Steve Ballmer banning Apple products for L.A. Clippers

Former Microsoft CEO and new Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is known for his distaste for Apple products. It’s not shocking then that Ballmer, who once grabbed an employee’s iPhone at a Microsoft meeting and pretended to stomp on it, plans to phase out iPhones and iPads from the Clippers locker room.

After plunking down $2 billion to buy the NBA team away from embattled former owner Donald Sterling, Ballmer has pledged many changes to the Clippers organization. We should have all seen this one coming.


Ballmer left the board of Microsoft last month but is still the largest individual shareholder, with about 4 percent of the company worth $15.7 billion.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the Clippers will be a Microsoft organization. The son of a Ford Motor Co. manager, he’s always been a company and product loyalist, banning his own family from using Apple’s iPhones.

“Most of the Clippers are on Windows, some of the players and coaches are not,” Ballmer said.

“And (head coach) 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 offseason.”

Microsoft recently struck a five-year deal reportedly worth $400 million to make its Surface “the official tablet of the NFL.” The Seattle Seahawks are the poster child, it seems, of a push from Redmond to get pro football players and coaches using Microsoft tablets on the field.


http://blog.seattlepi.com/sonics/2014/09/26/steve-ballmer-banning-l-a-clippers-from-apple-products/