[501user]

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urged shareholders to be patient

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Why should they be? Why not invest elsewhere, if there's a better alternative?
Is he asking for loyalty? When was MS ever loyal to anyone else?
Or is he promising that MS will deliver (perhaps because it has no scruples c.f. in his own words "hell-bent" but let that one pass).
But promises are promises. Why should anyone believe Ballmer? Check the record: he's told so many direct lies to camera it's not believable. According to Ballmer, the iPhone is the "most expensive" phone on the market. That's a direct lie. It's not. Moreover, disregard the dishonest discount-subsidy game on cellphone hardware and look at the overall cost plus plan and it's far cheaper than many totally crappy phones running Windows mobile. According to Ballmer, the Zune has a quarter of the market - only it doesn't: it has around three per cent. Ballmer claimed Windows-based smartphones had nionety percent of the market. Another lie: Symbian has over 70% and Linux-based is next. Windows mobile has a mere six per cent.
There are lies, damned lies, and pronouncements from Monkey Boy.
And the Surface - a.ka. the big ass table - is a joke. Want to talk about guys in a garage: people have been building similar things in garages for years. we're in an era of portable devices and Microsoft comes up with something the size of a small car that has to be in a darkened room to be used. To add insult to injury, the Surface didn't even work for Gates at the latest Microsloth demo.
MS are a standing joke. Buy a Mac, and if you can't afford that get something running Ubuntu from Dell. Why does it matter what Ballmer says?

[adobephile]

This to me screams of gross ineptitude at the highest levels and sheer unmitigated gall.
For a company to announce a ONE BILLION DOLLAR MISTAKE and then to have its chief executive panderingly plead with its investors to have patience is about as wrong and inappropriate as I can imagine.
Where's the head on a pike of the fool responsible for that costly blunder?
I'm sure glad I'm not an MS investor nor a customer beyond the "obligatory" MS Office software.

[heisetax]

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Vista doesnt get done by three people in a garage in three days, said Steve Ballmer.
Well, that may be true, but I'd wager that if Vista was done by three people in a grage it might actually work!
I just think it is hillarious that Balmer and M$ are reducing themselves to nothing more than Billboard Content salesmen simply because they have no answer to the onslaught of Apple.
Ha, Ha! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

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It seems that many people have forgotten how long it took Apple to get OS X close enough to correct to really work. I've owned every version of OS X starting with the Beta. It was not until version 10.2 that i started using OS X as my default OS. Part of the problem is that there was not enough OS X software around to get at least my job done & that of many others.
Microsoft with Vista is now in the OS X 1.0 time frame. The thing never mentioned here is that many Windows user's actually like Windows XP. They have used both the Mac OS & Windows & like Windows better. Part of this could just be that they are more familiar with Windows. But the same thing can be said for many Mac Users.
MS will remain around for a long time even if we do not like their hardware or software. Like many on this board I believe that MS since they have come up with few good or usuable products since MS Word & Excel of the 1984-85 time period, that they do not feel bad in buying out or using brute force to eliminate those that resist being bought out or were cut down & out enough to make them a non-competitor.
I have enjoyed using my Mac for the past 23 years. But like many here I also have to run Windows on a daily basis. Like most others here I do not like Vista. I haven't seen how others like MS Office 2007, but I'm one of those that do not like the new screen wasing ribbons & the new harder to find ways to do something that I've done for 23 years with MS Excel & before that with SuperCalc1 & 2 on my CP/M based Heath-Kit.
Usually the school I go to will be teaching the newest version of Windows & MS Office. At the present time they do not plan to change to teaching Vista & MS Office 2007 until the fall of 2008. This seems to be how important they believe Vista & MS Office 2007 to be.
Bill the TaxMan

[scotts13]

Slightly off topic, but... am I missing something about Surface? I'd never heard of it before. How does laying a big touchscreen on it's back amount to innovation? It seems more like a one-off for a wealthy client than a serious product. The only things even slightly novel are some interface adaptations; and as another writer mentioned, these are easily duplicated by a $500 gadget that fits in your pocket.

[BuzWeaver]

One of the things I find disappointing, if not just saddening about Apple Fanatics or in most cases the Apple Core Cultist (no pun intended) is their giddy juvenile attitudes and need to leverage their Appletude at the expense of competitors. Apple has its flaws, however I seldom see any advertisements from competitors resorting to school yard snipping or petty pandering to draw attention to their products.

[gambit]

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One of the things I find disappointing, if not just saddening about Apple Fanatics or in most cases the Apple Core Cultist (no pun intended) is their giddy juvenile attitudes and need to leverage their Appletude at the expense of competitors. Apple has its flaws, however I seldom see any advertisements from competitors resorting to school yard snipping or petty pandering to draw attention to their products.

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Please. Save it for someone who doesn't deserve it. While I personally do not feel the urge to publicly ridicule Ballmer, I will say that I completely understand why Mac users do it. Every chance Ballmer gets, he straight LIES about anything Mac- or Linux-related. So, go ahead and defend Ballmer's lies while calling Mac people fanatics; I'll have someone call you a Whhaaaaaambulance.

[greydog]

Microsoft has never been about innovation - they were the consumate business makers of the 80's and 90's. They knew how to penetrate a market, saturate it, dominate it, using the bare minimums to satisfy the needs of that market - no more no less.
On the other hand, Steve has always gotten it - he understands trends, he understands cool, he understands hip. Always had. His problem was that in the beginning the consumer was not to material-consumed and image-conscience that they were willing to spend the big bucks for Steve's vision. Then while at NeXT he still believed that no price was too high for the best, most powerful product. He did not understand the business of consumers, only the style.
Now he has mastered it all - build the products too cool, to fine to resist, at a price that keeps it in this world. This is the Age of Me, of consumer greed and indulgence. This is not the time of Yugos but of Navigators. M$ is too late to the game, and Apple is now the darling of the business world.

[BuzWeaver]

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One of the things I find disappointing, if not just saddening about Apple Fanatics or in most cases the Apple Core Cultist (no pun intended) is their giddy juvenile attitudes and need to leverage their Appletude at the expense of competitors. Apple has its flaws, however I seldom see any advertisements from competitors resorting to school yard snipping or petty pandering to draw attention to their products.

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Please. Save it for someone who doesn't deserve it. While I personally do not feel the urge to publicly ridicule Ballmer, I will say that I completely understand why Mac users do it. Every chance Ballmer gets, he straight LIES about anything Mac- or Linux-related. So, go ahead and defend Ballmer's lies while calling Mac people fanatics; I'll have someone call you a Whhaaaaaambulance.

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I'm an Apple Specialist, I'm around Macs every day, 9 hours a day. I'm familiar with the sales methodology and systems. We also have a service center with a nice assortment of malfunctioning Macs. I can assure you if I were on a competitors advertising consulting team there would be plenty of fodder for a school yard brawl.

[tallscot]

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Steve Ballmer asked investors at an analyst day to be patient with the time it takes for innovation and technology changes at Microsoft. <a href="/news/2007/07/26/msft_ballmer/index.php">[more]</a>

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You know, this article almost reads like a parody. The table "innovation" is really hilarious, like a parody, don't you think?
Microsoft's problem is they don't ship innovative solutions for problems. They give us tech demos of products that look cool but don't really solve any problems and those tech demos never rarely turn into anything good or useful.
Their shipping software that I have used is mostly crap.
Microsoft does come up with some good ideas, some ideas that have and will show up in the Mac OS. But their implementation is usually pretty bad.
Apple is really good at taking others' ideas and implementing them in a more user-friendly way.

[robb1068]

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One of the things I find disappointing, if not just saddening about Apple Fanatics or in most cases the Apple Core Cultist (no pun intended) is their giddy juvenile attitudes and need to leverage their Appletude at the expense of competitors. Apple has its flaws, however I seldom see any advertisements from competitors resorting to school yard snipping or petty pandering to draw attention to their products.

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Welcome to the Internet... first time here?

[gambit]

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I'm an Apple Specialist, I'm around Macs every day, 9 hours a day. I'm familiar with the sales methodology and systems. We also have a service center with a nice assortment of malfunctioning Macs. I can assure you if I were on a competitors advertising consulting team there would be plenty of fodder for a school yard brawl.

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I'm an Apple specialist, consultant, and columnist, with a predilection for smart-ass commentary. Mine was only to incite a chuckle, not a flame war. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Schneb]

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Yes lose, people, not loose.

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LOL, how many times have I seen this typo on forums! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[thebiggfrogg]

Headline: Steve Ballmer, CEO of beleagured Microsoft, asks for investor patience
Ah, the future is sweeeet. (We can only hope).

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
I instantly fell for OS X. I used the Public Beta as much as possible. Heck, I probably spent more time running the PB of OS X than I did with OS 9 those days. Do I feel OS 9 is bad? No. I just felt that OS X had some great ideas / differences and a lot of potential. Considering it was beta OS, it really didn't crash that often.