All Articles Tagged ballmer

Steve Ballmer, whose company produced the single most internet-hostile program in history — Internet Explorer 6 — has the stupefying temerity to state:

Let’s face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone. That’s why they’ve got 75,000 applications – they’re all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone.

Okay, Granted, Ballmer is likely looking at that Internet through a “compatibility-mode” colored screen, locked into SilverLight or ActiveX plugins, with ill-rendered box models and complete lack of support for anything approaching modern HTML5, and CSS support, so he probably doesn’t notice that stuff actually rendered using Web standards (Wikipedia it, Steve!) looks just fine on the iPhone.

Since Windows Mobile 6.5, brand new in 2009, uses Internet Explorer 6’s previous-century rendering engine (spare us the — it’s not the same as desktop IE6 — a poor browser by any other name hurts the web as badly), and Outlook 2010 (!) is transitioning to Word as its HTML email renderer (?!) we’re sure he has no clue what the internet is supposed to look like anyway.

But still, even for Ballmer, this is one ham fisted quote. The reason the iPhone has 85,000 apps is because it’s a modern, highly usable mobile device that developers want to develop for.

(For the record, what became the modern Web was designed on NeXT, the precursor to Apple’s OS X, the mobile version of which powers the iPhone, with computing power and screen real-estate we’re guessing might just be competitive with desktop power a couple decades old. B’okay Steve?)

[AP via Business Insider via Gizmodo]

As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was taking the stage for a private company meeting at Seattle’s Safeco Field, he saw an employee about to snap his picture with… an iPhone. So, Ballmer decided to snap instead. TechFlash (via Engadget) reports he grabbed the iPhone from the hapless employee, began making “funny comments”, put the iPhone on the floor and pretended to stamp on it, and then continued on, only to remind the employee he hadn’t forgotten about him later.

Maybe Ballmer should just forbid iPhones at Microsoft the way Bill Gates forbids them at home? Or, you know, get Windows Mobile back in order and make a phone so good no one at Microsoft would want to use anything else?

Of course, if it had been an Apple event, and Steve Jobs had caught one of his employees rocking an Windows Mobile device, no doubt Jobs eyes would have glowed and Omega Beams would have shot out and fried the poor soul on the spot.

(Yeah, we know Apple Store employees all use Windows CE devices to process credit card transactions, shhhh!).

I forget if this brings us 4 minutes to midnight or only 5 on the official app-ocalypse clock, but duck and cover because Windows 95 has been ported to run on an iPhone.

Ish. Gizmodo, via GoodiPhone, has the deets:

The hack makes use of a standard Windows 95 image and the Bochs emulator, though as you can expect, the performance is thoroughly crummy. They’re working on getting Windows XP to work too. An abomination, I say.

So say we all.

But hey, at least it wasn’t Windows ME…

We have to wonder if Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has some insidious plot to make his PR people pull their hair out, so they’ll look just as Fester’ian as he himself. Or maybe he’s just jealous of the love TiPb’s been giving Palm’s Roger McNamee lately? How else can you account for the glorious (for bloggers!) content he keeps spewing in our general direction?

What now? From the man who once said the iPhone would be the most expensive phone on the planet (guess he didn’t see the Windows Mobile Xperia X1a going for $800…), now comes the following, courtesy of WMExperts:

“Windows Mobile 6.5 has touch on it. The way Apple does touch drives cost. [The] way they do it on the iPhone is not an inexpensive component. We’ll do it in a way that you can afford to do it on most phones.”

Bu-bu-bu-but…! We thought WinPho was all about choice? Shouldn’t manufacturers like HTC, who’ve made capacitive touch screen devices like the Android G1 (which is hardly that expensive!) have the choice to offer WinPho devices with capacitive touch?

So not only does Ballmer try to spin Microsoft’s abject failure to deliver on capacitive touch 2 years after Apple (and months after Android and even BlackBerry) as a cost saving feature, but for extra bonus bluster, claims Apple is “driving cost” on the $199 iPhone?

Next time, stick to dancing…

TiPb. Heart. Steve. Ballmer. Microsoft’s #2 has really become #1 in our CEOh-Snap department. See, he doesn’t just hit the mic, he pummels it to bloody, infuriating, borderline committable pulp. This time, however, D|All Things Digital brings us a little CEOh-Snap back in the form of Ballmer being on the receiving end for once, via an unhappy questioner at the CIO Summit:

“With platforms like the Google phone and iPhone coming out, it’s really tough to continue to stand behind Windows Mobile when our employees are bringing these consumer devices into our environments,” the questioner explained. “And in your presentation you put Windows Mobile right in the center there, but it was a phone that doesn’t work in America and an operating system that you haven’t released. I’m wondering what your commitment is to continuing to get newer versions of the operating system in our hands so that we don’t have to fight this battle on the ground.”

Ballmer’s come back? WinPho 6.5 this year is significant but not everything they want for higher-end phones; that’ll come next year(!) with WinPho 7. Microsoft is accelerating their efforts, and people still bought more Windows Mobile devices than iPhone last year anyway, so: nyah!

(Though we’d remind Mr. Ballmer that Apple’s international roll-out really only began in July 2008, more than half-way through the year, and he’s welcome to check the sales numbers for Q3 2008 to see how that worked out for everyone…)

Microsoft PR must hate it every single time CEO Steve Ballmer gets on a mic. Bloggers on the other hand…? From the latest analyst briefing:

“The truth of the matter is all the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry. And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android.”

Um.. Apple and BlackBerry manufacture their own devices there Steve, so while their internal momentum is enough to steamroll an industry, ODM’s can’t get their hands on iPhone OS X or RIM’s OS no matter how badly they probably want to.

Apple Insider rightly points out, of course, that this is the same line Microsoft used about the iPod when promoting their own PlaysForSure DRM platform (which later became closer akin to PlaysNoMore).

Check out Apple Insider’s full coverage to get Ballmer’s views on Apple’s Mac, Google, Android on Netbooks vs. Windows 7, and how Microsoft could be like RCA! (?!)

Microsoft CEO and current CES Keynoter Steve Ballmer, prior to the original iPhone 2G’s launch, had quite a bit to say:

“You can get a Motorola Q for $99. [...] [Apple] will have the most expensive phone, by far, in the marketplace.” [...] “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Flash forward 2 years, where Apple’s $199 iPhone was the best selling smartphone — and all around phone — in the late-summer quarter, and the cost of unlocked Windows Mobile handsets like the Xperia X1a rocketed past the $800 price point, and what does everyone’s favorite internet dance sensation have to say? According to the Financial Times (Registration annoyingly required, text via Ars Technica):

Ballmer conceded that Apple’s iPhone (and RIM’s BlackBerry) have “clear market momentum.” Indeed, Windows Mobile has suffered in the face of strong competition from RIM and Apple.

TiPb isn’t the only Smartphone Experts site working our tails off this week. Our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn is pulling the live-blogging trifecta, going straight from Macworld to cover Steve Ballmer’s CES kickoff tonight at 6pm PST for WMExperts AND for the (very much anticipated) debut of Palm’s next generation NOVA hardware and OS for TreoCentral — not to mention everything AndroidCentral. Never to be out done, CrackBerry Kevin (with a full on CrackBerry Crew!) will push any and all BlackBerry news they get their cracky hands on. Check out all our sites throughout the day for the latest, greatest, most Smartphone-geeky coverage.

Another analyst deflating missive from everyone’s favorite mythical Mac pundit, the Macalope. This time, the horny headed one explains why there’s no Flash or Java on the iPhone:

Uh, because they blow?

There’s more to it than that, of course:

And here we have the real issue. Sure, the iPhone could run Flash, but — particularly given the already unoptimized state of Flash on OS X — it would probably have to run some stripped-down, crappier version of Flash.

For the full story behind the various procs and cons, check out the full article, and also take a look at the Macalope’s weekly column for the latest Windows Mobile CES news — which makes TiPb wonder if Ballmer is picking his code names from Lady Marmalade these days…

This. Is. iPhone JEOPARDY!… Judges Round!

Way back on March 14 we covered some of the bold, bodacious pontifications the CEOh-no’s of Microsoft, RIM, and Palm had made about the iPhone. Quick-on-the-buzzer as always, it’s time once again to go back to our judges and see how they did!

“Why We’re Not Worried about the iPhone” for 100

Ed Colligan:

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Daily Double-Talk

Steve Ballmer:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Final Jeopardy!

“Mike Lazaridis”:

“Talk — all I’m [hearing] is talk about [the iPhone's chances in Enterprise]. I think it’s important that we put this thing in perspective.” [...] “Apple’s design-centric approach [will] ultimately limit its appeal by sacrificing needed enterprise functionality. I think over-focus on one blinds you to the value of the other.” [...] “Apple’s approach produced devices that inevitably sacrificed advanced features for aesthetics.”

And to top it all off:

THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”

Judges?

10 Million iPhones sold in 2008, almost 7 million in Q4 alone. More units of a single SKU moved than all RIM SKUs combined, and more than (we think!) WinMob licenses as well. 200,000,000 App Store downloads, 5500 Apps available, and now being copied by Microsoft, Google, and RIM. Form factor and touch-centricity copied by both Microsoft-OEMs and RIM (who’s also introducing a no-keyboard Blackberry Storm!). And Palm? Er… Anyone heard from Palm lately?

And the Winner Is!

None of the players today.

For the Pundit Round, be sure to check out Daring Fireball’s awesome set of links, and MacDailyNew’s Compendium of iPhone Naysayers.