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Bill Gates Brags About Vista, Reacts to Apple's Latest Ads

fr8_liner writes "In an unusually candid interview with Newsweek Bill Gates lays it all on the line, bragging about the benefits of Vista, ragging on Apple for their 'I'm a Mac' ads, and claiming primacy in a number of features shared by Vista and OSX. Specifically, it is Mr. Gates' opinion that the Apple adverts are misleading if not untruthful. He makes the claim that 'security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.' The interview also touches on the future of Microsoft and Operating systems, and some of the company's plans for internet-based computing."

8 of 891 comments (clear)

  1. Exploits on Vista? by soapbox · · Score: 5, Informative

    I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.'

    Yeah, there's one this month.

    also here.

  2. Gruber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Great write up at Daring Fireball already: http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/lies_damned_lies _and_bill_gates

  3. Sidebar is 13 years old by kindbud · · Score: 5, Informative

    NEWSWEEK: If one of our readers confronted you in a CompUSA and said, "Bill, why upgrade to Vista?" what would be your elevator pitch?

    Bill Gates:
    The most effective thing would be if I could sit down with them and just take them through the new look for a couple of minutes, show them the Sidebar...
    Sidebar, new Windows interface from Quarterdeck
    Newsbytes News Network, April 6, 1994

    Sidebar is delivered on a single floppy disk, takes up less than 1 megabyte (MB) of hard disk storage space, and less than 300 kilobytes (K) of random access memory (RAM). It also fits on the right edge of the computer's display to take up as little screen space as possible.

    Quarterdeck has exclusive license of Sidebar from Paper Software of Woodstock, New York. Paper Software originally distributed the product on a try-before-you-buy basis as shareware, then Quarterdeck licensed it, made significant changes, and is now shipping the product. The suggested list price is $59.95.
    Yeah, cool new idea there, Bill.
    --
    Edith Keeler Must Die
  4. Re:ring ring by ReverendLoki · · Score: 5, Informative
    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  5. Four Apple bugs in a month, when looking!! by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Informative

    The MOAB actually only came up with three or four Apple bugs, the rest were in third party software that also applied under Linux and Windows!

    The most serious exploit (Quicktime) could only be replicated by one in sixty people, and that was when RUNNING A CUSTOM EXECUTABLE LOCALLY, generating the attack file from the binaries on your computer - again, which only worked for one in sixty people.

    Ridiculous. Now we know exactly what projects like MOAB lead to, idiocy at the highest levels of the executive quarter.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. Re:upgrading by be-fan · · Score: 5, Informative

    When OS X 10.3 (Panther) discontinued support for the Beige G3s, the line was six years old and had been discontinued for four. It makes sense that Apple chose to abandon support for a line of machines that wouldn't have run the new OS acceptably anyway.

    Linux can get away with supporting ancient hardware because, well, because they don't actually have to support it. Nobody calls up the GNOME foundation complaining that 2.16 crawls on their PIII-450 with 256MB of RAM. In comparison, Apple actually has to live up to the specifications they outline on the box.

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  7. Re:Truth or Dare? by pestilence669 · · Score: 5, Informative

    When I used to be employed to write adware, we did this at least once a day. I shit you not.

    You just can't hide running processes as well as you can on Windows. No other operating system offers so many diverse methods to run executable code as a privileged user. Believe me when I say: Exploiting Windows is like stealing candy from a baby.

  8. Re:4 TEH WIN! by gig · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was weird he went all Xerox PARC when the question with Vista is the skin. The Windows logo has been ensconced in glassy bubble that is such a Mac OS X wannabe that it's a self-parody ... the very Windows logo has been made to look Mac-like. The swoopy desktop pictures are too much just by themselves, although I heard them defend that by saying that they got all the desktop pictures from third-parties ... so it is not actually Microsoft that did the off ripping. And the "parental controls" feature he keeps saying is a first is in Tiger, released in 2005. It is really weird to hear him say they are first with these things when they are clearly not.

    Apple not only hired people from PARC and gave them a chance to make real products out of their ideas, Apple also paid Xerox with pre-IPO Apple stock. When Apple went public, Xerox made millions and millions and that was what Xerox wanted. The very reason they had the CEO of Apple and his computer design team touring around the Palo Alto Research Center was because they didn't know how to make any money from the stuff they had there. They were like a motorcycle company who came up with a cool concept car and didn't know what to do so they called the local car company CEO to come down and see if they couldn't get him to take the car project forward. He said, yeah, I like this, I'll hire the team and compensate you with stock and everybody was happy.

    When you read the list of GUI features that were developed AFTER that, solely by Apple, at Apple, and for Apple products, it is embarrassing to think about anyone trying to take Apple down a notch with the Xerox PARC story. Just in the 1980's Apple invented and shipped drag and drop, the clipboard cut/copy/paste, the double-click, the pull-down menu, overlapping windows, marquee selections (marching ants), the little box of painting tools like you see in Photoshop, files-and-folders, proportional fonts, WYSIWYG, the Trash, keyboard shortcuts for menus, File-Edit-View, a system menu full of shortcuts (Apple menu/Start menu), little hardware controls in the corner of the screen. The other day I saw a screenshot of System 6 and I was stunned at how much like Mac OS X it looked.

    The only stuff I know that Microsoft has contributed to GUI science is the little curly arrow they put on shortcuts, which is a classic innovation in that you see that on every system now ... the soft links or aliases or shortcuts have the little curly arrow. Also, using a modifier key plus Tab to cycle through running applications started on Windows and is everywhere else now. That's not much for 20 years of MS Windows.