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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

(danluu.com)
371 points greggyb | 16 comments | 28 Oct 24 21:48 UTC | HN request time: 1.163s | source | bottom
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exabrial ◴[28 Oct 24 22:11 UTC] No.41976993[source]▶
No he wasn’t haha. The only thing he did was slide the company sideways via pre existing illegal monopoly. In fact, they lost most of their monopoly under his supervision . At no point did the quality of their products improve, and that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows.

If you’re running Windows for anything, it’s only a matter of when, not if.

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1. analog31 ◴[28 Oct 24 22:18 UTC] No.41977054[source]▶
I wonder if Windows is even their flagship app any more. I think people will give up Windows before they give up Excel. And they might not even notice a different OS, so long as it had the same file manager. In fact Excel is the last non-FOSS app that I still use, even if sporadically.
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2. dlachausse ◴[28 Oct 24 22:22 UTC] No.41977098[source]▶
In some ways Office is actually superior on macOS. The fact that it still has a menu bar being my favorite thing it does better.
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3. ipaddr ◴[28 Oct 24 22:22 UTC] No.41977102[source]▶
Give them LibreOffice - Calc and most won't care.
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4. harry8 ◴[28 Oct 24 22:26 UTC] No.41977145[source]▶
http://www.gnumeric.org

I still use it, it seems a little stagnant in development nowadays. No ssl on the website etc.

The free software distros really lost something going all in on open/libre office which is just not nearly as good as a replacement for excel. I think if it was still the free software goto, installed by default first choice etc there would be more development. The feature list and quality is impressive and has been for many years.

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5. xanderlewis ◴[28 Oct 24 22:30 UTC] No.41977197[source]▶
It used to have much funkier icons as well! Sadly not anymore.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_for_Mac_201...

6. analog31 ◴[28 Oct 24 22:30 UTC] No.41977198[source]▶
My mom is happy with LibreOffice. For myself, I try it every few years (usually when there's some big announcement) to see if it's improved. There's some kind of latency in the UI that makes it laborious, if not painful, to use. And recalculating a large spreadsheet, or reformatting a graph, takes an eon. I found that out when trying to graph data sets with thousands of rows. Now I use Python.

This may be a place where the major paid apps still have an advantage. I think that MS sweats the details of Office the way that Apple sweats the details of the iPhone, and it's laborious work that can only be done by hiring a huge army of programmers and paying them a lot.

7. analog31 ◴[28 Oct 24 22:31 UTC] No.41977206[source]▶
For better or worse, my last Excel use case involves a VB macro that I don't want to re-write, and printing to a Dymo label printer, for putting serial number labels in my product. For anything else, I now use Python.
8. analog31 ◴[28 Oct 24 22:32 UTC] No.41977212[source]▶
Indeed, MacOS was where I first experienced Excel with VB macros, which is when it came alive.
9. GuB-42 ◴[28 Oct 24 22:56 UTC] No.41977420[source]▶
Don't forget gaming. Gaming on Linux is possible but Windows still has the advantage in both software and hardware support.

I particularly like the video series from LinusTechTips where they try to use Linux as their daily driver because it is very telling. They manage to do stuff, but it isn't great. I find it interesting because it is done from the point of view of computer enthusiasts but not IT professionals or programmers. The kind who know about the command line, but are not very comfortable with it and would rather do without.

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10. Kuraj ◴[29 Oct 24 00:28 UTC] No.41978134[source]▶
I don't think calling gaming on linux "possible" gives it the justice it deserves, with the arrival of the Steam Deck and all the improvements Valve contributed to the upstream. The experience is practically _seamless_.

I agree though that linux _on desktop_ is pretty janky, or at least it always was for me, having tried daily driving numerous distros.

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11. p_l ◴[29 Oct 24 01:56 UTC] No.41978607[source]▶
Default UI configuration in LibreCalc is such that until recently it always resulted in enraged searching of the MS Office support status in Wine.

Funnily enough recently I found out the UI style switch and lo and behold, when you switch from default to emulating Excel 2007 ribbon, the critical "cell data type" button is front and center just like it was in every version of excel since 1997 that I have used.

12. Uvix ◴[29 Oct 24 02:39 UTC] No.41978825{3}[source]▶
It's only seamless if you buy everything through Steam. Third-party stores need not apply.
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13. stackskipton ◴[29 Oct 24 02:48 UTC] No.41978873[source]▶
Windows Desktop still feels very important to them. Windows Server on the other hand feels very "Fine, since you are willing to pay for it." Thud "Is there any features?" "More money and your welcome I'm even giving this to you."
14. 71bw ◴[29 Oct 24 10:06 UTC] No.41981884{3}[source]▶
>The experience is practically _seamless_.

IF you buy through Steam. IF you have an AMD GPU. IF by seamless you mean that regardless of the aforementioned BIG assumptions you still have to go and play with winetricks or whatever to get some stuff working and it can take you hours of tinkering.

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15. GuB-42 ◴[29 Oct 24 23:38 UTC] No.41990570{4}[source]▶
So, steamless is not seamless.
16. Kuraj ◴[30 Oct 24 10:06 UTC] No.41993371{4}[source]▶
Okay, that's fair enough. Though even if you have a game that you bought outside of Steam, you can add it as a non-Steam game to benefit from the compatibility layer and all the bells and whistles.