The latest CEO berk: Netgear’s Patrick Lo. According to Smarthouse, he invited all of six journos to what appears to be a sad little rant about Apple and Microsoft.

In case you’re wondering, Lo:

• had no answers why Apple was more successful than Negear (and so he can’t really have thought about it all that much);
• said Apple’s ‘closed model’ only works because Apple “owns the market” for things like MP3 players;
• claimed Jobs versus Flash is all about ego;
• whined that “Steve Jobs doesn’t give me a minute,” to relay his concerns about Apple’s business practices. (Gosh, I wonder why.)

Still, the Smarthouse article reports that Lo’s criticism of Microsoft was rather more brief, saying “Microsoft is over—game over—from my point of view”. I’m sure Ballmer and co. will agree, with Microsoft’s tiny $6.66 billion Q1 profit versus Netgear’s most recently revealed quarter: $13.1 million. Still, I’m sure that was a blip and I look forward to Netgear’s February 8 announcement where it’s overtaken Microsoft.

As you may have heard, the Metropolitan police once again used a truly proportional response to deal with some tax protestors, hospitalising three with CS spray (Guardian) while they were protesting peacefully in Boots. Clearly, the staff were frightened for their lives, so much so that they subsequently gave the rampaging, highly violent protestors free treatment.

Still, it’s not only the Metropolitan police who covered themselves in glory sauce—the Boots spokesperson who provided a statement regarding the reasoning behind the company’s Swiss tax registration came up with an absolute gem:

In the longer term we believe it will better reflect the increasingly international nature of our wider group

Yes, Boots, that well-known international powerhouse that isn’t, say, a meandering British brand with a few outlets in other countries.

Not content with having dug a deep enough hole, the spokesperson continued:

If we had registered in Switzerland purely for tax reasons there are many other countries that we could have considered.

Well, that makes it OK then.

Smart move by Microsoft, saying it’s considering offering Office on the Mac App Store (All Things Digital). Priced right, it could be a massive success. But it also shows that one of the missing majors realises that the Mac App Store is going to be it for Mac software in the not too distant. It’ll be interesting to see how (if?) Adobe responds.

A nice piece from MacRumors, which digs up a 1985 interview with Steve Jobs, including this gem of a quote:

My philosophy is that everything starts with a great product. So, you know, I obviously believed in listening to customers, but customers can’t tell you about the next breakthrough that’s going to happen next year that’s going to change the whole industry. So you have to listen very carefully. But then you have to go and sort of stow away—you have to go hide away with people that really understand the technology, but also really care about the customers, and dream up this next breakthrough.

This is a problem with many industries, not least the majority of the tech world. Most companies provide customers with what they say they want; good companies provided customers with what they actually need, even when they didn’t realise they needed it.

Paul Thurrott:

There are some parallels to draw between […] Cook’s taking over day-to-day operations at Apple […] and Steve Ballmer’s ascension at Microsoft. And not to ruin the surprise, but this may be bad news for Apple. The simplest way to explain this is to simply provide the closing quote in the [NY Times] article: “He will not be the visionary, but that’s O.K. because there are other talented people around him.” Sure. That’s what they said about Ballmer too. Just a thought.

John Gruber:

There are some parallels: an operations executive succeeding a visionary product-oriented founder. But, I’d say Cook-as-Ballmer is pretty much the worst case scenario for Apple.

The warnings signs with Ballmer have been there for years. He’s been out of touch for a long time. Remember when he laughed at the iPhone? Said it had “no chance”? Let’s not worry about Tim Cook until he starts saying dumb things.

In addition to that, I’m pretty sure Tim Cook’s never leapt about the stage like a mental person. He also led Apple through the previous period where Jobs was away from the action, and hasn’t put a foot wrong when he’s been under the spotlight at Apple events or on earnings calls.

Even in the most recent earnings call, Cook differentiated himself from Ballmer in dismissing the opposition. Ballmer got caught by claiming Apple’s product had no chance, yet it went on to be a massive success. Cook’s dismissal of Android tablets is based on facts rather than guesswork. On Honeycomb tablets (i.e. the first Android tablets with an OS actually designed for tablets rather than smartphones), he states:

There’s nothing shipping yet, so I don’t know. They lack performance specs, they lack prices, they lack timing. Today, they’re vapour. We’ll assess them as they come out. However, we’re not sitting still…

There’s a big difference there from “no chance”.