Microsoft retracts Ballmer's Windows 8 in 2012 comments - Page 2

That's awesome, and so true. It's hard to describe Ballmer in words, but 'Homer Simpson' pretty much sums it up.

There was the Duke of Balmer;
He had ten thousand men!

He led them up the hill;
And led them down, again.

And when they're up, they're up!
And when they're down, they're down!

And when they're only half-way up...
They're all fucked up!

Or weight.

Sorry, but Bill was no genius either.

Glad to see MS reign in their Balmer boob

His vision of a tablet running a desktop OS didn't really hit the mark either.

all of Ballmer's announcements are weighty.

Re W8 = 'wait'

Does that mean that Windows 10 will be nicknamed "Why Oh Why!" and 11 will be made by Nintendo?

Holy Nostradamus! This numerology s**t works.

Ha! Microsoft would absorb RIM, and start to follow the RIM leadership model... MS would then have THREE mumbling, halfwit CEO's running the ship.

Kinda reminds me of an old Queen tune..... "Another one bites the dust".........

The biggest mystery to me about Windows 8 is it's purported platform-agnosticness without full compatibility support. The whole point of having Windows running on ARM, Tegra, Texas Instruments, etc. (besides bragging rights) is to be able to switch to the most appropriate hardware for your needs while maintaining the same workflow. The fact that Microsoft has stated there will be no compatibility with X86-written Windows software is absolutely ludicrous. Can someone explain that logic to me?

No. That would never happen. Such a thing would violate the laws of nature and rip a hole in this reality.

Ballmer and Gates are so used to spreading FUD about Apple and other competitors that FUD comes too naturally now. Lying about their own products is just one little baby step beyond spreading FUD about others.

Ballmer thinks that pre-announcing Windows 8 is somehow beneficial. Maybe because it sounds like Microsoft is actually making progress. (Microsoft won't do any significant work on 8 until after Lion is released and they have something concrete to copy.) Maybe because it will force Microsoft's software managers to pull in their schedules and get it done sooner. (Deadly mistake since the lazy-thinker's way to shorten a software schedule is to cut back on beta testing.)

In fact, pre-announcing Windows 8 can only hurt. If Ballmer convinces corporate IT that 8 is vastly better than 7 and that it's coming soon, corporate IT will postpone purchasing 8 until it's available. Which might be as long as two years from now. Dramatically lowered sales of 7 in the meantime. That's one reason why Microsoft wants to retract Ballmer's 2012 release claim.

Microsoft desperately wants to avoid speeding up the release of 8. We've all seen what happens when Microsoft tries to rush something out the door before it's finished. Vista was only half-finished, despite its 5.5 year development period. It took so long that they finally just gave up and launched it anyway. (And let's not forget the ultimate half-assed Microsoft product: KIN.)

A 2013 release for Windows 8 is better because that would give Microsoft another year to copy Mac OS X Lion's new features. Another year to integrate Skype into 8. Another year for Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer (if they survive iPad killing off netbooks), and all the pee cee makers to put Skype-cams into all their plastic e-waste-ready pee cees.

Ballmer may or may not remember the "Osborne effect." Pre-announcing a new version of a product can be extremely costly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

Windows on ARM would require "universal binaries" (or something equivalent for the PC world) to work correctly between the platforms, I'd expect. That would mean that anything that wanted to run on these devices would need to recompile everything anyway - for Windows 8 specifically.

The applications that require "backwards compatibility" in the OS won't be in the current development cycle anyway. They'd need to be recompiled anyway to actually run on the ARM CPU. While they're doing that, they may as well get rid of all the backwards compatibility issues.

Its a major headache to recreate all that backwards compatibility for ARM again. If they can minimize that, they will. And in this case, it means that the software developers just need to do the work rather than returning to a 10 year old program and just "carbon copying" over onto ARM.

For the record, I think the reason they dropped backwards compatibility is far simpler:
1. They didn't NEED it because of the reason above.
2. The problem with Windows right now IS the 100-year-old crud they still have to support. ARM couldn't take the slowdowns and still receive "brilliant results" - its a way of saying "wow have a look at our fast implementation", and hiding how they did it: get rid of backwards compatibility.

The assumption is the Lion will be released this summer. That may be correct but summer doesn't end until September 23rd. I'm sure Apple will stretch the release date out as far as they can since this is a major feature release. We'll get an idea in June. I won't be surprised to see it delayed even though it is in Beta Release 3.

The "Windows 8" name is a no-brainer. In the Chinese culture 8 is a lucky number so they would be missing an opportunity to please such a large market with the naming of their next Windows product. Please don't give it another name like Vista.

Isn't the new term "going postal?"

Wow! That's a few millennia from now! And you think Win7 will still be around in 20211?

I predict GM at WWDC with public release within 30 days (likely 2 weeks).

Reading to the grandkids again, I see.

I thought it was closer to 8 or 9 years in its "longhorn" incarnation. I may be wrong, though.


Plus time to copy whatever follows Lion.

Adding Skype-cams to the already overloaded box made me laugh! Right alongside the floppy drive and the blu-ray drive. Not to mention the VGA, SCSI, and serial ports in the rear.

Apple will not make a video iPod. Nobody wants to watch video on an iPod.

Apple should not allow third parties to create native iPhone applications. Nobody cares about native iPhone applications. Web apps are really SWEET.

Apple will not add copy and paste to the iPhone. Nobody cares about copy and paste.

Apple will not add multitasking to the iPhone. Nobody cares about multitasking.

Instead of just dismissing features, he could have just said something like "we're looking into it".

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Tod, Ha!

My dear departed Mother taught me many limericks (when I was the grandkids age) -- though not that particular * one!

Things like:

Two Irishmen, two Irishmen digging in a ditch...


It's part of growing up!

...and look how I turned out...


* That final line to the "Good Old Duke Of York" came about as a result of a Dale Carnegie course in effective communications. All the managers, marketing reps, and system engineers in the Las Vegas IBM office took the course -- two nights a week.

After one session where the instructor had each of us story-tell the "Duke Of York" limerick -- we all retired to the local pub. After a few rounds and joking about the lecture -- the last line kinda' wrote itself!


... one - run; two - zoo; three - tree; four - door.....

Haggar and Macrulez. The question was could you imagine Apple retracting a statement from Steve Jobs. This doesn't call for a list of quotes from Jobs designed to throw the competition off but one where he announces a product which his own team have to deny. The former is beneficial to the company, the latter detrimental.

Windows 8? W-8 a minute!

I don't think you're going to see ARM replacements for standard desktop/notebook Windows.

ARM is for phone/tablet/tv using a tailored UI/UX. x86 is for the desktop with full backwards compatibility (as well as phone/tablet/tv if Intel get Atom sorted out).

.NET provides code portability between the different architectures and form factors.

I hope you're right. I'm sure it won't support my late 2007 Macbook but we'll see. My late 2010 iMac will be fine though.

Erm. I think you mean cavalry.

There's a fundamental difference between Steve Jobs' "denials" quoted above and Ballmer's "cat-out-of-the-bag" gaffes. In Jobs' case, his statements are carefully calculated to either downplay/divert attention away from products that are currently brewing, or equally likely, to increase speculation, anticipation of products that Apple is "not" making.

And then there's Steve Ballmer. Seriously, that man scares me.

Leading the cavalry charge up Mt. Calvery maybe?

hahaha... Perhaps.