Forehead arteries pulsing dangerously beneath purpling and apocalyptic skin stretched taut, a Microsoft manager recently told journalists not to use or even mention Apple products at a Windows Mobile event in Germany.
Eyeballs bulging out of his skull like the enraged ocular twins of his every spitted umlaut, the manager rebuked a journalist who had dared to opine over dinner that there has never been an easier-to-use smartphone than the iPhone.
“This is a Microsoft event,” the manager shouted. “Apple products have no business being here!”
Silence followed, during which onlookers tried to decide for themselves whether or not the eruption was meant as a joke, in which case it was safe to laugh, or as the prelude to some sort of stabbing frenzy.
Germans, however, are not fans of ambiguity. “I’m serious about it!” the manager clarified with a dark and terrible glower.
Just one mid-level Windows Mobile manager’s overblown and self-righteous overreaction to the elephant in the room? Almost definitely. But as a tech journalist, I have to say, I hope this doesn’t mark the beginning of a company-wide “final solution” to the problem of Apple products being used to cover Microsoft events. I picture an ocean of MacBook-toting bloggers looking over to the chained doors of some Las Vegas Convention Center hall, just as several dozen hooded Microsoft representatives pull machine guns from their robes and aim them at the audience while Steve Ballmer maniacally shouts down from the stage: “Jetzt! Schnell!”
[via Daring Fireball]
