Comments on: Bill Gates bows out (mostly) at Microsoft

He's cutting back, for sure, but his tenacity, intellectual intensity, passion for technology, and competitiveness will now be applied more fully to saving lives.

[JeffW42]

..but, but, does he have an Ipod? ...And, if he doesn't, is he going to by one now?? Important professional news broadcasters want to know!!!

[kay100]

Bill can't ever trump Steve Jobs, Steve is the iGod and Apple will always be best, even the interviewer is saying this, anyways Bill contributed a lot to the world, and he deserves a lot od respect, and whatever he knows he has a iPod.

[trchbrr]

For an top journalist grammar and spell checker should not be optional. Content and information flow should be paramount when going at the end of a journey lasting 25 years of a subject. One would think that more insight and thought provoking anecdotes would be lavished upon this most auspicious of occassions. However, this piece is a bit trite and condesending in some respects to a careers worth of coverage.

[dfarber]

Perhaps you missed our coverage
http://news.cnet.com/For-Bill-Gates%2C-the-next-phase-begins/2009-1014_3-6242476.html

[AlC-Net]

Good luck, Bill, as you and our billions go out to save the world.

Its like the robber barons - rape and plunder your markets while you climb up the dead bodies to see how high you can go, and then buy your salvation in charitable causes.

Anybody out there want to do the calculation on how many hundreds/thousands of hours you have invested rebooting, reloading, trying to make things work but can't get anyone to answer the phone or respond to your e-mail? Multiply THAT times 1-B copies of the MS-OS in the world.

Anyone feel as though they had no choice because their work has insisted on Windows because of the sweet deals they got on perpetual upgrades?

Was there one original idea coming out of Gates in the last 25-years or did the revolutionary ones come out of PARC.

Good bye and good luck Bill. Think of us while you cower under your mosquito netting - in the Hilton - trying to figure out what to spend our money on next.

[mortega98]

Bill Gates retiring from Microsoft?
That doesn't cheer me up.
What will cheer me up is the day I know he is burning in hell.

[jrm125]

Wow...look at all the haters.

The man made the personal computer popular...whether you all want to admit it or not.

Now he's going to give his money back to the world. Does it make him a saint? Hell no. The man lied and cheated his way to the top. Let's just not blindly hate either, and instead realize his impact coupled with his faults.

Jobs...what are you going to do for humanity?

[t8]

You can't buy salvation. Giving money to charity and not having to pay taxes on it, doesn't excuse Bill Gates bad behavior and theft of other people's ideas and tech.

If that were the case, then every thief, liar, and murdered would just give money to charity and have their past wiped clean. If you want a fresh start, you need to ammend that which you have done wrong first.

[t8]

The real question is what are you going to do for humanity? Also, I not sure if Steve Jobs has lied and stolen his way to the top like Bill Gates. To me, that makes Steve Jobs a more valuable person to humanity. He may not be helping the poor (which is highly commendable of course), but at least he is giving a portion of humanity technology that is truly innovative.

[humanssssss]

Look at all the Apple fan boys. You guys are pathetic. If wealth is an indicator of success, Bill Gates is more successful than Steve Jobs.

Most study agree that wealth provides people the time to be happy. The people who are creating all the violence now due to rising prices are the poor people who THINK they are happy poor. =)

[Penguinisto]

The relativity of wealth and the inherent inequality of it will mean that there will always be those who are less wealthy. Incidentally, wealth is only an indicator of success if that is your only goal. Albert Einstein was wildly successful, but not wealthy. Wealth does not necessarily provide happiness, either (see also the typical Hollywood Celebrity). Wealth can provide leisure time, but the typical CEO is usually too damn busy to take any time away to enjoy it. Consequently, they usually die just as regretful and miserable as the typical trailer-park denizen.

[t8]

Not Apple fan boys, just people who see Bill Gates for what he was. He stole other people's stuff, and put good people out of business by shafting them from the Windows platform. Anyway the payback for Microsoft is that the Web is replacing Windows as a better platform for ideas and development.

[yacoubean]

"The planet will be better off with Gates focused on technologies and strategies for saving lives rather than defeating Steve Jobs." Amen to that.

The trouble is, Steve Ballmer and his management team has not shown any sign of changing the way Bill Gates ran the business. Microsoft's focus is domination and money. Their customers and software quality are lower priorities than power and glory. This is why I tend to be one of the "haters". If Microsoft were to clean up their act and finally start releasing quality software (and yes, I know a couple of their products are better than the rest), I'd be less likely to hate them. And why should I hate them for this stuff? Because I've been continually forced to use their crappy products, at work and elsewhere.

[AlC-Net]

Amen - and for those of you who assume that if we have a bone to pick with Bill at his eulogy, it must be "we're either Jobs or Gates". Come on people, think! The world is black and white and the full spectrum in between. He owes us for all the time re-booting.

[humanssssss]

Add to my remark above, the people who pay a high price for software and not get much back from their investment deserve to be poor. You shouldn't play into the hyper software should be expensive. Nor should play in the hyper software should be paid for you. The bottomline is you making the money. If you don't, you are enriching either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. That's not what you want to do, you want to enrich yourself. So if you could get ipod, iphone, microsoft windows, or microsoft office for free do it. Low ball anyone who plan to sell you these things for hundreds of dollars, they are not worth that much.

I talked to a sales person trying to sell me Microsoft office 2007 professional for $200. I told him, how about you give it to me for $5. He laughed at me. I told him HP got it for $5. He told me, go ahead and get it from HP. I told him, you going to die. He hung up.

If you don't look at your bottom, these guys -- Bill Gates and Steve Jobs -- will rip you off.

Open source software all the way baby!

[open-mind]

Bill will be back.



It's only a matter of time before Steve Ballmer and his army of misfit managers run poor Microsoft into the ground ... much like Apple from '85 to '97. At that point, Bill will return to save his baby just like Steve Jobs did.

[Penguinisto]

Maybe Gates can do that, maybe not. The difference is that when Jobs returned to Apple, Apple was still turning a profit. They were floundering, but still making money. Microsoft is at that point now... and rather than fight, Gates is leaving. I suspect that by the time Gates realizes there's massive trouble at Redmond, nothing he does will bring it back.

[t8]

Actually Bill couldn't save Microsoft because the future is the Web, and Bill is not a Web guy.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Ballmer alone at the switch?

Good god, it's over for that company.

RSB

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Dan,

Why doesn't anyone write about the boot loader issue?

[Earl Benzar]

Oh geez, Steve Ballmer is now fully in charge? Time to sell my MSFT stock. Look for more Vista boondoggles, flying chairs, and monkey boy dance videos. Wonderful, simply wonderful.

[sachman1]

Wonder what his legacy will be...

http://tinyurl.com/6q7b8z

[technewsjunkie]

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Ubiquitous PCs yes. Usability no. They've set us back YEARS in lost productivity due to poor products.

Microsoft has lowered the bar for programming quality and advanced mediocrity as a defacto standard.

[J. Blow]

Hey Haters -

Would Steve Jobs have given a rats ass about a platform? Would Steve Jobs cared one iota about developers? Would Steve Jobs cared one tiny smidgen about YOU? The answer, in case you are truley stupid is NO. Bill Gates is responsible for more income in the computer business than anyone. Linux? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Go ask Richard Stallman for a job. Opps! He doens't employ anyone!

Before you write about how Gates "destroyed" companies let me say that they were companies that self imploded because of the egos of the people running them. That includes IBM, and a pile of others.

So, if you work in the computer business, thank Bill. He is a geinus and ultimately a caring man.

[Penguinisto]

"Would Steve Jobs have given a rats ass about a platform" - Actually, he did, which is why OSX replaced MacOS. ------- "Would Steve Jobs cared one tiny smidgen about YOU?" It matters not whether he cares about me, so long as he cares about delivering top quality hardware and software in a form that is usable by me (and everyone else). ------- "Go ask Richard Stallman for a job." I make almost six figures a year from working with and on Linux as a Sr. Sysadmin, while the typical full-time MCSE can't even clear $70k per annum in these parts. As to the rest, IBM is doing rather well for being over 100 years old; Will MSFT even last the next decade or two with Ballmer running it into the dirt? ;)

[Fil0403]

"I can imagine one of his chief rivals, Steve Jobs, giving him a gold-plated iPhone 3G for his retirement with the inscription: "To Bill Gates: Look who's ahead now. Best of luck, Steve Jobs."" I can imagine him giving Steve Jobs an Ultimate version of Windows Vista as a reply with the inscription: "To Steve Jobs: Look who's still ahead. Best of luck, Bill Gates. "Even though Vista didn't leapfrog the Mac OS, and Microsoft has rarely been able to out-innovate Apple, the fire is still burning and Gates will be firing off a flurry of e-mails to Steve Ballmer and others he's left in charge." Even though Vista surpassed the Mac OS's market share in less than 1 year, and (with the sole exception of the iPod) Microsoft has always been able to win win Apple. "The planet will be better off with Gates focused on technologies and strategies for saving lives rather than defeating Steve Jobs." I have to agree with this, since defeating Steve Jobs has long been being proven to be boringly easy for Bill Gates.

[dfarber]

Depends on how you define defeat....as one example...MS stock has been flat....Apple has gone from $20 to almost $200. True Microsoft has dominant market share and successes in many categories, such as the xBox...but Apple tends to make products that people crave...and I think that Gates would have liked to have had products that people crave....iphone vs. zune....let's see what MS can do with Gates more on the sidelines....

[Penguinisto]

Re: "and Gates will be firing off a flurry of e-mails to Steve Ballmer and others he's left in charge." - It won't matter. The world and the markets are changing rapidly, and while Apple is diversifying and growing, Microsoft is not, in spite of their best efforts. Vista is being turned down in MSFT's biggest money-making space - the Enterprise Market. It won't be long before MSFT begins shrinking at an even faster pace, as Apple continues to swallow it from the top and Linux from the bottom and from the server space.

[sherlock871]

good luck to you bill. i think the people in this world will remeber you untill they live!