Ballmer Speaks
Thinking about the Windows Live announcement, there were some pretty harsh comments from analysts and from other sources around the Web. By contrast, Apple Computer usually gets this overwhelmingly positive response to almost anything it does–ditto for Google. Does that make you angry at times? How can you fix that?
Ballmer: There’s sort of the good news and the bad news. The good news is, the expectations are higher for us–frankly, I think–than for anyone else. These people think a lot of us, and it’s hard to always meet those demands. And we’re the big guy. We were the little guy for a while, we had a 10-year run where we were the darling.
Apple, because they kind of went though the valley of the shadow of death and have emerged, they are the darling again, even though they have been around for a while. And Google is still in that early phase. I know we’re doing good work. As long as we are doing good work and innovative work and exciting work, the customers are going to look at that, and they are not going to start and end with the analyst reports. They’ll start and end with the actual products we deliver.
Ballmer: Here’s why Microsoft is different | Tech News on ZDNet
Hmmm, I always thought everyone had high expectations of Apple products, even higher than MSFT products. Maybe Apple announcements are well received because of the fact that they actually meet expectations most of the time.