That Steve Ballmer is one committed man

Steve Ballmer says some worrying things sometimes.

Aside from odd things such as “developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers” (what the …) when he’s actually speaking in sentences he can be quite alarming.

Take, for instance, his recent assertion that Microsoft should try to be more like Apple.

One presumes, for the sake of his shareholders, that this does not mean he intends to turn Microsoft’s vast resources to the task of pursuing a five percent share of the desktop operating systems market.

One also presumes that he doesn’t mean Microsoft would think of launching a portable music player and an online music store to compete with the iPod/iTunes model, because that would just be a stupidly quixotic mission and an all-round bad idea.
Ahem.

Ballmer expanded on his remarks by saying that Microsoft’s “commitment to choice often comes with compromises in the end-to-end user experience”.

It took me a little while to read any further because my sides were hurting and my eyes were full of tears from several solid minutes of uncontrollable laughter.

This is Microsoft we’re talking about. Microsoft, which has its own version of MPEG-4 that’s different to the version the rest of the industry uses.

Microsoft, which has the least standards-compliant web browser on the market, forcing web programmers to build pages that don’t work on other browsers.

This is Microsoft, which introduced a “Plays for Sure” certification for digital music players guaranteeing that they will work with its own digital rights management, and then doesn’t support that standard on its own Zune player, requiring users to buy music from the Zune Store – music from which doesn’t work on any other player.

This is Microsoft, which bought game developer Bungie just when it was about to release Halo – for Mac only – and then made Halo the headline game for Xbox, followed by Windows.

The Mac version (which was written first) trickled out a few years later. Years.

This is Microsoft, which has used the term “embrace and extend” to justify co-opting industry standards and turning them into proprietary technologies as long as it has existed.

This is Microsoft, which required intervention by the US Government before it would allow hardware manufacturers to install their own icons on the desktop of computers they sold.

Ask Netscape what it reckons about Microsoft’s “commitment to choice”. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. Because Microsoft forced Netscape out of the market until it was acquired by AOL.

Maybe ask AOL what it thinks about Microsoft’s “commitment to choice”. Then again, you may not get a straight answer, what with Microsoft currently looking to buy AOL from its current parent, Time Warner.

Microsoft’s commitment to choice? I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me while I fall about laughing some more.

Then again, there is Windows Vista.

Where some operating system vendors release only one version of their operating system, thus locking customers into that purchase, Microsoft has something like seven different versions of Vista, ranging from the cheap but basically useless Home basic right up to the full-featured and mega-powerful Ultimate edition that costs an arm, a leg and the blood of your first-born.

There are a range of options in between of course.

That’s choice all right.

And whoever came up with it ought to be committed.Matthew JC. Powell chose more wisely.

Share your choices on mjcp@mac.com

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