No one questions CEO Steve Ballmer's drive or intentions - but is his devotion to the company and its Windows business hurting its ability to innovate?
By Gary Rivlin, contributor
It seemed a little like love when a blogger named The Paperboy got his hands on a secret device being developed inside Microsoft under the code name Courier. With its icon-rich user interface and multitouch, stylus-friendly screens, Courier represented "an astonishing take on the tablet," gushed Paperboy's post on Gizmodo in the fall of 2009, around the time techies were buzzing about Apple's forthcoming tablet. "Maybe," Paperboy wrote, "we've all been dreaming about the wrong device."
The Microsoft (MSFT) team working on Courier was equally jazzed. "We had a breakout product that had the potential to really delight the user," says Rebecca Norlander, a star programmer inside Microsoft who quit last June after 19 years with the company. Just as important, Courier held the promise of catapulting Microsoft into mobile devices, a lucrative field that had eluded Microsoft for 15 years -- and where rivals Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) had made significant inroads.
So when Robbie Bach, who led the company's entertainment and devices division at the time, presented his idea to CEO Steve Ballmer and Microsoft's senior leadership, he expected enthusiasm and additional funding for the project. There was just one problem: The Courier prototype borrowed from Windows, Microsoft's vaunted computer operating systems, but had an operating system all its own. (That's what Apple did with its iPhone and iPad -- it built a new operating platform based on its existing Mac OS X.)
Bach learned a hard lesson about the power and might of Windows within Microsoft. Not only would Bach not receive the extra funding he sought, said Ballmer, who personally delivered the blow, but there would be no Courier because it was unnecessary. The best of Courier, where appropriate, would be folded into the next version of Windows, Windows 8, due at the end of 2011 or in 2012 -- or maybe even Windows 9. Several months after its death, Bach announced his retirement. (He wouldn't comment for this story.) More
Why would Symantec's CEO suggest that Macs are just as vulnerable as Windows PCs?
Source: CNNMoney
Maybe to sell more anti-viral software.
That's the only explanation I can give for Enrique Salem's performance in a video posted on CNNMoney Thursday entitled "Macs are no safer than PCs." (Video below the fold.)
Fortune's Adam Lashinsky asked Symantec's (SYMC) CEO several different ways whether a Mac was as likely to get attacked by malware MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 17, 2011 2:40 PM ET
Generic PC users are happier than they were, but still not as happy as Apple's customers
Source: CNNMoney
The chart above, posted by my colleague David Goldman at CNNMoney early Tuesday, says it all.
The release of Microsoft (MSFT) Windows 7 helped undo some of the damage done by Vista, as measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index's 16th annual survey of computer users. But Apple (AAPL) remains in the lead MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Sep 21, 2010 6:58 AM ET
Apple's antenna woes have descended to the level of late night comedy
Source: CBS TV
It's hard to say which is more insulting, a top Microsoft (MSFT) executive comparing the iPhone 4 to Windows Vista or David Letterman using Apple's (AAPL) new phone as the launching pad for one of his Top 10 schticks.
But you can decide for yourself which is funnier.
Here's the Microsoft joke, delivered by COO Kevin Turner in MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 14, 2010 6:28 PM ET
Four ways Microsoft will make it increasingly difficult to stick with Windows XP
Enterprise installed base. Source: Forrester
When Microsoft (MSFT) launches Windows 7 next week, its biggest competitor -- especially in the multi-user enterprises that are its target market -- will not be Linux or Apple's (AAPL) Mac OS X, but Windows XP.
Eight years after its launch, and nearly three years after Microsoft began shipping Windows Vista (its putative successor), MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Oct 16, 2009 7:05 AM ET
After the Vista debacle, Microsoft changed the way it makes software. The result – Windows 7 – is winning raves. Can a new operating system (and a new attitude) help the company take on Google?
With Microsoft's founder and chairman, Bill Gates, trotting the globe in a quest to abolish diseases, his handpicked successor, CEO Steve Ballmer, has had most of a decade to move the company beyond its two MORE
Jeffrey M. O'Brien - Oct 13, 2009 6:00 AM ET
I got a thoughtful message last week from Jim Neal, a retired advertising and PR guy who owns a little Apple (AAPL) stock and spends a lot of time following its ups and downs.
Lately he's been trying to make sense of Microsoft's (MSFT) Laptop Hunters TV ads -- the ones where ordinary Americans are given a budget and a wad of cash and set loose in a computer store to MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 17, 2009 9:18 AM ET
UPDATE: Microsoft's own tests find IE8 faster than Firefox. See links to pdfs here. Independent reports treat the company's tests somewhat skeptically. See here and here.
- - -
I have not tested Internet Explorer 8 -- the new version of Microsoft's (MSFT) industry-leading Web browser, which was released here on Thursday. And since Microsoft has made it clear that it has no intention of writing a version for the Apple (AAPL) MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 19, 2009 11:47 AM ET
Twenty three were nominated. Nine were selected as finalists. But only one could take home top prize in the first-ever Fiasco Awards ceremony, held Thursday night in Barcelona, Spain.
And the winner was ...
Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Vista, garnering 5,222 of 6,043 votes (86%) registered via the Web. The successor to Windows XP was cited for being over-hyped, overly complex and riddled with incompatibilities.
A quirky, slightly tongue-in-cheek project of the Catalan Association MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 28, 2009 12:36 PM ET
Apple's (AAPL) slice of the Internet pie grew measurably in November as both the Mac and the iPhone hit record numbers in a Net Applications Web survey issued overnight Monday and updated Monday morning.
At the same time, Microsoft's (MSFT) Web presence crossed two psychological barriers, with Windows' Internet share dropping below 90% for the first time and Internet Explorer's market share retreating to less than 70%.
The Mac's share of Web MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 1, 2008 10:57 AM ETEvery morning, discover the companies, deals and trends in tech that are moving markets and making headlines. SUBSCRIBE
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| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.95 | -0.16 | -1.97% |
| Microsoft Corp | 31.27 | -0.17 | -0.54% |
| Ford Motor Co | 12.28 | -0.25 | -2.00% |
| General Electric Co | 19.39 | 0.17 | 0.88% |
| Citigroup Inc | 32.36 | -1.00 | -3.00% |
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| Dow | 12,938.67 | -27.02 | -0.21% |
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| S&P 500 | 1,357.66 | -4.55 | -0.33% |
| Treasuries | 2.00 | -0.04 | -1.96% |
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