Two excerpts stood out for us:
Gates on Microsoft’s tablet projects:
“Microsoft has a lot of different tablet projects that we’re pursuing. We think that work with the pen that Microsoft pioneered will become a mainstream for students. It can give you a device that you can not only read, but also create documents at the same time.”
Gates and Buffett on Apple:
• Buffett: “Steve Jobs has done a terrific job. And there will be companies that excel. And occasionally they will excel because of luck, but usually they excel because of brains.”
• Gates: “Yes, I think both in general and in the specific, Apple’s done a great job.”
Full article, via GuruFocus, here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a miracle Gates croaked out a compliment for Apple. Buffett’s answer must have cowed him into it. As for Gates’ pen love, let it serve as a lesson: Don’t let yourself get married to an idea or the world might pass you by. iPad creates documents without a pen today, but, fortunately for luddites like Bill (and mitten/glove wearers), it also works with a stylus like this, too.
[Attribution: 9 to 5 Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Manny S” for the heads up.]
That pin idea is right up there with the Big assed table that was such a big success, with innovation like that the end must be near.
@Big Al
Typing with your “stylist”? Which end aree you using? The head or the feet? Me, I’ll just use a good old stylus!!!!
lOL!!!
When I get an iPad, I’m going to be using it for illustration. For drawing in the real world, I like to use a pencil. I think it would be nice to transfer that experience to an iPad. Also, it would be neat to have a journal type app that I can write in with my normal handwriting skills, again, a pen-like utensil will come in handy.
I really don’t think that makes one a “luddite”.
To drackmere:
Rotary dialer app for the iPhone (but no physical dial as DRMSSDB bemoaned).
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rotary-dialer/id284926166?mt=8
It works well.
@Big Al – It might cost 20¢ to make a plastic stylus, but you’d end up pay 10 times that much for a M$ branded one minimum.
Bill saying M$soft and ‘we’ .. thought he’d left to focus on the benevolent venture of curing the world? ….
I wish the guy would just spend his money building a big F**g pyramid or something… might help him get the pen out of his rectum…
The Pogo Stylus works great with both the iPhone and my iPad. There’s a handwriting recognition app called Writepad that I use all the time. It’s as fast for text input as typing.
One of the most clueless geeks out there, amazing.
Less than 29 billions to go. I like the strategy, I like it a lot. And boy, have we patented the double-click!
@Fredo
Try AJI’s iAnnotate PDF. It’s not perfect, but I use it to markup PDFs that I read for college. I like it.
One word… VAPOURWARE.
just goes to show, bill may have left microsoft but he’s still throwing up the same bullshit.
Btw.. Pen styluses???? ROFL!!!
Btw… All these comments are cracking me up!
LOL!!!!!
can always guarantee a microsoft story for a great laugh!
I’m confused, why would Microsoft be all over the “stylus” when they have just teamed up with HTC thus allowing HTC access to the M$ version of touch computing?
Where am I going wrong?
Am I the only one that thinks Buffett smoothly called Billyboy a lucky idiot?
Let’s be frank. A good stylus and a vnc connection to the tower? $499 Cintiq. I want.
It’s too bad that Pogo has not made a Wacom sized stylus.
I find the grip of a thin pen to be way more difficult than Wacom pens. I am checking Dagi-which from pics seems to have a broader grip plus a transparent head the lets you see what you are drawing or writing more precisely.
Yeah. Pens that look, feel and melt like CRAYONS.
For Microsoft’s main treasure, the NT base code which has been used in Windows 2000, XP and beyond, they had to incorporate the work of a real OS team being lead by Digital Equipment Corps’ David Cutler in order to ascend beyond their DOS roots. There was even a law suit after Microsoft broke ties with the real strategic team behind the Windows Mobile platform – Sendo from the UK. How do they believe that now after all this time, they are going to do things right and make a tablet platform that can compete against Apple who understood how to bring the complexity of computing as a whole to the masses? Microsoft isn’t part of the “Rest of Us.”
Before Windows took off, there were amazing products available on the “lesser” computers such as the Amiga and the Atari ST. Three that come to mind were PageStream, Papyrus and Calamus. These were incredible programs ahead of their time from the independent community. In iPhoneOS, this opportunity has come again where the grassroots programmer can bring interesting and amazing software packages to light through xCode. The Touch (iPhone/iPod touch/iPad) family has brought back the interest to the independent programmer and there is NO way that Microsoft is going to be able to stop this train!
Microsoft: A company that made money on an amazing stroke of luck.
Apple: A company that made a name for itself (and money) by the pursuit of bringing technology to the masses in the easiest manner regardless of age or any other individual aspects, who has made money through the pursuit to make technology that their mothers could use as well as the most technically inclined.
Bill who? Isn’t he dead yet?
For folks who don’t know: There ARE pens/styli for the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad. There are several models and manufactures. You can even buy them at the Apple Store. Yes, kids. Apple sell them.
So yes indeed! If you want to use a pen/stylus on your iDevice, you can! Example: The Pogo Stylus:
http://www.tenonedesign.com/stylus.php
Some people like to draw, get over it.
Also capacitative styluses suck (and for that matter, resistive styluses suck). Wacom like activie digitizer or nothing. Otherwise it’s not done correctly and not a sketchpad replacement.
@Derek Currie
What other manufacturers are you referring to, other than the Pogo people?
ok i love my iPad but i do agree that as a OPTION stylus should be considered not to be used as a main form of input but as options for marking up textbooks on the iPad sure it might be able to be done without a stylus but i have tried a app for got its name that gives u the lined paper and you can both type and manually free hand text or what ever but it doesnt come out like you really want it and not exactly where u want it.