If I were some powerful corporate exec, I’d be paying someone whose job it was to make sure something like this never happened, or if it happened it was at least never recorded.
I mean, even before the viral “Developers developers developers developers” chant he was a nasty, sweaty mess.
I dunno I kinda miss this version of Microsoft. They were still shitty and evil, but at least they were trying to be memorable and they were genuinely trying to sell you a computer to do whatever you wanted to do with it.
In the years that followed we started getting buggier, slower software, DRM, forced cloud migration, and AI scanning of everything on our machines and in our messages.
This dude specifically had a hate boner for linux because they got absolutely shredded in the server space and the only reason MSFT survived in the end user product line was because they were already an established monopoly capable of forcing and coercing OEMs to never to offer an alternative OS from the factory lol.
But yes, at least they had some actual marketing ideas and design talent and not an infinite stream of slop.
Although even Ballmer gifted us the crapshow that was windows 8 before he conveniently dipped.
Fuck you they were. They wanted to sell you a computer so that you’d install Office. They never wanted you to do whatever you wanted with it. They intentionally changed internal APIs to break third party software that they didn’t want people using. This is also the era where they were constantly spreading FUD about Linux, convincing people that merely using Linux meant you were legally liable for patent infringement, etc.
Truth. I had a friend who worked at MS (not in Redmond) back in the early 90s post-IPO when Ballmer was CEO, and when most of the people working there were temps so MS could avoid the legal repercussions of the toxic workplace culture they’d built (harassment lawsuits) and get around paying benefits or overtime, and even then Ballmer was the most personally repugnant trailer trash CEO imaginable. People put up with it because it was Microsoft and endless fountains of cash, but he was an even worse CEO than he was a human being, and that’s quite a low bar to limbo under but he managed.
If I were some powerful corporate exec, I’d be paying someone whose job it was to make sure something like this never happened, or if it happened it was at least never recorded.
I mean, even before the viral “Developers developers developers developers” chant he was a nasty, sweaty mess.
I dunno I kinda miss this version of Microsoft. They were still shitty and evil, but at least they were trying to be memorable and they were genuinely trying to sell you a computer to do whatever you wanted to do with it.
In the years that followed we started getting buggier, slower software, DRM, forced cloud migration, and AI scanning of everything on our machines and in our messages.
Thus was happening at the same time they were being sued for (among other things) Embrace Extend Extinguish.
This dude specifically had a hate boner for linux because they got absolutely shredded in the server space and the only reason MSFT survived in the end user product line was because they were already an established monopoly capable of forcing and coercing OEMs to never to offer an alternative OS from the factory lol.
But yes, at least they had some actual marketing ideas and design talent and not an infinite stream of slop.
Although even Ballmer gifted us the crapshow that was windows 8 before he conveniently dipped.
Fuck you they were. They wanted to sell you a computer so that you’d install Office. They never wanted you to do whatever you wanted with it. They intentionally changed internal APIs to break third party software that they didn’t want people using. This is also the era where they were constantly spreading FUD about Linux, convincing people that merely using Linux meant you were legally liable for patent infringement, etc.
Truth. I had a friend who worked at MS (not in Redmond) back in the early 90s post-IPO when Ballmer was CEO, and when most of the people working there were temps so MS could avoid the legal repercussions of the toxic workplace culture they’d built (harassment lawsuits) and get around paying benefits or overtime, and even then Ballmer was the most personally repugnant trailer trash CEO imaginable. People put up with it because it was Microsoft and endless fountains of cash, but he was an even worse CEO than he was a human being, and that’s quite a low bar to limbo under but he managed.