“Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said current Internet search-engine technology is ‘a joke,’ and promised better features in two to three years. But the head of the software giant, in an event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum here late Friday, acknowledged that Microsoft had stumbled in its own search-engine efforts. He said the company had been ‘stupid as hell’ to let Google take the lead in the search market,” Peter Loftus and Taska Manzaroli report for Dow Jones Newswires.
“Separately, Gates said Microsoft was ‘certainly working hard’ to release a new computer operating system, dubbed Longhorn, in 2006. ‘It won’t be a radical shift, but it will be clearly an improvement on Windows,’ the ubiquitous operating system, Gates said,” Loftus and Manzaroli report.
Full article (requires subscription) here.
MacDailyNews Take: Of course, Gates doesn’t mention Apple’s Spotlight search technology slated for release “in the first half” of this year. With “Longhorn” long overdue, stripped-down, and now being described by Gates as not “a radical shift, but clearly an improvement on Windows,” Apple is sitting very pretty with their current Mac OS X 10.3.7 “Panther” (heck, they were sitting pretty with Mac OS X 10.2 “Jaguar”) and will soon be in an even better position with Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger.” Apple leads, Wintel follows, as usual. Find out more about Apple’s soon-to-be-released Mac OS X “Tiger” here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs: Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ will ship ‘long before Longhorn’ – January 11, 2005
Thurrott: Apple copying Microsoft’s Longhorn search features with Mac OS X ‘Spotlight’ – December 15, 2004
Microsoft’s Longhorn fantasy vs. Apple’s Mac OS X reality – September 14, 2004
Is Microsoft’s stripped-down ‘Longhorn’ worth waiting for? – September 10, 2004
Microsoft to gut ‘Longhorn’ in attempt to ship in 2006; Avalon faces knife – August 27, 2004
Analyst: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘going to have quite a lead on Longhorn’ in search technology – July 02, 2004
PC Magazine: Microsoft ‘Longhorn’ preview shows ‘an Apple look’ – May 06, 2004
Hasn’t little Billy been promising that M$ will release an OS with “better features in 2 to 3 years” for the last ten or fifteen years?
Vaporware, indeed…
So what if Google took the lead in search? Windows is an operating system and not a search engine. Would be nice if Bill could come to grips with this and focus on making a better operating system and not controlling the world.
This pretty much says it all. Bill who?
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000416.html
You don’t need to put quotes around the names of Apple’s OSes.
It’s Mac OS X Tiger. Mac OS X Panther.
Look at their website.
A Joke this and declacering War there. The massa’ s on their desks have to continue working with that shadow-rich company ! How long(horn) ?
MOOoo!
Longhorn BBQ at my place!
Microsoft may be a joke, but what’s the bet that search technology will be embedded in their “new” OS – like in the browser but linking to the M$ search engine … 95% of Windows’ users will say “How convenient!” and use it … If I was Google I’d be just a little nervous giving the propensity of BG to build “features” right into the OS that mysteriously lock out third parties …
MDN Magic Word “held” as in, “Remember when Netscape held the lead in the browser wars?”
I’m Ron Jeremy too but not the Ronnie type. Gates rules the neverworld.
re: Pete
If Microsoft do that then they are gonna keep getting their asses sued until they stop!
Simple as that.
Just as well the European have got the balls to sue them – the USA is a joke in dealing with Microsoft (that’s no surprise considering the amount of money and jobs they bring into the USA economy and the fact that ‘Billy’ Gates is so far up George Bush’s Ass that he can say hello through George’s mouth!)
Why am I not surprised!!
Solar Flare.. I’ve read some pretty intelligent posts from you, but eh.. sorry man…..
IE losing share like a boat with holes in it? IE lost like 3%…
Since when has technical superiority ever factored into MS’s monopoly with WIndows?!
Windows is about giving developers the best opportunity to make money. That means open architecture. I’m not a MSoftie, but I can at least admit that from a business standpoint, MS’s game is to build the platform and let the developers promote it/strengthen it.
Get it?
MS doesn’t have to advertise it’s own stuff.. the developers do that. It’s called De Facto Standard profit.
From the zilch in advertising costs, you make a pretty sweet profit margin.
Bill Gates isn’t scared of Apple for the same reason Apple wasn’t scared of MS back in the 90’s… they think their fortress is perfect.
Things are going to get interesting when the people start using their iPods to carry around their entire HD’s in their pockets. The client/terminal will be basically moot point. The technology is already available, but once people start really using it things are going to get very interesting for the guys who make the iPod
PS. Bill Gates still assumes they’ll win in Digital Media.
Solar Flare,
Well said.
Longhorn is a joke. MS IS a joke. Someone needs to make clothing that says “Longhorn. 10 years of work, and all we got was this lousy t-shirt!”.
IMO MS should scrap Longhorn altogether, and just stick with maintaining XP. What was “Longhorn” has degenerated into a 0.1-level XP update, and should be marketed as such.
Solar Flare,
Well said.
Longhorn is a joke. MS IS a joke. Someone needs to make clothing that says “Longhorn. 10 years of work, and all we got was this lousy t-shirt!”.
IMO MS should scrap Longhorn altogether, and just stick with maintaining XP. What was “Longhorn” has degenerated into a 0.1-level XP update, and should be sold as such.
Mike:
I already carry around my hard drive on my ipod!
My whole mac user profile is on it – along with fonts, updates etc etc.
I know several people who do this too – all because the ipod play music does not mean that you only have to use it for music.
Because my job involves moving around the country from mac to mac I carry it around with me everywhere.
I can’t wait for Apple to have portable profiles in .mac.
In my opinion if you use a mac for professional use you NEED .mac.
I can transfer file onto my idisk and access them on any windows or mac pc.
Gates also gave an interview to the BBC. Interesting only for the way he doesn’t actually answer the questions, especially about security issues, but just keeps parrotting the company line…
Part 1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4195177.stm
Part 2 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4215183.stm
I get the impression of someone who has really lost the plot…
perfusionista:
I saw this interview on tv and I believe they call it ‘Ballmer bullshit’ at M$.
Ive had media training and am trained to deal with reporters, journalists etc and there are standard ‘tactics’ for dealing with ‘awkward’ questions.
One of the standard techniques I learned was called the ‘recoché’. This technique involves you answering a question by asking a question back at the guy aking questions at you.
Another is called ‘the sniper’ which involves answering the question precisley BUT giving them as little information as possible.
Believe me, ALL CEO’s, politicians and anyone high up in a company uses these techniques every day to get what they want.
Politicians are especiallly expert at these techiques!
Dreamers!
OSX is great, but with a market share of 2%, there is no way it will ever grow to be significant. It takes a lot more than great technology, it is about marketing, media, mind-share, distribution, and price.
Bill Gates is not worried in the slightest. Apple is good, cheap R&D for Microsoft. If Apple was serious about increasing their market share, they would be advertising and telling consumers about their unique advantages. Apple gave up years ago.
I think the most exciting thing about Tiger isn’t all the search functions or extra iCandy, but basing the Mach kernel to the FreeBSD v5 code to better support multiprocessing. OSX as it stands isn’t as scalable as AIX or Solaris (or even the latest Linux), thanks to the way Mach talks to the subsystems. Tiger is going to remove the limitations, leaving the way clear for Power5 based chips in Macs, dual core G4s and 4 or 8 way XServes.
In short, if you think your dual G5 is fast now, you are going to be blown away by what it can do running Tiger. With Quartz already delivering Avalon, and Spotlight delivering metadata searches, Longhorn is going to have to be bloody special to come close to Tiger.
PC’s Rule-
Troll.
All Apple has to do is let MS fall on their face. A decade-long development effort that degenerates into a 0.1-level upgrade of a current product is disaster for any company. A major portion of the Wintel market was banking on the now-empty promises of Longhorn. Name ONE must-have Longhorn feature. Name ONE killer app that’ll compel people to upgrade. A search-engine bar is not that feature.
Longhorn is a joke. MS is a joke. Someone needs to make clothing that says “Longhorn: 10 years of work, and all we got was this lousy t-shirt!”.
People are good and sick & tired of Window’s hassles, and XP 1.1 (aka Longhorn) will only deliver more of the same. Now that Longhorn is a failure, people have more reason than ever to look at Mac OS X. Apple’s market share has nowhere to go but up.
Dave H. – I’m guessing you either live in BTV or Fishkill, right?
Well said mcmac!
I will certainly be laughing when (eventually) shortporn is finally released.
In usual M$ style, the final version that they will sell to their ‘brainless sheep’ will of course be a beta version.
All have M$’s OS releases have been betas!
Boy – why do users put up with the crap from M$???
Life is too short to spend 1 day a week making sure your windows pc is working without a virus or spyware or malware or adware etc etc.
Windows users are kidding themselves.
I work on macs in a large corporation (mainly windblowz pcs) – all the windows pc got infected with some virus that disabled all their internet access. Of course the macs were not effected in anyway whatsoever – this made me laugh soooo much and I said to the people working near me that this would NEVER happen on a mac.
The fact that the macs had total internet access and the crappy win boxes didn’t make me so proud that I use macs at work!
I can’t wait for the next windows virus!!
mcmac-your response to PC’s Rule had me
LOL so hard i spilt coffee on my keyboard!
the emperor has no clothes…
PC’s rule: the mind-game is being played out as you write your lame excuses for MS. Just read what every IT columnist is saying about Macintosh. It’s all the marketing a company could ever dream of.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with some of what ‘PC’s Rule’ had to say: “Apple is good, cheap R&D for Microsoft”
He’s right. They’ve been creating the technologies that M$ has been ripping off for over 2 decades!!! Steve Jobs is the best employee M$ has right about now. Honestly, what would billy and the boys do with themselves if their well being actually depended on their own innovation?
As for Apple giving up years ago… That’s probably one of the most asinine statements I’ve read on MDN (and considering some of these trolls, is saying a lot). I suppose the iPod was a fluke and it’s too bad they never advertised it *wink, wink* Apple is probably the most intelligent company I’ve ever witnessed in their advertising. They know they don’t have to come out of the gates with a big fancy advert for new products. Let it speak for itself and when it’s the right time and demand is high and stock levels are up, that’s when you advertise.
Apple can tout Tiger this early because they know that there’s no one that could begin to catch up to their offerings. But as far as new products go, we all know that we won’t have proof of existence until Steve sings “And One More Thing…”
When was the first iPod ad ran in relation to the product actually being released?
I’ve been using Mac at work/school for over 7 years and I’m a very recent home switcher. I’m ashamed it’s taken me this long to do it. Good riddance PC!
They had an iPod ad with jeff Goldblum when the iPod first came out. Shows an iBook, running OS X, synching iTunes to the iPod.
iPod
1000 songs in your pocket.
Sorry, I found out that it wasn’t Goldblum, but rather someone that looks similar to him. See the FIRST ad here:
http://www.esm.psu.edu/Faculty/Gray/graphics/movies/ipod_60_480.mov