During a keynote speech at the company’s TechNet/MSDN Briefings here Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer joked about recent remarks in which he branded iPod users as thieves.
“Ballmer earlier in the week had ruffled some feathers when he implied that iPod users might be thieves. Speaking in London, Ballmer said, ‘We’ve had DRM (digital rights management) in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is stolen,'” Lars Pasveer reports for CNET News. “He did not repeat that phrasing on Tuesday, instead saying, ‘I don’t know what I said exactly, but it was bad.'”
Pasveer reports, “When asked which MP3 player his son used, he answered jokingly, ‘My son doesn’t have an MP3 player. He has a Windows Media player.’ Everyone in his household knows that the protection of intellectual copyrights is important, he said. ‘It’s what puts food on the table.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While Ballmer may have several hundred million dollars more than us, those of us who have kids have kids living a richer digital life, happily surrounded by Macs and iPods. It’s interesting that one can have all the money in world and still be stuck with Windows and saddled with a Dell DJ. Whatever it takes to put food on the table, right?