Microsoft’s Chairman Bill Gates spoke with CNET News.com on the eve of his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Gates commented on Apple Computer and Apple’s iTunes, iTunes Music Store, and iPod:
Gates on Apple iPod+iTunes: Apple is doing things the way Apple does–where it’s the Apple hardware and the Apple store, that’s great for them. We’re doing it the Windows way, where you’ve got things like this Creative Zen Micro, which sold out this holiday season. This brings the photo capability in, and it’s a very attractively priced device. So the variety story is an important one for us; it uses our rights management format and supports a subscription approach that we think can be a significant part of online music sales.
CNET Question: What do you think of Apple’s success so far? I mean, they clearly have had a hit with the iPod.
Gates: Absolutely. They had a hit with the Apple II, they had a hit with the Macintosh, and they have a hit with the iPod, so this is a company that’s had three hits, and that’s very impressive. There are a lot of companies that don’t have three hits. And in the same way that Macintosh helped get people exposed to the graphical user interface, the iPod is doing a great job getting people to think about digital music. In the long run, there will be a lot of people making digital music players, and we think that there will be a very different market share with dozens and dozens of companies. And other than Apple, all those player makers are signing up to work inside the Windows PlaysForSure ecosystem.
Full article with much more, er, stuff here.
MacDailyNews Take and BGBS Translation Service: “Apple is doing things the way Apple does…” = “Apple’s iPod+iTunes is all about quality, elegance, ease-of-use, and winning awards.”
“We’re doing it the Windows way…” = “Doing just enough to make it seem good enough as compared to Apple’s products and making up the difference with FUD and big money marketing. Plus we can deliver malware payloads built right into the WMA music files. Apple can’t promise that.”
“[The] Creative Zen Micro… sold out this holiday season…” = “I’m not telling you how many they made, but I think you’re stupid enough to think Creative’s got a huge hit on their hands.”
“The variety story is an important one for us…” = “If everybody keeps buying iPods and buying songs from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, our digital rights management (DRM) format is worthless and we’re screwed out of owning this market”
“[Apple] is a company that’s had three hits, and that’s very impressive…” = “I think Microsoft’s has had more hits than Apple, so Apple’s measly three isn’t impressive to me.”
“Macintosh helped get people exposed to the graphical user interface…” = “Without Apple, there wouldn’t have been a Windows and I wouldn’t be talking to you today.”
“The iPod is doing a great job getting people to think about digital music…” = “The iPod is great for introducing people to digital music, just like the Mac introduced people to an OS with a GUI. I took the OS market by copying Apple’s Mac and making it seem good enough, I’ll do the same with the digital music market sooner or later.”
“Other than Apple, all those player makers are signing up to work inside the Windows PlaysForSure ecosystem…” = “Player makers totaling 10% or so of the current market use our DRM and slap our PlaysForSure* stickers on their iPod knock off players, while the rest of the world uses Apple iPods and iTunes.”
*PlaysForSure is not similar to a protection racket. It is simply designed to demonize any company that won’t knuckle under to us. There are so many stupid people in the world, that enough will believe the PlaysForSure crap actually means something. After we rope enough of them in, I’ll have another “standard” and everyone left will feel they have to buy into WMA, too. Then I’ll own the market, grow bored quickly, and ignore it like I did with Internet Explorer. It’s never about quality, it’s about destroying and amassing more money than God.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Windows Media songs and videos found to carry Windows malware payloads – December 30, 2004
chris north..
cheer up bud.. apple has patents on the scroll wheel..that’s why so far nothing of interest has happened in the PlaysForSure camp
Apple’s strategy actually works in their favor, not against them.. 70% of legal online songs can’t be played on any of Windows-based Music Players.
plus, they’re pushing for the HP-like deals.. they’re not on their own.. every HP PC has iTunes on it, in other words…a potential iPod
Nothing Apple has done has been easy.. nothing that took so much energy to build can be dismantled so easily..
a lower priced iPod will be introduced so they’ll have the 149-600 price range covered
Don’t forget.. none of those companies have had success with music players… Only two, Apple and Sony.. have had success.. and they’re doing their own thing.
That’s why MS is up shit creek when it comes to Digital Music.
If you didn’t have billions I would say you are a f#cking idiot, jack squat f%ck face. Bastard, can’t even make a secure OS.
The article needs to be in context. BG’s speech is certainly propaganda, as one should indeed expect.
It’s obviously meant to be read by the moderately ignorant masses who will feel safe and secure when they hear things like “top security team” and “Firefox is new, and people are trying it out”, or even “we’ve been in the search engine business before Google”. Or this beauty “the tools around Windows and Office are not even half of what they will be”.
Each of these points is designed to make people feel good about their choice of MS products. Good luck to them if they don’t know any different.
Apple beat them with online music, Google beat them in internet searching, Firefox is arguably more secure than IE and has more features now. Office and Windows are seemingly only updated these days to keep the money rolling in.
So, the question that ignorant people should be asking (but often don’t) is “Why, if MS is so great and has more money than God, haven’t they done something good already, and been the sucessful ones?” (excluding Windows/Office.)
Of course, the MDN reading audience knows the answer – MS are mediocrity at it’s finest. We also know deep down that they will likely eventually succeed in these areas, if the past is anything to go on.
But at what cost?
Q/ Ah, Mr. Gates… Why is it that Windows users seem to be forever facing viruses, trojans, security breaches and system instability?
A/ Well, Apple has a low market share, so there are no vir….
Q/ No no, Mr. Gates. Never mind Apple. Why does Windows have these problems? Why haven’t you managed to make your operating system stable and secure after all these years? Hell, I spend an hour a week or more just trying to make the damn PC run… Aw, FORGET IT MR. GATES! There’s no answer except to get a Mac…. and that’s what I’m going to do. Here – take this piece of garbage you call a laptop and shove it.
Thank you, Mr. Gates.
MacDailyNews should be about Apple-Macintosh and not attack Bill Gates, who has little to do with Mac, as a kind of religion.
Apple does fine now and Microsoft is an other thing: Let Bill be on MSN etc.!
And let the Windows community struggle with its own Virus alerts.
Let’s see…. Apple HITS….
Apple II
Apple IIGS
StyleWriter I & II
Macintosh
OS 7 (long before Windows 3)
Cinema Displays
G3 PowerMacs
iBook
G4 PowerMacs
G4 PowerBook
iMac (in all the variations and form factors)
eMac
G5 PowerMacs
OS “X” (in all variations)
iPod (in all variations)
Airport Wireless
iApps
Now, what were the Hits for Microsoft?
Windows (stolen form OS 7)
XBox
and?????
I rest my case….
Okay, here’s an amazing milestone:
Today at the grocery store, the music that was piped in had an “iTunes exclusive” song piped in, together with an iPod ad, announcing that iTunes music store cards were available at checkout.
I don’t expect the other music stores can even touch the ubiquity that iTunes is achieving.
I’ve been wondering when Apple would start invading traditional music venues more generally. I figured they’d start having MTV style events: sponsoring beach parties, radio programs, concerts, and music awards. I think we’re seeing the beginning of all that.
What did MDN expect Bill to say, that Apple is a better product?
Grow up dude. Badmouthing the competition will not make it go away. I said it two months ago that Creative Technologies is not a simpleton company with out a clue, they are they only real threat to the iPod.
doPi= Mac user since 1984 -iPod owner since 2002
I agree with Bah Chisnorth and DBS
Anybody can make a better hamburger than McDonald’s, but nobody has been able to sell more of them.
Apple products being better than MS does not in itself guarantee their success.
What about Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, and all those other movies? Don’t those count as “Apple hits,” sorta, by proxy?
The day I can listen to my iTunes/iTMS/iPod in my car with a well integrated & simple iPod-interface on my carstereo, that’s the day I’ll say smiling: Sorry Microsoft your solution is way too late and too sloppy to even take a look at…
“Macintosh helped get people exposed to the graphical user interface…” with the unspoken yet implied follow on “…invented by Microsoft.”
BILL YOU ARE SO FULL OF SITHH! Thats all i have to say!
GATES IS A TOTAL WANKER!
Thanks, Bah. There appears to be very few of us reasonable thinkers on this site. It’s too bad. I hate to think of Windows users who are considering a Mac coming here and reading all of this juvenile vitriol.
And unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a phase. It’s getting progressively worse, in fact. The iPod seems to be the catalyst to unleash all of that pent up frustration they seem to feel for the Mac having such an small market share. These are the typical manifestations of a highly developed inferiority/persecution complex. And has clinincal and political history has shown, these kind of complexes are only made worse by achieving any success or recognition whatsoever. If Mac ever reaches 10% market share, don’t be surprised if these freaks start calling for Windows to be outlawed.
g5Mac.. you think the Xbox is a hit?!
Wow…
I was sure you were gonna say WIndows and Office..
..
Oh yeah.. and for Apple you forgot about Quicktime
“…all those player makers are signing up to work inside the Windows PlaysForSure ecosystem…” – Gates
Yeah, and remember all those companies that signed on to work with the now-defunct Microsoft Passport single-signon mechanism?
tom
Today at the grocery store, the music that was piped in had an “iTunes exclusive” song piped in, together with an iPod ad, announcing that iTunes music store cards were available at checkout.
Wow.. that’s the first I’ve heard from anyone that something like this was happening. You can already buy iTMS cards from places like Target, etc. However I’ve also seen Napster (gag) cards there as well. That is a very encouraging sign.
<style events: sponsoring beach parties, radio programs, concerts, and music awards. I think we’re seeing the beginning of all that.</i>
iTMS music awards show, that’d be priceless. Make it prime time awards show, on network TV. Give away Apple gear including iPods, Macs, AirPort Express, etc. Put a big, gray Apple logo in the background. Awards shows are boring and pretentious, so I don’t watch them, but a lot of people do, and it’d really grab a young audience. Computers are not the way to get to someone’s soul, but music is. It reaches across racial, ethnic and cultural, age, and gender lines.
Apple needs it’s logo associated with music the way that Nike and Gatorade have their logos associated with sports.
I just quit a job where I was tied to a Windows PC. I came home and hugged my Mac. Then I took a nap listening to music paid for and downloaded from iTunes on my iPod. Bill Gates can have Mars, but Apple is Heaven on Earth.
Apple user since 1978.
Effwierd,
You are a tool! Shut up! You commie!
Either extremely funny, Gary. Or sadly exemplary. I’m hoping for the former.
Like it or not, Gates “three hits” comment was pretty sharp.
except for the fact that he forgot to mention the original iMac…
G-Spank
So he forgot the original iMac. Still, the comment is sharp (intelligent in it’s implication that Apple can’t turn its advantage into lasting power and hurtful as a well-placed jab). What are relevant profits and sizes of M$ and AAPL? OS religiousity and personal preferences aside, business is about money. Gates does it better than Jobs right now and has been for nearly 20 years.
g5mac listed a whole bunch of “hits” against M$’s few. But M$ dropped the a-bomb compared to Apple’s grenades.
Now if Apple can avoid repeating history with it’s iPod hit, then we might have to revise the story. Until then, M$ is the reigning heavy weight champion. Apple is the crafty lightweight trying to move up the ranks without getting crushed.
I do hope Apple succeeds.
effwerds quote –
“The iPod seems to be the catalyst to unleash all of that pent up frustration they seem to feel for the Mac having such an small market share. These are the typical manifestations of a highly developed inferiority/persecution complex. And has clinincal and political history has shown, these kind of complexes are only made worse by achieving any success or recognition whatsoever. If Mac ever reaches 10% market share, don’t be surprised if these freaks start calling for Windows to be outlawed.”
Just don’t ask him about the past election hist posts about in MDN….
What do I have to be afraid of, RSBS? Here, Google search: effwerd site:macdailynews.com