Bob Evans in Information Week asks:
What was the last Microsoft product you couldn’t wait to get your hands on, that would make a huge impact on your enterprise?
Uh, let me think. It used to be that companies feared Microsoft. No more. What about Apple?
I think a lot of companies fear Apple, and they fear it not because of its financial might (though it is vast), nor because of its brilliant suite of products (though it is intimidating), nor because of its marketing (though it is outstanding).
That’s the set up. Here’s the money quote:
No, I think lots of companies inside and outside the tech business fear Apple because it is the ultimate disrupter and the crusher of the status quo. It is the blazing, roadkill-making thing in the night those companies fear they will never see coming, either through the windshield or in the rearview mirror.
They fear the magic of Steve Jobs and Apple. They fear Jobs’ cunning and daring, his audacious and relentless refusal to play by the rules that trap so many other companies in the killing box of predictability, his willingness to blast head-on into so-called untouchables like digital-rights management, and his steadfast contempt for the average, the good-enough, the expected.
What of Microsoft?
What happened? How did Steve Jobs and Apple slip so smoothly into the slick and indomitable Bugs Bunny while Microsoft let itself become the tongue-tied and bumbling Elmer Fudd whose aggression seems maxed out in merely asking where oh where has that wacky wabbit gone?
The Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd analogy is sadly appropriate.
I hope Steve Ballmer figures out a way to get Microsoft out of its Elmer Fudd stage because the tech business is overloaded with Elmer Fudds. What we need is more of what Apple embodies, and of what Microsoft used to be, and what Google shows flashes of: we need more Bugs Bunnies, and a lot fewer Elmer Fudds.
Steve Ballmer is Elmer Fudd.