Steve Ballmer: Safari a 'rounding error,' Mac losing market share - Page 6

Now that I think about it, Ballmer himself is the "rounding error." Especially so when he goes 'round and 'round a podium, sweating and shouting, while hurting his foot, then trying to hide it.

Think of his foot as every single product launch he has been responsible for and you get the idea.

Well, he is progressively rounding a bit more every year and he is in error

I know one, and I know someone else of whom I would not be surprised if he has switched back from FF to IE after version 7 or 8 came out. Yes, those people exist!

And about the Ballmer bashing in this thread: I almost feel sorry for the guy. He does his best, but he is so stuck in his own view of the world that he can't help all the ignorance about what is going on around MS. Let's leave him be, shall we? If we don't, MS might fire him and replace him by someone competent. Of course, that might make Apple even better faster .

The restore point in safe mode can have the same problem Time Machine can have--some fool may have turned the blasted thing off. Another problem is that unlike Time Machine (built into the MacOS since 2007) since the archive is on the hard drive in question so if anything happens to it you are SOL.

The scary thing is if you imaging this position being like your average job interview and the people at MS thought this was their BEST choice then what does that say a) about the potential applicants and b) about the people they turned down?

Though to be fair to MS given how much fun Apple had with Spindler and Gil Amelio and the Brain Dead Mac Clone effort that took Apples then 7-10% marketshare (depending on who and what you looked at) and chucked it down to a dismal less than 3% finding CEOs that know what they are doing is not easy. Look at how bad the xbox 360 is doing--over 50% failure rate and just above the PS3 (only because the later cost so blasted much); clearly MS hardware department could learn something from even Packard Bell (at least 75% of their machines worked)

Also the market is a lot different then it was in the past. No one really knows what Linux markeshare as most versions are free. The commercial flavors of Linux hover at 2% while free versions are said to vary between a 8 to a staggering 28% and those numbers depend on what market you are talking about.

this sums up every windows user envy of Mac. I found quite amusing and his probably what Ballmar thinks deeper down.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ft-mac-windows

LEAVE STEVE ALONE!!!!!!

Well said.

Since when is Snow Leopard $29? The upgrade from Leopard is $29, but the full install costs substantially more than this. In fact, it costs more than an OEM version of Windows Vista or Windows 7.

1) The $169 version also comes with curren versions of iWork and iLife included.

2) The $29 version can technically be installed on any Mac running Tiger or a clean HDD without issue.

3) MS only lowered the cost of Win7 after Apple announced the lowered price of SL. Question: Does that still get you a version of Win7 that does a full install of Ultimate on as many PCs as you wish?

Well technically you are also not allowed to install Snow Leopard on as many computers as you like. The difference is though that Apple knows you've really already paid for it by buying their expensive hardware. So it's not so much of an issue. With Windows this isn't the case.

And that is the whole point. Apple can offer the OS cheaper because you've already paid them for their hardware. It's not like I can buy Mac OS and run it on whatever I want, Apple purposefully restricts me in what I can do (because it can actually run on a PC, they just don't want to allow people to do it). Microsoft isn't in on the hardware and are just selling the OS. If you wish to buy some hardware with Windows on it, then it gets cheaper. Dell offers laptops with Vista starting at $399. How much of that is OS cost? A whole load less than $169.

Apple can't come anywhere near that.

It's a different business model so your initial comparison is a bit moot. Also, MS would likely have anti-trust problems do to their OS dominance if they tried to bundle rich app like the ones found in iWork and iLife.

Comparing the trail cost of Windows with a $400 Dell to Mac OS X doesn't make much sense to me. I can't see many people dishing out only $400 for a computer to then spend such a large additional fee for Win7. Then again, most people I know who but $400 computers thinking they got a deal aren't the most keen shoppers.

If you believe my point is mute, then you must believe the original point in the article is mute, which was actually my original point.

I don't know what you're talking about a "trail" (trial?) cost. $399 covers the hardware and a full version of Windows Vista, and after the 22nd of October, no doubt Windows 7.

I don't see what part of a $399, 15.6", 2.2ghz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD laptop is not a deal. It's no MacBook Pro, but for $399 you can hardly argue that someone has been ripped off.

Considering the laptop will most likely not last longer than 2 years before something on it breaks or it altogether needs to be replaced, I'd say it's a ripoff.

He read my "not keen shoppers" conment and came out with "ripped off". If those are the only specs he looks fo. When buying a computer then I'd say he isn't a keen shopper, but for him to be ripped off he would have had to have not gotten the listed specs he agreed to purchase.

Like you say, I prefer a certain build quality, service as well as knowing the finer points about the specs. Apple happens to fit usually fit my particular needs. If buying a TN or low-nit display and a 2 generation old (or worse) arch CPU works for people then more power to them, but I don't agree with these general comparisons.

Before sounding off about what an idiot Steve Ballmer is, more ai readers should have read the TechCrunch interview. Ballmer may be a bit of a clown at times, and he may mangle the language, but this was a serious interview and delivered plenty of interesting insights. When he says that "Chrome is a rounding error TO DATE. Safari is a rounding error TO DATE. Firefox is NOT a rounding error." (my emphasis), he is quite correct. IE is losing market share, but it still stands at around 66%. The losses have mainly been to Firefox and Chrome. In the last year Safari has gone from about 3% to about 4% (according to marketshare.hitslink.com), and this is largely because it comes bundled with OSX. In the same timeframe, Firefox's share has increased from about 21% to almost 24%. Read Ballmer's comments about the browser as operating system, and I think you will conclude that he and MS are taking the competition very seriously. In relation to Apple he says "And weve actually held or maybe even gained just a tiny bit of share relative to the Mac in the last 12 months." I don't know whether that's right or wrong; marketshare.hitslink.com suggests that Windows has slipped all the way from 94% back to 93%, while Mac OS has gone from 4% to 5%. That's not a seismic shift. Whatever we might think about the superiority of OSX vs Windows (and I personally dislike Windows), the word that describes Windows most accurately is "successful". Ballmer also makes the interesting observation that for various reasons the really big markets (TV, phones, PCs) are not dominated by a single (hardware) manufacturer in the way that niche market sometimes are, or the way that a software platform can dominate. I think he feels that Google is a bigger threat to MS than Apple ever will be, though Google have erred in introducing two (incompatible) operating systems in Android and Chrome OS. As I said, "Read the interview".

You and Steve are obviously close. In more than one area.


For the CAD/CAM claim...EENNNNGGGGG!!! Wrong Answer. I guess you've never heard of VectorWorks....and yes there ARE MANY Mac only shops in the world. They just do stuff you've never heard of or care about..or....you DO know about them just didn't KNOW how they came about.

85,468 Apps in the iTunes Store...all made on a Mac.

I can do EVERYTHING I need to do on a Mac...even in a 98% Windows company. I do it every day. Even our designers are dumping their doorstop Windows e-mail reader machines since they use them 1% of the time. Now they use Citrix...and THAT will go away once MS releases Outlook for Mac next year.

Substitute McDonalds with Microsoft
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByPVIz_7rQY

There's not enough money in the world. I wouldn't do it.
It'd take at least $2 million to keep my mouth shut and not talk bad about Microsoft and its products. That's as far as I would go. Two million minimum buys no trash talk, and no posting about how inferior its products are.

Mac and virus, it's an oxymoron.

Well not in the way we thinK.

Macs don't get infected, people who start using Macs get infected and show their old pc friends how great a Mac actually is, so what happens is that pc owner comes to me when he wants to replace his pc and asks me to guide him in the choice to buy a new mac.

ISN'T THIS GREAT? So far I infected 10 pc owners into buying a Mac. And I am proud of it !!!

Now the nice thing about all this the infection doesn't stop there, it spreads on.

Those new Mac users I got infected start doing the same. Their friends and family PC users all get the same Charm Attack from an infected Mac User, and trust me it's a virus you cannot resist. Well at least not for long.

And then you become one of us. A Mac Zombie who actually finally start enjoying your digital life, spreading around good things, empowering the economy, getting a total different view at creating stuff, a different way approaching challenges in your life, your work. You'll be handling things with more simplicity. And in the end this will actually force EVERY manufacturer to start thinking in the Apple way. Why make things amazingly complex, while it can be made very simple and easy to use?

A real shitft will occur, Famine will vanish, Diseases will get cured, wars will stop, and finally serenity will spread across the entire globe, as an unstoppable virus.

And those that didn't change to Mac, will have sailed away to some deserted island where they try to survive the Post Mac infection era. Lonely, miserable and feeding on eachother.

We will keep an eye on them using our Macs.

LOL

Ouch. Maybe that's why I really graduated.