“The Microsoft chairman [Bill Gates] drew guffaws [at a meeting of business journalists on Monday] when he took a dig at Apple Computer Inc. in response to questions about the rave reviews the competitor’s newest operating system, Mac OS X ‘Tiger,’ received upon release last week,” Frank Bajak reports for The Associated Press
“The overwhelming consensus was that Tiger was far and away the best consumer operating system available now, with Microsoft not expected to match it in features in Windows until the end of 2006 at the earliest in its ‘Longhorn’ system,” Bajak reports. “Gates said he was pleased that the media were getting excited about computer operating systems. And then he took his jab at Apple, whose share of the consumer market is nearly 4 percent. ‘You can always tell if you’re working on a Mac or a PC. Just take your applications and stick them in there and see if they run,’ he said, moments after calling Apple ‘the super-small market share guy.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “You can always tell if you’re working on a Mac or a PC. Just take your applications and stick them in there and see if they run.” Gates is correct. If it crashes and blue-screens, it’s a Windows PC. If it runs and just works, it’s a Mac.
Market share, folks, that’s all they have. It’s all they’ve ever had over the Mac. By the way, there are 18,456 Macintosh-specific software items in Apple’s Macintosh Product Guide. What Gates neglects to mention, of course, is that Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger operating system, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, iChat AV, Safari, GarageBand, and many other award-winning, best-in-class applications don’t run on Windows PCs. Perhaps Apple Mac users should decide not to stick Microsoft software in their Macs anymore? Hey, we’ve got an idea, why doesn’t Gates stick Longhorn in his PC and see if it runs? Oh yeah, that’s right, it doesn’t exist.
Gates has the odor of fear about him. It’s not about money, it’s about winning with Gates and Jobs. And it’s Jobs who’s destined to win, not Gates. History rewards the originals, the innovators, those who strive for excellence; not the fakes, the copiers, and those who roll up sales with mediocre products to a confused, technophobic public. People are waking up. Personal computing is emerging from infancy and the public is becoming more educated and discerning. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, the world will look back at the fact that Microsoft Windows once held 95% market share for computer operating systems and more than just mere guffaws will be heard.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Mac users should not buy Microsoft software – May 16, 2003
BusinessWeek: ‘Tiger bolsters Mac OS X’s edge as the best personal-computer operating system around’ – April 28, 2005
Associated Press: Mac OS X Tiger ‘provides another excellent incentive to switch from Windows’ – April 28, 2005
Mossberg: Apple’s Tiger ‘the best, most advanced personal computer operating system on the market’ – April 28, 2005
NY Times: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger is the most secure, stable and satisfying OS on earth – April 28, 2005
Bill Gates: Microsoft’s ‘responsible for the creation of the PC industry’ – February 18, 2005
Experts say Bill Gates’ doodles show he’s ‘stressed and tense, not a natural leader’ (with image) – January 31, 2005
Windows blue screen of death crashes Gates’ Keynote at CES – January 06, 2005
Even Bill Gates can’t avoid Windows malware; Mac users surf the Web freely – October 03, 2004
Bill Gates’ sarcasm regarding Apple iPod: ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that’ – September 07, 2004
Bill Gates on Apple’s ‘Keynote’ app: ‘I doubt what they’ve done is as rich as PowerPoint’ – January 09, 2003
BTW, the Apple Store’s down. New iMacs today perhaps?
Yep, new iMacs it is.
http://www.apple.com/imac/
‘You can always tell if you’re working on a Mac or a PC. Just take your applications and stick them in there and see if they run,’ he said, moments after calling Apple ‘the super-small market share guy.'”
I found some of my old Win 3.1 and Win95 apps that are on CDROM – as an experiment I tried them on my Mac and my XP machine.
The XP’s CD drive whirred, grunted, moaned, got stuck, and caused the system to freeze on several tries. In other words, it could not recognize them.
The Mac, while it obviously didn’t open the apps, could at least display the application name.
I’ve also had friends give me photo or word processing CD’s made on their PC’s that my XP machine would not open, but worked fine on my Mac.
For once, I guess I have to say that Bill is right.
“A New Mac User”, regarding Mac’s market share: As most everyone here (veteran Mac users) know, Apple competitors use the quarterly unit sales of ALL computers as a figure for comparison, “Market Share”. But that has absolutely no relation to “Installed User Base”.
First, many Wintel boxes are sold as dumb terminals to be used as cash registers and other such mono-functional units that run only one or two customized aps for its entire life span.
Second, the rate of replacement is extraordinarily high with Wintel boxes. It is currently close to 2 to 1 when they (3 yrs) are compared to Macs (6 yrs). Wintel boxes are seen as disposable, while Macs are viewed as furniture. If Macs had a life span similar to that of Wintel boxes, Apple’s market share would be double what it is.
A better comparison would be to view “Installed Users”; what is actually being used. This number can be further separated between business use and home/personal use. It is not unusual to have a very low business migration to Macs because of the huge 3rd-party dependancy upon WIntel boxes, mainly from the IT departments and their buddies in the malware prevention businesses. While in the home, people don’t need endless boardroom meetings and IT department (heavily biased) analysis to make a decision to switch. As such, it is estimated that over 25% of all computers used for personal use are Macs. From the switching numbers, this is increasing rapidly.
In short, that “Market Share” number (3%) has nothing to do with reality, but makes for a great number to quote when you are the head of a defenseless and virus-weakened Goliath, totally devoid of any new ideas for the next 2 years, and being attacked by a very innovative David.
Finally, if you want to count applications, go for it. But, when you are done, let us know what is NOT available in the 15,000+ titles for the Mac that exists for Windows. I do not remember who said it, but in the early days of iLife someone stated, “Who cares if Windows has thousands of more titles, if the 5 you really want are only on a Mac!”
When you eliminate the crapware, Mac far exceeds Windows in quality titles.
History rewards the originals, the innovators, those who strive for excellence; not the fakes, the copiers, and those who roll up sales with mediocre products to a confused, technophobic public. People are waking up.
I’m reminded of Milli Vanilli.
You know what they say about guys with big “market shares”…
Why would a guy like Bill Gates even comment about Apple? I smell fear.
People are waking up? I’m quite surprised at the number of sheer delusional folks on this site, living behind rose-colored glasses. 3% marketshare is 3% marketshare….lol how some really insecure mac zealots need to fudge the numbers with ridiculous statements. Believe me, 1 out of 4 “user installed base” are NOT macs (would be closer for ipods lol).
Of course, getting news from an utterly biased site like this that makes incredibly asinine statements, deliberately twists outside quotes and sources, on a daily basis no wonder most of you are really blinded to the “truth”.
Want to know the “truth”? Windows XP-64 is a more complete 64-bit operating system than Tiger (FACT). Tiger has far greater 64-bit restrictions than Windows 64 (FACT), yet you idiots care only about the shell of the product…the style over the substance.
PC’s are technologically superior to Mac’s. The rest of the world knows this, thats why Apple’s share is down there with China. No candy apple operating system is going to change that.
Speaking of fudge, anybody seen Apple’s latest inhouse benchmarks? (The latest laughing stock in the PC world). I guess when there is a delusional leader, there’s delusional followers.
BMW might be regarded as making the world’s finest cars, like Apple make the world’s finest computers, but BMW only has a 5% market share of the world car market.
Does that mean that BMW is an insignificant car manufacturer?
————————
My Mac can go all the way up to XI.
Sammy……
Wow!
I think we’ve hurt little Sammy’s feelings. Quick, somebody say something nice about the PC world.
Sammy, care to back up your statements with even one fact? How is XP-64 “more complete” than Tiger? How does Tiger have “more restrictions”? How are PCs technologically superior? No answers, just bullshit.
As for the statement that “the rest of the world knows this”, have you seen the members of the rest of the world? Most are stupid, ignorant sheep that will buy what everyone else buys. That’s why MS has a large marketshare. It has nothing to do with MS selling a quality product (they put the ‘k’ in kwality). It has to do with sheep like you that don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.
I’ll say something nice,
eat shit sammy (FACT)
I expected such responses LOL. No one wants to tackle the issue Tiger is an incomplete 64-bit operating system, compared to XP 64. Or the flak Apple recently received for cooking its recent unverifiable, unreproducable benchmark numbers that are at odds with independantly conducted benchmarks. Why arent these headlines on the main page of MDN? LOL.
sammy is a transvestite bedwetter (FACT)
C’mon guys, lets be nice to Sammy. He’s mixed up. He thinks Windows administration is fun and frustration is normal.
Sammy please explain why XP-64 is “more complete” and what “restricitons” Tiger has. I’m interested to know what you read to arrive at these proposterous statements.
From …
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2404&p=1
excerpt …
Tiger also seems rushed in the sense that it’s not a drastic shift to 64-bit computing; Tiger adds the ability for individual processes to have access to more than 4GB of memory. As can be expected, any process using the 64-bit memory space can only talk to 64-bit libraries, which at present, doesn’t include any UI libraries. The end result is that you can have a 64-bit process, but it has to talk to a 32-bit UI process. There are even more limitations beyond this, but the basic impression that I get from Tiger is that Apple is taking a much more transitional approach to the move to a full 64-bit OS than Microsoft. In fact, if it weren’t for AMD, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Microsoft’s move to 64-bit would be much more similar to Apple’s. The reality of the situation is that for the majority of users, 64-bit memory addressability isn’t going to be a necessity for another few years still. Instead of focusing a lot of attention on 64-bit today, Apple appears to be making a transition towards the goal of making the Mac OS a full 64-bit OS, but with Tiger, we are far from there yet. Next week, you will be able to read my impressions of Windows XP x64 Edition, and from my experience with that, desktop users aren’t missing anything from Tiger, being somewhat limited in its “64-bitness”.
re: Sammy
HOW THE FCUK DO YOU KNOW THIS CONSIDERING TIGER HAS BEEN OUT ONLY 3 DAYS!!
Take may advice – buy a mac, buy Tiger, install it, use it for 3 months and THEN post your comments.
Because to be honest your comments made here are from TOTAL IGNORANCE.
AND they are laughable to everyone!
Jimbo, you’re obviously a dumbass who, in your own words, “follows the sheep” without any bit of relevant knowledge other than that bias stuck up your own ass.
XP-64 is a fully 64bit environment running in full 64-bit mode at all levels of the operating system. (Windows 64 requires a ground up rewrite of most software for its operating system, which is why it will take some time for market penetration since most users do not have an Athlon64/Opteron/EMT64). Tiger is command line only, at least until Apple’s next update. No 64-bit carbon/cocoa.
Technologically speaking, PC’s are superior. You can call that an opinion, but innovation is furthered much more on the PC side than Apple, who has been stagnant the last decade or so. AMD is aiming for QUAD-core in 2007…not even a dual core G5 on the horizon in the immediate future. PPC vs x86, on paper PPC should be dominating, yet it is X86 that has advanced the last several decades to the point where x86 chip complexity is greater than that of PPC (thanks to AMD who has brought some much needed competition against Intel) and quite a bit faster. What does Apple have to match PCI express? Nothing, it would rather license it and stick in their own boxes.
“As for the statement that “the rest of the world knows this”, have you seen the members of the rest of the world? Most are stupid, ignorant sheep that will buy what everyone else buys. That’s why MS has a large marketshare. It has nothing to do with MS selling a quality product (they put the ‘k’ in kwality). It has to do with sheep like you that don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.”
Let me tell you something, if you think the rest of the world are stupid, ignorant sheep and you, as the Mac user, is somehow superior…you are WRONG and quite an idiot for believing so. You are just one of the many stupid, ignorant sheep in Apple’s pen rather than Microsoft’s.
Sammy,
Thanks for your GCSE level explanations. Now get to detention!
Just because a x86 CPU is more complicated does not make it superior. In fact, if you do a little bit of homework you will find out just how superior RISC chips are compared to x86 CISC pieces of shit.
And a CPU is nothing without the rest of the computer. Think about it…
good points sammy (FICTION)
“Sammy please explain why XP-64 is “more complete” and what “restricitons” Tiger has. I’m interested to know what you read to arrive at these proposterous statements.”
It’s statements like these which are quite amusing. A FACT that is “proposterous”…which seems to indicate more than a few mac users here don’t really know about the underlying technology, only what PR and Jobs spewts out.
So who is the mindless sheep here? The “masses” of windows users, or uninformed mindless mac zealots?
where is Triumph when you need him?
MW: Very.
Sammy has got his nose up bill very hairy ass
Jaimy, I suggest it is YOU to do some real homework on Tiger’s 64-bit abilities (“proposteros” LOL) and the advancement of X86 architecture. For the supposed “superiority” of a G5 CPU, it sure gets slapped around silly by a similarly clocked AMD Athlon 64/Opteron.