[sf-lug] For John S. What is happening inside Microsoft...

[Bobbie Sellers]

At a recent meeting John Strazzarino asked a question about that ugly 
company and this is where
I got the information to reply to him.
It was originally a post on my Team Amiga Mailing List.

Analyzing one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the 
lost decade of Microsoft—two-time George Polk Award winner (and V.F.’s 
newest contributing editor) Kurt Eichenwald traces the “astonishingly 
foolish management decisions” at the company that “could serve as a 
business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on 
dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails 
between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an 
unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its 
current chief executive, Steve Ballmer, in the August issue. Today, a 
single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of 
Microsoft’s wares combined.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer 



I know this is a Linux mailing list but I think keeping up with the big 
ugly company
is a healthy thing to do. By the way on the new Windows 8 they have made 
using
the ugly blocky interface mandatory rather than letting it be bypassed 
by the user.
<http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-said-to-block-ability-to-boot-straight-to-desktop-in-windows-8-7000002219/ 
 >


Reading up on the specs such as they are for the Surface I learned that 
they have the regular
model with multicore ARM. This means that secure boot cannot be 
bypassed. That stricture on
ARM appliances using Microsoft was already announced.

The Surface Pro comes with much more RAM and a 4-core i5 processor so I 
guess it might
be more susceptible to alternative FOSS operating systems. I have to 
wonder what sort of
battery life that might afford. But so far no specs for the display or 
the battery life on any model.

What they are showing about the Surface might as well be computer 
generated images.

Bobbie Sellers