Not the Onion..Steve Ballmer banning Apple products for L.A. Clippers
Steve Ballmer banning Apple products for L.A. Clippers
Former Microsoft CEO and new Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is known for his distaste for Apple products. It’s not shocking then that Ballmer, who once grabbed an employee’s iPhone at a Microsoft meeting and pretended to stomp on it, plans to phase out iPhones and iPads from the Clippers locker room.
After plunking down $2 billion to buy the NBA team away from embattled former owner Donald Sterling, Ballmer has pledged many changes to the Clippers organization. We should have all seen this one coming.
Ballmer left the board of Microsoft last month but is still the largest individual shareholder, with about 4 percent of the company worth $15.7 billion.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the Clippers will be a Microsoft organization. The son of a Ford Motor Co. manager, he’s always been a company and product loyalist, banning his own family from using Apple’s iPhones.
“Most of the Clippers are on Windows, some of the players and coaches are not,” Ballmer said.
“And (head coach) Doc (Rivers) kind of knows that’s a project. It’s one of the first things he said to me: ‘We are probably going to get rid of these iPads, aren’t we?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we probably are.’ But I promised we would do it during the offseason.”
Microsoft recently struck a five-year deal reportedly worth $400 million to make its Surface “the official tablet of the NFL.” The Seattle Seahawks are the poster child, it seems, of a push from Redmond to get pro football players and coaches using Microsoft tablets on the field.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/sonics/2014/09/26/steve-ballmer-banning-l-a-clippers-from-apple-products/
I thought it was a joke at first but knowing Balmer's great vision of technology it was too Zune to come to any other another conclusion.
= new reply since forum marked as read
But given his track record at Msoft, If I were a clippers fan I would not be cheering at this micromanagement action.
I guess somebody has to buy those surplus Surface and Msoft windows phones, though….
I wonder if the same applies for Android devices?
"Under Ballmer's watch, I expect the Clippers to Excel," tweeted Tim Moynihan.
Others made jokes at the expense of Microsoft's Windows operating system.
"Steve Ballmer now owns something else that always seems to crash at a critical time," said Joe Sheehan.
"Well, who else would be accustomed to rebooting things?" tweeted William Boot.
"Steve Ballmer is buying the LA Clippers and the Jumbotron in Staples Center just blue screened," wrote Twitter user Wendavis.
Some techies posted geek humor. "How about moving the 3 point line to 3.1?" wrote Louis Gray.
Many folks were shocked that Ballmer is paying $2 billion for the team. That's the most ever paid for an NBA franchise and the second-largest amount ever paid for a sports team. The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team sold for $2.1 billion two years ago.
"Let's not forget this is the same Steve Ballmer that thought Yahoo for $44B in 2008 was a good idea," said Twitter user FennyFen. In 2008, Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) rejected Microsoft's buyout offers, which were said to reach $47.5 billion. Today, Yahoo has a market cap of $34.7 billion.
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BTW I have an old Nokia phone and a old iMac
I think the story is more about Balmer, who I never could stand, than their product.
