Eye on Microsoft
About this Blog:
This is Shane O'Neill's blog about Microsoft's corporate strategy and its various software and services — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Ballmer the Good Sport Signs a Mac
Steve Ballmer laughs it up with students and autographs a MacBook. Makes you wonder if Steve Jobs would ever sign a PC.
Here's some light Friday fodder for you. We all know that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is an intense, sometimes overcaffeinated, corporate boss, but he still has a sense of humor, even when asked to sign ... gulp ... a Mac.
TechFlash posted a video of a brave young college student asking Ballmer to sign his MacBook Pro at a recent event in Nashville, Tenn.
What would Steve Jobs do?
That takes some guts, but it was all in good fun and an affable Ballmer laughed and signed his name with the question, "Need a new one?"
When handing off the MacBook to Ballmer the Trevecca Nazarene University student uttered, "It's got Windows on it I promise." To which Ballmer smiled and said "Oh yeah. Uh huh" — as if to say stop yankin' my chain kid.
I think Big Steve will stop laughing if this kind of thing becomes a trend, but it was nice of him to be a good sport here. Imagine, if you will, if this were Steve Jobs and some poor soul asked him to sign a Dell laptop. Lasers would probably shoot from the Apple chief's eyes, reducing the student to vapors. In a less gruesome scenario, Jobs would flash a sinister smile and gently apply the Vulcan nerve pinch to the student, quickly bringing him to his knees and into a state of unconsciousness.
Slideshow: Seven Features in Windows 7 You Probably Don't Know About
Slideshow: Windows 7 in Pictures: The Coolest New Hardware
Of course none of that could happen because Steve Jobs would never be there in the first place. Jobs is not a mingle with college students kind of guy. It's doubtful he mingles with anybody, ever. All due respect to Mr. Jobs — I know he is not in good health — but even when he was fit as a fiddle he was never a man of the people.
Ballmer is not exactly salt of the earth either, but he is an enthusiastic character and is fairly comfortable hanging out with normal people, as he shows here.
Nevertheless, if I were the MacBook autograph seeker, I wouldn't be calling on Ballmer for a reference any time soon.
Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.
Previous Post: Zune Phone Would Complete Microsoft's '3 Screens' StrategyNext Post: The iPad and Netbooks: Comparing Them Is Stupid
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
