I read and listened to an interview from Steve Ballmer:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10301028-16.html
Ok we all can agree that Mac is quite expensive but its great looking and works well. He says windows is high quality low price but we all know that vista is low quality and medium price. When you pay for an enterprise linux solution (From the likes of Novell or Red Hat ..etc) you get what Ballmer mentions as “High Quality, Low Price”.
He says that the development of linux distros is chaotic. Linux is developed at a speed that it may seem chaotic but really its speed of development and innovation and this is because of its community development model. The Kernel is the best example of this quick but innovative development cycle.
He also mentioned that when windows 7 comes out it will have all this cool new hardware but he failed to mention a lot of this new stuff will work on linux eventually too. I can agree with the point that PCs get the best hardware and Apple are always a little behind but thats because they only are one company and Microsoft doesnt make hardware so they cant judge Apple in that regard.
He also said that because of IP reasons that linux is not free and I have not paid a thing for Ubuntu so in that respect he is dead wrong. Id like to also mention that maybe you dont have to pay for linux with money but if you like it try to contribute in any way you can.
Its funny that Ballmer started off with “Linux its all about linux, we have been competing with linux for a number of years”. So he see us as a competitor and that is great. He says that windows has a fixed design and that is what makes windows great but its quite the opposite, it will follow its own design and push it to the end even if its bad. Linux is evolution, if we see a flaw in a design we change it or replace it with something better. Free as in beer and freedom is a lot better than a “fixed design” and “low” (but not really) in cost.
I think this interview like all Ballmer interviews reveals how out of touch Microsoft is. He sees Windows as low cost but its not compared to Linux distros and Mac is expensive but you pay for the stability and the good software built in (although Macs have their flaws http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32210255/ns/technology_and_science-security/)
I actually I enjoyed listening to the interview and I think any publicity is good publicity so even though he is dead wrong on many levels he revealed one thing that was of use and that is that he sees linux as a threat.
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No, Ballmer is not saying this things about Linux and Mac because he thinks so. He says because it is his job to trash competition.
This is hard to parse. “The thing about Novell, Red Hat and the other distros you pay for what you get is what Ballmer thinks windows is and that is high quality low price. He says that the development of linux distros is chaotic and I think he doesnt get the point, linux is developed at such a speed that it may seem chaotic but really its speed of development and innovation.”
If I twist it around in my head and add a few commas and a few missing words, I can figure it out, but jeez!
Yawn.
I’m looking forward to the day when he takes the stage and no one notices. Roll tumbleweeds.
It’s interesting to see that MS seems to have understood they can’t play the ostrich anymore and pretend there are absolutely no competitors.
And actually, if there’s been so much marketing against Linux and Firefox lately, it’s indeed because they see us as a threat. That’s a good thing !
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What I understood was that his primary concern with Linux is that it’s difficult to develop an application for “Linux” because every Linux distribution is different. I guess that is valid to some extent, but right now Ubuntu is dominating the consumer Linux space. This means you can count the market share of Ubuntu alone as competition to Windows, and you’ll get a clearer image of where the two stand.
In Steve Jobs’ keynotes, you never hear him pounding on Windows or Linux for that matter. He simply presents Apples products in an enthusiastic way.
Balmer is an old school, aggressive and unrefined. He wants to own everything, without understanding what it is. He will be the one driving Microsoft into the ground.
But even in mentioning linux as a competitor is a good thing. Ballmer is an idiot, the fact that he is mentioning something means that he is thinking about it. He would make a crap poker player.
Whoops it made sense in my head ill add in a few commas.
Ok fixed I think, I generally just write in one big long ramble, then I delete anything that is repetitive, other than that I tend to miss. So it may be a little confusing I have to admit but if anyone points out a problem I fix it.
Well you could think of it that way in the enterprise desktop market Novell dominate and the server market is Red Hats, while ubuntu has been taken in by the home users. So I use a generic term linux because each linux distro has a different target.
Novell for enterprise desktop, yeah, but Red Hat? Red Hat’s all about servers.
Thanks Makenzie im having a blonde few days.