 8 laptop, a Windows 7 desktop, a Chromebook, an Android phone, and an Ubuntu desktop. I have Chrome installed on all of them, and I use Gmail, Google News, Google+ etc on all of them.

 

[GashPrex]

Used iOS since inception but windows phone os is far superior IMO

 

[FStop7]

The original implementation seems pretty primitive compared to NeXTSTEP object stuff, which came prior. Depends on which part you're referring to though.

Being able to drag and drop something like a block of cells from an Excel spreadsheet into a Word doc blew my fragile 13 year old mind. Not just cut and paste, but literally the tables and everything, formatting intact. It was The Future.

 

[Walshicus]

He's probably referring to this and the implied trend:

I'm referring to the analytics data on my own website which show it's already beaten BB, at least among that demographic.

 

[The Faceless Master]

Windows Mobile was good.

And 6.5 was the messy Android stuff you guys love anyway.

It was fine.

Windows Mobile was good... and then they went in the wrong direction. twice. threw out the baby with the bath water. twice.

 

[Angelus Errare]

Since when? Windows Phone has issues with mindshare, not ease of use. And even then it's growing at a very fast rate YoY when you look at web usage stats.

Doesn't Windows Phone report itself as IE10 just like the desktop/tablet version?

 

[lednerg]

Hopefully they'll copy Ubuntu next and just make a single version of Windows that's fully interchangeable between devices.

 

[Truant]

As someone who works in the IT business, it's so weird to see how different the professional side of Microsoft are versus the consumer side. It's like a completely different company.

 

[Ominym]

I really hope Microsoft starts getting its shit back together again. One of the few companies that has both products I absolutely love and absolutely hate.

 

[dorn.]

Microsoft's main problem is Google. Google did to smart phones what MS did to personal computers, except they don't need to make a profit on android since their business is advertising, which makes them very hard to compete with. Hence MS getting into advertising with Bing and Xbox Live ads, their current business model simply won't exist 10 years from now.

 

[Walshicus]

Doesn't Windows Phone report itself as IE10 just like the desktop/tablet version?

Looks like this for WP8:

• MOZILLA/5.0 (COMPATIBLE; MSIE 10.0; WINDOWS PHONE 8.0; TRIDENT/6.0; IEMOBILE/10.0; ARM; TOUCH; HTC; WINDOWS PHONE 8S BY HTC)
• MOZILLA/5.0 (COMPATIBLE; MSIE 10.0; WINDOWS PHONE 8.0; TRIDENT/6.0; IEMOBILE/10.0; ARM; TOUCH; HTC; WINDOWS PHONE 8X BY HTC)
• MOZILLA/5.0 (COMPATIBLE; MSIE 10.0; WINDOWS PHONE 8.0; TRIDENT/6.0; IEMOBILE/10.0; ARM; TOUCH; NOKIA; LUMIA 920)

And this for WP7.5:

• MOZILLA/5.0 (COMPATIBLE; MSIE 9.0; WINDOWS PHONE OS 7.5; TRIDENT/5.0; IEMOBILE/9.0; NOKIA; LUMIA 800)
• MOZILLA/5.0 (COMPATIBLE; MSIE 9.0; WINDOWS PHONE OS 7.5; TRIDENT/5.0; IEMOBILE/9.0; SAMSUNG; OMNIA7)

So yeah they'll still be subsumed in the IE10 and IE9 stats if you're reporting at a browser level, but if you report on an OS level you'll see it there.



The only thing I don't like about IE 10 is that the user-agent doesn't change when in the Metro version of the browser...