Ballmer Scorns Apple As a $500 Logo

theodp writes "Speaking at a conference in NYC, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did his best to refan the flames of the Mac vs. PC rivalry: 'Now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction [against Apple],' Ballmer said. 'The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.'"

Comments

Re:Ballmer -1 Troll

[Draek]

None of your reasons is meaningful because you fail to consider the fact that Micrsoft used anticompetitive practices and developer lock-in to leverage an inferior product into the dominant consumer and enterprise OS.

Wrong. They've used that to *maintain* their dominant position, but they attained it by riding on IBM's name *and* recognizing that the PC market was in sore need of openness and competition, instead of every company building their own little island, as Apple et al had been doing until that point.

What Microsoft has failed to recognize for the past 8 years is that Steve Jobs' Apple Inc. isn't interested in playing that game any more.

Wrong. In fact, Ballmer here is *precisely* poking fun at the fact that Apple isn't interested in going after the mass market and instead has settled in the profitable niche of selling expensive fashion items.

And the rest of your post is just your typical Apple zealot foaming at the mouth for all those companies ripping off Apple's brilliant innovations. Please, stop drinking the kool-aid and see that companies have innovated long before Apple, still innovate with Apple, and shall continue to innovate long after Apple is gone, and it's laughable to imply otherwise. But I'm sure you'll get modded up, eventually, Apple zealots are plentiful around here, and they've got modpoints to spare.