Carved out a few minutes this morning so I could watch Steve Ballmer’s live launch of Windows 7 on the Today show. I burst out laughing when I saw him standing in front of a huge HDTV with an image of a laptop on it — and one emblazoned with the Windows 7 logo — BUT THAT LAPTOP WAS A PREVIOUS GENERATION MACBOOK PRO!
While I’ll be picking up a copy of Windows 7 to run in Parallels on my MacPro tower (though just for very occasional use), this is still a very funny tweak of Ballmer by NBC Today show staffers who obviously knew exactly what they were doing.
About Steve Borsch
I certainly don’t think Ballmer would be stupid enough to go on live on Today knowing his company’s logo for its latest, greatest, same old same old, would be blazoned upon the likes of an Apple machine. I would hope that no one in Ballmer’s camp was aware of it either, lest they feel the wrath of Uncle Fester after the cameras were turned off.
No, I really think this colossal screw up is the result of some wise guy on NBC’s payroll. Oh well, he or she won’t be on the payroll much longer after today on Today.
It may have been on purpose. Consider that Windows is an operating system. They only stand to gain by allowing their OS to be run on as many computers as possible. These days, its impossible to deny that Apple is THE ascendant hardware design company. It is therefore important for Microsoft to communicate that it’s OS is compatible with Apple hardware something that a lot of Mac users sometimes forget. Perhaps MS hopes to sell lots of copies of Windows 7 to existing Mac owners – hence the use of the older Macbook Pro in the background graphic.
While its hilarious to think about a “wiseguy” designer creating the graphic as a practical joke, I seriously doubt that in this economy anyone would consider pulling a prank like that and risking losing their job (or, more likely, their recurring freelance gig or internship).