Ballmer has a BAD case of "Not invented here". I remember reading a story about him calling out and mocking an employee in a meeting b/c they has an iPhone (this was around 2008 I think). First off it's a VERY GOOD IDEA to use your competitors products if only to see how they stack up (Spoiler: They blew away MS's mobile offerings in 2008 and still do to this day). Second, what a way to make all of your employees yes-men who live in their own world shut off from what was happening in real world. He was douche all around from what I can tell and him leaving is one of the best things that could have happened to MS. Ballmer took over MS soon after I really got into computers and let it stagnate (XP/IE6) which lead me to switch to Linux/OSX and I've never looked back. I'm not saying it's all his fault but I think he was extremely influential in decisions that ultimately pushed me away from MS.
I moved away in 1999 to the Mac, and because of the incredible expensive Macs nowadays, I'm probably going to make another move, to Ubuntu.
Still, Steve Jobs was not an easy guy either. I don't know if he would mock an employee for having an Android phone? Not unlikely given how anti-Android he was.
VERY good point and honestly one that I hadn't thought of. I'm not aware of any publicised cases of Jobs calling out an Android phone but I would believe it, he was an asshole. IIRC he was so anti-android b/c he saw Android as a blatant rip-off of iOS (not weighing in here on either side).
As far as cost of macs I think it's still worth it even if you want to run Ubuntu as your OS b/c they hold their value better than any other laptop I've seen on the market. They also resell FAST which is very nice.
I buy my computers to use them, not to resell them. At this point my Macbook Pro is worth maybe $300, and I'd be more likely to gift it to a relative than sell it in the first place.
I also found it to be a huge pain to install Linux on it, which is why all my Linux computers are Thinkpads (with the exception of the old HP workstation I'm typing this from).
