02.06.10
Oracle Gates
“In the decade ahead I can predict that we will provide over twice the productivity improvement that we provided in the ’90s.”
–Bill Gates
“Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so irritating.”
–Bill Gates
Summary: A look back at nonsensical predictions and lack of foresight from Microsoft’s Nostradamus
“Since this is from the BBC,” says a reader of ours, “there’s no need for a URL, a better citation can be found instead. It’s another quote for the Bill Gates as Visionary file: “Although Bill Gates announced the tablet concept at Comdex in November 2001, saying that “within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.” Instead the format flopped, constituting less than 1% of sales in 2009.”
“It’s right up there with the open letter to computer hobbyists rant and the end of spam prediction,” says our reader. In 2004, Bill Gates said that “spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time.” To a large degree, spam is the fault of Microsoft. In 1993, Bill Gates said: “The Internet? We are not interested in it.” And yet, the BBC — with its infinite shamelessness — portrays Gates as though he's among the fathers of the Web. Microsoft is good at lying and getting the press to lie along.
Our reader Marti has just shown us this new tablet that combines Windows and Linux.
X2 Technology has capitalised on Apple’s decision not to call its tablet the iTablet. Its X2 iTablet will run Windows or Linux and support Flash.
It’s not the first Windows-Linux tablet of this kind. iPad is hardly the product to beat not just because it's customer-hostile but also because it’s technically inferior. There’s still doubt about the future of this form factor, which lacks a proper keyboard to begin with. █
Dennis Murczak said,
February 6, 2010 at 3:48 pm
The iTablet will probably not sell well – it has a bulky power-hungry x86 processor inside so it can run a bulky power-hungry Microsoft operating system. I think they didn’t state the battery life for good reasons. ARM+full-featured Linux (Moblin?) would have been the way to go for a universal mobile device with a big screen.
Well, that “new” market is still young. We will probably see some nice Linux-based tablets from companies that already produce portable bookreaders.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
February 6th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Android or Chrome OS will have some (Google or others).
your_friend Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 3:13 am
The run away success of iPod and iPhone have me less sure of iPad’s future. The thing that most makes Apple successful is Microsoft’s dominance of markets and a sickly tech press. It’s not hard to beat Microsoft in any of these categories and the tech press routinely ignores the promise of free software because they are paid to hype non free agendas. Apple will be able to dribble out features that people want as expensive options and replacements for the next five years. Camera and video chat? Next year or so. Keyboard? They can launch bluetooth devices in three years. Microsoft and Apple’s legal extortion will keep makers from being able to offer multitouch, reasonable handwriting recognition and other UI items that were developed long ago on free software. Microsoft’s hardware sabotage will continue to make it difficult for free software users to give themselves these features on their own. iPad will sell as a default option if Microsoft manages to screw companies like Asus hard enough. The sooner Microsoft fails, the sooner market forces will be released.
Robotron 2084 said,
February 7, 2010 at 6:06 am
It’s ridiculous to blame Microsoft for spam, though this website goes above and beyond what you could reasonably blame them for when it comes to just about anything. The reason spam exists boils down to simple economics. It costs no more money to send 1 email or 1,000,000, no matter what method you use to send that mail.
While Bill Gates may have been overly ambitious in his statement, in part he was correct. At least for me, spam isn’t the problem it used to be. All 3 of my email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail) do get spam messages occasionally but they are always filtered out automatically. Once every few months a single unwanted message gets through. Long gone are the days when I would have to spend 5 minutes manually deleting messages.