Steve Ballmer at D8: Failures, Criticism

We talked about center of attraction of D8, a day ago: Steve Jobs talking Flash, Future of PCs, Google TV, Android, and he couldn’t get it wrong. However, the other Steve (Ballmer) is almost always wrong. Lets start from the iPod, then iPhone and now iPad and Android OS. Its no longer a shock to hear some baseless talks from Steve:

On the phone, Android’s a real competitor. On the larger-screen devices, who knows. I don’t know that these Android-based things will matter. But I don’t know that they won’t either…I don’t really understand why Google has to have two different operating systems…Chrome? It’s like two, two, two operating systems — but they’re not in one! You want to know about Chrome, talk to them. So why do two? Why not focus on one? Having two OSes is confusing. You need coherence.

See who is talking about Coherence, The company that has nearly 18 different variations of its operating systems. Google might be wrong, who knows, so far we haven’t seen them going wrong Big time. Of course Wave and Buzz were like most unpopular apps of all times, but they still have innovation underneath.

Steve on Tablets

Responding to Steve Job’s comments Tuesday night that tablets like the iPad will replace personal computers, Ballmer said more and more people will be using PCs in the years to come, but that PCs are going to keep changing, with new form factors, as well as touch screens and onscreen keyboards.

Nothing people are doing on a PC is going to get less relevant, declared Ballmer, though some things will move to alternative devices. But many people will prefer a general purpose device to a lot of individual devices. He said people will continue to want general-purpose devices (such as PCs) as well as devices they can carry in their pockets. But devices like the new tablets really are “personal computers,” just in new form factors.

On tablets, Ballmer said there will be more of them running Windows with existing applications and some additions. “We have a lot of work to do,” he admitted. There will be a lot of competition around that, but Microsoft and its partners will drive innovation with both Windows and probably Windows Phone.

Its hard to not to stress that our hardware industry is innovating around Android: from cars to set-top boxes to televisions, Android is taking over.

Microsoft needs to face it, Google and apple have literally kicked them out of mobile business. Not just phones, Apple’s new category Tablets is one place where Microsoft haven’t even started (and will not till early 2011). And believe it or not, Tablet (especiallyiPad-like) devices are the futures of Personal computing.

Just as Linux took away growth opportunities from Sun Microsystems in the server arena, the Android OS (a Linux variant) will prove to be Microsoft’s Windows 7 for tablets.

Adding to that, Ray Ozzie, the Chief Software Architect at Microsoft said:

On the Android vs. Chrome issue…Android is a bet on the past; Chrome is a bet on the future. When you install an app you’re targeting a device. When you use Chrome, you’re looking at a cloud-based future.

Calling chrome a thing of future makes sense, but I heard this for the first time “Android is the thing of the past”. The future is all about ease of use new Personal computers will bring. The underlying computer OS details would be things for geeks and abstract to normal users as modern mobile OS change the way we  interact with computers.

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