http://liliputing.com/2013/08/steve-ballmer-retire-microsoft-ceo-job-within-1...

Well, Microsoft finally has partially written off all their failed OS products and all the Surface hardware it was locked into, to the tune of $900,000,000 worth so far.   They have more write offs yet to do as they still cannot sell the RT stuff at any price.

(unless they will UNLOCK IT first)

(its still for sale, but not cheaply enough since it is TOTALLY LOCKED UP hardware and can ONLY run the failed Microsoft RT OS)

Anyway, the truth of the matter is that Ballmer's retirement was announced at the next Board of Directors meeting when they decided that he was no longer needed at the helm.   They rethought it a bit after the first 3 people they approached to take Ballmer's job said "Hell no !!" so Ballmer will have to remain until his replacement is hired and is in place.

Since then MS totally reorganized their company internally a second time and said they are now a "devices and services company" but nobody wants their devices because the services associated with those devices are mostly vaporware and BS and and have never really gained all that much reality.  

Nobody wants Win 8, period.    Win 8 is now being acknowledged by all the PC manufacturers as the primary reason for tanking PC sales.

So now, the smaller post-layoff post-twice-reorg'd Microsoft is trying to convince folks they have actually really changed by "planning" to retire Ballmer.   And NOBODY is buying it, as it is completely meaningless to "plan" to retire him sometimes late next year.   He's obviously still there.

Remember, right now NOBODY invites Microsoft to conferences.   NOBODY invites them to foreign expositions.  NOBODY wants them around and Microsoft's presence is quickly disappearing in phone and tablet space completely.   Late next year will be too too late.

Their very few old faithful hardware partners are even now hard at work bringing out Android and Linux devices to partially replace the MS Windows operating system items they sold last year ....  

(yeah, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Gateway -- all are trying to enter Android space with 22" all in ones with ARM/Android as the processor/OS)

So, like I said months ago --- If you want to REALLY CHANGE your company, you have to get rid of Ballmer immediately and replace him with a WELL RESPECTED member of the open source community.   Somebody who would NEVER NEVER do any of the BS tricks that was Microsoft's trademark back in the day.    

Someone who would understand that you can't just halfway join the Open Source community, you have to be willing to do things like release the fully depreciated source code of your old OS versions (DOS and XP) and really work on making your new WIN 8/9 code to be OPEN in the sense that other OS's can read and write freely to Word, Powerpoint and Excel.

You can't live in the "dog in the manger" world that you had pioneered (unless you live there by yourself).



And simply promising to do something with this bozo sometimes in 2014 just isn't going to cut it .....  In 2014 ARM goes 64 bit, your vendors will have all jumped ship to the new 5.0 version of Android (which apparently is going to support PC style screens with multi-window multi-screen functionality as well as tablets and phones).

It is going to take you more than a year to convince somebody worthwhile in open source to come in to run your sick sick shop, and during that time you will become even more completely irrelevant.

Canning Ballmer isn't enough, you need to move some of the members of your Board of Directors out and replace them with some open source giants like Torvalds or Shuttleworth, who would then keep your company in line with the rest of the world going forward.


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Needless to say, by the time you get around to the point of being willing to do this deep deep level of real correction, it will be too too late.

Bring back Win 7 and give it 10 more years of active sales, forget about Win 8 completely and don't try to cram Win 9 down folks throats (make folks actually want it and consciously CHOOSE it over Win 7 as it is a better, more desirable OS).   This means you have to listen to your customers and make what they like, not create and cram as you have done in the past.

And. OBTW, this is what a desktop computer looks like in 2014 and going forward .....  it seems you still think about them big old obsolete white boxes with CD/DVD drives when you do all your software planning.  

Your software needs to ship on a jump drive, you dummies.

 
Babyhog, can you talk a post into your Windows phone?   Or can you verbally ask it to find the nearest pizza place in a strange town and have it answer your question in a meaningful fashion?


Question then becomes, can Microsoft keep doing this "screw up & replace" 4 year development cycle in a world that is moving 3-4 times faster than they are used to moving?   And this is with them starting out in a way behind position feature-wise and app-wise?

Tisen, Sailfish and Firefox OS products are all now shipping --- we expect at least two of them to immediately go right on past MS phone/tablet OS in overall popularity this year (as reflected by actual sales figures).    

This is easy to predict since Firefox has already done so in Spain, Brazil and Indochina -- and Sailfish will likely repeat this popularity trick in the Orient/China within its first six months as a shippable product as well.

Android, Tisen, Sailfish and Firefox OSs are all open source Linux based OSs that can share each others tricks without upsetting anybody .... and believe me they already share a Linux kernel and a great deal of Linaro maintained I/O and other code as well.

I mention Android, Tisen, Sailfish and Firefox (Sailfish in particular) because they can ALREADY do convergence on a big screen using their existing hardware if somebody simply wanted to build the docking stations.   The Ubuntu raw code to do all the convergence tricks was already released after all, so it is available to all to use.   And some already have it tucked in there already ....

The next version of 5.0 Android will be partially convergent as well, not completely, but partially.   Google really isn't boning to kill off Microsoft as a primary goal, although some of the others (Mozilla/Geko/Firefox in particular) would dearly love to put paid to their old historical abuser buddy.

Ubuntu/Shuttleworth isn't done with the concept of convergence and docking stations yet by any means, the upcoming Nexus 5 phone will have enough processor to do the Ubuntu convergence trick as it has almost all of the needed bits and pieces in it already.   Trust Asus or Samsung to come out with a really good enough phone or two soon enough as well.   (Remember, Ubuntu would run ALL Android apps natively as well as all the Linux distro stuff like Open Office, STEAM games, etc)

Then you will see what you will see.    

Remember, change is the only constant.

Windows phone isn't doing nearly well enough even here in America and Microsoft itself is still in the recovery room after their last cardiac bypass reorganization.    

Windows 8 anything isn't moving anything much in South America, Indochina, nor in India nor in Indo-China nor in China where 6-8 billion new phones will be sold next year alone.   At the end of next year, whoever sold the most phones worldwide will be the OS leader, just based upon the raw numbers of phones in current existence.

Look for one of the new open source boys to be in a strong #2 position to Android and if it happens to be Mozilla/Geko/Firefox then look for some "what goes around, comes around" style payback to be headed Microsoft's way sometimes in the near future.

Them older folks that are still around from the Mozilla/Navigator era still remember all of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer's tricks entirely too well.   They still have knots on their noggins from Ballmer's ball peen hammer.

I am glad your phone has speech recognition.  Windows 8 phone did not have any,  so it is Nokia who is doing it for you.

Aha, Nokia used a product called TellMe to get some speech recognition and Microsoft glommed on to it and actually bought TellMe recently, so technically "Windows 8 phone" does indeed have some native speech recognition now.

I'm proud of them, getting all with the talk to it program and all  ....


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Windows still rules the business world here in the USA, so we are most of Microsoft's forced upgrade revenue stream, and we are coerced into paying every year or so for yet another new Microsoft Office that everybody hates to have to learn how to use it all over again with the new monky'd up touch/click on an icon instead of dropping down a menu, just so you can go type a simple letter or to run a simple spreadsheet.

Have you ever seen Open Office?   Yup, you already know how to use it because it is the same look & feel as Office 97 through 2007.  Drop down menus and toolbars, the good old style productivity-increasing speedy to use stuff.