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TIL that Ballmer built their enterprise division from scratch.

Figures. It was a highly profitable division that nobody could figure out what it did or how.

He also saved Xbox from death [0]. More specifically the RROD (red ring of death) which afflicted most xbox360 consoles back in the day. I for one replaced my console three times before learning how to adjust the DVD drive's potentiometer after an insanely long disassembly process. Oh the good ole' days.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/07/hear-how-steve-ballme...

Interesting because he also tried to kill Xbox internally before it was an initiative.

Steve Jobs tried to kill the Macintosh before he took over the division building it and became its champion. Sometimes an exec doesn't see the value of something, until they do. It's the nature of working and leading in a corporation, when you're just one human with limited visibility into what's going on.

What they were building under Raskin, before Steve took over the team, was nothing like what the Mac became.

It was text only, no mouse or GUI, and used some weird automatic mode switching UI that Raskin tinkered with for decades after but never really went anywhere.

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