Bill Gates on Vista and Apple's 'Lying' Ads (Mac OS X vs Vista)

[Nils Holland]

In Newsweek, Bill Gates said:

> GATES: Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade  
> on the hardware than our competitors have done. You can choose to  
> buy a new machine, or you can choose to do an upgrade. And I don't  
> know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don't even get it.  
> What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things,  
> or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person  
> whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of  
> truth to it.

Well, Mr. Gates, it's probably nothing new to you when I tell you  
that Apple's "Get a Mac" ads are - well - advertising. In these ads,  
Apple basically tells you that there are no security problems on the  
Mac, that only Macs can do creative stuff right while PCs cannot, and  
so on. Of course, all of that is quite a bit oversimplified, but on  
the whole, the message goes into the right direction and comes kind  
of close to reality.

So, Mr. Gates, have a look at your own advertising instead. Recently,  
I stumbled about a section on the German Microsoft site in which  
there was a list of quite a few companies who supposedly switched  
from one flavor or another of UNIX to Windows, because - quote  
"Windows was more stable and secure, as well as less expensive to  
maintain". Now, I guess this is advertising too and it has the same  
right to be oversimplified as the Apple ads have. In contrast to  
them, however, my own experience doesn't see too much truth in what  
your ads are saying here. So, what do you complain here? You're doing  
the same thing Apple does, but in contrast to them, what you are  
saying doesn't even remotely come close to the way things really are.

Greetings,
Nils