Bob Cringely has republished a quote from an interview he did with Bill Gates from June, 1998 for a never-published piece for Vanity Fair:
“What I can’t figure out is why he (Steve Jobs) is even trying (to be the CEO of Apple)? He knows he can’t win.” – Bill Gates, June 1998
Cringely writes, “Look at the two companies today. Jobs is still running Apple despite cancer and a liver transplant while Gates has moved on to saving the world at the Gates Foundation. Microsoft is worth $240 billion, a tiny drop from 12 years ago, with the shares now around $27 (down from $29). Nothing gained in more than a decade. Apple shares, on the other hand, have gone from $7.25 to almost $240, Apple’s market cap has risen more than 33X from $6 billion to $220 billion. And Cupertino’s cash hoard today is almost exactly the same as Microsoft’s at around $40 billion.”
“It’s pretty easy to argue that Jobs did win. Certainly Apple has the mojo lately with its string of home run products like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and now the iPad. Even Mac market share is up in the double digits and Apple’s profit margins are the best in the industry,” Cringely writes. “The trend line is definitely up for Apple and mildly down for Microsoft.”
Cringely writes, “What Bill Gates didn’t count on when he declared Jobs a loser back in 1998, was the Californian’s tenacity. It took 12 years to do it, but Apple is well positioned now to take Microsoft’s crown.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Here are a few more quotes:
• The one thing Apple’s providing now is leadership in colors. It won’t take long for us to catch up with that, I don’t think. – Bill Gates, commenting on iMac in colors debut, circa July 2000
• You can’t come up with a new OS. – Bill Gates on why Microsoft chose to put Windows inside Tablet PCs instead of a different operating system designed specifically for tablet use, November 2002
• There’s nothing that the iPod does that I say, ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that.’ – Bill Gates, September 2004
• I don’t believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run. – Bill Gates, May 2005
Mr. Original can’t even help copying his own sarcastic and proven wrong quotes:
• There’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’ – Bill Gates, February 2010
Before you fire up Apple’s 30-day free trial of iWork or simply buy it for just $US79, please keep in mind that the quotes above come from the Chairman of the very company that today is attempting to sell you an overpriced, bloated Office suite for your Mac.
Please read: Mac users should not buy Microsoft software (or hardware) – May 16, 2003
FSCKIN A!!!!
Gates is on a downhill slope with no way up… Heeheehee
You can bet your sweet patootie that Apple will steamroller MS within two years. If the iPad is anything to go by, lord knows what else the Gnomes of Cupertino have up their sleeves for the coming months. Just look at some of the patents that have surfaced over the last few months.
It’s good to be the King
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=:~)
Microsoft? Oh, yeah, the computer virus maker. I remember them.
It is all because one of these to companies has always strived to excellence, perfection and customer centric satisfaction. The other was only hellbent intent in making money, at the expense of quality, user experience and most importantly, customer satisfaction.
Long live Apple!
damn straight. I can’t wait until Apple has a bigger market cap than MS …
now that’s revenge
if you wait long enough anything can happen. tortoise v. hare over 140 internet/dog years.
nice, Gates gets bit some more.
If you think about it, the fall in the US Dollar’s value means that Microsoft’s worth has gone through more than a “tiny drop”.
Quite a legacy Ballmer is leaving should he ever retire.
@BMWTwisty
Good one, Twisty. That will likely be the way M$ is remembered decades from now.
“I don’t think…” -Bill Gates, on numerous occasions.
@DaveH, the dollar is still a dollar. Oh, you mean because of inflation? That’s been pretty steady at about 2%. Oh, you mean exchange rate devaluation? That’s already being factored into inflation.
Gee, Bill Gates sounds a bit like the olde Zune Thang with a different fan club. Zuney’s fan club say it’s satire, Bill’s says he’s serious. Well at least Bill has the guts to tell it from his mouth.
@KenC
You hit that nail on the head: “I don’t think…” -Bill Gates
LoKong live Steve Ballmer, keep sinking the bloated ship…
“Microsoft is worth $240 billion, a tiny drop from 12 years ago, with the shares now around $27 (down from $29).”
Actually, it’s far worse than that – and it’s not linked to the falling dollar. Yahoo finance shows MSFT peaking at roughly $48 (adjusted for splits and dividends) in December of 1999 before the bursting of the dot com bubble in 2000. Going from some $400 billion in market cap to $240 billion is hardly a “tiny drop”.
So, Steve’s plans to abandon the Mac computer challenge to MSoft and devote his company to the new age of “computation” with simplistic pads, pods and phones is suppose to be a good thing for us?
In a few years when we arrive at the Applepad store and can find only a few refurbished iMacs for serious computer needs, we will be celebrating Job’s victory over the ‘sarcastic’ Mr. Gates?
Without the Mac faithful, Jobs would be simply a quirky guy in jeans and a black t-shirt. There would be no pad, no pod, no phone.
And, those of us who need a usb port, an optical drive, and some real computer power will be left with MSoft crap – worse than even today’s crap but the only computer in town. I hate this.
This is a silly lament about letting go of needless things.
Buy a BD/DVD drive for keeps. Buy a USB adaptor Built-in drives are a waste of space, they add dead weight, add to land-fill and they suck power.
If you don’t grok this, you will certainly lose sleep (or worse) when the MacBook Pro Air arrives.
“cogito, ergo non sum gates.”
If you like living in Steve Jobs universe, Apple is fantastic..
Reading other blogs it becomes clear that some people want more flexibility… or just don’t like feeling “limited,” or spending money for quality.
Since 86 it has been consistently good for me. So far so good.
Cringely… Hmm, I’m waiting for the third part of “nerds”… Loved especially the first one (“the only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste”). But it is about time to look back on the last decade – the mobile evolution, apple’s victory over Microsoft. Dr. …ähm I mean Mr. Cringely should start to film, because this summer marks the historic win for Apple…
Since 86 Apple has been consistently good for me…
@Worry Someone is waaaaaaay blowing things out of proportion. There will always be the Mac. Apple knows that there also needs to be a complex computer and not just a simplified iPhone OS (yet still robust I might add). Here, take some chill pills and go back to work.
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Yeah, or not. Those quotes should be a wake-up call to anybody who thinks Microsoft would be in better shape if Billy Boy was still CEO instead of Ballmer.
@Worry
Try making sense.
I wonder if Gates left Microsoft under a cloud of shame?
He bet the farm on the pen tablet and even went so far as to remind everyone at Microsoft just who he was when cynnical talk began to surface around campus.
Eventually, he siphoned off more than two-hundred employees throughout the company, who were trying to meet the challenge of getting Windows XP to run
smoothly on a tablet.
He lined up seven vendors to build the device, including HP and Compaq by telling them they would sell millions of these devices at a price of two grand.
The one tiny flaw that prevented the pen tablet from flourishing as he said it would, and the reason it still languishes today is, the device never could run Microsoft Office with the same degree of efficiency as the desktop!
He bet the farm on the tablet but in his capacity as the chief software architect, not even he could get Windows and Office to work on anything less than a desktop.
In the end, he just wasn’t smart enough to make it work. He couldn’t fathom the idea of creating a reduced version of his OS or Office, which is ultimately what Steve Jobs did with his tablet devices.
Gates clung to the pen, and hand-writing recognition because he couldn’t shake the paradigm of a tablet of paper.
It would seem Mrs. Gate’s little boy Billy was a special child indeed.