4 ms·

I think he believes it. Ballmer has said iPods and Google aren't allowed in his house (http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/no-ipod-google-in-ballmers-house-2006

I think he believes it. Ballmer has said iPods and Google aren't allowed in his house (http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/no-ipod-google-in-ballmers-house-20060331/ http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/no-ipod-google-in-ballmer...). He and his family all use Zune and Bing (by Ballmer's edict). So he's completely detached himself from reality. If anything this is the reason Ballmer has to go. He has Microsoft too ingrained into his thinking. So much so that he can't see its weaknesses anymore. Which means those weaknesses don't get addressed and things go from bad to worse.

raganwald 15y ago
Looping back to the point of the article, there is an important balancing act required where you must be able to see the potential success while still being cognizant of all the realities of what needs to be done to succeed. So believing that Zune will supplant iPod might not have been wrong, but ignoring iPod's strengths and Zune's weaknesses is definitely wrong.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
As a product guy, I would want my family to try the competition. My products should win because they are better, not by edict. You can't give an edict to the whole market!
- mirkules 15y ago
  As much as I agree with the ideology behind your statement, history has shown us that inferior products sometimes do win just because of better marketing.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    Marketing is very much a part of the whole product and is included in my comment. Only engineers think the product is just the bits (either 1's and 0's or plastic :).
  - roc 15y ago
    Do you have any examples handy? What I often find when people say this (particularly engineers) is that they're weighting solely on theoretical engineering superiority and under-valuing things like price, life-cycle use, and common user experience. I'm not saying you're suggesting this, I just always see things like "Betamax vs VHS" trotted out. Where the engineers spend undue time comparing visual quality specs and completely ignore things like the simple fact that Betamax tapes didn't hold enough video to record the types of things that consumers wanted to record. (movies, sports, etc)
    - jfoutz 15y ago
      Wine and diamonds are pretty obvious examples. It's a lot easier to find examples where things are all pretty much equal except marketing. Toothpaste, soap, all sorts of consumable household stuff where the only differences are color, perfume and marketing.
      - roc 15y ago
        Fair enough. Wine and Diamonds fit that bill. I was thinking electronics, but those make the argument pretty succinctly.
    - mirkules 15y ago
      Your comment forced me to think harder about what makes an "inferior" product. Yes, Betamax was the first example that came to mind. But, as you say, it was superior only to engineers since picture quality mattered most to them. In the same vein, Fahrenheit vs. Celsius, metric standards in general -- in my mind, it's so absurdly clear which one is "better." However, in the pro-Fahrenheit camp, there are lots of reasons (which are irrelevant to me) why people think F is better. PAL is (arguably?) better than NTSC. Linux is better than Windows. So, I should amend my original statement and say that there are lots of products which were superior in engineering terms but lost the battle on other grounds, whether it's user-friendliness, price, availability, installed user-base -- all of which I (incorrectly) grouped into the term "marketing" in my original post.
    - r00fus 15y ago
      The history of democratic politics is replete with such examples. The general view is that marketing entrenches information asymmetry.
Kylekramer 15y ago
It is that surprising that is what he says in an interview? When it comes to PR, "Ballmer Says No iPods, Google in Household" is better than "Ballmer Family Uses iPods, Google". I recall Melinda Gates saying the same thing after being berated in NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24fob-q4-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24fob-q4-t.html) It is Ballmer's/Gates' job to convince the world to use Microsoft products, not Microsoft's job to convince them. In public sphere, they are of course going to present a unified front. But in reality, I would be shocked if he actually never used a competitor's product.

raganwald 15y ago

Looping back to the point of the article, there is an important balancing act required where you must be able to see the potential success while still being cognizant of all the realities of what needs to be done to succeed. So believing that Zune will supplant iPod might not have been wrong, but ignoring iPod's strengths and Zune's weaknesses is definitely wrong.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

As a product guy, I would want my family to try the competition. My products should win because they are better, not by edict. You can't give an edict to the whole market!

mirkules 15y ago
As much as I agree with the ideology behind your statement, history has shown us that inferior products sometimes do win just because of better marketing.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  Marketing is very much a part of the whole product and is included in my comment. Only engineers think the product is just the bits (either 1's and 0's or plastic :).
- roc 15y ago
  Do you have any examples handy? What I often find when people say this (particularly engineers) is that they're weighting solely on theoretical engineering superiority and under-valuing things like price, life-cycle use, and common user experience. I'm not saying you're suggesting this, I just always see things like "Betamax vs VHS" trotted out. Where the engineers spend undue time comparing visual quality specs and completely ignore things like the simple fact that Betamax tapes didn't hold enough video to record the types of things that consumers wanted to record. (movies, sports, etc)
  - jfoutz 15y ago
    Wine and diamonds are pretty obvious examples. It's a lot easier to find examples where things are all pretty much equal except marketing. Toothpaste, soap, all sorts of consumable household stuff where the only differences are color, perfume and marketing.
    - roc 15y ago
      Fair enough. Wine and Diamonds fit that bill. I was thinking electronics, but those make the argument pretty succinctly.
  - mirkules 15y ago
    Your comment forced me to think harder about what makes an "inferior" product. Yes, Betamax was the first example that came to mind. But, as you say, it was superior only to engineers since picture quality mattered most to them. In the same vein, Fahrenheit vs. Celsius, metric standards in general -- in my mind, it's so absurdly clear which one is "better." However, in the pro-Fahrenheit camp, there are lots of reasons (which are irrelevant to me) why people think F is better. PAL is (arguably?) better than NTSC. Linux is better than Windows. So, I should amend my original statement and say that there are lots of products which were superior in engineering terms but lost the battle on other grounds, whether it's user-friendliness, price, availability, installed user-base -- all of which I (incorrectly) grouped into the term "marketing" in my original post.
  - r00fus 15y ago
    The history of democratic politics is replete with such examples. The general view is that marketing entrenches information asymmetry.

Kylekramer 15y ago

It is that surprising that is what he says in an interview? When it comes to PR, "Ballmer Says No iPods, Google in Household" is better than "Ballmer Family Uses iPods, Google". I recall Melinda Gates saying the same thing after being berated in NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24fob-q4-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24fob-q4-t.html) It is Ballmer's/Gates' job to convince the world to use Microsoft products, not Microsoft's job to convince them. In public sphere, they are of course going to present a unified front. But in reality, I would be shocked if he actually never used a competitor's product.