Forbes Calls Microsoft's Steve Ballmer Worst CEO Today

[halcyon]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]That is not how it worked for most people. For example, I had a computer (a Compaq) that had a Pentium D at 2.8GHz, 1GB of DDR2, a 250GB hard drive, a GMA 950 GPU, and it's case just happened to have a sticker that said that it was ready for Vista. I tried it out. It was not ready for Vista, which also happened to not support my printer, my external hard drive, and my WiFi card because it lacked the drivers for them. It was also extremely slow, crashed often, and was full of glitches, especially glitches related to the desktop.[/citation]
...but the lack of (or bugg) drivers (which could have contributed to the crashing and poor performance) wasn't Vista's fault...it was the lazy developers. I know the average consumer doesn't care who was to blame... the experience was just bad...but I believe Vista took some heat that it shouldn't have. Now, perhaps MS should have been smarter and had it use XP's driver model, but that prolly wasn't practical/possible/logical.

 

[blazorthon]

Vista was thrown on many systems with similar specs by default, adding to it's problems. It was put on systems with too little performance for it by OEMs very often when it first came out and for a while after it came out. Many people had big driver problems with Vista, especially with things such as printers and other external hardware (although many internal things, such as audio hardware and others, also had limited or no support). The stability was also very poor.

After all of that, let's not forget how much software would not run on Vista back when it came out. A lot of software was not compatible, especially with the 64 bit versions (which also had even worse driver support than the 32 bit versions).

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]...but the lack of (or bugg) drivers (which could have contributed to the crashing and poor performance) wasn't Vista's fault...it was the lazy developers. I know the average consumer doesn't care who was to blame... the experience was just bad...but I believe Vista took some heat that it shouldn't have. Now, perhaps MS should have been smarter and had it use XP's driver model, but that prolly wasn't practical/possible/logical.[/citation]

Driver support isn't directly M$'s fault for everything, but it was indirectly their fault. M$ should have made companies develope compatible drivers, or M$ should have developed some drivers themselves. M$ did the former with Windows 7, hence the far better driver support. Yes, Vista took some heat that it shouldn't have, but M$ was never not at fault at all for any of it's problems. Another such problems was OEMs putting it on systems with insufficient hardware. They did this because M$ decided to have the official minimum requirements stated well below what is necessary to have Vista run properly. So, again, not directly M$'s fault, but they could have done something about it themselves (M$ did, later on they increased the official minimum requirements).

 

[halcyon]

[citation][nom]fjhgbvjnmhb[/nom]microsoft has just let everything go down the shitter. They don't innovate, they don't advertise, they simply stopped producing things that mattered.[/citation]
That's true...in a sad way.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]That's true...in a sad way.[/citation]

That's a spambot post. Look at the user name and how it's a cut off piece of an earlier comment.

 

[bells101]

I get the feeling that every one in this comment section gets their facts from equally terrible journalism.

 

[eric_son]

[citation][nom]burntham77[/nom]http://www.ladyofthecake.com/mel/frank/images/soup.jpg[/citation]

Nah...he reminds me more of Herman Goering.
http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm284/Inspecterclouseau/Hermann%20Goering%20AKA%20THE%20SUPER%20DUPER%20SUPER%20MAN/?action=view&current=hermann-goering-15149680__MBQFtemplateIdrenderScaledpropertyBildheight349.jpg&sort=ascending

 

[stephenkendrick]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Windows 8 is a much better OS than Vista. It's only actual problem is Metro. Vista was unstable, had poor driver support, slow, a huge resource hog, and I think that's enough examples. Windows 8 is stable, has great driver support, uses less than half the memory of Vista, and is far faster. The only problem is that Metro is not as good for desktop usage as the older GUIs.[/citation]

Completely fair. I keep stating that Windows 8 is awful, but you are quite right. Without Metro, it would be a great progression. I dearly hope the the imbecile Ballmer doesn't prevent the minor U-Turn that would be allowing Metro to be uninstalled on a desktop PC (not just optional or disabled). That is, if he is actually that involved... but given the number of mistakes MS have made since he took over, I do see his cretinous hand in far to much of the company's activities.

 

[pedro_mann]

Can we add cannibalizing one of their core markets by bringing windows to the death march, by releasing Win8? This one is gonna smell like S.H. and probably be the one that gets him canned. There is no way with Win ME and Win Vista as track records (Those were not nearly as bad as 8 is gonna be) That they can march in this direction, while soundly ignoring customers and this not be their biggest failure of all time. They will give up their stronghold, truly ushering in the post pc era. With no pc's and the world swinging towards arm, why do we need winserver again? That will be their last stronghold, which will fade with time. Sad, I know.

 

[pedro_mann]

[citation][nom]XmortisX[/nom]"Vista's development cost too much and that it launched too late."I beg it differ, Vista was rushed and for that OS to cost them alot...I wonder how munch Win8 will cost them?[/citation]
Rushed? Quite the opposite, they had a cobbled together version of XP that didn't make the cut, so they tossed it out and restarted. Probably one of the smartest things they did. Of course they gave them a shorter timeline than they needed to get polish on it, but, Vista wasn't that bad really. Run it on dual core with 2GB of ram and you'll never have a complaint.

The beauty of Vista, is that it was far more forward thinking, architecturally than your average consumer can comprehend, so no-one really valued it for what it was.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]pedro_mann[/nom]Can we add cannibalizing one of their core markets by bringing windows to the death march, by releasing Win8? This one is gonna smell like S.H. and probably be the one that gets him canned. There is no way with Win ME and Win Vista as track records (Those were not nearly as bad as 8 is gonna be) That they can march in this direction, while soundly ignoring customers and this not be their biggest failure of all time. They will give up their stronghold, truly ushering in the post pc era. With no pc's and the world swinging towards arm, why do we need winserver again? That will be their last stronghold, which will fade with time. Sad, I know.[/citation]

Sorry, but I disagree with pretty much everything that you said. Vista and ME failed for completely different reasons than 8 might (we don't know, it might not go as bad as many of us Tom's readers seem to think it will with the masses), so the three are hardly comparable. Windows 8 is a great OS, Metro is the only problem and for us, it's not hard to work around if you don't want to learn to live with it. ME and Vista will always have problems (although Vista's poor driver support and poor stability have been pretty much fixed by now, it's still a resource hog), but Windows 8's only problem is easily fixed and many people probably won't even consider it a problem anyway.

M$ isn't going anywhere, they are here to stay for at least quite a while and in force. I don't really like them, but I doubt that they are going to go bankrupt because of Metro.

 

[pedro_mann]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Or, just continues using Windows XP/Vista/7... It's not like they suddenly become not an option just because you don't like Metro (which can be worked around with freeware).[/citation]
Something called standards that are being ignored by this workaround. Try supporting end users that have the freeware ui of the day installed. A mess is all that is.

They need to preemptively fire Ballmer now. And give Win8 an extra year for development, have a dual ui option (Metro isn't bad if it is an extra choice) Also take the extra time to add AD capabilites into Win on ARM (Rename it too, Win RT is not cool) And Microsoft, will be regarded as a gem, for their risk taking. Forcing Metro on us is not the kind of risk taking they need.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]pedro_mann[/nom]Rushed? Quite the opposite, they had a cobbled together version of XP that didn't make the cut, so they tossed it out and restarted. Probably one of the smartest things they did. Of course they gave them a shorter timeline than they needed to get polish on it, but, Vista wasn't that bad really. Run it on dual core with 2GB of ram and you'll never have a complaint.The beauty of Vista, is that it was far more forward thinking, architecturally than your average consumer can comprehend, so no-one really valued it for what it was.[/citation]

I've run Vista on dual core desktops with 2GB of RAM and I have a few complaints. It's not horrible once you get a dual core and 2GB of RAM (assuming it's not a very low end dual core, but at least a decent one for the time), but it's still not great, even fully updated. I just happen to have a Vista desktop with a Pentium Dual-Core (slightly cut-down Core 2 Duo) at 2GHz and it has 2GB of DDR2-533 and I can say that I still have things to complain about. The same was true for my similarly speced Gateway M-1624 before I upgraded my OS to Server 2008r2 X64 (was not the first OS I replaced Vista x32 with, but it was the last and I can say that I don't have complaints about it's performance like I do with Vista).

 

[pedro_mann]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]That is not how it worked for most people. For example, I had a computer (a Compaq) that had a Pentium D at 2.8GHz, 1GB of DDR2, a 250GB hard drive, a GMA 950 GPU, and it's case just happened to have a sticker that said that it was ready for Vista. I tried it out. It was not ready for Vista, which also happened to not support my printer, my external hard drive, and my WiFi card because it lacked the drivers for them. It was also extremely slow, crashed often, and was full of glitches, especially glitches related to the desktop.[/citation]
So is that the fault of MS, Intel, Compaq, or the plethora of peripheral manufacturers? The only blame I can give to MS is not setting a higher bar for their Vista ready logo. It really needed true dual core and 2GB ram.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]pedro_mann[/nom]Something called standards that are being ignored by this workaround. Try supporting end users that have the freeware ui of the day installed. A mess is all that is.They need to preemptively fire Ballmer now. And give Win8 an extra year for development, have a dual ui option (Metro isn't bad if it is an extra choice) Also take the extra time to add AD capabilites into Win on ARM (Rename it too, Win RT is not cool) And Microsoft, will be regarded as a gem, for their risk taking. Forcing Metro on us is not the kind of risk taking they need.[/citation]

The freeware ViStart and ViOrb just add a start button and menu to the desktop, not a whole new UI... They don't interfere with program support at ALL. It's not a mess at all. I have yet to try Classic Shell (I really should get around to that), but I'm very sure that it also does not interfere with program compatibility at all. It's not like switching Gnome for KDE (or the other GUIs) in Linux.

I do say that end users should not have to go through such trouble (even though it really isn't much trouble at all) for this, but it is a practical solution to solving the problem. M$ probably won't make Metro a built-in option because they want to use it like an app store, they want 30% of each purchase. M$ wants more money and that's how they plan on doing it. M$ wouldn't make Metro an easy to disable thing in Windows options anywhere, at least not intentionally, because of this. I think that what they are trying is BS and they shouldn't be doing it, but it is what they are doing.

Also, why does Windows 8 need more dev time? Except for Metro not being optional by default, it has no notable problems.

 

[pedro_mann]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Sorry, but I disagree with pretty much everything that you said. Vista and ME failed for completely different reasons than 8 might (we don't know, it might not go as bad as many of us Tom's readers seem to think it will with the masses), so the three are hardly comparable. Windows 8 is a great OS, Metro is the only problem and for us, it's not hard to work around if you don't want to learn to live with it. ME and Vista will always have problems (although Vista's poor driver support and poor stability have been pretty much fixed by now, it's still a resource hog), but Windows 8's only problem is easily fixed and many people probably won't even consider it a problem anyway.M$ isn't going anywhere, they are here to stay for at least quite a while and in force. I don't really like them, but I doubt that they are going to go bankrupt because of Metro.[/citation]
So I hit the agree button on your post because I was really glossing over the faults of Win ME and Vista. To be more explicit, We could say those 2 OS's were well recieved until consumers started using them. Then thats when things went sour. But, there was no writing on the wall. How can MS be faulted for that. I actually still have a decent opinion of ME and Vista, they were good at the time and good stepping stones. Win 8 on the other hand, is different because there is tons of writing on the wall. And actually, I am a lover of the architectural changes going on with win8. But, alas, the UI kills it. And on Win RT the lack of AD membership is going to kill it, because we aren't going to pay a monthly fee for BYOD users to manage their device. So guess what, they are blowing it big time, IMO. And I do agree, it won't be the obvious fault that lead to their decline, but it will be the mistake that can be pointed to down the road that was the start of their rapid erosion.

Most of my comments are not ment to be MS bashing, but I am an extremely forward thinking individual and some of my comments do make sense in todays context. They need to be proven by history.

 

[thrasher32]

[citation][nom]headscratcher[/nom]Hillary Clinton, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Ried, Barak Obama, Chris Dodd, ..... and you're embarrassed of Ballmer.[/citation]

Karl Rove, George Bush, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingritch, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Dan Quayle, Richard Nixon.

Any more questions??

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]pedro_mann[/nom]So is that the fault of MS, Intel, Compaq, or the plethora of peripheral manufacturers? The only blame I can give to MS is not setting a higher bar for their Vista ready logo. It really needed true dual core and 2GB ram.[/citation]

It's the fault of M$, the OEMs, and the companies who didn't have proper driver support for their devices. M$ is indirectly responsible for all of the problems, the OEMs are directly responsible for their problems, and the other companies were directly responsible for their problems. M$ should have been more adamant about the drivers and should have been truthful about Vista's minimum requirements, but the OEMs should have made sure that their computers were adequate before selling them and the other companies should have made sure that their hardware had proper driver support. Really, everyone get's a slice of the stale blame cake.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]thrasher32[/nom]Karl Rove, George Bush, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingritch, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Dan Quayle, Richard Nixon.Any more questions??[/citation]

We could all just agree that pretty much all politicians are people whom we should be ashamed of.

 

[Northwestern]

[citation][nom]HarryKuntheir[/nom]He's right about 3 things. developers, developers and developers![/citation]
DEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERS

 

[killerb255]

[citation][nom]trialsking[/nom]Good, too many lefties already.[/citation]

How about too many people that are too far on either extreme?

 

[eddieroolz]

I have mixed thoughts on this verdict. While it is true that he has presided over some spectacular failures, such as the original Zune and Windows Vista, he has also been the force behind critical successes like Windows 7, Xbox 360 and Kinect.

 

[dalauder]

[citation][nom]beayn[/nom]I honestly don't think any CEO can turn Microsoft around. You can't fight the trend toward Apple products when the mentality toward windows in general is "it sucks" while Apple stuff is "awesome and cool". I'm all for MS sticking around and beating Apple down, but I don't see it happening. Apple has to release a royal screwup of its own more than once for that to happen.[/citation]I've never owned an Apple product and I never will until their prices get in line with the rest of the tech industry. I guess "awesome and cool" goes a long way with people who don't know tech. But the people who do, Apple will never be a consideration.

 

[halcyon]

[citation][nom]dalauder[/nom] But the people who do, Apple will never be a consideration.[/citation]
That's simply not true. For some folks the difference is price between an Apple product and it's competitors is noteworthy. For many folks...it is not. With Apple you're being charged for their design philosophy...simple, with high-build quality and high quality build materials (the use of metal and glass as opposed to plastic and acrylic). However, if don't like their designs you'll not want to pay a premium for them and that's understandable. iOS is designed to be as simple and accessible as possible at the cost of the customization that many an enthusiast enjoy. OS X works great, is simple, yet powerfully capable.

I know tech pretty well and make a decent salary because of that...yet I like Apple just fine and own several of their products alongside a respectable PC.

 

[starcraftmazter]

What about the EA CEO?