steve ballmer - News, Features, and Slideshows

As we start the New Year, let’s look ahead at some of the coming troubles and concerns of 2015.

The years have not been kind to Apple's critics. Here are fifteen laughable predictions that show how Apple has been going out of business since 1984.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has broken another tie with the company, stepping down from the company's board of directors effective immediately.

It's not surprising that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer abruptly gave up his board seat some six months after leaving the top job, and the move should help cement the regime and strategy of his successor Satya Nadella, according to several industry observers.

Now that he's the bonafide owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers, Steve Ballmer today announced that he was formally stepping down from his role as a Microsoft board member.

Politics collided with the world of technology this year as stories about U.S. government spying stirred angst both among the country's citizens and foreign governments, and the flawed HeathCare.gov site got American health-care reform off to a rocky start. Meanwhile, the post-PC era put aging tech giants under pressure to reinvent themselves. Here in no particular order are IDG News Service's picks for the top 10 tech stories of the year.

Steve Ballmer isn't necessarily a bad CEO. After all, Microsoft's on strong financial footing. But Ballmer made enough bad product decisions - Zune, Kin, Vista and perhaps Surface - to suggest that Microsoft employees, swayed by a forced-ranking employee rating system, told him what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear. If that culture doesn't change, Ballmer's replacement will fare even worse than he did.

Microsoft observers knew CEO Steve Ballmer was due to step down soon, but announcing his impending retirement weeks after an executive reorganization seems odd. With that in mind, CIO.com contributor Jonathan Hassell examines the triumphs and missteps of Ballmer's 13-year tenure in Microsoft's corner office.

Some of the most memorable IT-related quotes were uttered in courtrooms this year, which involved a steady stream of legal challenges about intellectual property. In no particular order, these are some of the comments that stuck with us as 2012 winds to a close.

The big news this week out of Redmondland was CEO Steve Ballmer's Cloud Manifesto at the University of Washington. Big Steve was explicit in his remarks: Microsoft is betting its future on cloud computing.