No he wasn’t haha. The only thing he did was slide the company sideways via pre existing illegal monopoly. In fact, they lost most of their monopoly under his supervision . At no point did the quality of their products improve, and that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows.
If you’re running Windows for anything, it’s only a matter of when, not if.
Agreed. He was the "put windows everywhere" guy because he forgot that Microsoft and Windows weren't the same thing and thus he failed Microsoft AND Windows.
Microsoft is a software company, they sell software (and now software services). Steve thought that because their main product was Windows, that Windows was the only product that mattered and everything else had to depend on being run on Windows. Office sells very well on Macs. Office in the browser is really improving every year. XBox 360 was a huge hit while not really running "Windows" at all, just a related kernel and DirectX APIs; it wasn't even x86!
Steve made MS a Windows First company, and the entire company stagnated for years. He may have been a great number two to BillG but that doesn't mean he was suited to being CEO. Being the XO is a very different job from being the Captain, and a lot of times they take two very different types of people.
I'm assuming that "this years massive Windows outage" refers to the Crowdstrike thing, which wouldn't have happened if Microsoft had been able to lock down the kernel, which antitrust regulators prohibited. (The essay extensively deals with antitrust, I'm sure you have thoughts on this.)
I wonder if Windows is even their flagship app any more. I think people will give up Windows before they give up Excel. And they might not even notice a different OS, so long as it had the same file manager. In fact Excel is the last non-FOSS app that I still use, even if sporadically.
Don't forget gaming. Gaming on Linux is possible but Windows still has the advantage in both software and hardware support.
I particularly like the video series from LinusTechTips where they try to use Linux as their daily driver because it is very telling. They manage to do stuff, but it isn't great. I find it interesting because it is done from the point of view of computer enthusiasts but not IT professionals or programmers. The kind who know about the command line, but are not very comfortable with it and would rather do without.
I don't think calling gaming on linux "possible" gives it the justice it deserves, with the arrival of the Steam Deck and all the improvements Valve contributed to the upstream. The experience is practically _seamless_.
I agree though that linux _on desktop_ is pretty janky, or at least it always was for me, having tried daily driving numerous distros.
IF you buy through Steam. IF you have an AMD GPU. IF by seamless you mean that regardless of the aforementioned BIG assumptions you still have to go and play with winetricks or whatever to get some stuff working and it can take you hours of tinkering.
Okay, that's fair enough. Though even if you have a game that you bought outside of Steam, you can add it as a non-Steam game to benefit from the compatibility layer and all the bells and whistles.
I still use it, it seems a little stagnant in development nowadays. No ssl on the website etc.
The free software distros really lost something going all in on open/libre office which is just not nearly as good as a replacement for excel. I think if it was still the free software goto, installed by default first choice etc there would be more development. The feature list and quality is impressive and has been for many years.
For better or worse, my last Excel use case involves a VB macro that I don't want to re-write, and printing to a Dymo label printer, for putting serial number labels in my product. For anything else, I now use Python.
My mom is happy with LibreOffice. For myself, I try it every few years (usually when there's some big announcement) to see if it's improved. There's some kind of latency in the UI that makes it laborious, if not painful, to use. And recalculating a large spreadsheet, or reformatting a graph, takes an eon. I found that out when trying to graph data sets with thousands of rows. Now I use Python.
This may be a place where the major paid apps still have an advantage. I think that MS sweats the details of Office the way that Apple sweats the details of the iPhone, and it's laborious work that can only be done by hiring a huge army of programmers and paying them a lot.
Default UI configuration in LibreCalc is such that until recently it always resulted in enraged searching of the MS Office support status in Wine.
Funnily enough recently I found out the UI style switch and lo and behold, when you switch from default to emulating Excel 2007 ribbon, the critical "cell data type" button is front and center just like it was in every version of excel since 1997 that I have used.
Windows Desktop still feels very important to them. Windows Server on the other hand feels very "Fine, since you are willing to pay for it." Thud "Is there any features?" "More money and your welcome I'm even giving this to you."
Ballmer's tenure started with XP and eventually gave us Windows 7. Nadella gave us 10 and 11. Though 10 was largely developed under Ballmer before its initial launch, it's been under Nadella's stewardship ever since. I'll take Ballmer, thanks.
Ballmer also gave us the maligned Windows Vista and Windows 8. Microsoft has also been way more open source friendly during Nadella's tenure, whereas Ballmer was openly hostile to FOSS. I'll take Nadella, thanks (although he should fix his user-hostile spyware).
Windows 8 was misguided but not user-hostile. I miss not being repeatedly asked by my OS to create an account or share my data. If it was a human doing it rather than software I am not sure it would be legal.
WinXP was developed mostly during Gates' tenure. Ballmer is responsible for the disastrous Windows Vista, Microsoft phone operating systems, and Windows 8.
You mean the best mobile phone OS that we ever had? Unfortunately disastrously managed and then squandered, but still.
Also, Vista was a mess, but it was ambitious and it laid the foundation for 7 and it was only around for a few years before being replaced. Unlike 10, where Nadella has doubled down on the worst choices and even worse ones were made going into 11 (HOW THE FUCK DO YOU SET DEFAULT APPLICATIONS NOW, THIS IS FUCKING NONSENSE).
> that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows
Window's massive install base is not really a testament to their failure.
Satya's tenure has seen the fall of Xbox, the lost relevance of Windows. While moving to a services model is going to be very lucrative for them, they risk competitors offering swap-out models.
The fall of Xbox started with the Xbox One, which was developed and released while Ballmer was CEO. They put an enormous amount of investment into that console, but made some bad calls in both its development and marketing that put them in a deep hole that they've been unable to get out of since. The increasing backwards compatibility of modern consoles means that the current 4th generation Xbox is paying for the sins of the 3rd generation in addition to dealing with its own struggles. Really the only thing that can fix the situation is money, but the business is probably under pressure to show profits after two decades of heavy investment with minimal return.
I don't necessarily think you can blame Ballmer for the missteps the Xbox team made, but I definitely think you can't blame Nadella.
Yes, one can't blame Ballmer for the missteps of the Xbox team directly (that honor goes to Don Mattrick, VP in charge of IEB at the time of the Xbox One launch). Divisional VPs get a lot of latitude in how they run their org. However, Ballmer does have to accept ultimate responsibility for allowing Mattrick to head up IEB and how long he allowed him to stay there.
I agree with this. And it wasn't just Don Mattrick. Late in Ballmer's tenure there were a lot of VPs with poor track records who weren't being held accountable (or, in some cases, were being given more responsibility). Microsoft is still feeling the impact of those people today.
Out of curiosity, what do you see as the fall of Xbox? It seems to work fine to play games, even if they had missteps with certain things (eg. Kinect being deprecated after being mandatory, some hardware issues).
> Out of curiosity, what do you see as the fall of Xbox?
The ever-declining hardware revenue and market share. If the decline that started in 2013 continues long enough it will stop making sense for Microsoft to sell consoles at all. They seem to be planning for this, as they're clearly pivoting the Xbox business towards "content and services".
This is a stark contrast to how Xbox was positioned prior to the 3rd gen. Xbox One. They had taken significant market share away from PlayStation and they were expecting to continue to do so, particularly outside the USA. They were also trying to get a foothold in the household computing market (this market was in its infancy then, now: Alexa/Fire TV, Nest/Chromecast, Apple TV/HomePod). Those ambitions are gone.
Windows was already losing relevance in the data center when Nadya took over -because of Linux. At AWS in 2008 / 2009 adoption was all about LAMP stack - AWS's tools were all geared for LAMP. AWS offered some Windows + SQL Server licenses on their cloud, however it was a struggle to get a deal (any deal) with Microsoft.
On the mobile side Windows was losing relevance to iPhone - which Ballmer so famously derided.
Satya figured out that with cloud computing Microsoft would still interpose between hardware makers and the customer - and the results show. (Why hardware makers do not figure this out for themselves is a different topic..)
In Apple's case, the lost relevance of one platform lead to the increase in relevance of another one - that they controlled. Microsoft has no such "luck".
Also, it does matter, because there's over a billion Windows PCs in active use. It's still relevant, but it's getting eroded. That's a huge issue.
Gamepass and the lack of first party exclusives both seem like moves to kill the console in the long term, but as of now it's still a serious competitor to playstation and switch no?
Nintendo's always been on its own for these sorts of things, but even the folks I know with an XBox just use their Playstation these days if they have both. XBox just isn't really in the conversation any more. That could totally change in another generation of consoles, but their position wasn't great coming into this generation and it doesn't feel like it's gotten any better.
Basic numbers I've been seeing on a quick search has PS5 almost doubling the Series X sales.
XBox's irrelevance is thanks to Don Mattrick for ruining the XBox One release.
It is fair to point out that XBox continues to stagnate and despite many billions of dollars that Microsoft has pumped into gaming and acquiring numerous studios and publishers, they still have yet to succeed in that area.
If you’re running Windows for anything, it’s only a matter of when, not if.