Microsoft’s Bill Gates might be Bono’s friend but owning an Apple U2 iPod is out of the question

33 Comments

“When U2’s lead singer came to Seattle over the weekend for a concert, there was only one logical place to stay — the home of Bill Gates, who shares Bono’s passion for Third World development and relief efforts,” Reuters reports. “‘I was one of 20,000 screaming fans,’ Microsoft Corp.’s co-founder Gates told Reuters. Gates, the world’s richest man, said he got to know Bono through his work with his philanthropy.”

“Bono is a vocal advocate of Third World debt relief and Gates’ foundation has given out more than $4 billion for global health since its inception to fight diseases such as AIDS and malaria,” Reuters reports. “Asked if their friendship would entice him to buy one of Microsoft rival Apple Computer Inc.’s black-and-red U2 edition iPods, Gates said: ‘Absolutely not.'”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: One can have all the money in the world, give away lots of it, and still be a vindictive, pig-headed, sore loser. It’s comforting in a way. Joe Schmo’s got an iPod, his wife’s got an iPod mini, his kids both have iPod shuffles, and next week he’s buying a Mac mini for the family. But, Bill Gates, world’s richest man, is forced by his own ego to use some also-ran music player, a third-rate WMA-plying music service, and an OS that’s clearly an upside down, backwards, failed attempt at an Apple Mac knock off. Sure, he can afford to have the finest homes and the best cars, but in his very own field, technology, where he made his life, he must settle for second and third-rate hardware and software. Bill Gates is stuck using a Dell running Windows XP and listening to Napster To Go on an iRiver. There is a God.

33 Comments

  5. Great find!!! I love it “There is a God after all”!!!!!!!!!!!

    Now if Apple could complete the last steps to domination and get serious games for Macs as well as the long-rumored iHome Media Hub, I would be one happyyyyyyyyyy camper…

    But I guess I already am after getting my iMac G5

    Reply

  10. I agree with most of the MDN take, except the third rate hardware stuff. MP3 players yes, third rate is too high of a rating. But PC hardware is just better than what we have. Not better looking of course, but better performing. Yes I know Steve has demo’d the one Photoshop filter that is 3 millionths of a nano second faster on a Mac, but if your only job is performing that one filter over and over all day long then I feel for you. How boring.

    But video cards and their drivers are fine tuned on the PC side. The PC can push a lot more pixels than the Mac. And I’m not talking just about games here. Granted the dual G5s have come along way to narrow the performance gap. But the video cards and optimized drivers are crap on the Mac.

    I read lots of Mac threads about gee, I hope we move to the new Cell chip, and golly, I can’t wait for dual or multi-core G5s. None of these things are even on the horizon. There’s been no mention of IBM having these anywhere near ready if even in development. The PC side has dual GPU SLi video cards with a gig of RAM and both Intel and AMD have launched their dual core chips. I keep hearing about people waiting to get that G5 Power book. Which one, Apple hasn’t mentioned anything except it’s impossible to get the 64bit chip mobile for the foreseeable future. AMD has had 64bit mobile units in shipping notebooks for some time now. Maybe we should be hoping for a move from Moto and IBM to AMD?

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  11. I wonder if Gate’s hot wife has an iPod. What’s he gonna say? No? “Honey, you’re hot and waaaaaay out of my league but I’m willing to risk you cutting me off from the monkey ride to keep you from using that dang iPod!” Yeah right!

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  16. Hey Jerry T, please don’t forget to cc the video card manufacturer and the game authors as well as Apple when you complain about video performance being sub-par compared to a PC.

    Btw, in relation to the article, Gates must love sour grapes. If this is Bill trying to be cool by association, oh dear. Of course, maybe Gates just doesn’t like the black U2 model?

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  21. Gates: you don’t use that iPod stuff do you?
    Bono: its cool. works like a dream. the mac does too. how’s your business?
    Gates: just great. fantastic new os coming out next year.
    Bono: really?
    Gates: yeah. and its even got translucent windows.
    Bono: you really should try a mac. might give you some ideas.
    Gates: no. I can’t. It wouldn’t look good. Oh God Bono, we’ve so screwed up.
    Bono: really?
    Gates: its all the fault of those virus makers. we can’t do the creative things. we spend all our resources on fixing the holes. we fix one and five more come along. boo hoo hoooooo what’ll we do Bono?

    Reply

  22. MDN Take is a load of crap. i wonder what jobs would say if asked does he have a windows xp box in his house, cause thats exactly the same thing here. its a dogfood/pride issue here. apple geeks love macs and wont use windows. windows geeks love windows and wont use macs. proper geeks use anything their given and dont slag the rest of the people who use either or both. i have 3 windows servers, 2 windows workstations, a windows laptop, and pocket pc, smartphone, an imac and a powerbook and 2 linux boxes.

    Reply

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