What do Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Scott McNealy have in common? They’re lucky.

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

If you’ve ever wondered why it’s the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer, Scott McNealy and Eric Schmidt who are the successful ones who end up creating and running a hugely successful technology company and not you then I have excellent news – it’s not your fault. In fact, it’s an accident of birth.

I was reminded of this while browsing through Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink and generally considered to be a very clever bloke) as part of my research, such that it was, for next month’s Prolog – that is, the editor’s column in PC Pro. (more…)

What’s next on Microsoft’s kill list?

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

So Microsoft continues to kill off the backwater products in its vast product set. The latest to go is MSN Encarta. According to some reports, Encarta has a truly microscopic share of the marketplace, at least compared to the big monster known as Wikipedia.

What else has gone? OneCare, the really not bad antivirus engine, has been axed to be replaced by a free thing called Morrow. The entire Flight Simulator team has gone, as has staff in the Equipt division. (more…)

Ballmer vs Jobs

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

I went to see Steve Ballmer speak in London yesterday. For anybody who’s not had the pleasure, here’s a few simple steps to aid you in recreating the experience. Pick up your chair, pop it in the car and drive to the airport, then sit yourself behind the engine of a Boeing 747 and wait for takeoff. When it blasts you through air traffic control, you’ve pretty much had the experience of Steve Ballmer in full flow.

 He’s a force of nature. He stalks the stage like some slightly crazed but bizarrely literate bear stalking the bars of its cage. He barks his way through his speech, stops, heads off on tangents, U-turns, growls, snarls and flicks insults at rivals with the lethal precision of a ninja throwing shurikens. Take this from yesterday…

“Google has great search, but not much else. They don’t have much for enterprise, collaboration, email … They’re trying, but they’re not there yet.”

 When he bounded onto stage yesterday, he began speaking at a volume that caused every squirrel in a fifteen mile radius to immediately drop out of its tree dead. People in the audience were frozen in shock, as if a whale had just arrived on stage in a bowler hat and started singing showtunes. And halfway through this carnage, it dawned on me. I was being entertained. Contrary to popular perception, Ballmer is a charasmatic man, who is very quick and very funny. 

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The yolk of shame: A Ballmer game

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

The first time I watched the video of Steve Ballmer being egged in Hungary, I must admit I was disgusted. I sat open-jawed in amazement, completely outraged at what I’d just witnessed. The egg thrower had missed. Missed! He was so close he was practically sat in Ballmer’s lap, and yet somehow he had conspired to heft his egg dismally wide of the – not inconsiderably sized – mark. One can only assume he was blinded by a stray beam of light flashing off Ballmer’s shiny head, but even so… the shame.

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Stop picking on Steve Ballmer

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

I like Steve Ballmer. In fact, I struggle to understand how you can’t.

There’s something unscripted about him that’s uniquely entertaining. Watching him answer a question from the public is like watching a HGV driver trying to reverse out of a cul-de-sac. It’s a twenty minute event, filled with aborted attempts, sudden U-turns and near misses. Nineteen minutes of utter, exasperating futility followed by one minute of triumph when he eventually stumbles upon the way out. And here’s the thing – the more of it I watch, the more I find myself rooting for him. It’s endearing, and all the more so after being subjected to a number of smooth talking PR gurus who’ve perfected the art of speaking without saying anything at all.

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