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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."
> 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'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
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?
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."
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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.
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