“How swiftly thought evolves in the wonderful world of Ballmer! First, iPods are full of ‘stolen’ music, next he forgets what he said, but suggests that it might be anything that isn’t a Windows Media Player that’s full of stolen music, and now iPod owners turn out to be the most law-abiding people in the world,” John Lettice writes for The Register.
“We’re sure iPod owners will regard being called law-abiding by an exec from a company with Microsoft’s legal experience as a high point to end the week on. But, you ask, how the blazes did we get to this one? We have Ged Carrol’s blog to thank. Mightily offended by Ballmer’s original comments, Ged used the feedback system at microsoft.com to demand an apology, and he got one,” Lettice writes.
“The grovel itself is particularly interesting because of the way you can feel the truth shifting under your feet as you read it. ‘We would like to assure you that when Steve Ballmer implied that most of the music on iPods were stolen, he absolutely did not intend to single out iPod owners for criticism. [this implying would be when he whooped ‘STOLEN! STOLEN! STOLEN!’] In fact, given that they have access to their very own – and very popular – online music store, they are likely among the most law-abiding consumers of digital music,'” Lettice writes. “Notice the sneaky bit of dissing there? If you weren’t paying attention you might run away with the view that the Apple music store only worked with iPods, and entirely miss the fact that Apple has extremely capable player software in both Mac and Windows formats. But back to the apology…”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Of course, we would quite readily take this opportunity to apologize to Ballmer for calling him a big, fat, bald, sweaty, doughnut-eating, psychotic dancing fool if we were wrong on those counts.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Ballmer says ‘iPod users are thieves’ statement ‘was bad’ – October 05, 2004
Microsoft CEO Ballmer: ‘Apple iPod users are music thieves’ – October 04, 2004
Microsoft CEO Ballmer on the digital home: ‘There is no way that you can get there with Apple’ – October 03, 2004
one of the best takes MDN!
oh and first
I love MDN! Nice non-apology to Ballmer which, of course, subtly highlights the insincerity of MS’s “apology” to us iPod owners.
Hey Butt Monkey Boy – how does crow taste?
M$ ARE WANKERS!
Call me a thief again, Monkey Boy… c’mon, I dare you…
BTW, did Micro$oft send Gloria Estefan a check for the use of “Get On Your Feet” that Ballmer was so exuberantly dancing to in that video? I didn’t think so…
Hypocrites…
The Steve Ballmer sandwich is a thin slice of groveling with a thick slice of arrogance, lavished with a spicy spread of ineptitude, a hearty slab of Limburger, on a doughy buns.
I think I lost my appetite.
Although Windows ITunes is a good program… it is DEFINITELY not very fast… and it DEFINITELY shows that it is ported. It’s a pity that Mac doesn’t have a Windows Business Unit as efficient and capable as the MBU at Microsoft.
Although it isn’t buggy, it is slow on , and a resource hog. There are interface problems with it as well, which don’t allow minimizing to the system tray (which really is the equivalent of the dock).
It feels clumbsy as a mac application in a windows environment, although it is improving… remember, in windows, most windows are run minimized or maximized, given that there is NO expos�, and music players which are “Background” apps, shouldn’t show up on the taskbar if not requested. To do anything less is either an attempt to emulate the mac on a PC, or deliberate crippleware, which doesn’t give apple software a good impression…
However, rendezvous works cross-platform flawlessly… and the search mechanism works very well.
I think you should apologize for calling Ballmer a big, fat, bald, sweaty, doughnut-eating, psychotic dancing fool. He doesn’t eat doughnuts.
Ottomabulb,
I don’t completely disagree with you, but I think you are overstating things. iTunes on Windoze is better than most apps that run on that platform. You do make good points about how standard Windoze apps are supposed to work, however. I believe that Apple was trying to give an identical look/feel to the Mac version.
Considering all the other crap that is out there for Windoze, iTunes does a pretty damn good job. It’s also an early version. It may grow as well. I have not found another music store that comes close to offering what iTunes does.
This was all a play to steal the thunder from the iPod.
Pure FUD to trick dumb parents to not to buy iPods for their kids Christmas presents.
Someone please email this to Thurrot.
That idiot was on his moral high ground saying he was right..and he knew that Ballamer didn’t say it blah blah blah blah
Gawd i hate that guy.
Ottomabulb,
I agree with Jimbo on every point. It is Windows’s design that creates inconsistency for a user. For example, a user launches an application… should that application have a tab in Task Bar, or just a widget in the System Tray? What is the logic, and how does a user figure it out without having some experience? Apple delivered an application that worked the way the Mac version does, and doesn’t leave the user guessing where to find the application. You may argue that iTunes should not show up in the Task Bar, and it’s clear you can’t see past your own nose to how different things are on a Mac.
Now for a comparison… over the past few months, I downloaded multiple music store softwares on to my PC for comparison to iTunes software. All of then, with the exception of Napster, were slower and more problematic, than iTunes. They all have inconsistent interfaces and don’t adhere to the expected Windows behavior (whatever that is, as you clearly identified). Napster was a close second behind iTunes. And surprisingly, eMusic’s new site offered a pleasant, relatively problem-free experience, considering the inconvenience of having to use a browser, a Download Manager, and then manually opening the song files for import into iTunes.
(Thanks for the round-about apology Ballmer.)
ballmer, see how foolish you look
this is a joke right…?
Dance, MonkeyBoy! Dance!
because being overweight or bald makes you a bad person and its ok to make fun of “fat donut eaters”. i wonder if mdn would put in stuff about his skin if he were thin and black.
maybe talk about his dancing talent instead of stuff that just makes him like lots of other people.
and do it without insulting the poor monkeys! its not their fault steve balmer is a greedy lying idiot
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so… who would we flame if it weren’t for the likes of Ballmer, Thurott et al ??
Mac Beth….
I just sprayed my keyboard with the iced tea I was drinking while I read your post !!
Thanx a lot !! LOL
Ballmer is still a moron and shouldn’t be let out in public.
For Halloween, one of the major TV networks should just follow him around with a camera for a day. IMO it’d make a terrifying reality show; to bad nobody would believe it.
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-sip
Mac Beth,
Good point, actually. Publications like MDN should exercise a little bit of maturity. A good example is Arn over at MacRumors…. his comments, when he makes them, are carefully thought out and very respectable. He’s the leader of a community, and a leader needs to be someone who can be mature and earn the respect of its community. Ballmer is failing miserably in that respect.
This is the first time is saw the Ballmer Monkey Dance Video. I can’t believe ANYONE would act like that in any situation besides a football game. What the hell was he thinking? I also saw the Developers Video. Again, what the hell was he thinking? He’s like a…well…monkey.
(Does he always act like that??)
-Next
Any Video footage of this event???
Well done Ged!
I don’t see how MDN’s comment is saying that just because someone is overweight and bald, it makes them a bad person. The statement merely says that they called Ballmer a “big, fat, bald, sweaty, doughnut-eating, psychotic dancing fool”. Is Ballmer not these things?
1. Microsoft trying to be cool fails. They just don’t have that image. Microsoft is a geeky company. Apple is like a rock band. Bill Gates may be the richest geek in the world, but he’s still a geek.
2. I think it should be a rule at MDN not to ingest liquids while reading comments. Let’s not take our humor out on our poor keyboards. It’s not their fault!
3. Ballmer’s a break-dance studio reject. Either that or the missing link between man and monkey, not quite sure which.