Is Bill Gates mulling a return to Microsoft throne? Bill Gates is mulling a return to Microsoft according to a well-placed source. The mole told Fortune that the tycoon may consider clasping the reins of the company he co-founded and replacing Steve Ballmer as CEO. The remarks came from "a prominent chief executive", according to the site. Gates left Microsoft to focus on …
In which case, phones, tablets, and the cloud from Microsoft are all straight out.
And Apple has never made a serious effort at "IT domination" unless you count the lackluster XServe line.
Which isn't to say that those are original ideas with Apple, just that it's success that counts, not who did it first, at least in business.
They just didn't make them shiny enough for people to think 'ooh, that's nice'. They didn't make them with the limited features and interface that allow a 'guy off the street' to think "ooh, I want one of those". Rather, they made them like PCs- fairly dull to look at and maybe not the most reliable things on the planet, but incredibly practical, expandable and easy (and cheap) to develop for.
You can actually take the voiceover from the new iPad advert and apply it to every version of Windows since about 1998. Which means every Microsoft tablet ever.
Crucially, though, they didn't make them low-power enough to be small and light enough to fit into a purse. They didn't bang on about it and say 'ooh, look at our revolutionary shiny thing'.
They were also years ahead of Apple with smartphones/PDAphones. And being able to play games. And in office productivity equipment. And in being an evil empire- though their main crime was being a Big Company during the grungy 1990s, and their main fault releasing equipment when they'd got it working, rather than when it was ready for general consumer use.
Unfortunately, MS have in recent years (since Ballamer took over, basically) lost the long-term vision that put them ahead of both the mainstream competition and the level that technology would sensibly sit at. And dropped the Quality Control ball pretty badly with Vista. Hopefully, with a rested Gates at the helm they will once again be able to push back boundaries (admittedly, they'll probably be steamrollering it over smaller businesses... but hey, I get Apple's latest gadgets 10 years before they're made so life's good!).
> Ballmer terminated ...
If he is to remain in the top post he has to remove all threats from underneath that he can. This is the only reason that Ballmer has survived, there is no viable replacement in the ranks, he has made sure of that.
Of course these actions have hurt the company, this is the 'Peter Principle' at work, followed by entrenchment.
The only possible threat is from above. Replacement by Gates is the only thing left.
lets hope he does, i mean, We had windows 7 which is very good and wp7 is good too but most of Microsofts efforts have been for nothing as its marketing sucks, this is something that could easily be fixed given the correct will and guidance, there has also been a lot of FUD under Balmars reign. Gates is no saint, he might not even be a grate designer but a simple fact remains, his not and woudnt be any worse than Balmar. It doesnt matter what side of the fence you sit on, Pro or anti MS, having someone good incharge is good for us all as another simple fact remains that MS desktop OS and even its IE has market share more than any other, having good software in the hands of the many is better for us all
to let Windows die, he let DOS die and now it is time for Windows. Not to say they stop making OSs, just no more Windows and make something new. Looking at Windows 8, maybe they could
call it Tiles instead of Windows. Drop everything that was Windows, that being USER, GDI, Explorer, CMD Console, Iexplore, Kernel, etc. and start fresh. And ship it with VM'd Windows XP tweaked for VM. Much the same as they VM'd DOS on Win9x.
And when making this OS, I would like one that doesn't have a stupid number of files. DIR /S from within my WINDOWS 7 directory and I get over 91 thousand files and 62 thousand directories. 62 thousand directories for 91 thousand files, who makes this crap? I remember Win95 early days, a handful of directories and could do a DIR on DLLs in SYSTEM folder and manage down a list of files looking for older dated files (fixing DLL hell). Modular is great, but this is ridiculous, we got gigabytes of RAM, why do we need a bunch of killobyte and megabyte files?
I would hope you're kidding and just trolling. Vista was an overhaul and look how much that pissed people off because manufacturers wanted to push new hardware rather than write new drivers for the old stuff. Sure Vista was painful but it was a necessary change and Windows 7 improved on it quite a lot. Dropping all the 'old' stuff would upset a vast amount of people and not just end users.
You say that DOS was run in a VM on Win 9x... I just can't believe that's meant seriously. Win 9x were shells that ran on top of DOS. They didn't need it quite as much as previous versions of Windows but it was still used a lot. That was one of the big changes with Vista, moving away from DOS.
I can't comment on the rest of your poorly informed post and what I wrote is based on what I know which may also be wrong (feel free to correct me people that know better) but it's a lot closer than what you posted to the truth!
Or, completely redesign Windows and bring it into the the virtual world. I would love to see a Windows come out with it's own version of Open Simulator and an actual way of moving the web into true virtual reality, like everyone ever dreamed it should be. Maybe even making the new Windows open source like Linux.
The image springs to mind of the ageing Chinese leader Deng Xaioping smiling and clapping to an audience of thousands. Ok, anything to see the back of Monkey Boy, but it's a truly damming enditement of Microsoft's current state that this could even be considered.
Hobson's Choice; they've only themselves to blame.
Yes, everybody did everything Apple did first.
Apple secret was making it into a product that people actually wanted.
They also have a single focus on what they want and the different parts support that ie. iPhone needs iTunes.
In MSFT different divisions protect their turf - which is why their tablet died, because it couldn't do exchange server, their cloud offering died because it cost MS-Office sales, flight simulator died because it threatened X-box
"Larry Page famously returned as CEOs after absences and pulled off marvellous recoveries"
Google was in need of/has had a recovery...? Really? To put Larry Page's return in the same terms as Steve Jobs is a nonsense. What's actually changed? A bunch of going-nowhere labs experiments got taken out back and shot, and... that's about it. Is there anything else that has even registered on the radar since Page became CEO again?
How has Google's trajectory changed in any significant way whatsoever?
That seems a rather strange formulation. Unless it is, allegedly, Ballmer gossiping about his own forthcoming defenestration it suggests that the person concerned belongs to another company than MS. Such a matter, if true, would be very hush-hush and known only to a very small inner circle, how would the senior officer of another company have heard about this? Unless of course it is the CEO of a major investor in MS who has been "sounded out" about such a move. The only thing that causes me to think that it *might* be true is that BG may have "rested" long enough to feel bored away from the "imperial throne" and such a move would, at this time, be unlikely to harm the company's share price. However, I have to say that the story smells of kite-flying by someone rather than the real deal.
Bill Gates's "visionary" ideas centered (center?) mostly around handwriting-driven tablet computers and home automation. Real Jetsons-style nonsense. The guy is an out-of-touch nerd and never had his finger on the pulse of the consumer. Anybody who thinks he can come back to Microsoft and make a positive difference is delusional.
... for the shareholders. They are getting pissed off with Balmer's lack of success. Getting Bill back at the top would temporarily help MS share values until he too failed to grow the brand.
When MS came to dominance it when word-processing, spreadsheets and databases where the killer apps. He brought the dominant products to DOS and assimilated them into office. He saw the existing situation and gained control. MS business plan is to be behind the curve and then buy it. It is how they started and all they have ever done since.
The thing is the world has changed Microsoft still has the same business model since Bill first set it up.
Force your software down the world's throat by deals with OEMs, strangle the consumer with your licensing.
Microsoft is the great dinosaur that seems stuck in the PC market it has always existed in no matter how much they try to branch into search or mobile.
People might not like Bill Gates, but at least he has an interest in technology and IT, I have never had that feeling from Ballmer, he comes across as a mediocre businessman.
Like him or not Bill Gates did drive Microsoft to produce products that compete, even if they don't have the usability and sleek design of Apple products, and he does take action eventually to correct mistakes when he realises he has made them.
From what I have read and the interviews I have seen I am not keen on him as a person but he would have the drive and business sense Ballmer seems to lack and as such would be the better choice to run Microsoft.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
