How Microsoft Talks To Microsoft

From a letter from Monkey Boy Ballmer to the troops:

• Apple: In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones—providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.

“Narrow but complete”? (the emphasis is mine). Last time I checked, there were browsers, mail apps, calendar apps, text processors, word processors, development tools, iTunes, chat applications, RSS readers, blogging editors, you name it! Oh, and a little set of applications called Microsoft Office.

Is that really the best they can come up with? “Narrow”? Translation: we have no idea how they’re doing what they’re doing and it’s killing us.

Here’s what they say about themselves: while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Translation: legacy stuff is killing us, and all that it’s worth is a single bullet-point, but then again, everyone knows that the more bullet-points you can attach to a product, the better! Hang on a minute……naaaah.

Either way, the future is killing Microsoft.