Gates Talks Up Vista on NBC's 'Today' a Day Before its Release
| by Joe Leo, Columnist | January 30, 2007 |
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In famous Microsoft innovation form, Gates talks about the future five years from now, a future already unveiled by Apple and Steve Jobs--five years before their arch-rival predicts it will happen--at the Macworld Expo 2007 held earlier this month in San Francisco. The topic/product(s)?
Vieira, jokingly worried about her job security as an anchor of a morning news program on broadcast TV and pointing out that she just signed a contract for the job, asked Gates about something he said a few days ago.
"You were at the World Economic Forum over the weekend in Switzerland and you told business leaders and politicians that, 'within five years, the internet will revolutionize TV and we may actually see the demise of conventional broadcast television'..." She asks Gates to elaborate.
Gates, acting like a messenger from the future says, "Well broadcast TV means everybody's watching the same thing and I can't really interact with it... something complex... by using the internet to deliver TV, it can be very personal."
Isn't this what Apple and Steve Jobs are trying to do / are already pioneering with iTunes and the AppleTV? (Gates and Microsoft the innovator. What's next, MicrosoftTV?).
Bill Gates's own interview on the "Today Show," did nothing to distance Vista from OS X, and in fact, seemed to make it even more a clone of Mac OS X packaged in a different box and given a new name. To describe Microsoft's new OS like Vieira did the Zune, Vista would then be "Microsoft's own version of Mac OS X."
And while Vista is certainly an advance over past incarnations of Windows, when compared to Mac OS X which has been on the market for years now (albeit exclusive to Apple users), Microsoft's Vista is again, a step behind Apple in the scheme of things, as it always seems to be.
Today's rollout of Vista only shows Apple's impact on Microsoft's dominance as a giant in the industry. As "Today's" Meredith Vieira said, Microsoft has dominated the industry for years, but this launch of a new version of Windows is, "an effort to maintain its supremacy."
When something or someone needs to make an effort to maintain its supremacy, it can only mean one thing: something or someone is becoming a threat to its existence.
Let's not forget too, that Apple is already moving on beyond Tiger with Leopard just months or weeks away. When Leopard (Mac OS X, v 10.5) comes out, Tiger will be nothing more than yesterday's news, and Vista's comparisons to Tiger will no longer matter. And Vista will become yesterday's news as well.
"Too little, too late."
Yawn. It'll be like comparing lemons to apples. (Or was that oranges?).