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New LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer wants team to ditch iPads

Steve Ballmer may have retired as Microsoft’s CEO back in February and resigned from the company’s board last month, but rest assured that the raging businessman is still loyal to the Redmond-based software giant. For those of you who aren’t sports fans, Ballmer recently purchased the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers and one of his first acts as the team’s new owner is to have the organization cutdown its use of Apple products.

“Most of the Clippers on are Windows, some of the players and coaches are not,” Ballmer recently told Reuters. “And 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 off season.” A brand loyalist through and through, Ballmer reportedly bans his family from using iPhones.

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Comments

  1. Bruno Fernandes (@Linkb8) - 10 years ago

    Most are on already on Windows? Yeah, doubtful.

    • ebreak1 - 10 years ago

      hahahaha, right. It’s awesome to see people and businesses try to scrounge up Win 7 licenses because Win 8 sucks that much.

    • If you’ve been keeping track of devices sold every year, more macs are sold every year whilst the Windows PC is shrinking by 10%.
      That has been going on for 6 1/2 years.

      Soon the Mac and GNU/Linux will be the dominant OS’s.

      Just look at college campuses, journalists, scientists, Artists, doctors, and more are all switching to either OS X (mainly) or a distribution of GNU/Linux.

      Currently the most popular distribution of GNU+Linux is Ubuntu, which is the 3rd most popular desktop operating system world wide.

      1. Windows (although market share is shrinking every year)
      2. OS X (growth is increasing)
      3 Ubuntu GNU/Linux

      Steve Ballmer must have seen all the Mac’s at the last couple of Microsoft Keynotes.
      The Audiences were full of them!!! Virtually impossible to spot a single PC in the audience.

      As for iOS momentum, well they are not far from overtaking Android again.
      iOS accounts for the most usage of mobile web traffic, which must mean androids aren’t really being used even though there are apparently more of them.

      Microsoft is a dying company, it may take a decade or so for the overall consumer to realise it, if they haven’t already, but it’s inevitable. I am not saying the Mac will be the dominant OS, however that is styill likely with the current momentum. If it’s not the mac it will be GNU/Linux!

      • thinkman12345 - 10 years ago

        I agree with most of what you say here, but, regardless of how good Linux is (in whatever form) it’s primarily for geeks wanting to buck the system. How many people do you know who use it? How many people do you know who have even heard of it? Putting it in the running with OSX and Windows is more than a little pretentious, or just wishful thinking by those few who ‘like to climb under the hood’. Don’t get me wrong. I fully support it’s right to exist (I’m no palestinian terrorist, after all), I just don’t think it would ever go mainstream as it stands now.

      • André Hedegaard Petersen - 10 years ago

        @Thinkman12345,
        Well, my brother uses it, after +25 years of DOS/Windows.
        I diverted to Mac.
        I told him he should also go to Mac, but he likes the “tinkering under the hood”.
        So, personally, I know of 1 single person in the whole world who uses it.

        And about being mainstream, you’re right, Linux will never make it, because:
        1) Its too difficult for the average user to figure out what version to get and to install and use
        2) Its so bloody fragmented, there are hundreds of version available, each claiming to be better than the rest
        3) Some linux versions try to copy OSX and Windows and these are a big fail.

  2. Don’t tell people what to do. – You to let you know the basics.

  3. Mathieu L. (@mletourn) - 10 years ago

    What a douche!! hahahahaha

  4. Ed Mendez (@edducati) - 10 years ago

    Sore loser!

  5. paulywalnuts23 - 10 years ago

    Like Doc Rivers really cares if his players are using Windows or Mac… Come on, he has far bigger things to worry about than that. Balmer better be careful in what he pushes and how he demands that things be done.

  6. Ed Mendez (@edducati) - 10 years ago

    CEO of a losing company, now CEO of a losing ball team. Way to go, keep knocking down Apple. Ditch iPads? What are you going to back to chalkboards?

    • paulywalnuts23 - 10 years ago

      Surfaces would be the logical choice for Ballmer, and he can continue to think that Window 8 was a great step forward and not what cause him to “retire” when he did..

    • Max Mars (@devianter) - 10 years ago

      There are 30 teams and by your logic 29 teams are goddamn LOSERS. That’s flawed logic. There can be only 1 winner, sure, but it doesn’t mean that everybody else are scrubs. Clippers are a good team now, cmon, don’t cry, sore lakers fan.

  7. progressivepeach - 10 years ago

    The Clippers have been the NBA’s equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death since their inception. They are the Windows of basketball.

  8. c1ce091b - 10 years ago

    I thought we were over him…. I don’t want to see anything from this Buffon!!!!

    Who cares what he chooses, its pretty obvious what he would do, so this is no news…

    Still have to see his face here YUK Isn’t Eric enough in two days we have to add this other Buffon too?

  9. jrox16 - 10 years ago

    This is great press for Apple. Shows the team used all Apple products by choice. Now if they switch, it won’t be by choice but by the new owners wishes.

  10. ebreak1 - 10 years ago

    I’m not an insane Apple fanboy, but this is ridiculous. Of course he would push garbage devices upon anyone he has the power to do so with. I’m certain everyone will be ecstatic to lose all their purchased applications, be pushed into a device with almost no user base (which usually equates to no development of new apps), and deal with a garbage Microsoft product. Sorry Redmond, you haven’t created anything that advanced tech since the Xbox 360 and Windows 98se…

  11. Gregory Wright - 10 years ago

    I don’t see the big deal here. It’s Ballmer team and the one who owns makes the rules.

    • ebreak1 - 10 years ago

      I think we are just saying they are really unintelligent rules, that’s all.

    • paulywalnuts23 - 10 years ago

      So you think Donald Sterling was ok to do whatever he wanted because he owned the team, right?

      • Gregory Wright - 10 years ago

        I don’t believe Sterling should have been banned for comments privately made and in confidence. I’d be willing to bet each of us have made comments in private that might get us in trouble if those comments were revealed.

    • paulywalnuts23 - 10 years ago

      You are the team owner, not the team dictator…

  12. WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 10 years ago

    Got to love how Ballmer and Gates banned their family from using Apple stuff. I don’t think Jobs ever did that for his family, I’d imagine they just genuinely wanted to use them because they were better.

  13. Jack Powers - 10 years ago

    The only reason he got where he is, is that he went to school with Gates. He is a broken window!!!

  14. Matt Barnett (@mdb28) - 10 years ago

    So no Beats headphones?

  15. Ashley Brandt (@agbasher) - 10 years ago

    Love how Ballmer wants to swiftly pull the Clippers down into the muck of mediocrity that he created with Microsoft.

  16. Richard J. Greenstone - 10 years ago

    Still a tool.

  17. Max Mars (@devianter) - 10 years ago

    Ballmer is kinda funny though, cmon. He’s a goofy guy, doing goofy things and saying goofy things. At least he’s SUPER passionate about basketball and his new team, i’m sure he’ll throw all the money he can into the organisation. And that’s a good thing (Coming from a bulls fan, damn you Reinsdorf)

  18. “Stupid is as stupid does”
    What’s the surprise here?

  19. Edison Wrzosek - 10 years ago

    Once a moronic douchebag, always a moronic douchebag I guess…

  20. bobborries - 10 years ago

    It will take Balmer a long time to realize MS screwed him, when he does, he might take a unbiased look at what Apple has to offer. He would make unlikely fanboy, but it’s possible.

  21. Brand Johnson - 10 years ago

    he truly is a complete idiot!!!

  22. Graham J - 10 years ago

    It’s ok, commentators will still call them iPads anyway.

  23. André Hedegaard Petersen - 10 years ago

    “bans his family from using iPhones”
    Bans? As in 18th century man deciding over his wife and kids?
    How is that even possible for his kids not to say:
    “Why dontcha go fuck yourself, you fat balding gangrene prick!”

  24. boardflyer (@boardflyer) - 10 years ago

    Best way to screw up morale of an organization: Micro-manage with top down edicts like this. Balmer should be asking Doc Rivers how to make Surface competitive with iPad and address those concerns rather than cramming something down his employee’s throats.

  25. Eli Matar - 10 years ago

    “$500 for a phone? Are you kidding me?”
    :)

    • thinkman12345 - 10 years ago

      Did you stubble on to this page in the midst of an hallucination? What does “$500 for a phone” have to do with anything here?

  26. Kasimani Baskaran - 10 years ago

    Except for the friendship with his boss, Balmer has done nothing to earn his respects while he was at Micro$oft. He is a good example for ‘Idiot at high places can really turn the so called high places into hell’

  27. lkernan - 10 years ago

    He does realize he doesn’t work for Microsoft anymore, right?

    • thinkman12345 - 10 years ago

      He never actually worked FOR Microsoft — I think it would be far more correct to say that he worked against Microsoft, while drawing a monumental paycheck for bringing down Gate’s venerable old girl!

  28. So what next, anyone entering the building who has a apple device won’t be allow in. Fans too or any employee with a personal idevice.

  29. And Ballmer enters the real world. Rude awakening for that poor guy.

  30. thinkman12345 - 10 years ago

    Well, of course he does! Once a bozo, always a bozo. What I’m wondering is if it will take him even less time to run the Clippers into the ground than it did for him to do the same for Microsoft. And the assertion (either by him or merely speculation by the author of this article) that most in the Clipper’s association use windows phones is hysterically funny! NO ONE uses Windows phones. fewer and fewer people and companies are even using Windows. Period!

  31. Chris Chamberlain - 10 years ago

    What a douche-bag this rich bozo is! As CEO of Microsoft, he led them to years of stagnation and mediocrity!! As Steve Jobs famously said: “Microsoft has built a great business and has huge market share, but they lack vision and their products are boring and have no soul” Well said Steve! Let’s hope the same fate isn’t in store for the Clippers.

  32. Computer_Whiz123 - 10 years ago

    No. If I was on his team, I would quit if he asked me to ditch iDevices.

  33. Philip Vaticano - 10 years ago

    I suppose after that Steve you’ll ban the current basketballs, trading them for medicine balls…then your transition back to the 20th Century will be complete…