Gates: Apple is a 'force in doing good things'
I want to be a force for good. Doesn't everyone?
Which is why I was delighted to be moved by the words of Microsoft's Bill Gates during a CNBC TV special in which he and Warren Buffett discussed the meaning of life. Or something similar.
Asked by an audience member what he thought of Steve Jobs and Apple, Gates began with an insouciant smile.
Then he tossed garlands of roses and pearls of praise at the Apple co-founder.
He said: "He's done a fantastic job."
Which was charming in itself. But he continued to describe how Jobs saved Apple: "He brought in a team, he brought in inspiration about great products and design that's made Apple back into being an incredible force in doing good things."
So, from now on, everyone who happens to be a fanperson of either brand should seek out one of his or her supposed mortal enemies, hold hands with them and see if, together, they cannot try to be a force for good things too.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article1860204.ece
It was cute... and awkward :)
If that didn't get the users of their products to simmer down, nothing will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY
AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!
They have good ideas, don't get me wrong, but they're rarely revolutionary. They just see where tech is going and bring it out in a polished package, though rarely first and arguably not always the best.
Also, its pure opinion that OS X is years ahead of Windows. A vast amount of people would disagree with you, in fact, its quite arguably a vast majority of people would disagree with you. It's great you like it better and it fits your needs better than Windows, but lets not make exaggerated statements.
You're comment has the right idea, but you exaggerated everything to the point where it will annoy a lot of people. Mac users shouldn't be thanked for anything as it has nothing to do with them. It's all Apple. You guys aren't a team.
And Windows doesn't suck as much as you all like to claim either.
Can't folks just realize that Microsoft and Apple are both companies with different audiences and different ideas? Neither are better than the other for every individual out there. It varies from person to person. Claiming otherwise just exposes yourself as arrogant and/or ignorant.
Very well said
Maybe Steve Jobs doesn't take "loosing well" because he isn't stuck. Perhaps you meant "losing". Clearly, you don't have a grammar checker on that PC of yours.
sorry pjhenry1216, i have to agree with MyRightEye. and i'll go even further than what he said. I think Windows users should not only thank apple, but Mac users should thank Microsoft. Without apple being put in such a horrible position, I don't think apple would be the same company. it goes both ways, almost like a symbiotic relationship lol
AND, for the cell phone and mp3 player industry, Apple applied what they learned from computers; that if things are made cheap, then there is a long way to go in advancing a product's technology. When Apple came out with the iPhone, almost all of the industry was full of cheap phones. yes there were a few "smartphones", but today those smart phones are equivalent to the cell phone standard (smartphones from then=normal phones today). Apple took the opportunity and made a solid phone in the midst of companies slacking off. Now the iPhone is the most profitable phone ever. period. the same thing goes for iPods.
and although Apple and it's products aren't perfect (nothing ever will be), people are recognizing them from a company that used to be in shambles 12 years ago. even the founder of Apple's biggest competitor, Bill Gates.
lol and i think joetesta70's comment below is so ironically true...
While you are mostly correct in your points (The ipod wasn't the first mp3 player to use a hard drive - the creative nomad jukebox had one over a year earlier), the only thing I would strongly disagree with is that the iphone wasn't revolutionary.
I can't think of a single cellphone in history that had the impact that the iphone had. Name a single other cell phone ever that was so dominant in mindshare that people needed to come with a 'xxxx' killer. Sure, the ipod dominated it's market too, but the mp3 player market was practically non existent when the ipod launched, so it didn't need to be revolutionary to succeed.
Before the iphone, there was no such thing as a fully touchscreen cell phone. People thought Apple was insane for not including a stylus or a keyboard, now, there are dozens of phones just like it.
Mr. Gates though, decided to bail in his prime - he obviously wasn't paying attention when VISTA came out.
Apple completely re-wrote the OS from OS9 to OSX - thats quite radical for an OS vendor. They jumped from IBM chips to Intel, which is also quite radical considering the disruption in software that causes. Before the iMac, you couldnt buy a computer that wasnt beige - radical yes, revolutionary maybe.
I think there's a lot of examples like this over the past 10 years and while none may be revolutionary, they all had a big impact on how hardware & software developed as a whole.
Its hard to think of a company that has as many inspiring ideas over the past 10 years and while Apple may not be for you, which is fine, lets not deny the fact that they innovate, radically.
Yeah, THAT'S how it happened. What are you smoking and where can I get some?
Bill made a product so successful that it took enough market share to almost get it broken up. Good thing they got him out of there while they still could! Now Windows is down to a pitiful 92% of the personal computing OS market. Almost no tech companies, Apple included, haven't been taken to court for breaking the law no matter how bogus the charge.
That's the funny thing about these two guys... they're fierce competitors, and now that Gates is not in the race any longer, he can easily afford to show publicly what he's likely felt ab't Jobs all this time - respect. I'm sure that if Jobs would say kind things about Gates as well if you asked him.
Of course, that won't stop the fanboys from spewing their personal hatreds/praises (see also various posts in this wee talkback section).
That's a mighty ignorant statement. While I agree that the grunt labor is what provided us what we have today, it is the vision of Mr. Gates and Mr. Jobs that provided them something to create in the first place. If not for MS and Apple, do you think these engineers and programmers would have made these things in their basements regardless? Of course not! The leadership and innovation that both of these CEOs have brought to the table is EXACTLY why we have what we have.
Just makes overpriced laptops most of the developing world can't afford.
Hordes his billions and does nothing with it.
Helps the Chinese govt censor and oppress it's people.
Time to think different, $teve.
You never know if Jobs is the second type.
Because of that I do not judge.
Of course, they did buy him a company jet to get him around town. Membership has it's privileges. =)
He understood the Internet too late and his vision comes from Apple, Google, and others who innovate.
Microsoft copies, that is well known.
Fortunately world has limited amount of fanboys for any single company to get elevated to a monopoly only with them...
This is very true. Gates is often credited as a visionary, but his real talent was in recognising a shooting star and grabbing onto the coat tails and taking off with it. Very opportunistic and clever business man. When the opportunity arose after taking off, he also knew how to turn that opportunity into a monopoly. Visionaries are more interested in creating and achieving. These days Steve Jobs is still quite the visionary, but he has tempered that with a strong defensive mentality for the profit of the business. In this respect he has learned from Bill and MS. In the visionary stakes though, it was very much Bill learning from Steve, among others.
I'll let you in on a little secret... Apple has been sued for "copying" other people's ideas. You like that fancy little interface on your iPod? You can thank Creative for that! Apple stole it and was forced to pay a lot of dinero as a consequence. Definitely not the first time either, and most likely will not be the last. Same goes for lots of other companies... that copying thing you point out is is a two way street!
Those two are just the Billy Mays of the IT world. And we should be grateful that they introduced us to the next best thing. Order within the next 5 minutes and get two for the price of one. Just pay seperate shipping and handling.
Incidentally, MyRightEye should know that Apple's research into tablets and the technologies to implement them was underway even in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with no Jobs around. The Newton was a product of that research. Remember it? Had Mr. Jobs not killed that product line, we might have had real, useful, world-changing tablets from Apple years before now. Maybe the diversion into iPod (whose first OS was produced by "graduates" of the Newton project) and iPhone were worthwhile detours, maybe not. But it is a fact that Apple was moving deliberately and publicly in the tablet direction almost 20 years ago. To speak of an overnight revolution, and give all credit to Jobs today is to demonstrate profound, even willful ignorance of all that went before, which has led up to the present moment.
Maybe Palm isn't contributing anything worthwhile now, as the_mrwhite says, but my cell phone is a Centro and my wife's is a Pre. We like them more than well enough and we considered a number of options (including iPhone, which was good but not good enough to get us to switch providers).
Let's be clear about that.
"Apple completely re-wrote the OS from OS9 to OSX "
You are very wrong and I wish that so many people would not be so opinionated without really being informed. Apple inherited the core of Mac OSX from the Next Computer acquisition as well its CEO Steve Jobs. And that core is already based on the BSD kernel. So, not only are you wrong on the "rewrote" aspect, but a lot of other people are wrong on the ingenuity aspect of Apple on the Mac OSX count. Apple is incredible at design, marketing and packaging, not necessarily inventing...
Please people read some history and truly follow some of the real world events before falling so gaga over something. I am not saying Mac OSX is not good - heck I thought NextStep was brilliant and had two black cubes, but Mac OSX is not really an invention of the Apple that we know, it is a rightfully owned intellectual property of Apple that was gained through an acquisition and made even better through some very smart UI tweaks and other consumer oriented OS changes.
" >ranran2009</a>
I had a full touch screen phone way before the iPhone came out. Granted it DID come with a stylus, my HTC was still touch activated. the iPhone is just a refined version of many featrues rolled into one as stated before.
- by h_tom November 15, 2009 5:59 PM PST
- effusive is a big word, had to look that one up.
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