There are six words a football manager never wants to read about himself in a newspaper: “he has lost the dressing room”. Reports of mutiny in the ranks are almost inevitably followed days later with another six-word epitaph: “spending more time with his family”.

Will Steve Ballmer’s three kids soon have more quality time to spend with their dad? Judging by the reaction to last week’s annual employees’ meeting at Microsoft, it’s looking increasingly likely.

The influential Mini-Microsoft blog posts a largely upbeat account of last week’s gathering. Yes, people were reported to be “streaming out” of the hall before the event had finished, although only in “small numbers”, and as the blog points out, it was “nowhere near as bad as BillG’s last company meeting where Ballmer started screaming at people to sit down”.

Yet, the comments on the blog betray a far deeper level of internal anger towards Microsoft and Ballmer in particular. It should be noted that we can’t verify whether the comments are from genuine Microsoft employees or not, but if they are, Ballmer has some serious morale issues to deal with.

Here is a selection of the comments:

“It is the most depressing time per my 10 years at MS, actually. Everyone is either leaving or planning to leave. Everyone is selling stocks.”

“Do yourself a favour. Ignore the noise, the music, the clapping and ask yourself if you really believe what the people on stage are telling you.”

“All our strategies are DEFENSIVE. We’re not creating anything *new* of value, and haven’t since Windows 95. W8 will only prevent Windows from dying immediately.”

“It has been a year since I left MSFT and it has been the best year of my life. The lack of vision from the top, the inane HR and review policies and procedure and the obscure version of ‘teamwork’, where people work together and against each other at the same time, drove me away.”

“SteveB did one of the smartest things I’ve ever seen him do as CEO today: He delegated responsibility by paying someone else to jump around like an a****** during his entrance instead of doing it all by himself. Now if only he’d do the same with his regular day job…”

There are a smattering of positive comments to counter the gloom, and the self-perpetuating nature of blog comments should never be taken as a representative sample of opinion on anything. But the level of bile and – more worryingly for Microsoft – resignation among at least a minority of its staff must be a cause for concern.

Interestingly, even the Microsoft employee who wrote the original, largely positive blog post speculates on a potential change at the top, suggesting that Windows chief Steven Sinofsky is “CEO material”. I made a similar point almost three years ago, when I suggested that Sinofsky might be the man to replace Steve Jobs at Apple.

Apple promoted from within. Perhaps Microsoft should consider doing likewise.

Whether Steve Jobs really does only need to get his hormones back in balance, or there’s something more serious going on, Apple are going to need to find a new top dog at some juncture.

For me, there’s one outstanding candidate for the job and (whisper it) he comes from the old enemy: Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky.

Sinofsky’s performed not one, but two minor miracles at Microsoft. He was the man responsible for the magnificent overhaul of the Office suite, with Office 2007. Microsoft was so scared of tampering with the Office cash cow that the software had barely changed in appearance since the days of Windows 3.1. Redesigning the interface on a piece of software that is used by the vast majority of office and homes around the world was fraught with risk, but Sinofsky and his team pulled it off with care and no small amount of style. Now not only is it immeasurably easier to produce professional-looking documents in Word, for example, but fast-gaining open-source rivals such as OpenOffice now look tired by comparison.

Following his success with Office, Sinofsky was sent to rescue Windows from the car crash that was Vista. The end result? Windows 7. Arguably the first Microsoft operating system since Windows 95 to create an enormous feel-good factor. Yes, it’s still in beta, and yes, it could still all go horribly wrong. But all the indications are that Microsoft’s learnt the lessons of Vista, and produced a lean, powerful and attractive operating system that actually makes computing easier. And they did it on Sinofsky’s watch.

I first encountered Sinofsky in the flesh at last year’s Professional Developers Conference, and he has that Jobs-like combination of public speaking with confidence, charisma and complete control of the subject matter. During a press conference, he dealt brilliantly with a verbal assault from a French journalist with an axe to grind over one of Vista’s many flaws, accusing Microsoft of not even testing the software it pumps out.

He waited patiently for the grand-standing hack to vent his spleen, before calmly asserting: “Whenever someone finds a part of Windows they don’t like, they assume it’s something we put a junior design team on to torture people with. We have 40 people who do nothing but test the [Windows] product every day. We’re more committed to usability than we ever were. But that’s just like saying we like quality.” Direct, funny, assertive. The hack sat down and shut up pretty quickly.

Compare and contrast that to the way Steve Jobs stand-in Phil Schiller deals with this mildly impertinent question from Channel 4 News’s Ben Cohen. Schiller simply blanks the question and darts a pleading glance at the off-camera Apple PR flunkies, who cut the interview short. And this is the senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

Sinofksy might lack hardware experience, but he’s smart, level-headed and has one hell of a track record of delivering innovative products. At PDC he was even wearing jeans and a polo-neck, so he’s got the Apple uniform already.

Could Apple really appoint a Microsoft man as CEO? Yes, it could. And yes, it should. 

“UAC was so famous I thought it might surpass Clippy,” he remarked to journalists earlier in the week. 

He issued another half-apology for UAC during his Windows 7 keynote today, dryly remarking “we got a lot of feedback on Vista RTM. From users, from the press, from bloggers… Oh, and from one or two adverts.” 

“We had the best of intentions of helping to secure the platform more,” he continued, before adding: “we probably went a bit too far.”

Yes, Stephen, you did. But Microsoft certainly appears to have learnt its lessons before Windows 7. The new OS includes a slider that allows you to set the level of UAC interference, right down to the equivalent of ‘don’t darken my door again, buster’, which I suspsect is the setting that most PC enthusiasts will immediately deploy.

The nagging can be silenced elsewhere, too. System Tray pop-ups can be disabled, and you now have the option to condemn those irritating “love me, love me” System Tray icons that certain software makers love, to an overflow area.

In fact, I’m yet to find something in Windows 7 that’s lit my infamously short fuse. Give it time, though. Give it time.