Steve Ballmer autographs student’s MacBook: “Need a new one?”
Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer is a curious man ape: loud, purple-faced, drenched in sweat, and hirsute but for his head. But at least the man’s got a good sense of humor: upon being handed a MacBook by a student at Trevecca Nazarene University, Ballmer happily autographed it with the message “Need a new one?”
Presumably, Ballmer was making a tongue-in-cheek jab at his rival, but he possibly also knew exactly how much an ironically autographed MacBook signed by Microsoft’s CEO would get on eBay.
We criticize Microsoft and Ballmer a lot here at CoM, but this was a cute and classy gesture, especially considering it’s almost impossible to imagine Steve Jobs doing the same thing without hurling the Windows laptop to the ground and apoplectically smashing it to atoms with his feet.
John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him ![Read "Why You’ll Probably Never Own A Mac With An ARM Processor [Feature]"](http://cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/macbookairarm-300x250.jpg "Read \"Why You’ll Probably Never Own A Mac With An ARM Processor [Feature]\"")
![Read "Is This USB Vibrator The New iPod? [Interview]"](http://cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/crave1-300x250.jpg "Read \"Is This USB Vibrator The New iPod? [Interview]\"")
