Well now. Ignorance and conceit seems to have reached new heights at Microsoft. It turns out that Windows Vista is doing really poorly at the moment as far as sales go. Of course, Microsoft has noticed this. Its selling slower than even Windows XP did coming so close after Windows 2000 Pro.

However, Vista offers not only business versions but also several home versions as well, so why are all versions, business and home, doing so poorly across all markets? Well, Steve Ballmer has an explanation.

One way Microsoft can bump up Windows sales is to tighten the screws on pirates, Ballmer said. “Piracy reduction can be a source of Windows revenue growth, and I think we’ll make some piracy improvements this year.”

“We have new technologies built into Windows Vista, something we call Windows Genuine Advantage [that] we’ve really dialed up in capabilities with the Vista release,” he said. “I do think that will bring some revenue growth. We will have strong growth in the Windows business in emerging markets: China, India, Brazil, Russia and many others. Those markets are very high piracy.”

Ballmer hints at tougher Vista antipiracy crackdown – ARNnet

So according to Microsoft, the poor global sales of Windows Vista is a direct result of piracy in China, India, Brazil and Russia.

Of course it has absolutely nothing at all to do with poor driver support, slow development of Vista compatible versions of software, and in general, no real feature benefit to upgrading, a general distrust and dislike of embedded DRM in the platform itself, absolutely pitiful benchmark results for gaming and a complete and almost total bad reputation among the independent press and media.

Will Microsoft ever finally concede that the operating system they have created is a lemon? More of a lemon than even Windows 3.1 or Windows ME? (Okay, maybe not Windows ME, at least Vista doesn’t crash every few minutes.)

Its funny… Apple sales keep soaring. Each new release of OSX has generated more and more sales of Apple hardware. I think the biggest thing Microsoft could ever have done to boost sales of Apple computers and increase downloads of Linux has been the release of the unripe lemon that is Windows Vista.