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Steve Ballmer Mocks iPhone-Toting Microsoft Employee

Friday September 11, 2009 9:10 am PDT by Marianne Schultz

An alleged photo of Ballmer taken with the borrowed iPhone, courtesy of Engadget

Techflash reports that Steve Ballmer playfully took an iPhone from an employee at a company meeting in Seattle yesterday and then pretended to destroy it:

As the story goes, it happened when Ballmer was making his big entrance -- slapping hands, running around, and generally whooping things up, as is his tradition at these events. That was when he spotted someone at field level, allegedly a member of the Windows group, using an iPhone to take his picture. Ballmer grabbed the Apple device from the employee and made some funny remarks as everyone booed. Then he put it on the ground and pretended to stomp on it, before walking away.


A couple of Microsoft employees mentioned this incident via Twitter:



[ 115 comments ]

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brent0saurus
Posted: 32 months ago
Click here to read a quite amusing story about Steve Ballmer pretending to smash an iPhone owned by one of his employees.

Also, if you have a Digg account, please Digg it! I'd love for this to hit the front page!
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Fizzoid
Posted: 32 months ago
Maybe he should focus his efforts on getting Windows Mobile to actually work! :rolleyes:
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bigjnyc
Posted: 32 months ago
What a tool. At least bill gates was cool calm and Collected most of the time
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MacBoobsPro
Posted: 32 months ago
If anyone puts my iphone on the ground they will be the ones being stomped on!
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Kristenn
Posted: 32 months ago
I always found Steve Ballmer funny. Especially after seeing Pirates of Silicon valley. But sometimes he is a little to over the top!

I do like how mellow Bill gates is though. He is a total nerd but he just seems really sweet :o
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theLimit
Posted: 32 months ago
Non-digg/blog direct link. Why do people feel the need to have clicks routed through their crappy blog to get to a story?

On topic: Ballmer is a raving maniac, but it sure is fun to watch him act like an ass.
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Rodimus Prime
Posted: 32 months ago
From what I can tell it is more not to Humiliate the guy but just to ralley the troops so to speak. Depending on how it was done a lot of people could see it as it was all in good fun.
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Wotan31
Posted: 32 months ago
How old is Ballmer? Either that's a really bad photo, or he's in his mid-80's now. Then again, the iPhone does have probably the s#!ttiest camera of any cell phone, ever.
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bigandy
Posted: 32 months ago
Mocking a product that's not only well designed* but also very successful, while your own attempts in the market are as feeble and bin-worthy as theirs are is just a little dumb.


But what else have we come to expect from good old Ballmer?




* With lots of room for improvement, obviously
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polaris20
Posted: 32 months ago
Look, I like Windows 7. I like Windows 2008 Server, a lot. But Windows Mobile is absolute dog poo. Worst mobile device OS available right now.

Ballmer has no room for being angry at anyone but his own company for someone wanting to use an iPhone (or Blackberry, or Pre, or Android, or Symbian, which are all way better than WM6.1 and 6.5 Beta).
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