Gates' support of Ballmer led to Microsoft ouster of Sinofsky - report - Page 2

The competition ate Microsoft's lunch years ago. 

It's already too late. 

Windows 8, Surface, and Microsoft's entire, years-late push into mobile has resulted in next to nothing. The whole effort is stillborn, and has been for some time now. 

The *real* problem aint Sinofsky. It's Ballmer. And the entire MS board. 

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Originally Posted by scotty321 

And in related news, Sinofsky and Forstall are forming a band.

The Forskys it's called.

lots of pressure at these places

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Originally Posted by digitalclips 

So many things make me wonder exactly what it is Ballmer has on Gates ...

in or on?

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Originally Posted by lkrupp 

 

Not on my system. Everything looks fine. The trouble is on your end my friend.

safari on MBP retina - what can i do?

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Originally Posted by mstone 

I'm getting a lot of ? also when the stories first appear. I'm pretty sure Tallest goes in and fixes them.Likely the difference is between the forum doctype and charset parameters and the home page doctype.

yup they are all gone now

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Originally Posted by pfisher 

Scoble of Scobilizer fame is saying his contacts at MS are shocked. He is shocked.

 

I get the impression that Sinofsky had his act together. This seems kind of sad.
 

Take Scoble in small doses and with a healthy level of skepticism. He's a bit of a drama queen.

If any of you watch the Men Who Made American I was thinking that Gates and Ballmer reminded me of Carnegie and Frick. Carnegie was the genius and caring business person and Frick who he hire was the Intimidating business bully, the only difference is Carnegie was smart enough to fire Frick before he lost all of Carnegie money.

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Originally Posted by drblank 

I think Gates is afraid of Ballmer.  Ballmer can be a little intimidating to someone like Bill.  Bill is a little passive and Ballmer is VERY aggressive.  Plus, I don't know if Sinofsky has the CEO attitude Microsoft wants.

 

I guess maybe Bill like Ballmer's Monkee dance routine. 

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Originally Posted by digitalclips 

So many things make me wonder exactly what it is Ballmer has on Gates ...

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Originally Posted by tribalogical 

I actually suspect it was Sinofsky's decision to leave, not an MS initiated 'shake up'.

 

It was probably triggered by the total train wreck and embarrassment of the "keynote" introducing the Surface, where it was apparent to me it had been rushed out the door unfinished, and probably against Sinofsky's wishes (and he has to take the credit (or blame) for that). Windows 8 is a schizophrenic mess, with most people I talk to saying that Metro is a worthless, confusing layer of distracting and pointless eye-candy… Ballmer's sudden pressure to "consolidate everything" is causing no small amount of problems, I'm sure...

 

To be honest, I'd guess that it's Ballmer that is "hard to work with"... Not Sinofsky.

 

Someone else commented that Ballmer probably intimidates Gates, and I can easily imagine some truth to that as well. He's a very aggressive personality. And he can out double-speak ANYONE… who knows what he has that Gates "supports"… but it sure isn't the track record of the past 5 years or so. MS is slowly listing, and given its current trajectory, will be relegated to the irrelevant sidelines within a short couple of years...

 

Here's wishing both Sinofsky and Forstall all the best. They're both talented individuals who have contributed quite a lot to my modern "computing device" experience. Who knows, maybe they'll form a new company together. That'd be interesting! 

Why is this story identified as a "report"? It's a gently massaged rehash of work that came from All Things D. Just like many of the stories here are taken directly from other sources, give some lipstick and slapped on the front page.

Maybe more original reporting could be done here? Surely with the thousands upon thousands of visitors here daily some of them have some "insider" info?

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Originally Posted by igriv 

 

 

Whether or not MS's push into mobile will bear fruit, they have been a money machine for several decades, so no one has eaten their lunch.

 

You can't buy cachet. You can't buy taste.

But you sure as shit can zune your entire strategy. 

As per usual, MS stands back, takes a long hard look at things, and makes precisely the WRONG move!

They fired the wrong Steve, by miles.  Surely Gates knows better, and can see the nonstop trail of wreckage that Ballmer has left.

All in all this is great for Apple.  But it kinda takes the fun out of things when your competitors kill themselves.

Sinofsky's legacy will one of skipping around on stage telling us how freakin' GREAT the Surface is.

Say what you will about Sinofsky, he continued to tweet good things about Windows 8 until the news of departure was announced. Thereafter, he is still gracious.

Forstall too has not changed his tweeting style - nary a tweet still.
 

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Originally Posted by igriv 

 

Cruel (though fair).

 

No, it's just plain childish. It's getting hard to take anything said here seriously. They should insist on people being over the age of 10 (years).

philip

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Originally Posted by markLouis 

[...] Internet Explorer integrates really well with OneNote.
 

Having no idea what that is, I looked at Microsoft's site. Lots of FLASHING BANNERS! and LOUD HEADERS! and LINKS TO HOW OTHERS ARE USING ONENOTE! but NOT ONE WORD that answers my question: "What the hell is it? What does it DO?!"

That's the third time in the last month or two I've looked for information about a new software product, only to find that the developer assumes I already know what it is, what it does and why I want it. That also makes it the third time in the last month or two I've left my credit card in my wallet.

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Originally Posted by sippincider 

As per usual, MS stands back, takes a long hard look at things, and makes precisely the WRONG move!

 

They fired the wrong Steve, by miles.  Surely Gates knows better, and can see the nonstop trail of wreckage that Ballmer has left.

 

All in all this is great for Apple.  But it kinda takes the fun out of things when your competitors kill themselves.

I agree with you. However MS isn't so competent as to actually kill themselves.

I wish Ballmer a long life at the helm of Microsoft. It will give me years of entertainment as the company staggers and gropes around in their confused attempt to regain relevance in this new century with last century's thinking.

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Originally Posted by igriv 

 

Apparently, the MSFT board does not have problems with Ballmer. Probably because it knows that his job is very difficult. Their software runs 90% of the world's computers still, so they really can't make incompatible changes (which Apple makes all the time, even with their "pro" applications), and their Office suite is likewise ubiquitous. You want to develop new stuff (to keep up with the changes in the computing world) without killing your cash cow. Who else succeeded in this? IBM, maybe. A lot of companies have fallen by the wayside (when was the last time you heard of Novell)? and the fact that Ballmer has kept MS making money and also kept it somewhat relevant (think XBox) is a testament to a considerable measure of skill. Idiotic statements from monday morning quarterbacks notwithstanding. Could someone else do a better job? Perhaps, but we will never know. Could someone do a worse job. Certainly.

 

You may have missed the memo that the MSFT board recently gave Ballmer a cut in wages due to his sub-par performance. It may have been that action that emboldened Sinofsky to make a play for the CEO chair.

In a few months we will see if the techicolor-tiled Windows 8 is successful or whether there will be a general back-peddling from this visual nightmare. Ballmer has some work to do to keep the mother-ship afloat and he's pumping out the bilge too slowly. It took Ballmer SIX years to come up with a smart phone that still doesn't seem to be a success. Less time to come up with tablet that's a poor tablet and a poor laptop that requires a desk top to prop it up in front of a terrible keyboard... that is admittedly running beta OS. 

Originally Posted by igriv 
Apparently, you can't buy a clue, either, since your post makes no sense whatever.

It reads perfectly fine. With what are you confused?

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Originally Posted by v5v 

 

Having no idea what that is, I looked at Microsoft's site. Lots of FLASHING BANNERS! and LOUD HEADERS! and LINKS TO HOW OTHERS ARE USING ONENOTE! but NOT ONE WORD that answers my question: "What the hell is it? What does it DO?!"

 

That's the third time in the last month or two I've looked for information about a new software product, only to find that the developer assumes I already know what it is, what it does and why I want it. That also makes it the third time in the last month or two I've left my credit card in my wallet.

Yep, and I googled for Skydrive pricing plans and all the hits were to others talking about Skydrive. Well, the first return on Skydrive was an MS site link, but it was a Skydrive FAQ, but no pricing information. I couldn't find it anywhere. I gave up. Isn't that wonderful?

Originally Posted by igriv 
"You can't buy cachet"? Firstly, you can…

I'm almost positive he didn't mean definition 3.

So no, you can't buy it.

How does that make sense?

You've missed the point entirely. The above makes no sense.

You REALLY don't understand anything he's saying. How many Zunes are out there? What are the reviews like? How much money are they bringing Microsoft? Have they completely redefined an entire market down to the names used to describe products?

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Originally Posted by bobborries 

Sinofsky's end could be tied to the fact Windows 8 is not doing well, without a start menu it's difficult for MS users to begin they're work. They way Microsoft operates, I'm sure some scapegoat was sacrificed for Vista's failure as well.

I for one am tired of this easy meme.  I seldom use the Start Button on my Win Tower at all - 1. all the apps I use are in two other places in the Desktop.  2. the Desktop is exactly one press away in Win 8.  I'm more concerned about starting to lose access to convenient manual file management (something I've developed and depended on for decades) in Apple's OS's.

That said, I agree with the "schizophrenic mess" meme - that's partly the transitional aspect, partly the consumer/enterprise divide, and partly the Rev. 1.0 syndrome MS has always suffered from.  Service Pack 2 (and e.g., Surface 3) will work a fair amount of this out - and the Desktop will fade into the background for consumers over time - certainly by the next version - while the desktop will still run all the Enterprise spaghetti code inside of companies for years (decades?) to come.  That's Microsoft 101 for long-time watchers. 

Originally Posted by igriv 
You don't understand what I am saying…

No, you don't understand what he is saying, and I'm clarifying. You cannot give someone money for the purpose of obtaining taste or respect. It is physically impossible. That is what he is saying, and it's something with which you apparently disagree. 

As for his implementation of the verb "zune", it is designed as an umbrella term for when a product (or anything) fails as completely as the Microsoft Zune has. Similar to how the verb "xerox" is used for the act of photocopying on any brand machine.

I think what's killing the PC is Windows.. PC makers should unite and ditch window in favor of linux so software developers are forced to develop for linux.. and it shouldn't be a huge effort if they already run on Osx that is in itself just another flavor of linux.

And what is killing microsoft? I guess that has nothing to do with Sinofsky and a lot to do with BALDmer. I still hope MS goes chapter 11 some day.

It's time to bring back John Hodgman and Justin Long. They need to be there to show people how Windows 8 upgrading is causing problems. The PC could be schizophrenic and Mac could react to it trying to get it to choose a personality.

Windows integrating everything into one big software sharing pool could be a problem. If people don't like the OS then they won't want to get any of the other things related to it. It's one of those get it right or you'll lose everything kind of deals.

Apple is also going down this road. I know they'll do it better but they're starting to lose me. I really don't care one bit about social networking. I don't want my computer connected to some online company for the purpose of disseminating posts from every forum I visit or showing every blog I read.