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LOL! Industry leaders from Bill Gates to our own John Dvorak share their visions

M

MacQuest

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 18, 2003
902
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You See Dead People...
The same genius who stated back in 1984 (referring to the newly introduced Macs mouse pointing device) that "there is no evidence that people will want to use these", John Dvorak is now sharing his worthless insight into the evolution of tech for the next quarter industry.

Yay! :p

Don't even get me started on bill g's failure to foresee the future of the industry...

The Next 25 Years in Tech
Industry leaders from Bill Gates to our own John Dvorak share their visions of tomorrow's technology.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2243309,00.asp
 
You might not like Bill Gates' products (I sure don't), but you have to admit that it would be pretty hard to imagine that he would take control of 95% of the market and become the richest man in the world if he had neither any foresight nor the ability to take his foresight and will it into reality.
 
Blll gates like it or not has done more for the computer industry than Steve Jobs ever has. He standardized an OS for the industry to use and set the standard. Apple does not want to do this. They are a hardware company.
 
themadchemist said:
You might not like Bill Gates' products (I sure don't), but you have to admit that it would be pretty hard to imagine that he would take control of 95% of the market and become the richest man in the world if he had neither any foresight nor the ability to take his foresight and will it into reality.
Click to expand...

This could become a very complicated discussion, with lots of historical detail, if anyone really wants to go there. The abbreviated version is that Gates had opportunities dropped on his doorstep which were unprecedented in this annals of the technology industry and quite possibly in the history of American business on a whole. Did he take maximum advantage of these opportunities? Arguably, yes. Did he do it entirely with the bounds of the law? Absolutely not. Did he accomplish what he did because his insight into technology was exemplary? Again, I would say certainly not.

I think it was a sad day when Bill Gates was anointed as a technology visionary simply on the basis of his success. Looking into this even superficially, it's very difficult to determine what his vision was or is beyond control and profit.
 
IJ Reilly said:
I think it was a sad day when Bill Gates Steve Jobs was anointed as a technology visionary simply on the basis of his success. Looking into this even superficially, it's very difficult to determine what his vision was or is beyond control and profit.
Click to expand...

I guess that works both ways.
 
Fundamentally in the late 1970's Microsoft were the only "new" PC company with enough professionalism to wear suits when the IBM employees came round. This got them the IBM OS deal which made them a lot of money, at that time Gates had the foresight/luck (delete as applicable) to sell the OS to clones as well, he also was sensible enough to develop Office on the Mac, rather than the more competitive PC and to port it later. Later they leveraged DOS to get Windows and then Windows to get Internet Explorer.

Gates is still huge to have achieved this, but wasn't as visionary as Woz and Jobs.
 
killerrobot said:
I guess that works both ways.
Click to expand...

If I was drawing that conclusion based on the same argument, then yes.

Otherwise, no.

Eraserhead said:
Fundamentally in the late 1970's Microsoft were the only "new" PC company with enough professionalism to wear suits when the IBM employees came round. This got them the IBM OS deal which made them a lot of money, at that time Gates had the foresight/luck (delete as applicable) to sell the OS to clones as well, he also was sensible enough to develop Office on the Mac, rather than the more competitive PC and to port it later. Later they leveraged DOS to get Windows and then Windows to get Internet Explorer.

Gates is still huge to have achieved this, but wasn't as visionary as Woz and Jobs.
Click to expand...

When IBM came knocking at Microsoft's door there wasn't such thing as a "PC company" (early '80s BTW). In fact Microsoft had never at that point written an operating system and they really did not create DOS either, but instead ported a clone of CP/M, which they purchased. The clone industry arose not because of Microsoft but because of IBM's mistakes. Microsoft was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the clone market when it emerged, but they hardly could have planned it that way.
 
Bill Gates always predicts the wrong stuff. I read his book The Road Ahead and nothing he predicted has ever come true. Dvorak is also a worthless shill who can't predict a thing.
 
maxrobertson said:
Bill Gates always predicts the wrong stuff. I read his book The Road Ahead and nothing he predicted has ever come true. Dvorak is also a worthless shill who can't predict a thing.
Click to expand...

You don't become the richest man in the world and run one of the most successful companies by predicting everything wrong.
 
yg17 said:
You don't become the richest man in the world and run one of the most successful companies by predicting everything wrong.
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Maybe not everything, but pretty much everything. Really, you should read "The Road Ahead" -- even when it came out, the impression was that Bill really didn't have much of a grasp on the future. Microsoft almost completely missed the internet because Bill didn't see the importance. You should also try this mental exercise: think of one, important concept which was invented, or even perfected, at Microsoft. Good luck!
 
zap2 said:
No, Steve Jobs(along with Woz) really pushed Apple, which ending up pushing the market.
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Umm... what market are you exactly talking about? PC? Phone? Media player? Industrial/product design?

IJ Reilly said:
You should also try this mental exercise: think of one, important concept which was invented, or even perfected, at Microsoft. Good luck!
Click to expand...

I'd say they pretty much rocked it with Office - pretty much universal.
Even the marketing was brilliant - use software to sell an OS, and use an OS to sell machines.
Seems like Jobs is trying to use that same page seeing as how it's a "software" company. Use iTunes to sell OS X, and use OS X to sell Macs.
 
killerrobot said:
I'd say they pretty much rocked it with Office - pretty much universal.
Even the marketing was brilliant - use software to sell an OS, and use an OS to sell machines.
Seems like Jobs is trying to use that same page seeing as how it's a "software" company. Use iTunes to sell OS X, and use OS X to sell Macs.
Click to expand...

All you're really talking about here is marketing, plus some cheating. Microsoft had access to Windows APIs that their competitors lacked. They gave themselves a built-in advantage, and used it. Hardly an innovation!
 
IJ Reilly said:
All you're really talking about here is marketing, plus some cheating. Microsoft had access to Windows APIs that their competitors lacked. They gave themselves a built-in advantage, and used it. Hardly an innovation!
Click to expand...

in·no·va·tion
Pronunciation [in-uh-vey-shuhn]
1. something new or different introduced
2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.

Had anyone done that before with software?

And yeah, I pretty much said it was great marketing ( a conceptual part of technology) - so great in fact, that Apple's trying to do the same thing now.

BTW why do you keep trying to make this a moral argument and are you saying that MS Office was not innovative within itself?

EDIT:
If Office wasn't a good enough answer for you then maybe perhaps Surface is.
 
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