Steve Ballmer calls Apple's Mac growth a "rounding error"

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  • Reply 201 of 272
    phalanxphalanx Posts: 109member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by newbee View Post


    BOTTOM LINE

    The new 15-inch MacBook Pro is faster, runs longer on a charge, doubles the memory capacity, and adds an SD card slot. It also has a gorgeous wide-gamut display and a lower price. In short, the quintessential commercial notebook is now even better.

    Quote from Tom Yager, @infoworld .com



    Don't try to sell features. I bought a laptop 1 year ago with gorgeous 16 inch screen (that is wider than 15 inch), multi-memory card slot, runs longer than any Macbook on a single charge, 250GB hard drive, has fingerprint login, for less than half ($730) the price of Macbook pro.
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  • Reply 202 of 272
    newbeenewbee Posts: 2,055member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by phalanx View Post


    Don't try to sell features. I bought a laptop 1 year ago with gorgeous 16 inch screen (that is wider than 15 inch), multi-memory card slot, runs longer than any Macbook on a single charge, 250GB hard drive, has fingerprint login, for less than half ($730) the price of Macbook pro.





    But still, unfortunately, runs ONLY windows, unlike the mac (any 1 year old model), that will run both windows or mac.
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  • Reply 203 of 272
    mariomario Posts: 349member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by phalanx View Post


    I can't hang with your PhD in "pure math". I only worked on the several Flight Simulations for NASA (Shuttle, Space Station), Swedish Air Force (JAS 39), and US Air Force (F15/E, F16). We did a little math on those. I'm sure nothing a complicated as your "pure math".



    Good, as they say rocket science is not rocket science. You are still quite stupid and your lack of understanding of market and deluded opinions make you sound more like a paid Microsoft shill working for minimum wage posting shill messages on Apple news boards, who can't even afford to buy a real computer. You really sound pathetic.



    And no engineer or even a programmer I know would be surprised by the term pure math (as opposed to applied math) enough to quote it. That puts in the high school drop out category. Check it out, a math department near you has a degree program in "pure math".
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  • Reply 204 of 272
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by desarc View Post


    i can't wait for the Apple ad where "Mac" hands people thirty bucks and sends them into best buy [and a microsoft store] to fine an OS upgrade. then they go to the apple store and get snow leopard for 29 bucks.



    If that occurs, one can expect Ballmer to merely spin around and spout out of the opposite side of his mouth, "You get what you pay for!"
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  • Reply 205 of 272
    is the McCain campaign from the US Presidential Elections last year.



    Balmer says "Apple has nicer hardware." Damning with faint praise, the same way the McCain campaign called President Obama a "Celebrity". Don't respond, denigrate. Both got a little traction, but didn't matter in in the end. It's the stab-in-the-dark against a more agile, better equipped enemy, Apple in this case.
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  • Reply 206 of 272
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by phalanx View Post


    Don't try to sell features. I bought a laptop 1 year ago with gorgeous 16 inch screen (that is wider than 15 inch), multi-memory card slot, runs longer than any Macbook on a single charge, 250GB hard drive, has fingerprint login, for less than half ($730) the price of Macbook pro.



    I doubt the screen quality beats any Macbook Pro. One inch is negligible for screen size. Multi-memory card slot? I barely see a need for the SD slot on the Macbooks! What's so hard about plugging in your device that uses these cards? Also, I doubt your PC came standard with a battery life that lasts longer than the 15 inch's 7 hour battery life. 15" Pros also come with at least 250GB hard drives. Finger print log in? Once again, who cares? It's not necessary what so ever. I doubt more than 1% of the Mac community would ever need something like that.



    HOWEVER! Can your PC run OSX? I don't think so. Macs can run XP, Vista, and soon, Windows 7, though I wouldn't ever. Odds are you'll spend almost half of the price difference in Virus and spyware protection during the lifespan of your computer. Can you bring your computer to the manufacturer's store to get it fixed? Probably not. When you send it out, how long will that take to fix? Probably over a month. Apple, turn around time on average is anywhere between 2 days to a week. When you call up tech support when your computer fails, who will you get? Probably someone in the Middle East. Not with Apple. I am 100% satisfied with my Macbook Pro 15". I paid 2000$ because I knew I was getting a solid product with a quality company to back it up.



    And the whole rounding error is BULL. Market share IS rising, and faster than ever!
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  • Reply 207 of 272
    brucepbrucep Posts: 2,823member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by phalanx View Post


    Don't try to sell features. I bought a laptop 1 year ago with gorgeous 16 inch screen (that is wider than 15 inch), multi-memory card slot, runs longer than any Macbook on a single charge, 250GB hard drive, has fingerprint login, for less than half ($730) the price of Macbook pro.



    bullshit

    if surfing the net is your thing or light buisness accounting you did well

    I can't see your exact specs and i guess you won;t show exactly what you bought

    but a 13 in MBP uni bpdy crushes your bloatware piece of crap

    crushes in every way

    goodluck sleeping with gates
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  • Reply 208 of 272
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,759member
    Windows users who come to a Mac fan site in order to offer dissenting opinions are ultmately . . . TROLLS.



    Simple as that.



    Every time there's good news about Apple and lousy about MS (get used to that combo, people) they come flying in to feed us the same lame garbage MS has been trying to feed the industry for the past few years:



    "We really don't suck that much, honest!"







    They'll go away eventually. Just have to roll with it.
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  • Reply 209 of 272
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,759member
    "I can see the Apple logos versus the PC logos. So we have more work to do, more work to do. Our share is lower in this audience than the average audience. But don't hide it. I've already counted them. I have been doing that since we started talking."



    Another stupid line from ballmer.



    The Microsoft motto:



    "We have more work to do."
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  • Reply 210 of 272
    ogmanogman Posts: 5member
    He really is just an irritating 5 year old with too much money, isn't he?
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  • Reply 211 of 272
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mario View Post


    Good, as they say rocket science is not rocket science. You are still quite stupid and your lack of understanding of market and deluded opinions make you sound more like a paid Microsoft shill working for minimum wage posting shill messages on Apple news boards, who can't even afford to buy a real computer. You really sound pathetic.



    And no engineer or even a programmer I know would be surprised by the term pure math (as opposed to applied math) enough to quote it. That puts in the high school drop out category. Check it out, a math department near you has a degree program in "pure math".



    is Phalanx really the best Microsoft can do? Or is he just a troll not working for MS? I'm tired of the spec comparison PC v Mac. Specs don't matter when it takes forever to start up. Programs are sluggish or just crash. Hard resetting my ms laptops were just part of my workday (a necessary evil). Then I had to remember to run avg anti virus, spybot search and destroy, cleanup, windows defender every night. Oh, there's also that wonderful msconfig where I had to continually disable certain programs from startup (despite the fact that they had already been disabled).



    Oh, then there's the awesome experience I had when windows genuine advantage warned me that I had counterfeit windows software when I bought the damn thing at best buy. Then vista came and that was the proverbial straw. I don't care if they tell me thy can sell me a pc with 10 terabytes of Ram and 1 million gazillionabytes of hard disk space that runs a 20 core. 1000.8 gigahertz processor. I'll take my poor unibody 13inch. It just works and that's all I care about.
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  • Reply 212 of 272
    trollswatter (great handle, by the way) said "For laptop brand reliability between 2004 and 2008, Consumer Reports rates Lenovo(IBM), Compaq, and Toshiba at 18. Dell, Gateway, and Apple at 20. HP at 21."



    How do they arrive at these ratings? I'd like to see the number of hours a machine is used for before failure.
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  • Reply 213 of 272
    kotatsukotatsu Posts: 1,010member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dballecer View Post


    I'll take my poor unibody 13inch. It just works and that's all I care about.



    Funny, I have a PC and a Mac and *both* just work. Maybe you're doing something wrong?
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  • Reply 214 of 272
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kotatsu View Post


    Funny, I have a PC and a Mac and *both* just work. Maybe you're doing something wrong?



    This is what I've always thought. You hear about how PCs just go spectacularly wrong in this forum, and how the user has paid MILLIONS for virus software, yet my Windows PC 'just works' and I have a free antivirus installed. It's either ignorance, or trolling.
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  • Reply 215 of 272
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by al_bundy View Post


    http://www.dailytech.com/Another+Maj...ticle15832.htm



    add one more security issue



    Ho hum, let's see him do this on my system.
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  • Reply 216 of 272
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by phalanx View Post


    I can't hang with your PhD in "pure math". I only worked on the several Flight Simulations for NASA (Shuttle, Space Station), Swedish Air Force (JAS 39), and US Air Force (F15/E, F16). We did a little math on those. I'm sure nothing a complicated as your "pure math".



    Out of interest did you use Dell or HP laptops to do it?



    Do they run on XP or Vista?
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  • Reply 217 of 272
    macgregormacgregor Posts: 1,434member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by John.B View Post


    Exactly, what kills me is that the analysts don't question these inconsistencies. Of course, most analysts stopped fulfilling their duties a long time ago, instead it seems most are inclined just "do their jobs".



    Both analysts and journalists seem to be caught in the "game" where they are just looking for easy quotes and simplistic explanations. Maybe it is a cyclical problem with the two industries or maybe its about having their own corporate overlords, but critical thinking and investigative journalism are not valued anymore.
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  • Reply 218 of 272
    macgregormacgregor Posts: 1,434member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post


    "I can see the Apple logos versus the PC logos. So we have more work to do, more work to do. Our share is lower in this audience than the average audience. But don't hide it. I've already counted them. I have been doing that since we started talking."



    Classic symptoms of an hyper-observant paranoid who has to be so entrenched in his own perspective to be able to speak the PR drivel without going nuts.
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  • Reply 219 of 272
    hiimamachiimamac Posts: 584member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kresh View Post


    If it is just a rounding error, why spend real money to advertise against Apple?



    While I doubt win 7 will blow us away. It is fast on older hardware and who's to say they could not buy sinus acid division, acid/Vegas and come out with a free great word processor and iLife app combined with something that works with it in tangent with mobile me? They do have great touch surface hardware. All they need us something like iLife and a free word and excel program with iChat ti boot and the game changes. Probably won't happen, but if I were in charge if r&d, this is what I would ficus on while making the zine a portable mobile steaming media device.



    Peace.
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  • Reply 220 of 272
    piotpiot Posts: 1,346member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacGregor View Post


    Both analysts and journalists seem to be caught in the "game" where they are just looking for easy quotes and simplistic explanations. Maybe it is a cyclical problem with the two industries or maybe its about having their own corporate overlords, but critical thinking and investigative journalism are not valued anymore.



    Totally agree.



    In the case of Steve Balmer's "rounding error" comments, there seems to be one obvious fact that none of the pundits have brought up. The rounding errors started back in 2004!



    After a long decline in worldwide market share the Mac bottomed out in 2003. Since then it has gained share every year, including 2009 (so far). That's nearly six years of compound rounding errors.



    At the same event, other Microsoft execs were also continuing the FUD with their 'Apple tax" mantra. Coupled with spending over $300 million on advertising against Apple, this rounding error seems to be taking up an awful lot of Microsoft's time, energy and money.
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