Frankly he sounds incompetent.
You cannot call Bill Gates incompetant. One of the most sucessful people who ever lived. Seriously?
AnDy
Frankly he sounds incompetent.
Dude, the point is that DR turned up their noses at IBM when they came calling. If they hadn't, MS would never have gotten the opportunity and this would be a different world today.
You cannot call Bill Gates incompetant. One of the most sucessful people who ever lived. Seriously?
AnDy
Bill Gates said:This is very strange to me. The music companies own operations offer a service that is truly unfriendly to the user and has been reviewed that way consistently.
Somehow they decide to give Apple the ability to do something pretty good.
He sounds pretty clueless in that email.
Other than Apple at the time or GM at the moment MS is doing great .. coming out strong with Win7 .. no downfall/rebirth in sight.
Just because you do not agree with what they do or how they run their business doesn't mean they are not successful or need to be saved by some savior.
T.
Just because he didnt understand how to work with the music industry he is incompetant? I'm sure his overall job entailed much much more than just that.
Someone is living in the past, namely you. We are in the 21st century. Most of those events, except for MSFT not getting the internet, took place in this century rather than the last.yet somehow they're probably the most important company of the 20th century...![]()
I don't fully understand why Microsoft felt that they were "smoked." They weren't really in the music market at all at the time. Why does Apple and Microsoft feel that they must compete in every field?
Someone is living in the past, namely you. We are in the 21st century. Most of those events, except for MSFT not getting the internet, took place in this century rather than the last.
umm, when exactly did MS settle for a billion dollars to apple? And what lawsuit exactly was that? Like I said, depending on what revision of history you subscribe to...
Check it out on Roughly Drafted. It was in their financial reports! The main case was the 'look & feel", but there were several others all together.
... How the hell did you arrive at the conclusion, that the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation is about buying a Nobel prize?
How about not everybody is a self indulged a$$ and some people actually put their money out there to do good.
How blinded do you need to be to actually take a fantastic good cause and put such a negative spin on it?
No they did not. When IBM came calling the guy they were meeting was on his way back to the office by plane. The whole "DR snubbed IBM" FUD was spread by Gates and Microsoft.
History is written by the victor, or in this case the underhanded salesman.
You cannot call Bill Gates incompetant. One of the most sucessful people who ever lived. Seriously?
AnDy
And I was referring to MSFT being the most important company for the 1900's, thank you. Clearly they haven't had nearly the impact on technological progress in the 21st century as they did in the prior. But Apple hasn't really done much either. Commercially they've been successful...but have they moved us along technologically? iPods and iPhones are awesome, but they are improvements of existing technology and not furthering our progress as a people. Dos/Windows and it's integration into PC's revolutionized the way we live today. Try to spin it any other way, and you're just deluding yourself.
There are a couple of books that people might like to read.
The first is a large one produced by Microsoft about Microsoft. I forget the publisher or precise date, but it's been available as a remaindered book here in the UK within the last 5 years, so it's not that old. The really interesting thing about this book is that it doesn't mention the internet, or the World Wide Web! No, instead it talks about MS Net. At the latest, it had to be late '90s, maybe 1996. We all know when it started, and we all know what Gates is.
The second book is Jerry Kaplan's own story of Go Computers, the venture that was killed off by a combination of IBM procrastination, incompetence and meddling, and MS double dealing of the most underhand kinds.
Gates therefore isn't incompetent at everything. He did run his company like a top of the food chain predator, destroying everything in its path. He held back the progress of computing by maybe a decade, and jealously set up successive operations with one sole purpose: to spoil products and services developed and offered by competitors.
His main assets are the monopoly deal with IBM, his Dollar power and the ability it afforded him to impose industry damaging constraints on suppliers and developers, as well as to develop products that don't need to make money, but do dilute the market for the competition.
And he did all this whilst getting personally richer than any other man on earth, and pontificating like some faux sage on the future of computing. In my opinion, he's a revolting character with no original contributions, and a blight of personality traits that would keep an entire practice of New York psychiatrists busy for a lifetime.
There are a couple of books that people might like to read.
The first is a large one produced by Microsoft about Microsoft. I forget the publisher or precise date, but it's been available as a remaindered book here in the UK within the last 5 years, so it's not that old. The really interesting thing about this book is that it doesn't mention the internet, or the World Wide Web! No, instead it talks about MS Net. At the latest, it had to be late '90s, maybe 1996. We all know when it started, and we all know what Gates is.
The second book is Jerry Kaplan's own story of Go Computers, the venture that was killed off by a combination of IBM procrastination, incompetence and meddling, and MS double dealing of the most underhand kinds.
Gates therefore isn't incompetent at everything. He did run his company like a top of the food chain predator, destroying everything in its path. He held back the progress of computing by maybe a decade, and jealously set up successive operations with one sole purpose: to spoil products and services developed and offered by competitors.
His main assets are the monopoly deal with IBM, his Dollar power and the ability it afforded him to impose industry damaging constraints on suppliers and developers, as well as to develop products that don't need to make money, but do dilute the market for the competition.
And he did all this whilst getting personally richer than any other man on earth, and pontificating like some faux sage on the future of computing. In my opinion, he's a revolting character with no original contributions, and a blight of personality traits that would keep an entire practice of New York psychiatrists busy for a lifetime.
Amen to almost all, but not knowing the man personally, I can't vouch for the last sentence. I assume he's a fine human being (and has proved so by his charitable work), but as a businessman he was most certainly a weasel of the highest order. So while I admire what he's doing with his wealth, I do not admire how he acquired it.
It's discouraging that a company can become so insanely wealthy and powerful with such a collection of mediocre (at best) products. They're the General Motors of the computing world - a tech conglomerate with no real vision or direction - the Acme of software. We saw mediocrity finally kill (effectively) GM, and they must now rebuild - based on the merits of their products. One can only hope Microsoft suffers such a fate at some point. Consumers are finally waking up and realizing that buying cheap and/or buying the status quo for the sake of status quo is probably not the best option.
Gotta run, need to place an order for a new iMac to replace my mom's Dell with Windows.![]()
sorry, i can't find it, even with the all powerful Google. Now I know part of the '97 peace treaty that involved MS buying 150M in non voting stock, included Apple dropping their lawsuit that windows took some liberties with Apples' OS...but I don't know anything about another $1B in settlements between Apple & MSFT for the same issue. That infusion of $150M in equity is what some people believe allowed Apple to continue on....of course, then they hit it big with the iMac & iBook, and the rest is history.
Anyway, if you could link I would appreciate it, because it is contrary to my understanding.