Ballmer Confiscates iPhone at Microsoft Annual Meeting

Hm. Ballmer previously

(OK, try this again.) Ballmer previously laughed at Google, now he does a John Belushi routine (from Animal House, where he smashes the folksinger's guitar then shrugs and says "Sorry") on someone's iPhone.

It's clear that Blue Steve (Jobs, of course, is Rainbow Steve) secretly desires to be a standup comedian. My advice would be not to quit his day job. Of course, his day job garners him a salary of $1,250,000 (fiscal 2008), so he's probably figured that out already.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you..."

Lol 3vi1. Kinda a dumb statement looking back now, but being the CEO of Microsoft he couldn't really be like "Oh it looks cool."

Isn't this like going to Mom's home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner with your own personal stash-bag of McDonald's burgers?

That must indeed have been a real dilemma for Mr Ballmer - a choice between getting his picture taken with a competitors product (imagine what would have happened if the offending camera had been found on an Android !) or not getting it taken, which from what I understand, would not be an appealing alternative to a man with Mr Ballmer's need for the limelight. Presumably he resolved it by seeing to it that several photos were taken of him «stomping» on the phone....

Henri

Super Dave:

Isn't this like going to Mom's home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner with your own personal stash-bag of McDonald's burgers?

No.  Not unless Microsoft was going to give everyone phones at the event.

This is more like packing a homemade healthy lunch to take to your job at McDonalds.

...and then having your idiot boss pretend to stomp on it because he thinks McDonalds should have a monopoly on food.

Ha.  Though Microsoft doesn't have a Zune Phone or anything like that to compete with the iPhone.  What are these millions of phone's Ballmer claimed to be selling?

3v1, nobody makes a homemade smartphone, so your analogy is a little off.

This is more like showing up at the executive planning committee meeting of McDonald's, which you know the CEO is attending, with a bag of food from Wendy's to munch on. Then, you offer said CEO a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger as he walks by.

You don't wave your competitor's product in your CEO's face at a meeting. Bad form.

Then again, Ballmer did over react. He's known for that, at least he didn't actually damage the damn thing.

I don't think your analogy is any better. Offering the competitor's cheap food to a CEO is completely different than using an expensive personal camera to take a photo - no matter who makes it.

Funny thing is, if it had been a phone camera that runs SymbianOS, which owns almost 50% of the smartphone market, Ballmer probably wouldn't have done anything (if he had noticed). He really needs to get his priorities straight about who the real competition is.

Just as a comparison, I remember back in the 1980s, when someone mentioned publicly that "when the software of the future is written, it will run on a Macintosh." ...Then again, Bill Gates did forbid his kids from having iPods. I'll have to ask him the next time we meet for lunch at McDonald's whether he actually smashed any tht they brought into his house.

What a sorehead!