OneAndOneIs2

I daresay most geeks will have seen reports on Ballmer's apparent attack on the iPhone:

There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.

Naturally, a lot of people have attacked him as "Not getting it" - Hell, Apple themselves have said that their target is one percent of the global market. Apple would be happy with ONE, and Ballmer says they'll fail and "only" get two or three. Good work, monkey boy...

(He also HUGELY overstates the amount of market share MS has on phones - 60-70%? In your DREAMS!)

But that's not, actually, what shows that Ballmer, and Microsoft, still just don't get it. Even the claim that Vista won't be the last Windows OS doesn't show that.

No, the quote you really need to look at is a bit further down:

We're in the Windows Mobile business. We wouldn't define our phone experience just by music. A phone is really a general purpose device.

Gahhhhhh! What is WRONG with you?? Why can't you get rid of this terrible mindset??

The world does not need, or want, yet more different-shaped, hard-to-use boxes running Windows. Did the Zune not make that clear? Marketed as an MP3 player that ALSO browsed the Web, did social networking, had high-def video playback, and virtually anything else Windows can do.

How has it done in competition with the totally-music-oriented iPod? Most of the world hasn't even heard of a Zune. Because it's a crappy, hard-to-use general-purpose box running Windows. Not even close to competing with an iPod.

Why can't they understand this? Why is their sole method of competing to cram as many features as possible onto a product?

They get occasional flashes that make you think "At last, they get it!" - the original Xbox. The focus on making Office easier to use instead of just cramming in yet more features. News articles devoted to explaining how MS is showing signs of an awareness that it needs to change to survive.

And then they let Ballmer out of his cage, and you get products like Vista - "Hardware-hungry XP SP3 with eye candy" marketed as a revolutionary new OS. The world is divided into people who don't know anything about it, and people who think it's a joke. If you look really, really hard, you might find a tiny number of people who know all about it and think it's good. (But you shouldn't let them write a book about it)

There are people who still believe the world is flat, too. I'm still waiting to hear about one single feature Vista has that makes it worth the cost of an upgrade. Given that Dell's reaction to Vista was to restart selling XP and invest in Linux support, I'm not alone in that view.

Maybe if the "Vista plus one" that Ballmer mentions throws out the "Cram in more features" mindset, Microsoft will be saved - He promises it'll be out in just a few years, so they've clearly written Vista off as a big flop already.

When KDE 4 comes out, it'll be running on a library that has lower system requirements than its predecessor. You won't need to buy new hardware because what you've already got will work BETTER with the new version. Contrast that with Vista.

When I installed the latest Ubuntu, the only thing I could point out as a "new feature" was the automated installation of codecs & drivers when I needed them. I genuinely can't tell you anything else that's changed, and yet I'm preferring my clapped-out laptop over my lovingly hand-made desktop right now, purely because it's 7.04 vs. 6.06. Both look and act the same in every noticeable way, but Feisty is quicker and easier in dozens of barely-noticeable ways. And still has the same hardware requirements.

FOSS projects take OUT complexity and as a result give you better performance for the same resources. Microsoft can't get their heads around this idea, and instead insist on you giving them ever-more resources so they can shove in ever-more complexity in the names of "user-friendly" and "general purpose"

If Ballmer & co. can't shake off this mindset (or get replaced with people who can), with Linux and Apple and Sun and ODF and all the rest snapping at their heels, they're in real trouble. And the world just wouldn't be the same if the geeks didn't have their "Great Satan" to complain about as the cause of their every problem.