“I gave myself two weeks to form an opinion of the iPad. (And note well the my and opinion: I may let a fact sneak in here and there, but I intend to convey my personal impressions. As we say online: YMMV. You might come to a different conclusion.) I carried my brand new iPad everywhere, and I mean everywhere: From the smallest room in the house to the office, out to the coffee shop, into the 747 cabin and then on, to a magazine industry conference in Paris,” Gassée reports. “I wanted to know if this would come back to the pail after a fortnight. Call me a skeptic, but I’ve spent too much time inside too many sausage factories to trust a demo, (which is a first impression.)”
Gassée reports, “The iPad isn’t perfect but, for me, it’s more than good enough, and extrapolating from the iPhone trajectory since 2007 we’ll see a steady string of improvements, especially if competitors such as HP and (the now-disliked) Google spur Apple and drive investment and creativity. A final word…for Bill Gates. In 2001, he predicted that within five years, the Tablet PC would be the most popular form of PC sold in America. The timing was off, but he might end up being right, even if he might not enjoy the fruits of his vision… The iPad might be the real thing, finally.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bill Gates predicted tablets running Windows would be the most popular form of PC. Therefore, not only was he wrong in the timing, but wrong in the OS. On top of that, Mr. Genius Prognosticator has said, as recently as this February, even after Steve Jobs showed him the iPad, that he still thinks “that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the mainstream on that.” In other words, unsurprisingly, Gates still doesn’t get it at all.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
Why people listen to Bill Gates is beyond me…
Who’s Bill Gates?
The waiting for 3G is killing me. Too bad that Sprint hotspot is so bloody expensive.
Why doesn’t Fred Mertz just join your staff so that you don’t always have to give him special credit for his research?
Why does reading his syntax make my head want to explode?
MDN noted “he still thinks “Gates thinks…that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the mainstream on that. Gates still doesn’t get it at all.”
MDN missed Gates’ point, which is strictly MS & Gate’s income.
Gates STILL wishfully thinks Windows is going to dominate tablets, because without Windows, there is only a marginal business out there for PCs as the years go on, and the Gate’s income from MS will dribble down year by year.
@Burrell
I’ll take the dribble… A billion or two here, a few billion there.
@ChrissyOne:
How expensive is that Sprint thing? I tried to find out, following an ad to their website on iPad — and the site was all Flash!!!
Utter morons.
If tablets take the form of that visualised by Gates it would never be successful. Typical that some deluded individuals would judge him right by taking credit for the work of others. Sounds familiar somehow.
I wanted to know if this would come back to the pail after a fortnight.
What the hell does that mean?
@Acme
pall
verb [ intrans. ]
become less appealing or interesting through familiarity : the novelty of the quiet life palled.
zmarc
Read the reviews of the device. 4G appears to comes with the cost. But the device slips to 3G and racks up huge income for sprint.
@HughB
It makes even less sense if pail is changed to pall.
wanted to know if this would come back to the [pall] after a fortnight.
Bill Gates was smart that he recognizes an opportunity then took advantage of it (by essentially stealing someone else’s work). He rode that to be the most wealthy man in the country (and world).
He was never really good at much else. His prediction track record speaks for itself.
I would love to have heard what Steve Ballmer said about the iPad. He was so wrong about the iPod and iPhone. If anything ever happens to Steve Jobs, Apple could just design in the opposite direction of everything Steve Ballmer thinks is the way to go!
Etymology
From pale, a jurisdiction under a given authority; often held by one nation in another country, hence suggesting that anything outside their control was uncivilised. It was in use by the mid-17th century. The phrase may be a reference to the general sense of boundary, but is often understood to refer to the English Pale in Ireland. In the nominally English territory of Ireland, only the pale fell genuinely under the authority of English law, hence the terms within the Pale and beyond the pale.
[edit]Adjective
beyond the pale (not comparable)
(idiomatic) Describing behaviour that is considered to be outside the bounds of morality, good behaviour or judgement in civilised company.
Good thing that guy had the iPad to pass the time, because tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people’s lives have been disrupted by the volcanic ash cloud that is polluting the atmosphere and doing Lord knows what to Global Warming, Air Quality, Water Quality, Farm Land? And people are cranky, missing work, missing home, missing children, running out of food, money, patience… sounds a little like armageddon if you ask me! Wonder what the ‘Bamster thoughts are?
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“I wanted to know if this would come back to the pail after a fortnight.”
Apple Translator: I wanted to know if the RDF would wear off after a couple days.
@Health care passed and…
No, no, no….
Did you not get the memo? Humans cause global warming.
Volcanos have nothing to do with it.
Voice and handwriting recognition will become standard and there will be endless attachments for all reasons. Apps & Adds ( + ads ) will rule, and everybody will have one. Viva iPad!
I like chips with brown gravy.
Again no love coming from MDN on this article.
@ zmarc
http://skattertech.com/2010/04/sprint-4g-overdrive-review/
“The device goes for about $99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year contract through Sprint.com, but for only $50 through Amazon.com with the same requirements. Monthly service plans begin at $60 per month, which is on par with most service plans. It’s definitely a plus since there’s 4G speeds for the same price. Sprint also impressively offers unlimited data usage for 4G, but caps 3G to just 5GB per month.”
But also…
“The Overdrive only offers about 3 hours of battery life when the 4G network is in use for browsing the web, streaming a few videos, replying to emails, and chatting.”
…which is just unacceptable if my iPad is going to have 10 hrs of life.
Bill Gates may be right that a “tablet” will become a popular form of computer, through perhaps not the “most popular” even five hears from 2010. However, he never envisioned how such a computer would operate, and that it would completely abandon the desktop GUI. His thinking was “UMPC with Origami,” where the Windows GUI was shimmed and fudged to work with touch (or a stylus). That was clearly not the tablet of the future, so he was more wrong than right with his prediction.
Gates just shoots his mouth off, Apple kept quiet and made the thing and it works. Why does anyone give gates credit? Anyone watching stargate could see that tablets were the way to go.