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I use an iPhone and I don't mind if somebody else uses an Android one.

You know what the best phone is? Whichever you prefer!
But some like conflict and argumentation. When I was in high school in the 60s it was the gearheads who attacked each other constantly over Ford vs Chevy vs Dodge. They argued about transmissions, engines, carburetors just like the iPhone vs Android vs Mac vs PC ‘wars’ of today.

In the 50s it was the audiophiles who had just woken up to high powered stereo amplifiers and monstrous speaker cabinets. They argued all the time about frequency response, RIAA curves, and which amplifier was the best.

Human nature
 
I would have thought it would have been quicker and easier to install the Microsoft apps & services you need on an iPhone over uninstalling all the bloatware/crapware that comes preinstalled on many Androids.
Gates: Some of the Android manufacturers pre-install Microsoft software in a way that makes it easy for me.

He likes that bloatware/crapware.
 
doesn't even make sense.

  • Set Bing as default search engine? - no problem
  • Make Outlook default e-mail app? - no problem
  • Make mobile edge (is that a thing?) default browser? - no problem
  • Integrate one drive? - no problem
I would say the Office Apps are also far better optimised and integrated on iOS than Android.

Clearly he is just too lazy or hasn't used an iPhone much
It's probably because he can't stream Xbox games on iOS using a native app. And all browsers on iOS are essentially Safari with a different UI. You can't truly use a different rendering engines, if that's what he prefers.
 
*YAWN* The co-founder of Apple's once biggest competition craps on Apple's iPhone.

Given that Microsoft lost the portable music, AND phone market to Apple (and others), I don't know why someone would be surprised that he wouldn't be a fan of the iPhone. I'd actually be surprised if he DID support them. It would take a 'bigger man' than him to embrace his once competitor.
Preferring software flexibility of Android is not crapping on iPhone.
 
Bill Gates is prepping to run for U.S. President. Any press he can get right now is free campaign press.
 
What would you have expected from Gates? Android is just more nerdy. You can install whatever you want. You can customize it however you want. You can run it on just about anything. It's like Windows vs MacOS in that regard. Android has a lot of nerd appeal. I have a lot of respect for Gates, but he is the ultimate nerd--and I'm sure he'd agree with that assessment.
 
Bill Gates nor Microsoft originally wrote DOS. Bill bought the rights to sell it.

Some say bought, others say stole. *shrug*

I think the guy that actually wrote it, if he knew what Microsoft would make off of his 'invention', would have asked a heck of a lot more. Microsoft might have had to deal with Kildall and DR-DOS...
 
In fairness to Gates, it was Steve Ballmer who served as Microsoft's CEO between 2000 and 2014. Ballmer infamously laughed off the iPhone, but Apple had the last laugh, as Windows Phone failed to ever gain any significant market share among mobile operating systems and was ultimately abandoned.

When Steve Ballmer wrote off the iPhone in 2007, Microsoft had a pretty solid market share in the mobile smartphone operating system market placing second to Nokia's Symbian or third to Blackberry's OS. Reports I've seen indicate around 12% or so of the marketshare at the time which seems like a reasonable amount of shipments for a losing platform. If you exclude Symbian as it's form factor skewed the market, Microsoft is sitting closer to 40% of the market share at the time.

Ballmer didn't take it seriously because he didn't understand how the iPhone changed the user experience. It removed the need for a stylus with a multitouch display that removed the need for a keyboard by having large on screen buttons. He said "it doesn't have a keyboard" thinking that nobody could adapt to the on screen display keyboard. I don't think Ballmer valued the extra support for media in the device because he was focused on his own use case as a business user and didn't see how it'd transform. The iPhone also pushed a much more graphically rich environment with lots of transitions and animations accelerated by the hardware in a way that hadn't been a priority on phones at the time. Apple treated the iPhone like a media device following the lineage of their iPod ecosystem. They added gyros to make the phone respond to orientation automatically in addition to developing gestures to interact in a touch based interface. The iPhone introduced features like push IMAP that used to require a Blackberry server to work properly.

Whilst both Microsoft and Blackberry didn't take the iPhone seriously, the threat here wasn't Apple but Google copying Apple and giving it away for free. The early devices lacked features (copy and paste and MMS weren't available in the first iPhone for example) however both Apple and Google iterated quickly enough to add those features and more. The iPhone didn't launch with the app ecosystem we think of it today with native apps, it launched with essentially web pages that you downloaded to the device. In that regard both Microsoft Windows Mobile platform, Nokia's Symbian and RIM's Blackberry OS were far more capable at third party applications. In fact if you look at the original 2007 keynote, Apple referred to Stocks and Weather as "widgets".


If MSFT been smart and acquired RIM in the early 2000s, Apple would be half its current size. Blackberry devices that were natively integrated with office networks and Exchange would have dominated the business and government markets and iPhones would have never gained the traction they did.

Microsoft already had a mobile phone platform that was competitive with RIM's Blackberry devices and had similar connectivity and market share. Microsoft's devices also interacted with the office networks and Exchange but they didn't natively integrate. You needed to deploy a Blackberry Enterprise Server that was a pain to deal with to get everything to work. The Windows Mobile devices had ActiveSync capabilities to connect back to the corporate network. The managers and executive types gravitated to the Blackberry devices but many of the field technical staff that had smart devices at the time

Given both the Windows Mobile/Windows Phone ecosystem died and the Blackberry died, I don't think it'd make a difference if MSFT had acquired RIM. They both missed the transition that the iPhone brought until it was too late. If you look at Android, it was making a Blackberry clone until the iPhone launched and they pivoted. You can see this influence in the early devices where Android required keys for the menu and back button to navigate around the operating system. Whilst they don't focus on the device much, in one of the early Android demo videos you can see a device with no touch capabilities that looks like a Blackberry style keyboard layout.


Windows phone was actually a really great platform to use. It could have dominated and at least been more diffferent to iOS.

The issue wasn’t the software but the timing. Microsoft (thanks to Ballmer) was slow to react so they had barely any apps which just created a downward spiral.

I feel some of the other challenges is that Windows Phone launched and took away capabilities that the previous version of Windows Mobile had supported in addition to not having compelling devices. As I note above, when the iPhone launched you couldn't load native third party applications on it like you could with the other platforms (Symbian, Windows Mobile or Blackberry). I think in reality what sunk them was that third party phone vendors that used to ship Windows Mobile had a cheaper option in Android. Google came in and undercut the licensed mobile operating system market by giving away a product for free.

That meant that Microsoft was left with only Nokia to ship hardware with against a slew of cheap phones from Android manufacturers and Apple. Microsoft sank lots of money into making apps for third parties on the platform but they didn't have the marketshare because all of their partners had abandoned them so they tried to take the Apple route with the Nokia acquisition.

That meant app developers had a choice in 2010 at launch if they wanted to support the rapidly growing Android operating system, Apple's iOS operating system (both around 15% in the start of 2010 with Android exploding to 30% by the end of the year), the declining Symbian (~30%) and Blackberry platforms (15% and dropping) or Windows Mobile at this point in the single digit percent and a brand new phone operating system that wasn't compatible with their previous versions. Windows Mobile held on longer than Blackberry or Symbian but I don't think Microsoft wanted it to be a loss leader it would need to be to build their own ecosystem out there. I don't think Microsoft could stand being third in that market behind Google and Apple.
 
doesn't even make sense.

  • Set Bing as default search engine? - no problem
  • Make Outlook default e-mail app? - no problem
  • Make mobile edge (is that a thing?) default browser? - no problem
  • Integrate one drive? - no problem
I would say the Office Apps are also far better optimised and integrated on iOS than Android.

Clearly he is just too lazy or hasn't used an iPhone much
The only problem he has with ios is that Apple doesn't let to preinstall Microsoft apps.(and any other except their own) Some Android phones are just Microsoft partners especially Samsung
 
When Steve Ballmer wrote off the iPhone in 2007, Microsoft had a pretty solid market share in the mobile smartphone operating system market placing second to Nokia's Symbian or third to Blackberry's OS. Reports I've seen indicate around 12% or so of the marketshare at the time which seems like a reasonable amount of shipments for a losing platform.

No, that was the share within the segment of smartphones, which was only about 10% of cellphones.

Apple's current market share is of all cellphones.

 
Personally I use Android, but I don't really care what BG prefers.
Let him take care of his anti-viruses and vaccines, since he seems to have become a leading specialist in this field...
 
30 years and Windows still s*cks

why should anyone care BG opinion on this or climate change ? !
 
Even now. 40 years later he is towing the company line. I prefer android because of "pre-installed software".... I am supposed to believe one of the leading minds of the technology revolution, makes decisions based on preinstalled software? My opinion is that the bare minimum should be pre-installed. it is the user that should define the experience, not the company providing the device.
 
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