From the rip-off desktop background to the white and translucent plastics to the rounded corners, Microsoft’s ‘Athens’ prototype PC shouts “I wish I were a Mac.” However, this slab of plastic is incapable of running Mac OS X and is merely a prototype that is shipping nowhere.
“The goal is to make Windows-based computers more consistent, easier to navigate and able to provide a better computing experience, Gates said in an e-mail interview,” reports The Seattle Times.
(MacDailyNews: you mean like Macintosh?)
“‘The PC industry has been incredibly successful over the years, but hardware and software development have sometimes been a little out of sync,’ he said. ‘The best way to advance the state of the art is to work together even more closely, always starting from the customer’s perspective and focusing on the combination of hardware and software that works best to create an innovative and compelling next-generation PC,'” reports The Seattle Times.
(MacDailyNews: you mean like Apple?)
“To demonstrate the potential of this approach, Gates plans to demonstrate an advanced prototype office computer, dubbed ‘Athens,’ that Microsoft developed with Hewlett-Packard… If the industry embraces this new approach, Microsoft could have an even bigger role in shaping the evolution of PCs. It may also help the company fend off competition from Apple and freely shared software.” writes The Seattle Times.
“Coordinating development of machines and software they’ll run may lead to better-designed machines with more consumer appeal. That’s the approach taken by Apple Computer, which develops both software and hardware in-house and is credited with numerous innovations to the ire of Gates and other leaders in the Windows PC industry,” writes Brier Dudley for The Seattle Times.
Dudley continues, “It may not be a coincidence that the Athens PC resembles an Apple machine, with rounded corners, a translucent case and a flat, wide display. HP executive Louis Kim acknowledged the similarities, noting, ‘Apple is on a similar track in that they’re designing with the end-user in mind and they’re integrating hardware and software.’ But he said the Athens was designed for functionality, not fashion. ‘There was no intent to try and mimic Apple here,’ said Kim, HP’s worldwide director of marketing for business desktop computers.”
See the ‘revolutionary’ new ‘Athens’ PC prototype here. Closeup of the machine here.
Lastly, you might want to tack the ‘Athens’ example to the list in this article, “Apple leads; Wintel follows as usual” written by SteveJack last November.
