[Marlin Guy]

http://mashable.com/2012/07/10/microsofts-ballmer-war-on-apple/

But we are not going to let any piece of this [go uncontested to Apple]," Ballmer shouted. "Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.

They still don't get it, do they?
Everything new in the past ten years, with the exception of the x-box, has come from Apple.

Microsoft lacks agility and innovation. They spend their time trying to cover first base when Apple is rounding third.
There's nothing wrong with showing up late and taking a portion of a concept already proven by others, but don't do it and then carry on about what a leader you are. :nono:

 

[djlong]

They had a lead in smartphones and blew it.
They had a fantastic product that they called a "Home Server" and blew it (marketing super-fail).
They had "Surface" on a coffee table but failed tablets and could never "get" the idea that one belonged with the other.
They're killing Skype, slowly.

They mocked IBM years ago - and now have all the characteristics that IBM had when they were making fun of them.

 

[SayWhat?]

San Francisco City Government Won't Buy Apple Products,

 

[bobukcat]

They had a lead in smartphones and blew it.
They had a fantastic product that they called a "Home Server" and blew it (marketing super-fail).
They had "Surface" on a coffee table but failed tablets and could never "get" the idea that one belonged with the other.
They're killing Skype, slowly.

They mocked IBM years ago - and now have all the characteristics that IBM had when they were making fun of them.

Agreed, and their lack of direction is alienating their enterprise customers as well. Nearly 100% of the largest companies that make or move a physical product in this country (and probably close to that percentage in Europe) have a considerable investment in devices running their WinMo or CE software. Microsoft has failed to continue to innovate in that area and instead have left their customers with almost no reasonable way forward with MSFT. WP7 isn't suitable for those applications and the development environment is completely incompatible. Now it sounds like they are going to take a similar heavy-handed approach to Win8 but the market expects and is demanding more flexibility.

In the consumer market they've had to buy Nokia's allegiance to WP7 while using patent litigation to make money off of Android integrators because their product was so late to market and still lacks certain functionality.

 

[djlong]

When it was time to upgrade my WinMo 6.5-based Palm, I chose the HTC Touch Pro 2 for three reasons.

1) I could bring my Windows apps with me. (I even wrote a couple)
2) It was a world-phone (GSM and CDMA)
3) They said it would run the forthcoming WinMo 7.

Not only did Microsoft then renege on what would and wouldn't run Win 7, they scrapped upward compatibility (my apps were worthless) and then made Win 7 a dinosaur by announcing Win 8. Osbourne Effect anyone?