Ballmer's Reason For Letting Go of Windows Boss Revealed

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.

southernshark

Distinguished
Nov 7, 2009
1,015
6
19,295
In fairness MS seems like a company that could use a few shakeups. Not that Ballmer shouldn't be considered for being let go as well.

That said I still support Microsoft as a company and think it has done a hell of a lot for computers and technology, certainly overall more than just about any other company (except Intel perhaps).
 

jonjonjon

Honorable
Sep 7, 2012
781
0
11,060
id love to know all the details. im guessing he didnt agree with ballmer on metro touchscreen in the windows 8 for desktops. to bad ballmer wasnt fired.
 

jerm1027

Distinguished
Apr 20, 2011
404
0
18,810
[citation][nom]PreferLinux[/nom]Huh, I guess Canonical they couldn't consider Xfce or KDE of course. So they had to go and make their own rubbish.[/citation]
Xubuntu and Kubuntu respectively.
 

kinggraves

Distinguished
May 14, 2010
951
0
19,010
Steven forgot the first rule of business, say yes to the boss no matter how stupid the boss is. Tell him how great his hair looks today. Innovative thinking is for the people in development.

For those who think Ballmer may not have been the one who thought Win8 was a good idea, keep in mind he's the one who makes the final call. He definitely approved it for what it was. Steven was the guy who could have turned this around instead of just brownnosing. Not playing well with the team does not mean the guy didn't have the skill to turn out a quality product. Unification isn't that great an idea when you have the power to custom make products for different markets.

Ballmer is a terrible leader, everything the company has been turning out is just copycatting. People like Apple? Let's do a closed unified approach like them. People like the Wiimote? Let's do our own motion sensing device. Now they have a tablet controller? How do we turn our tablets into controllers? Microsoft has lost their innovation.
 

LEXX911

Distinguished
Nov 24, 2007
24
0
18,510
As much as I love Windows 8. It's a damn big failure to launch the thing properly. Have any of you been to the computer store and try out some of the laptops? Can't believe they are installing shit full of third party softwares and the trackpad DOES NOT HAVE MULTI TOUCH function driver for Windows 8. Swiping from the side or top or bottom does not work at all so how the fuck they expect people to buy it if they couldn't try and get Windows 8 start screen to function properly? Microsoft need to lock down on these laptop manufacturers with some strict protocol.
 

migaltec

Honorable
Aug 8, 2012
10
0
10,510
He didnt agree with BALLSmer to make the metro ui the main interest in the desktop version of windows 8 so he got kicked out
 

DjEaZy

Distinguished
Apr 3, 2008
1,161
0
19,280
... ok... when this is out of the way now... PLEASE... do give a option to disable fully the former-merto crap UI on desktops and laptops... leave it just on phones and tablets... and then merge it step by little step, like OSX and iOS do...
 

fuxxnuts

Distinguished
Jan 24, 2011
35
0
18,530
[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Surely the thing that us the end user wants is a single cohesive system where everything works with everything else - a document created on Surface RT, syncs with skydrive, opens on my PC, edits it and syncs with Skydrive again, open it on my phone - if anyone was for being less integrated and wanting division then they should go because it is not what is in the customers best interests...Not entirely sure of the legitimacy of this story as the source is "a former Microsoft executive" and "Sources familiar with discussions" but if there is a grain of truth to this and Sinofski was responsible for the departures of Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia then let's hope that if Sinofski has gone they are free to rejoin and keep doing great things...I want an integrated system that works, I don't care who delivers it and no one man is above the product[/citation]

Steve Ballmer posts on Toms Hardware? Wow.
 

darkwhitesoul

Honorable
Nov 14, 2012
1
0
10,510
the only likely reason could be either
personal ambitions ,differences of opinion with others of the team and it seems the team work thing was an issue
 

damianrobertjones

Distinguished
Aug 14, 2010
587
1
18,995
[citation][nom]m217866666[/nom]FYI he was super against Metro and the removal of the start bar. Ballmer wanted the OS to be dumbed down and more "Mac like"[/citation]

Apparently that's what consumers actually want. Phew that we still have full access to all the nice techie bits under the interface. Best of both worlds
 

pocketdrummer

Distinguished
Dec 1, 2007
1,084
30
19,310
They let the guy who turned Vista into Win7 go and kept Ballmer?

The board should have let Ballmer go and made Steven Sinofsky the CEO. He sees to have his head in the right place as far as software decisions go. I hate metro. It has it's place on tablets, but not on a keyboard/mouse PC (which the majority of the world will continue to use for at least another decade). Apple got it right when they separated the user experience in iOS from OS X. The only good thing that might come from Win8 is being able to use apps from both. Unfortunately, that benefit isn't worth the complete degradation of workflow. Any power user will immediately become annoyed with the 2 separate taskbars and the full screen start page. The lack of any real integration between the two halves is the biggest flaw and why Win8 is a complete POS.

Passing this OS and eagerly awaiting Win9... hopefully it will un-%@#$ this conundrum of an operating system.
 

pocketdrummer

Distinguished
Dec 1, 2007
1,084
30
19,310
[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Surely the thing that us the end user wants is a single cohesive system where everything works with everything else - a document created on Surface RT, syncs with skydrive, opens on my PC, edits it and syncs with Skydrive again, open it on my phone - if anyone was for being less integrated and wanting division then they should go because it is not what is in the customers best interests...[/citation]

You are missing a few key points here. First of all, one the great things about windows is that you should be able to sync with WHATEVER you want. Not just skydrive. So parts of the OS should be open to other methods of syncing (not sure if that's possible, haven't tried).

The BIGGEST point to make isn't how the software is compatible with other devices (tablets, phones), because that part of it is genius. The BIGGEST problem is that they expect 1 GUI to work for all devices as well (phone's excluded). You simply cannot make 1 method of doing things and expect it to work flawlessly with multiple methods of controlling the OS. We've seen countless times that Keyboard/Mouse-centric GUIs don't really work for touch, and using a KBM setup with a Touch-centric GUI is both cumbersome and a waste of screen space. If they wanted real integration, they should have built-in the ability to adapt the UI for the method used to control the OS.

Another enormous oversight is the way they handled Metro (sorry, we'll always call it that). You can't claim to have cohesion while simultaneously tearing the OS in half. Metro has a taskbar, the "classic Win7" side has a traditional taskbar. Why is there two!? In order to see ALL the programs that are running, you can't just look at THE taskbar, you have to look at TWO. In fact, if you're in the metro interface, you have to launch the desktop just to see what's running in the taskbar! That is the very opposite of integration. They dangle that word like it's a huge new achievement until you try the OS out and find the reality contradicts the rhetoric.

Win8 has entirely failed to accomplish its goals. They've split the OS in two and they've ruined the user experience for the majority of users (KBM being most popular still).
 

TeraMedia

Distinguished
Jan 26, 2006
904
1
18,990
I agree with @pocketdrummer. I've been using Win 8 Rel Prev for a few weeks now. I use almost nothing in the metro interface, because everything I need is outside it but only a few things are inside. Calculator? Outside. Notepad? Outside. Internet Explorer? Outside. Win XP/7 games? Outside. Hyper-V Manager? Outside! Control Panel? Outside.

I suspect that Sinofsky perhaps didn't direct as much energy into integrating the GUIs as Ballmer had requested. Given the success of W7, it's hard to blame him ("if it ain't broke" and all). But given the schizophrenia plaguing W8, it's hard to say that he continued to do a good job. Rather, it's more like he fought against integrating metro and lost, and then the team scrambled to integrate as much into metro as they could. All of that said, asking the Windows team to completely redo all of the GUIs into Metro GUIs in anything less than 6 or 7 years is ridiculous. There are far more GUIs than most people realize, and it isn't just a matter of porting them either. You have to redesign them almost from the ground up to make them both KBM-friendly and touch-friendly. So Ballmer probably said, "Do this, and get it done in 2 years. We're losing ground to CrApple." And Sinofsky probably said, "That's a mistake because of A, B, C and D. And there's no way in hell that we could get all of that done in 2 years!" And so began the divisiveness, and the eventual exit of Sinofsky.

That's just my eduguess. Reality may vary.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Vista might have been a failure but I dont think there is anything interesting in v7 that makes me want to buy it. Considering that I think he has been a failure. If he was showing the middle finger to other teams, then I dont know why he was kept for such a long time.
We need the people who build windows 95 and windows 2000 back at Microsoft. Those were the times.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Thank You

Your blog is very informative & important :

software development
 
Status
Not open for further replies.