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

[Matt Penna]

On Feb 2, 2007, at 4:20 PM, Nils Holland wrote:

> 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.
>

The entire second page of the interview has some very odd statements  
by Bill Gates. He seems to be very uninformed (which is not new) and  
at times almost incoherent.

Microsoft had better wake up. If anything needs major surgery, it's  
not "PC;" it's their development processes.

When we see what the final release of Leopard looks like, I do not  
expect Vista to compare favorably. And OS X 10.6 will probably be out  
long before Vista's successor, so what's Vista going to look like  
compared to whatever comes next from Apple?


BILL 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.

Is the second statement even related to the first? Either it's simply  
an incomplete train of thought or he doesn't realize you can upgrade  
Mac OS X. Or Linux. Or anything else.

It's been said by a lot of others before: A lot of people will indeed  
buy a new machine - likely made by Apple, and it won't be running Vista.

He also apparently missed the statistics that half of current  
business PCs can't run Vista's Aero interface without a major  
hardware upgrade. At my previous workplace, there were 3 machines out  
of 60 that could run any version of Vista at all, with no plans to  
begin wholesale hardware replacements. If anything, I'd say the 50%  
estimate is conservative.

And I thought the one-third of people who needed to upgrade hardware  
when Windows 95 was released was a lot.


BILL GATES: 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?

Well…probably that they think they're superior? Because in a lot of  
respects, they are. Isn't that what comparison-based advertising is  
supposed to convey? If Bill Gates honestly believes that Windows is  
superior to Mac OS hands-down in all respects across the board, then  
it's no wonder he was basically tossed out of his own company.

Windows definitely has advantages over Mac OS X for certain people,  
but the number of such advantages has been shrinking for a while and  
will no doubt continue to do so.


BILL GATES: So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were  
doing, user interface-wise. Let’s be realistic, who came up with  
[the] file, edit, view, help [menu bar]? Do you want to go back to  
the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came  
from?

I've read that a good 5 or 6 times and I still can't figure out  
exactly what he's trying to say. Perhaps I'm dense. Does anyone even  
care?

	Matt
--
Matt Penna

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"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very  
sophisticated idiots." -Dr. Who