The Mercury News’ Dean Takahashi spoke with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates after his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month in Las Vegas. Gates talked a bit about Apple:
Takahashi: What do you think of iTV [Apple TV] and what Steve Jobs is saying?
Gates: I think it’s important to recognize that what you used to think of as consumer electronics has changed a lot. A company like Microsoft or a company like Apple may have some of the more interesting skill sets for delivering connected experiences. Jobs — I remember at a conference he was talking about how he didn’t like going into markets where he had to go through somebody else’s orifice. That’s how he described the broadband companies, cable companies and phone companies and things like that. We love those guys.
MacDailyNews Take: Jobs did describe them as orifices, but only because that is an inherent characteristic of such companies. “Broadband companies, cable companies and phone companies and things like that” are tax collectors, constantly overcharging for products and services while stifling innovation. No wonder Microsoft loves them; they’re exactly like them. Microsoft partners so well: just ask their many “PlaysForSure partners” – they’ll tell you all about Microsoft’s “love.”
Takahashi: There wasn’t much mention of Zune (iPod rival media player) today. We keep expecting the next Zune device, like the 60-gigabyte version or something else.
Gates: Zune deserves an event of its own. We clearly don’t have any new model. We just introduced the product three months ago. It’s doing well. We knew what we wanted. Just like the first-generation Xbox, we wanted to get on the learning curve. We wanted to get credibility. We wanted to have a reputation of doing something innovative and something that we could upgrade over time because of the large screen and the WiFi. We feel great about Zune.
MacDailyNews Take: Zune certainly does deserve some kind of an event of its own. Microsoft clearly doesn’t have any new model – device or business – that much is sure. If Microsoft’s goal for Zune was credibility, they failed miserably. And Microsoft definitely has cemented some kind of reputation for Zune that has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with mediocrity and limitations; par for the Microsoft course. If Gates’ feels great about Zune, he’s woefully and irrecoverably out of touch.
Full interview here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bizarro Ballmer” for the heads up.]
All you have to do is change some Registry keys if you want to remove the 3 day/3 play limitation on unprotected audio files. Likewise you can change some Registry keys to make the Zune function as an external USB hard disk.
The files are not wrapped in DRM in any way, and they are unmodified when transmitted from Zune to Zune. Check the Zune hacks. People are doing all sorts of things with their Zune players.
And of course iPods are excluded because they don’t have wireless and the iPod is part of the big Apple/iTMS lockin (just like Apple did with the Mac clones back when they lost the OS wars – Apple excludes everybody else from their products deliberately).
One thing you stupid freakin’ Mac acolytes can do is stop bashing the competition all the time. You’re like a bunch of brainless kids on the playground at school. And the childish anti-Microsoft bullshit I’ve seen posted on this forum certainly doesn’t further your cause or enhance your image as Mac users. What it does is make you look like what you really are – a little cult.
You all make me laugh, thanks! You remind of watching monkeys throwing their fecies around, after all is that you do? Apple will continue to flounder as they have done so well over the decades as they try to swim upstream against the tide of consumer wants and desire in their continued struggle to own their destiny…learn what consumers really want…competition and an open architecture that drive competition and variety. Apple sealed their fate when they drove Franklin into the ground with drive to a closed architecture, resulting in no competition. If there was ever a need for antitrust look at the “Macopoly”. Then when they (Apple’s brain trust)opened the market up for licensing, who did they first ASSign this license to? China…real American! No apple pie dreams coming true here! To all you apple simbiants, grow-up, get off the trust fund…then you might find yourself having to give up the Crack! If it wasn’t for Intel/MS 90% of the homes in the US that have PC in them today wouldn’t have one. Information is the new comodity, and wouldn’t it be nice if MS and the PC compatible were not around, then the CRapple owners would raign supreme! Well, wake up, that dream is just that a dream, not reality.
The Apple TV is going to be amazing! I found a community already, if you going to get one check it out http://www.appletvusers.com