Steve Ballmer Just Lies
Here’s the MS honcho on Surface RT sales:
When asked by the Journal’s Shira Ovide how the public received Windows 8 and the Surface tablet after their first few days of availability, Ballmer is quoted as having said, “Numerically there’s not really much that’s interesting to report.”
Ballmer continued, “If you were to call the retailers, they would say, ‘Hey, off to a very good start.’ We’re out of stock a lot of places on touch [screen] machines. I was at a dinner in San Francisco last week, and I brought out this beautiful, very thin [touch-screen] laptop, and they said, ‘Wow, I never thought touch could be valuable and important in a laptop.’ “
Yeah, because that’s how people talk to other people at dinner parties.
Actually, I guess they do if they’re hacky marketing douchenozzles trying out new print ad copy on the boss.
…they do if they’re hacky marketing douchenozzles…
Bingo.
Haven’t been to the bay area lately, have you?
“I brought out this beautiful, very thin [touch-screen] laptop”. There is your first big problem, Mr. Ballmer.
Tablets are not laptops. Two completely different animals. Tablets are portable consumption devices that can do work in a pinch. They are not thin, under-powered laptops w/ a touch screen that also look cool.
Ballmer was probably out at dinner celebrating the final demise of Nokia at his hands. Billions in value destroyed with a word. He feasted on the lamentations of Finnish women.
Window is up to version 8? Why wasn’t I informed?
I must be spending too much time with Macs and Linux machines that actually work.
Windows 7 works (and quite nicely). Windows 8 is Microsoft’s way of correcting that problem…
I keep hearing that Windows 8 is Microsoft’s attempt to reclaim everything they had w/ Windows Vista.
When you get down into the guts of the thing, OSX is just a variation of Unix.
I’m willing to believe they’re out of stock – because stock wasn’t very high.
That said, I think I actually saw a Surface in the wild, in use.
Didn’t look real close, but it seemed to function.
(Contra Mr. Hoge et. al., Windows has “actually worked” since XP, and Windows 7 is an excellent OS*.
Windows 8 is basically Windows 7 SP2, with a Metro UI layer you can turn off with fair ease.
Given that Windows 8 finally includes ISO mounting in the core OS, it’s an improvement.)
* Full disclosure: I run OSX by preference for general use, Windows for games and work, Linux as a server solution. So I have no dog in the “zomg best OS!!!” game.
I also had no problems at all with Vista, as I did not try to run it with antiquated hardware that didn’t have drivers for the new vastly-more-secure driver model it introduced.)