In his 2008 CES keynote presentation tonight, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates described three things that he thinks will dominate the next decade in technology:
Direct link via YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uau0aIbrzkQ
Seriously though, tonight Gates talked about the following:
1. High Definition everywhere
2. Everything will be interconnected and sharable
3. Power of “Natural User Interface”
In describing his third point, Gates mentioned touch (including Apple’s iPhone by name), speech, pen-based, and gestures as ways users will interface with machines and devices in the next decade.
Gates claimed that Microsoft has “100 million people using Vista now.”
Gates then claimed “over 10 million new users” for Windows Mobile last year and that Microsoft “will double that in the next year.”
Gates then ceded the stage to Mika Krammer, Director of WIndows Project Management who claimed that Windows is “her lifeline.”
MacDailyNews Take: Livin’ dangerously there, Mika.
Blah, blah, blah and Mika departed. Gates came back out and demoed Microsoft’s Big Ass Table. It’s all very Jeff Han three years ago. Gates failed to mention that Microsoft has delayed their Weak iPhone Obfuscatory / Me Too Campaign, er… Big Ass Table.
Gates shilled for Silverlight, Microsoft’s “Flash killer,” and announced that NBC (who else) will partner with Microsoft to broadcast the Bejing 2008 Olympics using SIlverlight. Naturally, no mention was made of the 2008 Olympic Organizing Committee dumping the unstable, unreliable Windows Vista.
Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s President of Entertainment & Devices Division then came out – scarily clad in a light blue V-Neck sweater just like Gates’ light purple one – to tout the many money losing products that Robbie oversees, such as Xbox (over which Microsoft is being sued yet again, this time not for defective machines (Red Ring of Death), but for recent Xbox Live outages) and Zune. Bach announced that Disney, Disney’s ABC, and MGM will be bringing content to Xbox Live (Did Steve Jobs sign off on that one?) There was no word whether MGM’s version of The Emperor’s New Clothes would be available. Probably not. Bach then said that “this is not a hobby” for Microsoft, wiggling his fingers in air quotes during “hobby” in a clear slam at Apple’s Steve Jobs who referred to Apple TV as a “hobby” last year.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ll see how much of a “hobby” Apple TV is next week when a real visionary keynotes Macworld Expo.
Bach then claimed, with a straight face, that Zune is “becoming the clear alternative to the iPod.” That would, no doubt, be news to the real clear-yet-distant #2, SanDisk. Microsoft is so psyched to be #5 or whatever, that they’re vowing to inflict Zune upon Canadians this spring. Oh, you lucky Canucks! Come spring, you’ll get to ignore Zune just like us Yanks.
MacDailyNews Take: Nothing against Canada, we love Canada, but if Zune is such a rip-roarin’ success, why stop at Canada? Why not bring Zune to the entire world? Because it’s a failure, that’s why.
Bach then demoed “Microsoft Sync” in a Ford car onstage which allows for voice controlling iPods (and other MP3 players) and iPhones (and other mobile phones) in Ford vehicles. Amazingly, both doors stayed on the vehicle despite being opened and closed at least once.
Bach then claimed that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile is “a leader” in mobile phones, says that Windows Mobile “outsells Blackberry, outsells iPhone,” and then talked excitedly about how Microsoft is taking a very serious approach to mobile advertising.
Gates then returned to demo a huge black brick that you can point at people and places that recognizes faces and buildings and presents information – and ads – relating to what the device’s camera is seeing. Of course, no shipping date was mentioned.
Gates then took on Bach in Guitar Hero contest with Guitar Hero Champion Kelly Law-Yone standing in for Bach and Slash standing in for Gates. Each played guitar and then the keynote ended.
You can see Gates’ CES 2008 keynote here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yawn.
Bill was a marketing wizard – but a terrible predictor of the future.
Saw the keynote… Yuck.
1) Was that shipped or really sold Xbox 360? Still Wii exceds Xbox and PS3.
2) Yes MS had brough the BSOD to your living room in RRoD!
3) Isent that box of what around me just a fancy GPS with a user data base? Dosent the iPhone and others one do that now in some fassion?
4) It felt like a summing up of what we ripped off so far.
5) He cant say We careated DOS since he bough a license back in the 70’s and licensed that to IBM.
6) A basic interpreter was easy to write back then!
7) Was interesting to see them say Vista and then moved quickly on…
8) With the ad’s comment and others they know there real competition is Google… Since Goggle is already in the cloud so to speak.
9) The First digital decade will really start in 2009 when Analog TV go dark.
10) That lady need to get a live!
One last item…..
Diddent Mr Gates say something about all you need is 640K of memory quite a while back???? Guess that went out the windows with Vista. ^_^
“Gates then returned to demo a huge black brick that you can point at people and places that recognizes faces and buildings and presents information – and ads – relating to what the device’s camera is seeing. Of course, no shipping date was mentioned.”
This seems to be the only exciting thing of substance. There are few things innovative and exciting. Of course they come from start ups and other companies that were recently purchased. MS will have trouble finding a marketplace or implementation of this technology but someone like Apple could build well on it in due time.
I try to be fairly objective when it comes to MS. Licensing costs actually piss me off the most. $80k to license an enterprise version of SQL Server for instance. A very cool tech though being worked on at MS Labs is Photosynth: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
Just so everyone knows, Apple won me over years ago. I think MS (like Sony has) rides its’ monopoly with little innovation. Apple (iTunes/iPods for example) rides its’ monopoly by trying to compete with itself and outperform its’ previous products – continually trying to best itself. It acts like any misstep could collapse its’ monopoly. Apple is hungry to stay on top and focussed to deliver 80% functionality to all users. MS and other companies (Blackberry, Nokia, Sony) bring 20% functionality at best to other users. Too many features and poor, poor user interfaces.
Still, while MS does not know how to commercialize some tech, some of the companies they have purchased have and are working on some cool technology.
It will be sad to see Bill Gates step back from MS. The rivalry between Bill and Steve will be missed.
I worked on the house of the manager for the WinCE section of Microsoft years ago in Bellevue. I do not know if she is still managing that division. Her husband used nothing but Macs in his Architectural Design business and in his home back then. I helped him get his Apple wireless network updated. What a great guy!
It must hurt
It must pain you guys so bad that the 360 is a much better content streaming device than the Apple TV
It hurts worse that no one is using the 360 for anything but Halo.
“It hurts worse that no one is using the 360 for anything but Halo.”
That’s the other Halo effect.
I pwn billz *G*H* sk:llz.
re: Zune sales….
just watched a Target employee talk a couple out of buying a Zune and into an iPod yesterday. funny stuff.
e-Mail me a copy and if I have time I check it out!
Otherwise forget it!
M$$$ is old news….
theloniousMac is obviously a shill working for some PR firm.
@ Rip Van Winkle
Bet you didn’t know I have
” rel=”nofollow”>my own section in Target.
And “Decorative Accessories” no less – funny!
@drhufufur: Microsoft is not a standards body, I agree. If however, enough manufacturers decide to use Microsoft software on their devices, doesn’t Microsoft become the de facto stancard?
@R: I take it then, you would go out and buy an HD-DVD player? Consider Silverlight. Apple has QuickTime streaming and has had it for freaking ever yet no one ever seems to use it. They beat a path to Windows Media, and they will to Silverlight also. Luckily MS plans a Mac OS X client, but content developers will be working on Windows machines. You have to see the bigger picture than just the narrow minded tunnel vision Mac bigot view.
@Gary: iTunes is one big ad platform! Have you ever just launched QuickTime player? All ads! My concern is that over time, though things seem good now, content opportunities for Apple might decline in the face of Microsoft pervasiveness. My question is what will Apple do? Let’s say your a content creator. You can take your content, develop it for web distribution, mobile device distribution, DVD distribution all at the same time using an MS Solution, and you’ve covered over 90% of the computer market place. You gonna turn around and develop it for Mac users as well?
You see, my point is I’m worried. I don’t want an all Microsoft world but if that’s the only place content is available… then guess what?
@ChrissyOne
nice pic. but why just “Decorative Accessories”? why not “The ChrissyOne Collection”?
“You’ll only get the truth here at MDN”
LMFAO!
Yeah, the “truth” in the form of the Gospel According to Brain Washed Apple Zealots. Kudos to theloniousMac for being the only the only other person on this forum besides me with a triple digit IQ. Whoever runs MDN, I’m fairly certain, is at the lower left end of the Gaussian Bell curve, and applying the formula, (100*mental age/chronological age) yields an IQ of approximately 5.
“Considering that much of this is going to be .NET based, there is a considerable threat to Apple.”
Do you even know what .NET is, or are you just repeating Microsoft marketing’s confused terminology? Just because they went around slapping a .NET branding on everything under the sun for a year or two does not make it a “pervasive” threat.
.NET the programming environment, which is the only “real” .NET product, offers some interesting things along the lines of Cocoa (and some things Cocoa doesn’t have). However, it’s hardly the magic “re-invent the Internet” technology MS has made it out to be.
shorter Gates:
BIG ASS TABLE!!! YOU WANT!!!
Gates’ adopted vision of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) based on touch screen technology -> sounds like he’s co-opted the the ambitions of Marl Weiser at PARC in the late 70’s, early 80’s. Of course then the Great Satan Microsh*t arose and killed all those dreams from 30 odd years ago. And now they’re back on Bill’s agenda. Shame this didn’t happen 30 years ago when we should have started with this stuff. Sure the hardware lagged behind the dreams -> but at least there were dreams and high ideals back then (call it naive and wishful thinking, but they said that about Woz and Jobs too didn’t they??). In a Microsh*t dominated world (thankfully being liberated by Apple and others), nobody has dreams and ambitions, only a singular hope to keep the BSOD or RROD at bay (a forlorn hope at best) and a willingness to keeping on swallowing Gates’ and Monkey Boy Ballmers’ lies, FUD and crappy products like the ever-trusting, naive lemmings they seem to be. Damn. We wasted 30 years because of Microsh*t. How could they not be seen as bad??? So why the hell listen to their crap??
Gee Zune Thang, you just spent one night reading Windoze fan blogs? Come on, there much be so much more to it than that, get your butt back over there and read some more. Then again, you could try posting.
I tell you one thing, I get really excited thinking about having those touch tables at the bars.
Their strippers. Our table. Your puke.™
One thing I will say, I loved the clip on Bill Gate’s last day. As a person, he has always seemed decent enough and the clip had me actually laughing out loud. Bill is actually really funny in it and I thought it was well done. The end of an era for sure and one that saw the home computer industry proliferate to the point where even people without much money could get one in their homes.
http://www.on10.net/Default.aspx (It is a funny clip!)
I’d love to see an actual PC/Mac commercial with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs played at Macworld. I think it would be hilarious and well received. Possibly before they showcase MS Office 2008 on stage. Most likely won’t happen but you never know!
Personally, I feel all of this had to happen to get Apple to where it is today. If Apple had dominated early on, Job’s wouldn’t have been ousted (best thing to ever happen to him) and he wouldn’t have grown as a leader and come back to take the industry by storm. Regardless of how you feel about Bill Gates, he is one of the biggest iconic personas in the Computer industry and will go down in history as such. As well, he does a tremendous amount of good through his foundation – something that should be encouraged more among the wealthy.
Again, the end of an era and one where Bill Gates goes out on top before Apple surpasses Microsoft in market share.
Good bye Bill. Hello Apple!
Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft is such a funny video! The cameos are great.
http://www.webcastr.com/videos/technology/bill-gates-at-ces-the-final-keynote-big-pimpin-w-jay-z.html
@ Mike
um….yeah. Whatever sparkles.
Bills plan to send the Zune to Canada is just one more example illustrating how porous the Canada-USA border really is. Border security really must be stepped up!