Slashdot Mirror
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."
> I haven't heard about all those Mac exploits he's referring to, have you?
I have. They exist. (Most of) The exploits themselves would take a phenomenal amount of knowledge about the entire underlying OS to turn them into a full-fledged rootkit installation exploit but they do exist.
> When somebody comes to us [after discovering a vulnerability] we've got [a fix] before there is any exploit
Bill. I thought you were an uber-hacker. You should know better. This is only true if they come to you with the vulnerability before they've written the full-fledged exploit.
> The number [of violations] will be way less because we've done some dramatic things [to improve security] in the code base. Apple hasn't done any of those things.
This statement is borderline libelous. Just the facts, please.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I am not a big fan of the "I am a Mac" ads. Being a Linux user, I don't care that much about OS X or Windows based PCs. So perhaps my opinion is unbiased.
:-(
I think that these ads might offend Windows users instead of getting them to switch to the cool side. These ads do not show the strength of Macs. These focus more on insulting Windows based PCs.
Moreover, don't know why, but I've always felt that any company that really has superior products doesn't have to attack the competition this way. In fact, through these ads, Apple has lost a little respect in my eyes, if nothing else.
ps. I know that writing something against Apple might not go very well with my Karma, though
1. Vista is real kewl.
2. I can't believe how apple is lying about being superior.
3. In the future we'll lock in customers by offering our applications as services and by storing the user's data on our servers.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I'm running 10.5 on a 7-year-old G4, among other systems. It is in the same configuration as when it was purchased (dual-500 g4's, 1 GB Ram) except that the hard drive has been replaced (40 GB -> 60 GB).
It might have been a large machine when it was purchased, but it wasn't all that unusual for a Mac. It might not be the fastest computer but it will run the OS faster than it ran the OS it came with (or any other since).
Let's see you run Vista on a 7-year-old Dell.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
Gates mentions Linux, without really any prompting from the interviewer, in his second answer. He doesn't really say anything, but just the fact that he mentions Linux without having to is going to make Linux seem more like a serious contender to many people.
OK couple things about his statements that jumped out at me from reading TFA: The number [of violations] will be way less because we've done some dramatic things [to improve security] in the code base. Apple hasn't done any of those things.
Um, Bill, Apple hasn't had to fix DLL hell, and processes run by a user blowing away system things, because they didn't build those problems in in the first place. They didn't have to block open ports with vulnerable services listening on the by default, because they're not _open_ by default. And so on. Next?
Question: How about the implication that you need surgery to upgrade? Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade on the hardware than our competitors have done.
How so, Bill? What are the hardware requirements for your new OS? How many 5 year old boxes, or even 3 year old boxes, meet that?
You can choose to buy a new machine, or you can choose to do an upgrade. And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it's superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it.
So Bill is saying, that there's no truth to the statement that you need to make hardware changes if you want to upgrade to vista. NO truth to it.
Tell that to my inlaws; they'll need a new box entirely.
I mean, it's fascinating, maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, 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.
OK Bill, show me the figures. Show me a total exploit on OSX. Now, show me 365 of them for each year it's been out. Back up your figures or be shown to be the liar you are.
I just can't keep going through this, I think that one says it all about the guy's outright lies, and/or complete lack of clue. So, windows fanbois, is he lying, or is he clueless?
Let's get this straight. The fact that Macs can be hacked makes exploiting Windows okay?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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, show them the way the search lets you go through lots of things, including lots of photos. Set up a parental control. And then I might edit a high-definition movie and make a little DVD that's got photos. As I went through, they'd think, "Wow, is that something I could use, would that make a difference for me?"
I'm a developer, but even I know the sales-jargon phrase elevator pitch. I don't know many 30-second elevator rides that afford a chance to sit down with someone for a couple of minutes. They must have really nicely furnished, though slow, elevators in Redmond. (Wow, is that allegorical to Vista, or what? ;-)
Anyway, there is no way on God's green earth that Bill Gates doesn't know what "elevator pitch" means. So the answer really is, no, there is not a quick and compelling explanation for why one should upgrade to Vista. Instead, there is a long, laborious demo that ends in a rhetorical question about whether there's anything useful.
To which the answer is probably, "No."
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
Seriously, come on. The ad where the PC buys the Mac that C++ reference manual that he secretly lusts after himself is just so much blatant false image building it's ridiculous. Are they implying that Mac programmers live in a glorious world where technical manuals are unnecessary? Or that every windows user is a technical programmer? It's ludicrous.
The point, of course, is that it takes being the kind of person that wants a C++ GUI programming guide to actually enjoy and really understand Windows.
The "home movie" comparisons where the shapely woman is the mac one and the ugly unshaven guy in drag is from the PC is just dumb.
Easy to say, but I defy you to make a movie in MovieMaker that looks anything close to as good as one made in iMovie. Have you even used iMovie?
The PC going in for surgery is another joke. At least he PC CAN be upgraded instead of simply requiring replacement for a major OS update.
Any Mac made in the last five years can upgrade to Tiger without more than a memory upgrade and actually run many things faster. I speak from personal experience on this and the iMac I had was actually six years old. The point was that you don't *need* a hardware upgrade to upgrade the OS.
When you call someone a liar you need to provide evidence to that effect.
Boom Shanka
That particular case was when 10.3 came out and allowed accelerated graphics to be used on computers that had AGP slots in them (since AGP allowed for enough bandwidth for this feature to be useful). Some people did find the trick to enable it on PCI-only machines (like yours), and found that because of the lack of bandwidth between memory and the graphics card it was actually slower.
So... is your argument is that Apple should have made your computer slower, or that Apple should have somehow caused your PCI clot to become a AGP slot using software only?
And since then there have been a number of changes in this sub-system. Each time Apple has allowed older computers to continue running they way they were, and allowed newer computers to be faster with a very few extra eye-candy touches (like a rotating cube). They have not created distinctly different functionality (yet). Vista does go a little further down this road, and there is a chance that 10.5 will too with CoreAnimation (I have no non-public information on this: pure speculation).
Bill's claim about the File-Edit-View-Window-Help menu is even weirder. Bill Atkinson did that at Apple. What is Bill Gates smoking? Apple even invented the phrase "cut and paste." And before the "Apple stole from Xerox" comments start, they actually hired a bunch of the Xerox folks who then went to work on the Mac.
I haven't seen Gates make comments like this in a long time. I'm glad the public finally gets to see what an asshole he is. Seriously, he's known for cussing and swearing in meetings, and he even once said he'd rather "piss on" OpenStep back in the 90s. In the early 90s, he told his wife he had more power than the President (she kicked him in the leg for it). A very arrogant guy.
Jobs is arrogant and defensive too, but at least you can understand why given what happened between Apple and Microsoft in the 80s.
I don't know if there *was* a virus on OS X, but...
I challenge all those virus-writing bozos to write one! Clearly they haven't got the faintest idea how to create something truly malicious when they don't have a bunch of pretty scripts already written for them. Not a single virus? That shows these bain-dead hacks can't write real code for peanuts. They're hopeless jokes and OS X users laugh about them all the time. And their mothers are too fat.
There. I said it.
Someone had to.
"Never challenge an attacker" ?
In the case of security, I *want* OS X to be the subject of intense scrutiny. I want people combing the OS for hooks they can hang malware on. This will force Apple to respond and make the OS more secure. If this doesn't happen, the OS will stay as it is (and that's not a bad level of security right now).
The MOAB fizzled out to a few third-party issues (most fixed by now) a few categories of Apple issues and a *lot* of invective from those bozos. They were useless hacks unfit to call themselves researchers. They failed comprehensively to find that "smoking gun" which would have catapulted them to the notoriety they sought.
So, who's next? Any wanna-be virus writers looking for a challenge? Or are you all too chicken? Are you all incapable?
I double-dog dare you!
I'd go so far as to say that the only thing keeping Vista from being a flop is MS' strongarm agreements with the OEM's.
If no one at MS can come up with a single compelling reason to get Vista other than irrelevant eye candy, then there must not be one. Nobody wants Vista, because there's no real value in it, and because MS can't tell anyone why they should want Vista.
The next couple of years will be a huge opportunity for Apple and/or Lunix.
If he's referring to the Month of Apple bugs, then the premise an outright lie in the first place. Most of those are denial of service, priviledge escalation, arbitrary code with non-root permission, potential exploits, etc. On top of that, they've thrown in 3rd party apps to fill out the month. I'm not saying the MOAB people are doing a bad job, but it's a shame to see them being used in this way, because MS shills they are not.
As for getting what he wishes for, he already does - on a scale that OSX will never see. People measure the cost of the MS disasters in the billions of dollars. Way to miss the point Microsoft.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Speaking of Hodgeman and sympathy, did you see Gates on The Daily Show? The instant the interview was over, Gates did an about-face and high-tailed it out of there. Didn't even sit down and do the faux-chat thing during the transition to the commercial break. The guy couldn't generate sympathy if he tried, he has no social graces at all. He didn't even use any humor during the interview - he spoke like it was a advertisement for laundry detergent, not an interview with Jon Stewart.
I agree. A couple of years ago I heard him speak in person at WinHeck. At the beginning of the speech he did sort of a "light introduction" (for a normal person I would say "joke" but for Gates that would be aiming too high) where he talked about the story of him saying that people didn't need more than 64K. (Or was it 640K, I don't remember.) And basically I was waiting for the punch line - there wasn't one. He basically just said "I never said that". And the whole thing was so completely irrelevant that it was just stupid.And then his keynote was so boring that I actually fell asleep.
I've been to WWDC several times and seen Steve Jobs speak and I have never fallen asleep. Steve Jobs may not be the best jokester in the world, but he is a very good communicator. In fact, I can't picture him going on Jon Steward's show because: Jobs isn't funny enough to do the show well, he doesn't do self deprecating humor well, AND he is smart enough to already be aware that he couldn't pull it off. Gates is the sort of nerd who just doesn't know/care that he is not funny or interesting or tasteful.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
No, that'd be Xerox. Actually, they were the first to implement it. The basics of the WIMP concept were first proposed by Doug Engelbart.
This isn't something I ever thought I'd have to point out in a Slashdot discussion. Apple makes great stuff, but most of their "innovations" come from elsewhere. They just do a great job at implementing them.
> What I see is that nearly every review of Vista is written by a Mac user.
No, I think what you are noticing is that every IT writer in existence in 2007 has run a Mac at least a little bit, whereas in 2001 when Windows XP came out, Mac OS X was just a few months old, and it was rare that any IT press knew anything existed other than Microsoft. Especially over the last couple of years the combination of iPod success and Apple-Intel switch has created a situation where many IT writers are writing about Windows all day then going home to their Macs. You can't put a new Windows with a Mac skin and Mac features in front of these guys and they don't notice. These are also the same guys who were chatting up WinFS and now have to explain why certain dialog boxes in Windows still look like NT 3.1.
When Windows 95 came out, very few people noticed that the way the UI looked was a complete rip-off of NeXT, because hardly anybody had run a NeXT system, or even seen a screenshot from a NeXT system. The Vista skin is similarly very much like Mac OS X, but the problem for Bill Gates is that everybody in IT knows that. You can't just wink about it anymore. The Mac is running the same 64 bit Core chips as everyone else and there are even 4-way Xeon 1U servers so it is really disingenuous to play the same old game that Bill Gates plays of pretending Apple doesn't exist. IT used to play along but like you say, they seem to all be Mac users now.