Joshua Topolsky: Let’s get into it, I know you have very limited time. Tell me about this new memo.

Satya Nadella: Yeah, so the context from a timing perspective is that we just finished our fiscal year … so I just wanted to mark this and take the opportunity to galvanize our employees around what it is that is core to us, and our soul and our culture-change agenda. And obviously nowadays when you’re talking to 100,000 employees, you do it in ways where it’s open to everybody, where you talk to customers, partners, as well as the press.

The thing that I tried to hone in on: “What is the core contribution that we as a company can make in a ‘mobile-first, cloud-first’ world?”

So that’s the core of the memo, and when I think about productivity for me, a good canonical example for us is what we are doing with Cortana. Think about what Cortana can do for you as a salesperson, walking out of a sales meeting. It knows your calendar so it knows which company and person you met, where you were because of the geofencing, it does your “CRM” work for you as opposed to just about getting you there in terms of your mapping information. So it’s about a much more broad view of what an intelligent agent that we can produce [is] that can reason over data, that’s personal, organizational, and [can] improve productivity.

At the end of the day, look, any strategy gets eaten for lunch if you don’t have a culture that’s also changing and is innovative in itself. In fact, I kind of say we’ve got to innovate on the innovation process, so we’ve introduced a lot of new functions that are more core, like design and data science, into the core of our engineering.

We also have taken out layers, we want to make sure that the least number of decision makers are involved anytime something needs to be decided on … and also question any dogma. This is not about, “Hey, a set of changes [at] one time,” but to be able to say, “Look, we’re going to be an organization that’s going to learn and change, and every employee should push.” And so that’s really the essence of what my message was.

Everything you just ran through sounds very enterprise focused. I’m not hearing a lot about consumers there. Is there a new Microsoft focus, a different Microsoft focus — and I’m talking the end user — are you moving focus more towards enterprise and away from the consumer?

I don’t think of the world as enterprise and consumer. I think of it as people. In fact, I call out the specific thing about dual-use, which is I think where we can be most unique. Look, there’s always going to be Pandora on our devices. But what is it that we can do with our operating systems, with our cloud, with our software, which is different and unique? We can make OneDrive, and OneDrive for Business, which I will use to share photographs and save photographs for my business documents. We can do a fantastic job of bringing those things together in support of you, the individual who’s spanning both personal life and work life. So to me, that’s what we are about.

But for the pure consumer who’s walking into a Best Buy and they’re looking at the range of products, they’re seeing Google, they’re seeing Apple, they’re seeing Microsoft. Look at smartphone market share for example. Is this is a place where you can win? How do you convince consumers that Microsoft is a different company and not the Microsoft that they grew up with? The Microsoft of the late ’90s or early 2000s?

The thing is, any current market share is not a marker for our future ambition. So the way I look at it is, you’re pointing to the right challenge. And the solution to that challenge is to say, “First, why would you want to pick one of our devices?”

Take Surface Pro 3. I want you to say, “Look, I like this thing, because it’s a tablet that can be a laptop, because I want to be able to listen to my music, I want to snap it to one side and I want to be able to do a Word document on the other side, I want to be able to use it for note-taking, use it for sketching.” I want us to be able to take what we can be good at, define it, brand it, and communicate it in ways that can be appealing to the general user. But it turns out that the user is not just listening to music, not just seeing TV, but also doing things and getting stuff done, and that’s where we can shine.

I don’t want us to be shy about where we are differentiated, while competing in these other categories. So that’s what I think we need to do with our devices. And with Windows — we have 300-plus million PCs. I agree that there are more phones, and I am not at all confused about the difference between 300 million and a billion. But 300 million is 300 million.

Is it important to convince the consumer that Microsoft is important and they need to be a part of their lives? Or are we really talking about convincing Fortune 500 companies, convincing major corporations to adopt Microsoft, to connect to these connected services and devices and that will sort of by osmosis bleed down to the consumer?

No, I fundamentally believe that it’s most important to us to convince consumers. You’re defining the market as “It’s already done, Apple and Google have won, because they won the consumer side.” And I’m going to question that. I’m going to say “No, any thinking consumer should consider Microsoft because guess what, you’re not just a consumer. You’re also going to go to work, you’re also going to be productive and we can do a better job for you in there.” And that’s what I want to appeal to.

So how do you change the message? How do you change the mindset?

At the end of the day, the only way to change it is products. We’ve got to make progress with our tablet share, with Surface Pro 3, we’ll talk about that when we talk [in our earnings call on the 22nd]. We’re going to change it by producing phones — where we grow in countries where we’ve grown from 3 to 10 percent, celebrate that. And then have higher ambition. There are many countries, even in Western Europe, where we have over 10 percent share, and I completely recognize that if you are not growing in the US, for you we are nothing, and I’m grounded in that reality. But at the same time, [we will] keep coming at it and keep coming at it, but have a core which you really are using to differentiate what your value proposition for the user is.

“Any thinking consumer should consider Microsoft because guess what, you’re not just a consumer.”

If we talk about something like that smartphone market share, and obviously we have to think about tablet market share as well, do you believe that you can get to a place that is more competitive than where you are right now?

I absolutely believe that in a world where there are going to be many screen sizes, and ecosystems across all of those screen sizes, and cloud services that’ll be available on all ecosystems, that’s what Microsoft’s future is. I want every home screen across all ecosystems to have Microsoft services. Skype is a good example: I want our own ecosystem across all device categories to have high share.

As I said, we have 300-plus million devices today, predominantly PCs, but we want to compete for the new categories, and there will be additional new categories that will be invented in the next five years. That’s the worldview I have.

In recent years — and let’s be honest, probably since just after Steve Jobs’ death in 2011 — there has been a sense of hesitation, of standoffishness, and maybe even a little bit of fear in the tone of Apple events. That tone has carried over to the company’s approach to the outside world, and has left a lot of people wondering just whether there’s been a plan at all. You could feel a palpable sense of Apple being closed off, in a huddle, trying to figure out what kind of company it wants to be (and can be) in a post-Jobs world. Because whether you agreed with his style, decisions, or philosophies, it’s impossible to deny that Jobs was the voice of Apple and the holder of the keys to the company roadmap.

It feels like for several years we’ve been living with an Apple in a period of recovery and rediscovery. Just listen to Tim Cook answer questions on several occasions about future plans and roadmaps — he’s hesitant, speculative. And I don’t believe it was just about secrecy and timing. It was about Apple finding its new voice, waiting to speak with that voice. And the company has a voice again.

Apple is executing on a plan, and it’s giving it confidence and power.

But that new voice is also giddy, buoyant. I wouldn’t call Apple’s new stance completely “open,” but it’s an Apple that wants to get its hands a little dirtier. One that wants to build ecosystems, work on the plumbing, and lay the groundwork for partners near and far to do great things with its platforms. An Apple that wants to say “yes” to its users and developers.

Both in the messaging on stage — in that playful banter and sense of ease — and in the announcements the company made at its keynote, the headline seems clear to me: game on. Even when Apple was on the attack, like the moment when Tim Cook said Android switchers wanted “a better life,” the negative shots were good-natured. A kind of winking “we know we’re going to be doing this for a while, so let’s just have fun.” Think about how many times Google search or Windows compatibility was mentioned onstage. That wasn’t an accident.

But the big announcements of the day also reflect that new vibe from Apple. It wasn’t just the wholehearted embracing and praising of its developer community (though that most certainly happened in a big way). It was the core of Apple’s new message: how can we help you? You need only look at something like iOS 8’s new extensibility, which opens up first- and third-party apps to additive features from any developer, or the loosening of boundaries on things like third-party keyboards and widgets, or the open access to Touch ID. It’s obvious that Apple is ready to break down some of its long-standing barriers and let people inside. They literally and figuratively said, “We hear you, we want to give you the things you’re asking for, and this is the first step.” The introduction of iCloud Drive and iCloud’s new photo-management scheme show this very well — a simplification around a basic idea that makes a user’s work much easier (and also proves that Apple is starting to get the web after years of lagging behind competitors).

The foundation, not the star attraction

Beyond just loosening up, whole swaths of Apple’s new ecosystem seem specifically geared towards being the foundation rather than the star attraction. Software layers like HealthKit and HomeKit show Apple at its very best, creating whole new ecosystems for third-party hardware and software developers to take advantage of. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the Apple that kickstarted the “app economy” — a company building brand-new highways that connect us to the future. This is not a new trick. Remember that Apple made music matter again when it seemed like that industry was falling apart. It’s part of the company’s DNA to give creators a platform and then just let them play to their heart’s content. And it’s not just cool; it’s smart too. It’s a way for Apple to give loft to its partners while remaining a core and fundamental part of the process. Apple doesn’t want to make door locks, it wants to make door locks talk to each other.

The WWDC announcements weren’t just about attitude and positioning. They were meaningful, and many of them seemed to take the long view. Continuity and its suite of services (HandOff, AirDrop between platforms, and SMS and phone integration between mobile and desktop) show that Apple can still be clever and innovative. And Swift, the company’s new programming language, is a stark reminder that there are avenues of innovation Apple is working on which will have lasting effects on its platforms for decades to come.

But the big story — and the big picture — is that Apple seems to have come out of deep freeze. It feels light, like it’s moving forward. Like the cobwebs have brushed aside, and things are going to get fun again. Everything we saw at WWDC’s keynote points to a very interesting next few months for Apple — a period that will undoubtedly come into deep focus around the fall, when the company tends to roll out its major hardware updates. But unlike previous events, which have felt painfully predictable and iterative in the past couple of years, the next move Apple makes should be surprising. If the software and platform work that we saw at the keynote on Monday is any indication, the kind of apps and hardware that follow it aren’t just going to be business as usual.

The new Apple may be lots of things to lots of people, but obvious isn’t one of the words I’d use to describe it. And that’s a very good thing indeed.

Everyone will be asking the same question today: why did Facebook buy Oculus VR, makers of a groundbreaking virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift? The answer, however, is really quite simple. In fact, company founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said clearly what this purchase means for Facebook. “We … want to start focusing on building the next major computing platform that will come after mobile,” he told listeners on a conference call. “History suggests that there will be more platforms to come and that whoever builds and defines these will not only shape all the experiences that our industry builds, but also benefit financially and strategically.”

What he means is that right now, mobile is the internet, or the next internet at least. Maybe it’s not all the way there, but your kids will never know the desktop and “web pages” the way you do now. They will only know how to interact and communicate through discrete applications in the palm of their hand. Snapchat, Instagram, Hangouts. They will only know social games played across oceans, like Words With Friends. And they will never, or rarely, go back to a “computer” or a “browser” to learn, work, or socialize. But Facebook hasn’t been able to own that particular space — in fact, it’s fighting for just a little corner of it right now. Fighting so hard that it’s spinning up its own collection of tiny apps like Paper, Messenger, and Poke (okay, maybe not Poke). It had to buy Instagram and WhatsApp to stay relevant there. Facebook doesn’t own mobile — it actually barely even exists in it.

But Facebook’s ambition isn’t to have a corner somewhere. Its ambition isn’t to be an app in a grid on your home screen. For tens of millions of people, sharing photos, communicating with your friends and family, and learning about the world around you already happens through the portal of Facebook, but just a handful isn’t enough. Facebook wants to be the internet — hell, in some ways Facebook needs to be the internet — and I don’t believe it will settle for anything less.

Your All Stars touch down on the dark blue planet — an environment that appears to be teeming with life, both native and exotic. All around you, green and blue foliage sways in a strong breeze. The light of this planet’s sun begins to dip behind the tree line, burning orange and purple on the horizon. A Taco Bell logo dots the yellow sphere, reminding you to try the new Doritos Locos Taco 6, with six times the sizzle. Somewhere nearby, you hear music. You like the beat —a strong four-four with an undulating series of power chords atop. It sounds like something your parents used to listen to, one of the classics like Katy Perry. A Spotify logo materializes in your HUD displaying the track name and artist. Good thing you connected your account. Suddenly your Facesuit vibrates across the shoulders — a message is incoming.

“Hey man, you’re on the blue planet too!?” It’s your cousin Charlie on a VidMessage. “Meet me at the club just a few clicks from your location — Places bro — and we’ll go on some adventures.” His head disappears and is replaced with an offer for directions to Gatecrasher Blue, which is in walking distance. You thumbs up the logo and head off in the direction of the sound, assisted by the turn-by-turn.

Your QuenchTube switches over to Ciroc vodka, and you start to feel a buzz. Here comes the night.

The purchase of Oculus may seem like a company hedging its bets, but Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz (a major investor in the startup) explained it quite well. “The way to understand this purchase is to think of Google buying Android in 2005. That confused a lot of people at the time. Facebook believes that virtual reality will become the next major platform, the same way mobile computing did, and they want to make sure they have a big stake in that.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Facebook has made a play to become the internet — just think about its many privacy encroachments, search initiatives, and attacks on competing companies — but it is the first time that Facebook could legitimately own the window into the next phase of connectivity. And you can be sure that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to own that window so you can look out onto other people’s property — he wants you looking at his property.

“Today’s acquisition is a long-term bet on the future of computing. I believe Oculus can be one of the platforms of the future,” Zuckerberg said. But Facebook is a business, and so Oculus must fit into its business plan. And of course it does. “We now have Oculus joining us, which long-term can be one of the next important computing platforms. And of course we will continue to focus on our extremely important work of building out our advertising platform as well, as part of this.”

“Imagine enjoying a court-side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world, consulting a doctor face-to-face, or even shopping in a virtual store where you can explore the products you’re interested in… just by putting on goggles in your own home.”

Just like the future envisioned in some of our best science fiction, the things to come are fantastic and exciting, but often tinged with darkness. The most breathtaking vistas can hide something terrifying — something inhuman. The wedding of Oculus VR — a company with a literally boundless vision of things to come — to an entity like Facebook gives us a taste of both, perhaps in equal measure. It’s true that no company other than Facebook could connect us together the way that we have been connected in the past decade, but it’s also true that no company could taint that experience in quite the same way. As a service, Facebook is inspiring, as a platform, Facebook is scary.

That company now controls one of the most exciting technologies of the past 50 years. A truly revolutionary product that has reignited a dream many felt was all but dead and gone. What it will do with that technology is the only question that remains. I submit that history is an excellent teacher.

So learn your lessons well.

Exhausted and elated, you punch your Extractor switch and a Honda transport drone silently scoops you up for the journey back to Planet Facebook. As you see the blue planet shrink in the distance, you pull up your RealTime Player to revisit the night. You click play.

You blink and open your eyes to a fantastic new sun above your head. You’re lying in a field of tall grass, but in the distance you hear sounds of machinery. The city. As you lay there, a blimp begins to float into view, its bulbous shape painted in the striking cherry red and stark white ripple of the Coca-Cola logo. “Go Offworld with Coca-Cola today!” bellows a voice from a loudspeaker high above your head. “The adventure of a lifetime awaits… and all you have to do is say yes!”

Lead image courtesy Condition One