Microsoft Exec: Red Polos, to Us, Are Like Turtlenecks to Steve Jobs

March 19, 2009 at 12:01 pm PT

Every year, Microsoft (MSFT) puts on a bash for Web designers and programmers in Las Vegas called Mix. At this year’s conference, the company focused on its new Internet Explorer 8 Web browser, reviewed here, but it also took a not-too-subtle dig at Steve Jobs, with a send-up of prima donna executive antics.

The company rolled a video before Microsoft corporate vice president Scott Guthrie took the stage at the conference, showing Mr. Guthrie in the hours before his speech having his hair done, working out in a disco ballroom and getting a tattoo that said “Thug Life.” At one point in the video, a bewildered conference producer barks that Mr. Guthrie has to make a wardrobe selection, when a clothes rack filled with dozens of identical long-sleeved red polo shirts drifts by.

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Tagged with: conference, digital, Digits, entertainment, frontpage, Internet, Internet Explorer 8, Las Vegas, Microsoft, Nick Wingfield, Scott Guthrie, software, Steve Jobs, tattoo, The Wall Street Journal, wardrobe, Web

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Levander Thomas

That sounds about right. Microsoft copying Apple’s style and not getting it quite right. Wearing a black turtleneck every day, you don’t notice it. Black is a neutral color. A red polo every day would be annoying. Kind of like Windows.

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