Ballmer lets out his inner Monkey at Mix08 event

Seattle PI | at | by Mike

An animated Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer poked fun at Apple's latest hardware, defended his company's giant Yahoo acquisition bid, and promised to keep fighting Google for market share until his last breath.

And that was before he reprised the whole "Monkey Boy" thing.

Appearing on stage Thursday at the company's Mix08 Internet conference here, Ballmer sparred and joked with former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki for more than an hour on a wide range of topics related to Microsoft and the technology industry.