“Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says PCs will get smaller and phones will get bigger at the 11th annual CEO Summit. Speaking to more than 100 CEOs from Fortune 1000 companies, Gates touted convergence and also had his employees demo the upcoming Microsoft Communications Server and Communicator applications. He also did the unthinkable and mentioned the iPod by name,” Humphrey Cheung reports for TG Daily.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, it’s hardly “unthinkable,” Gates has talked about iPod before. Please see related article: Bill Gates’ sarcasm regarding Apple iPod: ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that’ – September 07, 2004. Bill Gates is an insecure little dweeb who should concentrate on retirement and letting his wife donate his ill-gotten gains to various causes. Someday, historians will put Gates into proper context for the masses: the ruthless nerd for whom mediocrity was “good enough,” who thought business ethics were optional, and who plunged the world into the Dark Ages of Personal Computing. That history will be written on a Macintosh. And even Gates knows it.
Cheung continues, “Gates praised shrinking computer and gadget form factors giving the nod to Apple’s iPod a few minutes into his speech. He also touted bigger and more power mobile and desktop phones that have still photo and motion video capture features. Gates believes that computers will eventually meet up with the mobile phone, saying, ‘The phone will move up… and pcs will move down.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Gates is quite the genius prognosticator after Steve Jobs has shown the world the iPhone. To those inclined to get reverential and confer genius status based upon bank account size: Bill Gates is a sham. He fooled many, but he could never seem to fool that pesky top 5%.
Cheung’s full article here.
I can just see Gates holding a Dell notebook to his ear…
The iPhone may be a desktop replacement for the strictly “internet and email” computer users, but for those who actually use their computers for real work, the iPhone isn’t gonna cut it.
MDN,
I agree with all your takes.
Bill Gate’s wealth is an historical accident. He found himself in the right place at the right time – but he was the wrong person.
He has never said or produced anything original, and history will judge him harshly.
The iPhone is the ultra mobile PC
Best MDN headline in a long time. Agree with takes as well.
M$ have no class….
Nuff said.
Give Gates a break – he managed to acquire technology and trick corporate giants like IBM into using it and making him a lot of money.
That’s not innovating but it is certainly amazing how he got where he did.
Yep. Amazing.
And it’s amazing how so many German’s in the ’30’s could be duped by a dweeby little nerd who had been picked on in school and, with a big chip on his shoulder, tried to take over the world.
Little difference ‘tween the two, if you ask me….
“Bill Gates is a sham. He fooled many, but he could never seem to fool that pesky top 5%.”
Nice one MDN. That’s a keeper!
Its certainly true that Gates, and thus Micrapsoft, has almost always been behind the curve. With bad design. And bad taste.
Gates, the rocket is waiting for you. Just take Ballmer and pres ctrl+alt+dell. F1 F1 F1. “The system has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down”. Error wmp32.dll. And so on …
If you think there’s only a “little difference” between the M$ head nerd and Hitler you really need to get out and see the world, in all its beauty as well as its cruelty and brutality. Either that, or you’re an utter moron. You pick.
XOXOXO,
Kate
I predict that MS will introduce, then discontinue, the Origami.
Give me pie.
What all these pundits fail to mention is that MSDOS which was the start of the Microsoft empire was not Gates’ idea to begin with. By dumb luck he essentially “stole” it from the original programmer and sold it to IBM. That was the start of it all. Not genius, just as you say ,”optional business ethics”.
“I predict that MS will introduce, then discontinue, the Origami.”
When you predict that it will be discontinued?
Two thoughts come to mind reading this.
1) Has he told Ballmer yet?
2) Anybody else thinking “robber baron”?
Here’s a comment from a long-term faithful Mac user:
“Bill Gates is an insecure little dweeb…”
That’s like me calling a Muhammad Ali a wimp. You should be such a dweeb!
“Someday, historians will put Gates… the ruthless nerd for whom mediocrity was “good enough,” who thought business ethics were optional, and who plunged the world into the Dark Ages”
Bill gates will be considered one of the greatest businessmen of all time. In evaluating his ethics, he looks like a business saint next to Carnegie and Rockefeller.
You need to get life — as well as a brain. Gates changed the world. You may not like it — I may not like it — but the world has embraced the PC.
Is the Origami out in the wild? I’ve heard rumors but rumors are usually BS. Origami was only vaporware, wasn’t it? Sure a few prototypes were pasted together but did any of them actually get sold?
“Bill gates will be considered one of the greatest businessmen of all time. In evaluating his ethics, he looks like a business saint next to Carnegie and Rockefeller. “
as a professional philosopher specializing in the field of ethics, allow me to be the first to say “you have no idea what you are saying.”
but thanks for your opinion.
magic word “price” as in the true price of ethical choices is not reflected in the outcome.
Bill Gates is an insecure little dweeb who should concentrate on retirement and letting his wife donate his ill-gotten gains to various causes.
Perhaps a little more about the “donate to various causes” phrase.
Owning money is not the best part, controlling it is. When you own money you clearly control it, when you donate it to a vehicle that you control it still is controlled by you but can claim not to own it. Practically the difference is nil, propaganda-wise and tax-wise the difference is definitely bankable.
Most of the B & M Gates Foundation’s money is invested, how it is invested is primarily down to B & M, or should I just say BG. A lot of those little African nations that have had ‘grants’ from the small amount that has been ‘donated’ have since bought their Windows licenses rather than choosing free licenses for software. And they have subscribed to buying, for example, AIDS drugs licensed from the big US/UK/EU companies who, like Microsoft, sell products of dubious quality for twenty times their production cost.
Microsoft has always been in the business of obtaining ‘intellectual property’ by fair means or foul and distributing it at a profit. The perceived value of drug companies’ ‘intellectual property’ far exceeds that which Microsoft Corp controls. BG’s play should be seen for what it is, a vehicle to support and profit from the concept of intellectual property.
So donate is not a word that I can equate with the process of giving money to someone on the basis that they spend it on something for which they pay twenty times what it worth.
It is worth noting that it’s a few years since the major drug companies started spending more on advertising than on R&D, a model that had been previously expounded by Microsoft.
These few paragraphs can not of course begin to encapsulate the machinations that drive such events but for a good overview of the kinds of issues that are at play I recommended a visit to Google video and a search for the future of food. Different subject but of even greater importance and similar mechanisms are at play, and if they will f**k with your food like that then doing so with drugs or mere software is chicken feed. Unfortunately the full length film seems to have disappeared by numerous extracts remain, you can of course buy a DVD.
The business dynamics resulting in the world’s embracing of the PC were not put into effect by bg, nor can the scale of its adoption be even remotely credited to gates. “Greatest businessmen”? For one timely and quite obvious move resulting entirely from being in the right place at the right time? You seem to have a low opinion of future historians. (can we change his middle name to something starting with “u” so we can call him “bug”, or “the bug”?)
And two years from now the ignorant masses will believe that Bill Gates invented the hand-held computer-phone (a.k.a. iPhone).
@DogGone says:
“Yep. Amazing.
And it’s amazing how so many German’s in the ’30’s could be duped by a dweeby little nerd who had been picked on in school and, with a big chip on his shoulder, tried to take over the world.
Little difference ‘tween the two, if you ask me….”
=====================================
Oh, there’s a current parallel as well: It’s amazing how so many republicans/conservatives in the early 2000’s could be duped by a dweeby little nerd who had been picked on by his alcoholic mother while his father was away playing at the CIA and, with a big chip on his shoulder, tried to take over the world (or at least those spots with a few gigabarrels of oil).
Little difference ‘tween the three if you ask me…..
“PCs will get smaller,” says Bill Gates as he looks over at a Mac Mini, “and phones will get bigger,” says Bill as he looks over at an iPhone.
William Henry Gates anagrams to:
“The marginally wise.”
They already are screwing with the food supply.
Check out “terminator seed” in Google.
GM foods and seeds are a reality and if they ever get wide spread we’re all seriously hosed