Gates vs. Jobs: The rematch

With Microsoft's entrance into the portable music business, Apple's Steve Jobs must prevail over his old nemesis, Bill Gates.
The New York Times

The story "Gates vs. Jobs: The rematch" published November 14, 2004 at 3:25 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[sunergeos]

You say apple, I say oranges

VHS versus betamax is not the argument. It is more like Chevy versus Ford versus Mercedes versus Saturn, etc. It is not an all or nothing proposition. While that supposedly makes for good (?) headlines and tag lines, it makes it an apple and oranges debate. Jobs does not have to, nor is he interested in ?prevailing? over Gates. He already did that, in a way, with Pixar. Every product from Pixar is a hit. MS can?t say that about their products. Isn?t that right, Bob?

Gates did not win any "personal computer" war. Microsoft's operating system got majority distribution, albeit, through a monopoly. MS does not ship personal computers. They don't sell them, just the software that runs on them. Again, apples and oranges.

Interesting that the word "choice" is being used by Mr. Gates. The trial notes from the antiturst case that he lost says differently. I know, old argument, but since I'm pointing out the discrepancies in the story, let?s point them all out.?

The problem I see is that Apple is able to reinvent, but Microsoft has to bolt everything onto their monopoly to get it to move forward. Take Windows off the PC and their playing field vanishes. Why would anyone care if it was XP or RedHat in my TiVo like device? You?re right, it doesn?t matter. That?s why Apple can take that front by storm as well. I can hear it now. ?Who care?s that it uses Mac OS X ? it?s soooooo cool?and secure!?

[Shauheen]

I'm as important as the other guy!!

Well, looks like the C|net reader is being convinced that Micro$oft is a big rival in the music player market. Perhaps a part of gaining the market is to pretend you have it, and surely Gates has lots of channels to push this. There are many debatable issues in the article, I just want to point out two.

It is trying to convince us that, Unlike Apple who has tried to keep iTunes exclusively for iPod, (which is itself debatable) Micro$oft has adopted a far more open strategy of uniting the world in the sense of its online Music store as if they are offering an open source technology instead!

As far as I know MS has constantly (not just in this frontier but in many other ones) tried to push devices that exclusively support the MS Windows Media Format, what is more exclusive than M S Windows Media Format!! perhaps "Advanced Audio Coding" (AAC) or MP3?!

Also the article fails to provide a solid background on the technical pros and cons of the two technologies that are the backbones of the two services so called rival.

Comparing WMA and AAC this way is like telling a customer dial up Internet subscription and High speed connection both connect you to the Internet, and you can check your emails, and read news, no difference.

Apple and Orange! but you go further and predict that people will have more orange on their diet than apples next year!!?

[sunergeos]

You say apple, I say oranges

VHS versus betamax is not the argument. It is more like Chevy versus Ford versus Mercedes versus Saturn, etc. It is not an all or nothing proposition. While that supposedly makes for good (?) headlines and tag lines, it makes it an apple and oranges debate. Jobs does not have to, nor is he interested in ?prevailing? over Gates. He already did that, in a way, with Pixar. Every product from Pixar is a hit. MS can?t say that about their products. Isn?t that right, Bob?

Gates did not win any "personal computer" war. Microsoft's operating system got majority distribution, albeit, through a monopoly. MS does not ship personal computers. They don't sell them, just the software that runs on them. Again, apples and oranges.

Interesting that the word "choice" is being used by Mr. Gates. The trial notes from the antiturst case that he lost says differently. I know, old argument, but since I'm pointing out the discrepancies in the story, let?s point them all out.?

The problem I see is that Apple is able to reinvent, but Microsoft has to bolt everything onto their monopoly to get it to move forward. Take Windows off the PC and their playing field vanishes. Why would anyone care if it was XP or RedHat in my TiVo like device? You?re right, it doesn?t matter. That?s why Apple can take that front by storm as well. I can hear it now. ?Who care?s that it uses Mac OS X ? it?s soooooo cool?and secure!?

[Shauheen]

I'm as important as the other guy!!

Well, looks like the C|net reader is being convinced that Micro$oft is a big rival in the music player market. Perhaps a part of gaining the market is to pretend you have it, and surely Gates has lots of channels to push this. There are many debatable issues in the article, I just want to point out two.

It is trying to convince us that, Unlike Apple who has tried to keep iTunes exclusively for iPod, (which is itself debatable) Micro$oft has adopted a far more open strategy of uniting the world in the sense of its online Music store as if they are offering an open source technology instead!

As far as I know MS has constantly (not just in this frontier but in many other ones) tried to push devices that exclusively support the MS Windows Media Format, what is more exclusive than M S Windows Media Format!! perhaps "Advanced Audio Coding" (AAC) or MP3?!

Also the article fails to provide a solid background on the technical pros and cons of the two technologies that are the backbones of the two services so called rival.

Comparing WMA and AAC this way is like telling a customer dial up Internet subscription and High speed connection both connect you to the Internet, and you can check your emails, and read news, no difference.

Apple and Orange! but you go further and predict that people will have more orange on their diet than apples next year!!?

Apple is more a software company than Microsoft

So, Gates claims that Apple is a hardware company and
Microsoft a software company. Well look at the high-quality
and secure OS X vs the vulnerable Windows XP, Safari vs
Internet Explorer, Apple's iLife vs ?. I'd say Apple is far more
a software company than Microsoft ? if you go by vastly
superior software products. Apple updates its software
regularly keeping users up-to-date, whereas Microsoft is
struggling with Windows Longhorn.

But of course, Apple produces hardware as well because they
want better quality hardware to run the software on than
your average poor quality PC with the superior processing
power of a PowerPC processor, rather than the outdated x86
architecture of the Pentium.

Seems Apple innovates on all fronts, and that must steam up
Bill's glasses with jealousy.

Apple is more a software company than Microsoft

So, Gates claims that Apple is a hardware company and
Microsoft a software company. Well look at the high-quality
and secure OS X vs the vulnerable Windows XP, Safari vs
Internet Explorer, Apple's iLife vs ?. I'd say Apple is far more
a software company than Microsoft ? if you go by vastly
superior software products. Apple updates its software
regularly keeping users up-to-date, whereas Microsoft is
struggling with Windows Longhorn.

But of course, Apple produces hardware as well because they
want better quality hardware to run the software on than
your average poor quality PC with the superior processing
power of a PowerPC processor, rather than the outdated x86
architecture of the Pentium.

Seems Apple innovates on all fronts, and that must steam up
Bill's glasses with jealousy.

[Dibbs]

boring?

"last month it introduced iPod Photo, with the ability to bore your friends with thousands of snapshots of your latest vacation on its small color screen."

bore your friends? me and my friends love to sit around and look at pictures. those are good times! and with an iPod Photo that we connect to a tv, we could do slide shows with music could we not? true its expensive, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone from buying these little suckers.

and the author is right, i think, when he says that part of Apple's appeal is it's isolationism. i sort of like it, in that i know my computer(s) are not infected with the well known crud that comes with windows.


i do have one question, though: i have an xbox and it seems to run fine. it never crashes, so i even tend to forget its even from MS at all. makes me wonder... if MS stood back and looked the OS they made for their xbox (windows CE?), which works fine... couldn't they take that same philosophy with desktops?

[Andrew J Glina]

XBOX OS

The XBOX runs on a modified version of Win2000, which from a programmers point of view is an incredibly stable platform. I think people need to move on from old "facts". For example;

1. Win 9x was extreamly unstable due to it's DOS core. NT 5 (2K/XP/XBOX) is stable.
2. Just because Microsoft was deemed to be a monoply a few years ago does not mean that it is for all eternity. Besides, Microsoft does not have a Monopoly. How about UNIX, MACOS, Solaris and even BEOS (at the time anyway). How exclusve is that?! Furthermore, I rememeber how annoying it was in the early 80s when there wasn't even a 50% dominance of any platform. I prefer it as it is now.

Errr... I am getting carried away. Back in my box!

Andrew J Glina (SinnerComputing.com)

[Dibbs]

boring?

"last month it introduced iPod Photo, with the ability to bore your friends with thousands of snapshots of your latest vacation on its small color screen."

bore your friends? me and my friends love to sit around and look at pictures. those are good times! and with an iPod Photo that we connect to a tv, we could do slide shows with music could we not? true its expensive, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone from buying these little suckers.

and the author is right, i think, when he says that part of Apple's appeal is it's isolationism. i sort of like it, in that i know my computer(s) are not infected with the well known crud that comes with windows.


i do have one question, though: i have an xbox and it seems to run fine. it never crashes, so i even tend to forget its even from MS at all. makes me wonder... if MS stood back and looked the OS they made for their xbox (windows CE?), which works fine... couldn't they take that same philosophy with desktops?

[Andrew J Glina]

XBOX OS

The XBOX runs on a modified version of Win2000, which from a programmers point of view is an incredibly stable platform. I think people need to move on from old "facts". For example;

1. Win 9x was extreamly unstable due to it's DOS core. NT 5 (2K/XP/XBOX) is stable.
2. Just because Microsoft was deemed to be a monoply a few years ago does not mean that it is for all eternity. Besides, Microsoft does not have a Monopoly. How about UNIX, MACOS, Solaris and even BEOS (at the time anyway). How exclusve is that?! Furthermore, I rememeber how annoying it was in the early 80s when there wasn't even a 50% dominance of any platform. I prefer it as it is now.

Errr... I am getting carried away. Back in my box!

Andrew J Glina (SinnerComputing.com)

[Orane Productions]

Gates vs. Jobs - Reactive or Proactive

There are two simple words to compare and contrast the leadership ability of both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They are REACTIVE & PROACTIVE.

Bill Gates (Microsoft) can be described as the 1000 pound gorilla in the IT sector who is armoured with all the distribution channels and a huge clientele base. Over the past few years, windows applications has become more and more generic and relies on a few marquee software products that fails to deliver efficiently, but is backed by the name of the infamous IT Solutions Provider - Microsoft.


In contrast, Mr. Jobs has been pushing the envelope at Apple by adapting to the trends of the 21st century and simply captivating its audience by releasing innovative products on the market. Personally, I was shocked when HP (A major PC distrubutor) took on the IPOD under its wings. Could this lead to a shift in the IT market, from Microsoft to Apple?


Currenly, Bill Gates hopes are riding on the release of Longhorn which inevitably copies alot of the glossy feel from the Mac (OSX) interface. Overall, the history of Microsoft lacks innovation, but they were able to take over the market by having a unique distribution channel. However, when this distrubution channel becomes ruthless and is in need of new products for its consumers, what are they going to do? Could Apple be the answer to Microsoft Innovation problem? I would not even bother to delve into the original conceptualisation of the infamous "mouse" that we all came to love...

In my opinion Apple's core market lies within the multimedia sector, but its products competitive declines in the corporate markets. Even though Apple's stock is up via the ipod boom, I think that Steve Jobs should also offer solutions that is targeted to the corporate echelon in order to make a full force on the market.


Orane Franklin
Webmaster @ Orane Productions Multimedia
www.oraneproductions.com

Current student @ American InterContinental University (AIU) who is seeking a job or looking for investors.

[Orane Productions]

Gates vs. Jobs - Reactive or Proactive

There are two simple words to compare and contrast the leadership ability of both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They are REACTIVE & PROACTIVE.

Bill Gates (Microsoft) can be described as the 1000 pound gorilla in the IT sector who is armoured with all the distribution channels and a huge clientele base. Over the past few years, windows applications has become more and more generic and relies on a few marquee software products that fails to deliver efficiently, but is backed by the name of the infamous IT Solutions Provider - Microsoft.


In contrast, Mr. Jobs has been pushing the envelope at Apple by adapting to the trends of the 21st century and simply captivating its audience by releasing innovative products on the market. Personally, I was shocked when HP (A major PC distrubutor) took on the IPOD under its wings. Could this lead to a shift in the IT market, from Microsoft to Apple?


Currenly, Bill Gates hopes are riding on the release of Longhorn which inevitably copies alot of the glossy feel from the Mac (OSX) interface. Overall, the history of Microsoft lacks innovation, but they were able to take over the market by having a unique distribution channel. However, when this distrubution channel becomes ruthless and is in need of new products for its consumers, what are they going to do? Could Apple be the answer to Microsoft Innovation problem? I would not even bother to delve into the original conceptualisation of the infamous "mouse" that we all came to love...

In my opinion Apple's core market lies within the multimedia sector, but its products competitive declines in the corporate markets. Even though Apple's stock is up via the ipod boom, I think that Steve Jobs should also offer solutions that is targeted to the corporate echelon in order to make a full force on the market.


Orane Franklin
Webmaster @ Orane Productions Multimedia
www.oraneproductions.com

Current student @ American InterContinental University (AIU) who is seeking a job or looking for investors.