Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone, Android

I wish I could ask Steve Ballmer the following: You just said you missed a generation in the phone market. You also missed a generation in the browser, web services, MP3 player and operating system* markets. How does this keep happening to you guys? I find it impossible to believe that with so many talented engineers no one wants to push the envelope; engineers live to push the envelope. So what exactly is the hangup? Am I wrong that your engineers are hungry? Is your management so unwieldy that no one can get anything done? Did you make innovative things that just didn't catch on?<p>When asked what your plan was for the tablet market (which you haven't missed a generation on yet, but the clock is ticking) you responded simply: "It's called Windows" and laughed. What exactly is the joke here? The absurdity of the idea that Windows could ever fail to dominate a market? Wake the fuck up.<p>Recently you had a QA on reddit regarding your new browser. Your response to almost every question of the form "Why didn't you include feature X?" was "Our market research shows people don't want feature X, we make what people want."<i></i> Again you're only lying to yourselves and insulting us along the way. We are your users (at least we could be) and we're telling you what we want. What those answers mean to us is that your product is just never going to do what we want it to. Why do the QA with these people when all you're going to do is marginalize the concerns they express.<p>I think I know why you keep slipping up here Steve. You're somehow under the mass delusion that things are still going well.<p><i>This one less so than the others Vista wasn't a missed generation so much as just not up to snuff. </i>*To be fair this this QA was done in 2 parts first with marketing people then with programmers the prior having much more of this type of response than the latter.

This is denial. Next step is anger, then bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.<p>It seems the mobile division is a couple years behind the server software division.

In all seriousness, if Microsoft can keep their phone software from getting captured the carriers, that would be a good thing in my mind. IMO, it is impossible to overstate the horror of a world run by the wireless carriers, and I'm afraid that Android is merely serving to empower them at the expense of the consumer.

I got hands on with a pre-release WP7 phone earlier this week. I think all the "kill Apple" stuff is kind of stupid, but the WP7 phone was really really nice. There were lots of nice features and flourishes, and I can honestly say I liked it a lot better than my wife's iPhone.<p>MS has obviously put a lot of thought and a lot of work in WP7 and it shows.<p>Whether it will survive in the marketplace is a different matter.

Microsoft's mentality reminds me of a recent TedTalk: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4</a><p>The researcher concludes that when you tell others what you are going to do, that your mind tricks itself into believing that the task has already been achieved, and reduces the incentive to do the hard work to actually achieve it. Thus, when Steve Balmer gushes to the press and says that iPhone is going to get obliterated, it probably reduces the chances of that actually happening.

Microsoft's last chance? No way! Microsoft isn't going to run out of money anytime soon; it can buy itself quite a lot of time, enough for several chances.<p>Paul Graham also declared Microsoft dead (<a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html</a>) 3.5 years ago. With all reservations made to the meaning of the word "dead" in this fine essay, I can't find the way around some ways in which this is simply wrong. For example, if I want to play a computer game nowadays, I'd better have Windows. The vast majority of games, from indie and experimental through proud little independent companies all the way to established companies - are made for Windows. It's like the only game in town. There's no sign of changing this in sight. Granted, PC game market is a fraction of that of consoles, but in consoles Microsoft established a good foothold too and not giving it up anytime soon.<p>I'm afraid that many technology observers drink too much of some fashionable kool-aid and over-dramatize things. Wherever some company or technology appears that has non-zero chance to potentially displace established company or technology X, they declare it "X killer" or proclaim X dead. I'm afraid I can't fully trust the expertise and reasoning of said people after that.<p>Maybe Microsoft's hopes to bury iPhone and Android are just that, hopes. But declaring it Microsoft's "last chance", even in mobile segment, is no less wishful thinking.

John Gruber (noted Apple fan) recently had an opportunity to play with a prototype Windows Phone 7 phone for 5 minutes. He felt that in many respects the UI/UX was as good as an iPhone, substantially better than Android.<p>Listen at: <a href="http://5by5.tv/talkshow/10" rel="nofollow">http://5by5.tv/talkshow/10</a> starting about 55:00<p>7 may be their magic number.

jfb hopes for a Porsche 918, more than two weeks of sun in San Francisco.

Microsoft: the Nikita Khrushchev of the software industry.

I'm sure it won't hurt their chances to have burned Verizon on the Kin and sued their key smartphone provider. WP7 is obviously going to be <i>so good</i> that it won't matter that they'll launch as second banana on the two largest networks in the US.

Off topic: Why do headlines from some sources omit the "and" from sentences? Shouldn't it say "Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone and Android"? It's not like I can say "honey, can you buy some apples, pears, oranges at the store?". I might be wrong, but this is something rather new, right? If so, when and why did it come about?

Keyword: "hopes"

What I find pity-full is that they are trying to bury their competition with litigation instead of a good product, like many other companies out there they are just a law-firm that pretends to sell products.

Epic picture. Ballmer doesn't seem his usual comical self. I would say, he's <i>lost</i> hopes of progress, let alone a burial.

I don't understand why Microsoft keeps having the mentality of killing their competitors, burying their competitors.<p>It has become a "LET'S BUILD SOMETHING THAT WILL KILL THE &#60;FILL IN THE BLANKS&#62;" instead of "LET"S BUILD SOMETHING THEY WANT". And that's why Google and Apple are innovating and Microsoft is just playing catching up.

Sounds accurate. They are only hoping now, not longer confident it will happen. They can still dream.