[kwill]

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If Ballmer were a car in Pixar's "Cars," he would have no radio or antenna nor any rear or side-view mirrors.

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They'd be there. They would just be stickers.

[JMStafford]

If Microsoft wanted to do something innovative for their stockholders they'd take that enormous cash hoard pay a dividend to said stockholders and stop wasting money on losers like Xbox and Zune.

[bastion]

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If Microsoft wanted to do something innovative for their stockholders they'd take that enormous cash hoard pay a dividend to said stockholders and stop wasting money on losers like Xbox and Zune.

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1. Microsoft is in the minority of tech companies that do pay dividends to shareholders. They pay out over $800M per quarter.
2. XBox is a loss leader.
3. It's a bit premature to classify Zune as a loser. I share your expectation that it will be, but to insist right now that it is is simply wrong.

[robtain]

I can't help but wonder if Microsoft in 2006 is a bit like Apple circa 1996 (before the return of Jobs). Markets change and Microsoft's old aggressive business model obviously outlived its usefulness. Now the company has to find new paths to follow.
That said, I wonder if Ballmer is the guy to shepherd the company in the future. He's exactly the kind of pitbull who exmplifies the "old" Microsoft. They need a new visionary now that Bill Gates is turning his attentions elsewhere.
My 2
Rob

[bastion]

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I'm sure there must be something they've "successfully" created from scratch, but nothing comes to mind immediately. I'm sure someone out there will help me remember.

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Microsoft is the first company I'm aware of to extend the drag-and-drop manipulation process to arbitary data editing. Moving around files is one thing, but Word and Excel were the first products I ever saw (that weren't fundamentally graphics-based) where you could drag a selection within or among documents.
You also have to acknowledge that while not exactly innovation, it took a great deal of foresight and confidence for the management of a publicly-traded company to believe in 1983 that graphical UIs were going to be dominant in the not-too-distant future.
(Edited to clarify one statement that was wrong as written.)

[jmincey]

"...it took a great deal of foresight and confidence for the management of a publicly-traded company to believe in 1983 that graphical UIs were going to be dominant in the not-too-distant future."
In 1983, Microsoft was already the dominant force on the corporate desktop in what then was a very young PC industry. CP/M and Digital Research DOS were not factors in 1983. IBM's PC-DOS was a non-issue.
So the point is that Microsoft had nothing to lose. It wasn't about belief that GUI would prevail as much as it was about making it prevail with brute force. After all, even under the first incarnations of Windows, DOS was still fully available and Microsoft continued to develop DOS. So what did its customers have to lose? Nothing. What did Microsoft have to lose? Nothing.
This was not a courageous or risky business decision in the least.

[ecrabb]

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If Ballmer were a car in Pixar's "Cars," he would have no radio or antenna nor any rear or side-view mirrors.

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They'd be there. They would just be stickers.

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SC

[samrod]

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"There really is a Sony that lives inside of us," he said. "There's an aspiring Google or Yahoo that lives inside of us."

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Google, Sony, and Apple are each responsible for major paradigm shifts in technology, driving markets, culture, and society in new and uncharted directions. Their soul is within themselves and inherent to who they are and why they exist. Balmer finally admitted what the rest of us have known all along, that Microsoft has no soul, no character, and is the Johnny-come-lately of the business world. I can't freakin' believe he had the gull to give this speech. Has it ever once occurred to anyone running that company to simply sit back and simply think of something new that no one else has done? Go ahead, take a risk. FAIL! It's ok to fail! It seems that Microsoft's only failures were caused by poor implementation of existing technology.

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"It's always best in our business to be first. We want to be first.

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Really? First with what? DOS? Word? Office? Excel? GUI? Access? Viso? xBox? Zune? PocketPC? WebTV? MSN? Was Balmer just shooting off his mouth, or did he have an actual product in mind when he said that? Then again, he didn't say "we have been first" or "we are first". Simply "we want to be first." Ok, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't just imply M$ has been first with anything.

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"We will never [again] have a five-year gap between the releases of major products,"

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Gee, how many other software companies can claim a 5 year gap between updates of their flagship apps? In fact, how many other automobile, clothing, computer, aircraft, consumer electronics, and whatever companies can do that? Yeah, competitive pressure must be stressing out those poor Vista programmers.
I've never known a word to be so raped and mollested as Microsoft has done to "innovate".

[bastion]

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So the point is that Microsoft had nothing to lose.

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Aside from a huge amount of money and credibility. I think you're overstating Microsoft's security and dominance at the time. The PC itself was barely a year and a half old and only starting to be taken seriously as a business machine when Microsoft was both announcing Windows and working on Macintosh software. Even Guy Kawasaki, the ultimate Apple evangelist, credits Microsoft and Gates particularly with having sufficient vision that early.

[Nobody]

The best thing that Microsoft can do for the industry is to go out of business. Then the market will explode with creativity, innovation, true competition and advancement. Lame M$!

[Machound]

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I'm sure there must be something they've "successfully" created from scratch, but nothing comes to mind immediately. I'm sure someone out there will help me remember.

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I'd say MS Flight Simulator was pretty exciting at the time v1.0 was released back in the 1980's. There were other flight simulators for personal computers but they were truly primitive. Of course, the Navy, Air Force and commercial airlines had flight simulators, but those weren't items you could go out and buy for home use.
I have to admit the list of MS innovations is pretty short. I believe the idea of robbing people and stealing their ideas had already been tried before MS came along.

[Nobody]

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"We will never [again] have a five-year gap between the releases of major products," Ballmer

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Now that they have established they can get away with it, the next will be 6 years, then 7...

[Machound]

No, next time they're going to charge for XP1, XP2, etc. Better yet, automatically bill people's credit cards an annual fee for the privilege of running Microsoft Genuine Advantage. God only knows how they might have access to such credit card info.

[macFanDave]

Am I the only one who has this image of Ballmer dancing around on a stage in a sweat-soaked shirt chanting:
Multi-core, multi-core, multi-core, multi-core,
Multi-core, multi-core, multi-core, multi-core,
Multi-core, multi-core, multi-core, multi-core,
Multi-core, multi-core, multi-core, multi-core,
Multi-core, multi-core, multi-core, multi-core,
Multi-core, multi-core, multi-core, multi-core?