If Windows 8 Fails to Impress, Ballmer Could Be Out | Hacker News Reader

If Windows 8 Fails to Impress, Ballmer Could Be Out

news.softpedia.com

9 pointsmtgx11 comments

Wow, this claim is basically fabricated. The content of this article is sourced from an NYT post (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/window_pain_for_ballme...), where the claims that Balmer may be fired are being speculated by "Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi", who says:

> The success of Microsoft’s mobile strategy doesn’t hinge only on this quarter’s sales. But if the company can’t boost results into next year, Ballmer would become vulnerable, Milanesi said.

> “If Windows 8 were to fail, Ballmer would be questioned,” she said.

So this isn't even a rumor, it's some analyst making speculations and then being rebranded as a rumor by a 2-bit news outlet.

A lot of people want Steve Balmer to leave, of those, a subset seem to think that Steve Balmer is the reason that Microsoft isn't competitive with Apple or Google at the present time. A subset of those, have blogs and/or are reporters and they construct stories to support their belief structure.

Softpedia is not exactly known for being accurate or reputable.

Whether Windows 8 fails badly or mildly succeeds, I think Microsoft could benefit largely from a fresh perspective. They need someone who's thinking about the future, not someone who is trying to recreate the success from their past. They lost a few strategic battles, and the game has changed. Web is huge, open source systems are becoming more widely adopted, they don't own a monopoly any more.

In my opinion With windows 8 they saw a split in the market. Consumers are becoming mobile, and producers are migrating to laptops. Rather then creating 2 perfect operating systems for both they decided to create a zipper to merge them back together. It reeks of a regressive perspective.

Microsoft still employs an army of talented engineers, and they have a successful platform. I'm a .NET developer. I'm proud of working on Windows. But I can't see their future, and I suspect neither can they.

>Rather then creating 2 perfect operating systems for both they decided to create a zipper to merge them back together.

I think that's the right approach in general, though Windows 8 may not be the right implementation. The reality is that you can no longer neatly sub-divide market segments. We're exiting the era where we can point to a device and categorize them as a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. There is overlap between the phone and tablet categories and even more overlap between the tablet and laptop categories - and things will get more and more confusing as manufacturers experiment with designs. The upcoming Surface Pro is a great example. Is it a laptop, or an iPad-like tablet? Well, it's neither and both.

What scares me the most was that, as recent as .Net version 4, .Net was considered the future of software development for Windows environments. This appears to no longer be the case and the future of .Net still feel very much in question.

It's failed to impress -

The travesty that is Windows Server 2012 is /bad/ just really really bad. I like some things they did with it (No gui - admin by powershell? awesome!)

But Windows 8 as a desktop user experience and "Metro" or whatever they are calling it now is nearly unusable. There will always, always be people that embrace and enjoy new technology and new interfaces but they haven't broken the Skip one buy one philosophy yet.

What Microsoft needs is a fallback option. Same issue as Ubuntu/Unity debacle.

Here is what Microsoft needs to do:

1) Bring back old start menu (as an option).

2) Go straight to desktop (as an option).

The problem is that users expect no learning curve.

3) Improve the desktop experience instead of abandoning it.

Microsoft really needs to make a split between Business/Professional and Home.

The Home version with the touch Metro-esque interface and social network integration makes a lot of sense.

This simultaneously seems completely inappropriate in a professional environment. It shouldn't even be a part of Professional, or if it is, then as an add-on after the fact.

Microsoft is famous for making one-size-fits-all solutions to problems that aren't so simple, and this is one of those cases.

I'm not sure about that, but Ballmer should leave regardless. Microsoft did OK in the 2000s, but largely played catch-up to Apple and Google and now lags in categories it wants to lead. Some fresh leadership could do Microsoft a world of good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com