“Now that he’s in his 50s, Bill Gates is still fanatical — fanatical about Microsoft’s new tablet/PC thingy known as the Surface, a device he believes Apple may have to follow,” Chris Matyszczyk reports for CNET.
“Gates described how his goal with Microsoft had been to deliver ‘the magic of software to people both in their work and in their home,'” Matyszczyk reports. “Surface, he insisted, is a new form factor. He called it ‘exciting.’ (He subsequently got even more excited about that excitement.) ‘You don’t have to make a compromise. You can have everything you like about a tablet and everything you like about a PC all in one device. And so that should change the way people look at things.'”
Matyszczyk reports, “How come, though, pressed [interviewer Charlie] Rose, Jobs was able to cross the tablet threshold and Gates wasn’t? ‘He did some things better than I did,’ admitted Microsoft’s co-founder.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Besides banking cash, something at which he was no slouch but didn’t much care about, either, Steve Jobs did everything better than the increasingly delusional Gates.
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Only in his 50’s and suffering from dementia.
Sad, really.
I think I read that he has a padded trampoline room in his monstrous home.
Maybe that’s where he’ll spend his declining years, bouncing off the walls in a room with no Windows.
Very funny! No windows, that should drive him mad!
“Now that he’s in his 50s..”
What? Like Gates’ age has anything to do with it!
Steve was in his 50s too. So?
I’m in my 50s as well.. Triple so fsking what!!!
I am also in my 50’s and age has nothing to do with Mr. Gates loosing touch with reality, but that does not exclude other factors that we do not know about.
ow, jeez, I hurt myself laughing so hard…
Uh, Bill, I think you’re going to have enough of a hard time just trying to get some of those M$ “partners” to follow you down that slippery SURFACE path, so don’t think Apple will be behind you when you look back. If you want to see where Apple is look far, far ahead of you (with binoculars!).
With the “vision” Bill Gates has repeatedly demonstrated, binoculars would not suffice. Try the Arecibo radio telescope.
It’s called the MacBook Air.
In one of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation conference room…
Melinda Gates: ” O O.. Keep it going Bill.. It feels good”
Bill Gates: ” I am hot plugging ‘it’ as hard as I can”
Melinda Gates: “Don’t stop Bill.. O… ”
Bill Gates: “Sorry honey… I cann’t do it no more…”
Melinda Gates: ” Don’t you dare to ‘Zune’ on me… I have the best ‘Surface’ ever!!”
Bill Gates: ” I need to ‘Ctrl’ ‘Alt’ ‘Del’ myself…”
Melinda Gates: “C’Mon Bill… You BSOD on me again…”
– The End –
I’m not surprised one bit.
Gates idea of a tablet was always a full blown Windows install, which is why it always failed.
In his mind Microsoft “has it nailed” this time since Apple came in and showed how its done, he figures they have borrowed just enough of the pieces to bring his dream OS back from the dead.
I’m sure Apple had lively debates about the right way to make the iPad. I also bet that included bringing over the full blown OS X. Maybe Bill should ask himself why Apple did not take this direction ?
Note to general public: Bill Gates is not a genius.
Don’t be so hard on Gates people. He’s as trapped in the Windows ecosystem as any other Windows sufferer.
Lighten up. Give the man his due.
Is there due for ill-gotten gains?
Has BG forgotten that Microsoft tried and failed to get “tablet computing” off the ground for quite a few years before Apple came along and showed everyone how to do it right?
MAC Lemmings – Here’s what I have to say about the IPad:
500 dollars? Fully subsidized? Without a plan? I said that is the most expensive Surface wanna-be in the world. And it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard. Which makes it not a very good email machine. Now it may sell very well.
What color do you think the sky is in Gates’ world? I ask because they apparently don’t have iPads where he lives. It’s that or he’s smoking/shooting/snorting (or all 3) some really good drugs.
Why would Apple waste there time and money on that piece of garbage. Tim Cook said it already, Apple will not make a device like that because it will fail.
Really?
A crap tablet with a flimsy plastic keyboard dangling from it is a new form factor? I hope with the keyboard, unfortunate Surface owners can CTRL+COMM+ESC to unfreeze their tablets or something.
Most intelligent people will realize that there are a bunch of keyboards built into the iPad cases for those that need a keyboard?
MS should have invented something new rather than copying Apple and then copying an accessory manufacturer.
So pathetic. MS has no balls. Gates is proof of that. He can’t throw enough money at MS to make something worthy so he gives money to worthier causes.
Jobs experimented with acid, Gates appperantly has been on it since 1976. There is no other way to explain his delusional belief that he contributed anything to the tech world other than an inferior copied product. The best thing Microsoft can do with the Surface is to use it as a blunt object and get Steve “Assclown” Ballmer out of the way.
To paraphrase SJ, is he inebriated?
Well, that seals it… If Gates says it, you can bet your last $ 4 bucks that Apple will DO NOTHING THAT LOOKS / SMELLS / ACTS like a Micrshaft tablet – EVER!
Just a quick word to Bill…. Your plebes tablet blows chunks…
Gates is trying to prepare the MS Surface for market share dominance by reducing the current Apple iPad tablet leader market share by making asinine comments causing mass iPad users to die laughing! More news at Eleven…
In his dreams!
With all due respect, there really will be two “Surfaces” (if they ever see the light of day). One runs on ARM/Win8RT (or whatever it’s call) and the other running on Intel. Apple already makes these two machines: iPad and MBAir.
I agree with Bill Gates.
iPad is not for getting serious office work done. Great for other things for play, but not for work.
Aside from the many Macs I’ve owned over the decades – I presently have several iMacs, a few MBPs and MBAs. But I think for tablet work, I’ll be going with the Windows tablet. I’m hoping that Windows RT at least has a file storage system similar to Finder and Windows Explorer.
The fact that iOS does not have a proper filing system means they’re targeting people who use their iPads for fun purposes, and making working people adapt to that majority-rules approach.
Of course I haven’t gotten my hands on a Windows RT tablet yet, but I assume Microsoft is going to make their tablets more work-friendly than iPads. I use iOS already on my iPhone, so I realise that it is not adapted to office work. It’s great for fun purposes – emailing, Facebook, web surfing – but the minute you create and do work on it, you need to file your stuff in folders in a systematic way.
Sure, there’s Dropbox – but the fact that Apple refused to create their own filing system means that the fun-focus permeates their entire design ethos.
So, as a confirmed Mac addict – I am going to Microsoft for my tablet products.
Couldn’t Apple have done the same thing as MS is hoping to succeed at? And didn’t Steve Jobs say when talking about the this new category, said that the tablet had to do certain things and do them very well. If you try to make a tablet a PC are you not betraying that philosophy? Not saying it won’t work, maybe it will, but then again, maybe opening up a whole can of worms that was MS’s problem for the last 10 years they were stuffing their OS into OEM tablets prior to the iPad. Anyway, when the Surface arrives, let us know if it excels at what you are hoping it can accomplish and do for you.
“. . . but I assume Microsoft is going to make their tablets more work-friendly than iPads.”
And would you say that with the first iterations of the SURFACE tablets being limited to Wi-Fi only is worker-friendly?
Ref.: http://goo.gl/0dfWE
Now Ballmer, don’t you have anything better to do than post on MDN?
http://www.modbook.com
I agree that for heavy users w/lots (1000s) of files they want to access on an iPad there needs to be a solution.
All it would take to put a work related solution on the iPad is Apple putting out a “Finder App”.
It is still a computer with file headers, etc., so a file indexing system already exists, it is just not shown publicly.
I smell viral marketer.
Why use a Surface over a Macbook Air? Because you hate yourself and want to be tortured by using a traditional PC shoe-horned into a tablet form factor?
To some extent, I do agree with Gates.
Would’nt it be nice if we could have a full fledged OS experience in a tablet? And, with that in mind, replace our larger laptops all together?
I’m not saying Apple should go and do this. But is it not only logical that if we are making a shift from Laptops to tablets, we migrate the full fledged operating system with us? At least all of the OS X features? The (iOS) UI can stay the way it is.
But don’t take this so critical. This is just an opinion
“Would’nt it be nice if we could have a full fledged OS experience in a tablet? ”
No, it wouldn’t be. That’s why Windows tablets have been rejected by consumers for 12 straight years while the iPad was accepted with open arms.
Well, to some degree, you are right.
I guess my point was: the iPad is great. But it feels kind of like a toy. You can not really do a lot of “serious” work on it (yet). I was really excited when Apple announced apps like iWork and iMovie would be available for the iPad. But, upon downloading them, I realized the suite had been compromised. iMovie had only to offer really basic editing, a lot of iWork templates were unavailable, and other apps were also compromised.
I have no complaints about how the iPad is now. But I do wish they could bring the whole thing in and not just a simplified version of the full app.
When will these people wake up and smell the coffee? Such an absurd statement fron bill gates, he among other people should know tne apple ipad is king and microsoft he desperate to catch up
“You don’t have to make a compromise. You can have everything you like about a tablet and everything you like about a PC all in one device.”
Gee, Bill… if you didn’t make any compromise, why are there two versions of the surface? One that’s more like a tablet and one that’s more like a PC.
Good point.
” . . . You can have everything you like about a tablet and everything you like about a PC all in one device.”
Well, except for one small nicety like mobile roaming connectivity with the SURFACE being limited to Wi-Fi networking only.
Ref.: http://goo.gl/0dfWE
Yes and which of the seven OS’es will it have? Student, Home, Office, Pro, etc.? Why not just one OS for all your computers as well. Then you really have no compromises? One PC, one tablet, one OS to be able to run on both.
I watched the interview with Charlie Rose. It was pure idiotic Bill Gates doing what he does best: Lie for his own benefit. Spinning, spinninger, spinningest.
I am soooo going to enjoy the latest in his long line of futurist proclamation FAILs. Surface (v2) is going down the drain of history alongside the Metro GUI. Sell your MS stock now. I won’t be pretty.
The only good thing in the Interview that did not attract my [expletives deleted] ire was his insistent reluctance to accept legendary status from TechTard Charlie Rose or to denigrate Steve Jobs. It was extremely odd to watch him being sincere in light of his usual Microsoft pimping.
Also I should point out that his foundation’s contributions to inoculating the world against diseases might actually be humanitarian. Imagine that.