3 ms·
He helped make the Microsoft Surface line. At the time it had some trouble starting out but now Microsoft has a portfolio of Surface products that can actually
by zitterbewegung 7y ago
He helped make the Microsoft Surface line. At the time it had some trouble starting out but now Microsoft has a portfolio of Surface products that can actually go head to head with Apple products while Google's hardware strategy just keeps on being more and more confusing and weird.
- tehlike 7y agoBallmers main success was enterprise contracts with big corps.
- chrisweekly 7y agoPlus "Developers, developers, developers", right? Hilarious antics aside, doesn't he get some credit for pointing in that direction? FFWD a few years to VSC, Github, MS as arguably world's leading contrib to OSS... I came of professional age being pretty anti-M$ (and w good reason), but things do, sometimes, eventually, change.
- nl 7y ago"Developers, developers, developers" was in 2000, around the same time Ballmer was saying "Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."[1] The context of the "Developers, developers, developers" thing was that MS was fighting against open source to try to attract developers to the Windows platform instead. Visual Studio Code, Github etc only came after Ballmer left. [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/24/top_10_steve_ballmer_quotes_from_microsoft_history/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/24/top_10_steve_ballme...
- chrisweekly 7y agoThanks @nl, quite right -- and I do recall, having been there -- but my point was not that Ballmer had all the right ideas(!), rather that his emphasis on developers led eventually to the org (under Satya) embracing OSS which IMHO represents a logical (tho far from inevitable) progression or evolution.
- m0zg 7y agoAlso: Azure and Office 365. Both started by Ballmer.