Steve Ballmer: Safari a 'rounding error,' Mac losing market share - Page 3

Remember that fat jerk-off kid in your high school that nobody liked, but who was still arrogant, smug, and...well, he was still fat. And still a jerk-off.

Ballmer is a dick. Keep talking jackass.

Ballmer is a dick, keep talking jackass.

... running a discontinued* version of Windows.








* Well XP would be discontinured except for the introduction of the Netbook ... running Linux.

I really need to be careful when reading anything about what Ballmer says while I'm at work.

I had to keep myself from literally laughing out loud more than once.

Rumor has it that the next edition of Webster's Dictionary will have a picture of Ballmer next to the word "nincompoop".

Can I feed the rabbits?


Only one t-shirt in Ballmer's size.

You had me at the title.

he's killing ms, and doing it great...so i say, every fan of apple should love ballmer...

I hate to go against the herd here, but Balmer is actually right. Apple talk a lot about their share gains in the US (which are both real and impressive), but if you look at their overseas success, it's not really there yet, and Microsoft dominate.

I hate to say it, because I'm far from impressed with Windows (though Windows 7 doesn't look that bad), but if you look at the global numbers, Apple are not making progress against Microsoft.

I think you missed the point, it was that Toyota, Honda and Nissan were seen as no threat and look at them now. Does not matter really what was the reason for their success, but main point was their were dismissed.

Who cares what Bill Gates' college roommate thinks? I look forward to the day that the Microsoft board votes his pasty, useless butt out.

Totally agree with the gist of what you are saying but:
Actually Apple 3Q revenues are barely down (less than 1% if you look at earnings per share, flat if you look at revenues.) You need to compare Q3 with previous Q3 as Q2 and Q3 are always seasonally down. What has been down is rate of growth -- still positive but not as stellar as it has been.
http://investing.businessweek.com/re...asp?ric=AAPL.O

this is the one truly correct comment that Balmer makes. Apple is about the 'complete package' which is hardware, software, support. To break it apart and try to say "well our hardware is better, but their software is" misses the point. folks are buying the package not the pieces. In part because this is how Apple wants it. but also cause they like the appeal of that way of doing things. one stop shopping if you will.

Pity Balmer has to follow it with a bunch of tripe.


what Balmer doesn't get is that in times like these, folks will spend but they are looking more closely at cost effectiveness than before. Buying something for $1000 that will last for 5 years is 'cheaper' than buying something for $700 that will only last 2.


indeed.


define down. you talking dollars or units. cause yes I believe one of them took a small drop but the other didn't. like the price cuts in the late spring brought down the dollars but raised the units sold.


over Steve Jobs new liver.

the day that Apple stops dealing in computers is the day that the legal system forces them to. or at least forces them to stop dealing in hardware or software (ie one or the other but they can't do both anymore)


yes and no. remember that Apple doesn't support Boot Camp. it is one of those 'provided as a courtesy' items that they won't help with and if it screws up your computer, tough nuggets. you have to fix it on your own.

but you are correct that the hardware on both sides is from the same molds and yes there is the possibility of having two machines at once. then again, if you don't mind cheating it is possible (illegal by your license but technically possible) to put Mac OS X on any computer you want.


by letter of the definition, there are few to no netbooks on the market. there are sub sized laptops galore but very few devices that were designed and marketed as a NETbook. The Apple Tablet, particularly if it runs the iphone OS, might be the first truly NETbook (with an added media player).

and if it goes simlocked with 3g/4g and wifi and at least limited approved apps via the itunes store (particularly if they hire another 10 or so reviewers just to examine new versions of previously approved iphone/touch apps for quick release into the 'tablet' store), it could be an interesting fight.


what is there really to gain by winning the House Cup. It's a shiny trophy and bragging rights. Period. again, the 8 year old tome of wisdom (who spent the last couple of days here sick in bed cause I was working at home) points out that 'they don't really get anything right. there's no toys or special treats', they just get to say they won't and Dumbledore puts their things up in the hall'.

that's this whole browser war. no real profit, just bragging rights.

oh and yes I think Balmer would be Draco in this sitch. Especially the version from the first movie where he started off with that snide gloating face but when the math was done looked like he was going to barf in his pudding he was to peeved they lost in the end. so he spent dinner pouting


out of pocket sure. but you also have to look at cost of ownership.

the computer on my desk cost $1600 out of pocket, plus $600 in upgrades to the hardware and another $130 to the basic software (by that I mean the OS) over 8 years. Yeah the computer is old, the DVD burner is finally blowing out, the fans are noisy, but I can still get online, read my email, surf the web. I can watch standard def video downloads from itunes no worries. etc. and all the problems there are didn't start until about a year ago. so lets call it a 7 year old machine since that's how long it was really working without issues.

so for basically $2300 over 7 years. not so 'expensive' after all.


this is something Apple is very good at. they make us want what they want us to want, not what the other guys are doing.

the other guys all shoved blu-ray players in their computers. It was mainly as a marketing tool ("Look Mom, it has blu-ray" said the laptop hunter ad). Apple puts in SD slots and you can bet they will be the big cheerleaders for replacing optical with SD/flash memory for everything including movies and tv shows. and there is some appeal. I have whole seasons of shows that are on 6-7 disks. what if I could get the same on 1-2 little cards the size of the member cards hanging on my keychain. so much clutter gone from my place. Instead of bookshelves and racks on the walls I have a box on my desk. And all that plastic no longer being wasted on disks and packaging. Steve Jobs is the savior of the environment. Mark my words, it will happen over the next few years and Apple will be the Pied Piper of the game. on that, on solid state drives, on reducing cable clutter with few wires between parts and better wireless connection systems.

and yeah it's going to cost more than $500 a machine. but Apple isn't about making cheap. they are luxury and they know it. The world knows it and embraces this. And while Apple will be doing just dandy with their $2000 desktops, Ballmer and such will be shaking their heads and trying to catch up

Pretty reasonable observations. There really isn't that much difference between Mac, Windows and even Linux. Mac seems to have a little more finesse in the GUI department, but for example if you know Photoshop on a Mac, you should feel quite at ease working in Photoshop on Windows. However, when you have to do a lot of interaction with the file system, Windows seems a bit clunky to me but both can certainly get the job done. Linux interface is the clunkiest of them all but powerful and rock solid for servers. Any computer professional can master whatever OS is appropriate for the task at hand.

http://www.macdailynews.com/index.ph..._sold_in_2009/

Record Mac sales.

Apple does from time to time, but when they do it, it tends to make sense and is even clever.

And for comparison.
http://investing.businessweek.com/re...asp?ric=MSFT.O

My new Macbook Pro should be here tomorrow. Haven't had a Mac since the IIci was the latest. Not only a switcher but a developer moving to Mac. Can't wait until I can get away from Windows completely.

actually, the rounding error is balmer's head.
Nice...smoooooth...cerebrum...

I can believe it. Whenever I'm in an Apple Store, I see machines flying out the storeroom like hot cakes from an oven. When my girlfriend was buying hers, (in Kingston-upon-Thames, UK), we were in the store for 30 minutes. In that time I counted 12 machines being sold. No wonder Apple continue to roll out new stores.

Phil

What kind of software do you develop? Anything we'd be interested in purchasing?

Welcome back anyway. You won't be switching back, that's one thing I can guarantee.

I switched 4.5 years ago, and my only regret was not doing it earlier.

I don't know why some of you guys make this subject so difficult. There is plenty of published data out there.

Apple has increased it's global sales of Macs EVERY year since 2004.
That rate of growth has been faster than the rest of the market.
Therefore Apple has increased it's market share EVERY YEAR since 2004. Even this year (so far) when every pundit and their aunt told us Mac sales would drop.


The Mac is NEVER going to dominate the conventional PC market. Ever!

Apple's market share gains are modest but slow progress is still progress.

If, as Ballmer has stated, Apple is a statistically insignificant "rounding error" in its competition against M$, why is M$ spending so much effort and money on its pro-M$/anti-Apple media campaign?

Why can't M$'s products essentially sell themselves on their own merit of price and performance, instead of having to berate all the other competition with lies and half-truths. It would seem to me that M$ would be better off spending its resources on developing a worthwhile successor to its NT-based OS. Judging from the quality of the language that he uses, I have to seriously question the business and technical acumen of M$'s senior management.

I think that M$ could learn a lot from the technical and business performance of companies like Apple and Intel, but M$'s hubris would blind it from the possibility of seeing the truth about itself and its need for real change. It's too bad for M$ that other companies are learning from M$'s mistakes and doing better as a result. Perhaps that is M$'s true legacy to the world of computers, just not what they had hoped or expected for themselves.

No, more like informed. So he's not talking out of his ass like some people we know...

The day that Mac gains 25% market share, Windows and all the other Microsoft products will be history in three years. It is amazing that people use products as horrible has the ones made by Microsoft: the reason is just and only just inertia and ignorance.

Is that why Safari has market monopoly in Smartphones? Must be a rounding error.

Interesting. At my webcomic's site (hardly a scientific sampling), I see:
\t
Firefox – 63.01%\t
Internet Explorer – 15.68%\t
Safari – 12.28%\t
Chrome – 6.12%\t
Opera – 2.03%

Does that mean my readers are smarter than the average internet user?

Absolutely! When you see a company like Apple in the top 5 PC vendors each quarter and knowing that they get most of their business from machines costing over $1000, with an average selling nearly double that of other vendors, and an 92% dominance of that $1000+ market and growing in a recession then even MS can see a problem arising.

Its more than just Apple taking its small share. Its Apple taking the most profitable share which seems saturated and will force them to move into some cheaper machines which will gain them even more marketshare and grab the next highest profit area in PCs. If Apple grabs too much of this then the cheap $400 notebooks and $300 desktops that others produce will become even more of an issue in markets like the US. This really only affects MS in the long run, but that is a stone you dont want to get rolling but is it too late already?



Of course it has. The fact that an item costs money will turn away some people. I love the side-mouth talking that CEOs do. Is there a class for telling the truth but not the whole truth?

Shut up, sit down! Told you not to be stupid you moron, Steve Ballmer. I have Windows XP at work, because I have to use a PC. At home, I use a Power Book that runs Snow Leopard. Guess which one I prefer, Steve Ballmer? Not your crashing software

Power Books are PPC based, how have you managed to get Snow Leopard to run?

No, MS is one of the most paranoid companies in the world about losing their position. Hence all those unfair/anti-competitive practices in the 90s when they were the unchallenged top dog.

They don't want to be the next IBM...which is why they've pushed into search (lost), free email (lost), console (partial win), zune, winmo, etc.

They may enter a segment late but they go in whole hog to make sure they don't completely miss the boat. Heck, Bing may be a far cry from Google but they have a presence and Bing is pretty decent.

Whatever you think of MS, the corporate culture is not one of complacency.

There are some great advantages of having PCs at work.

It takes ages to boot up, connect to the network, load all of the security software and system tray tools, so I can have a nice coffee, chat to my colleagues and have a pleasant 30 mins start to the day.

Then, it works really slowly, with all of that security software so I don't have to work too hard. My manager understands when I don't achieve everything he wanted me to because he has a PC as well, and knows how slow they are.

And when it crashes or freezes, like it does about 2 or 3 times a day, I have more breaks!

I hope my company doesn't do an assessment of how much money it would save switching to Mac!!!!

That cant happen. For Mac OS X to have 25% marketshare it would mean they would have about the same market share as HP does now worldwide. They is based on units sold, not profit. How can Apple compete with a $400 notebook or a $300 Acer netbook and still make a profit with their business model? It just cant happen.

Its okay that Windows has a dominate marketshare in the OS. With the internet becoming more OS agnostic every day this isnt a problem and its good to have an OS out there that caters to the stagnant needs of companies and offers to license their OS to other vendors. Even if Mac OS X had a 49% marketshare to a 50% marketshare of Windows this would be a problem because that would mean that 1 out of every 2 PCs sold in the world is a Mac. When you look that sale price, this just isnt possible. They already dominate the market segments they are in and take 33¢ of every $1 for every PC sold in the US. That is ⅓ of gross profit with only a 10% marketshare by units.

While I agree with your last sentence, and the bit about Photoshop, I don't agree at all with the larger point.

I use Linux at work (mostly because that's what our servers run and it's just simpler to use the same OS and my other choice was Windows, which just isn't nearly as stable) and if I were asked to describe the GUI (Gnome) in one word, that word would be "crude". As great as Linux is for servers, its GUI is simply (and I suspect always will be) years behind Mac or Windows, in appearance and functionality.

I also have to work with Windows from time to time and it's a completely different experience from working on a Mac. Of course there are the obvious differences that are so often pointed out, but there are also very subtle differences that have a major impact on the user experience. For example, the mouse drivers on Mac OS give a much more natural and precise feel than those on Windows, and the way text selection works in various controls is far superior on the Mac. If I sat down to list all these little things that add up to a very large difference, I'm sure the number would run to hundreds, but the basic theme is that Apple pays far more attention to small details than Microsoft does.

While they may all be similar in a very superficial way, it is absolutely not the case that, "There really isn't that much difference."

EDIT: And I forgot to even raise the stability issue. My uptime on Mac OS is basically the period between system updates. I don't think very many Windows users can claim that.

Ballmer is a rounding error.

That's great to hear. As another member pointed out I too regret not having switched earlier. I regret it a lot.

Never going to happen. Apple not putting flash on the iphone is retribution to Microsoft for bundling Flash in IE back in the mid 90s to kill Quicktime.

Payback's a bitch!

Balmer has become the post turtle of the computer industry.

"When you're driving down a country road and you see a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle. You know he didn't get up there by himself and he can only see in the direction he has been turned. He doesn't belong there; he can't get anything done while he's up there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down."

"iPhone seizure" just about sums it up, all right.

We all know that Steve Ballmer chats out of his ass. He has just makes crap up on the fly, without any baring on reality. Remember what he said about the iPhone. The fact is if Ballmer said it then it's probally bull. I think he is trying to replicate Job's RDF, but can't get it to extent beyond his own skull! I don't think people like being shouted at by a big sweaty ape man.