It was about noon, I was at my desk filling out my "plot of the day" forms when all of a sudden the entire room went "white", no pictures, no carpet, no furniture, just white. The hairs rose on the back of my neck so I whipped around, and there he was! It was the "Smoking Man", you know the guy from the x-files. I asked, "what are you doing here?" He puffed lightly, then said, ""I was hired by Department 666a for effect, I'm bringing you their report!"

I replied, "hmmm, this must be pretty important, 666a hasn't contacted me since the IBM thing!" – We both chuckled.

SMOKING MAN: "You can see sir it is entitled POISON IVE"

BALLMER: "Is that what you guys want to do? Seems a little extreme to me."

SMOKING MAN: "No sir, they just thought it was a clever name for the new Anti-Apple operation"

BALLMER: "Time is money, let's hear your report synopsis, chop-chop!"

SMOKING MAN: "Well sir, 666a has concluded that Jonathan Ive is more dangerous to us than Steve Jobs. He keeps Jobs on task, gives him great designs and ideas, keeps him inspired. Jobs makes the decisions, but, Ive gives him the good choices. Conclusion – Without Ive Jobs is just another CEO with an incompetent staff."

BALLMER: "I can see that, so what's the plan?"

SMOKING MAN: " We have already started it. We have seeded the media with stories about Ive wanting to take over from Jobs. Our psychologist say that it is 94.5% certain that Jobs will eventually become paranoid and fire him!"

BALLMER: "Good plan! Now how do I get all of my stuff back? Where did everything go?

There was suddenly a flash of light. POOF! Everything was back just like it was, the Smoking man was gone and the carpet and walls were back!

I said, " Wow, those 666a guys are good! All that's left is this report and the smell of cheap Turkish cigarettes!"

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

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I'll bet he thinks he has the best job in the world already, doing what he is undeniably world class at doing.

At a reported US$3 million a year, I'll bet he has everything he would want and more in terms of material benefits, respect from his peers and so on.

D

In that regard Ives could just do the same in theory

finally it's a combination of functionality ,design and marketing that sells your product

For Ives to take over Apple he would have to have a grasp on all of the above, it's the uniqueness of steve jobs vision,passion and technical expertise that makes him the perfect ceo for Apple quite honestly I cannot think of anyone that could replace him today… Ives ?? maybe …