“You can always tell whether you’re on a Mac or on a PC…Just stick your applications in there and see whether they’ll run.” Bill Gates in a chat with Dawn Chmieleski, of San Jose Mercury News. How about if we change it to: “You can always tell whether you’re on a Mac or on a PC…. just check for a spyware clean-up program…. oh wait you don’t need to do that on a Mac.”
Your mac bias shows…. There are so few Mac attacks…. aaaaa…. because too few people use them….
I love Firefox, oh, wait… I need to apply that security patch (to Firefox??, what has the world come too.), before i proceed.
Every software is hackable, breakable, and if you think otherwise, you are just being naive. If you think that your software is not, then it just hasnt reached a ‘critcial mass’ yet…..
Ah, yes…“just stick your applications in there and see whether they’ll run.”
So I take it this means that Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows XP SP2 were secret Apple releases, then?
Another way to know you’re using a Mac? You don’t have any money left to buy apps anyway!
Haha. My distaste for Windows aside, you have to admit, that was pretty funny!
my mac bias … there is a reason… about three years ago i was writing my book, thinkpad and windows xp. nicely going along, and then along comes a virus, which i had no clue about, and then boom, the system goes down, and with that a lot of work. my mistake that i backed up stuff only once a week, i admit, but i learnt my lesson and switched to mac. mac bias, absolutely.
Gates’ comment pertains to the overwhelming number of applications available on the Windows platform. Can we not agree that this is shooting ducks in a pond? Having 90 odd percent of the market, doesn’t that translate into 90 odd percent of applications? What an impressive BB-gun he’s holding. Let’s take another pot shot!!
The only applications missing from mac are the el-cheapo ones in the $5 rack at the supermarket. Those are PC only. Also, there is a lack of overpriced shareware.
Your comment about windoze having 90% of the hardware market is true, but they don’t have anywhere near 90% of the software market. I don’t want ALL the applications I can get, I just want the best ones. Even MS Office was Mac first (original PC versions were character based, nothing like today’s versions) and most reviewers agree they are still better on Mac today than on Windows. (We have features in our OS that make it better and MS probably won’t add those to Windows for a few more years at least.
Finally, the biggest problem with Mac software is there are no viruses. (Well, not unless you install virtual PC.
I have a problem with Bill Gates comment, by using Virtual PC (now made by Microsoft), doesn’t the Macintosh OS have the most “potential” apps? As I see it, Windows Apps on Virtual PC, Linux on VPC and OSX native, and OS X Apps native…
Or is my thinking flawed?
..Every software is hackable, breakable, and if you think otherwise, you are just being naive. If you think that your software is not, then it just hasnt reached a ‘critcial mass’ yet…
oh sure…that’s not a moot point. but in the PCs, hackers have a free pass to do it. in the mac, it depends on the users, as the sole administrator of their computers, whether to give the hackers a free pass or not. do you see the difference?
and that’s why viruses, worms, spams..name them all..thrive well in the PCs because Mr Gates hasn’t done his job well. may be with Longhorn, the lives of PC users will improve but that’s more than a year away dealing with miseries.
“You can always tell whether you’re on a Mac or on a PC…Just stick your applications in there and see whether they’ll run.’’
Did he mean Office for Mac?
as a tip to one of the people who accused me of bias, i am going to spend next 24 hours on windows xp. just to see how much of a difference the apps make, and do i really have a bias and if yes, why.
Well, Bill has apps installed and tested for him so it’s all peaches & cream for him … just like he says he’s never gotten a virus – well, when your computer is on the world’s tinest intranet, sure, you’ll be virus free … so, who out there think Pc apps install and run like a charm 100% of the time?
The PC is the rental fleet car version of the personal computer. It’s works well enough when you haven’t graduated college or got mom & dad to buy it for you. It’s clearly becoming the OS for cash registers, wedding kiosks and people who don’t want to spend more than $9.95 a month to connect to the internet.
MS is like GM – once a place with cars like the Bel Air, the GTO and ’59 DeVille … now it’s the company of the Cavalier, the non descript G6 and the Venture minivan – just like MS. It had its time in the Sun but now? WebTV. MSN. Home Networking – all on life support or dead. If XBox didn’t have Halo (a game being developed for the Mac BTW), it would be even dead also but then again, most companies can’t afford to lose $100 on each piece of hardware they sell and call it a success.
Just like the rotary phone survived for years after the touch tone, so will Windows but when you have thousands of programmers and you can’t get a new OS out in 4 years even after stripping off all the major components – you are the new GM. They will go on but be irrelevant very soon. Google is busy coming up with an internet OS so for casual users, they’ll just a Google terminal. For power users, there are Macs and Linux and when you just need to run a cash register or wedding kiosk, you have Windows – or of course for the Commodore-rotary phone never-say-die crowd … they’ll be the OS that will spawn a new virus on the last day it gasp its last breath while Mac users will still be awaiting their first.
You can see this guy has a “the earth is round” bias… Let’s burn him! (sarcasm)
Anyway it’s obvious that some here have an Anti-Mac bias. The guy who posted this entry used both and choose OS X. Unlike most Mac users who often have to use Windows at work, these Mac bashers seldom used a Mac and are just agressively repeating myths that their favorite “hard-core PC user” guru keeps repeating to feel better about himself.
Seriously, there are over 18,000 programs for Mac OS X, do we really need more?
buzzy… that’s funny. much respect for making the obvious so much fun to read
Has Gates ever tried using Final Cut on a PC? No? I wonder why.
It doesn’t matter if the PC has more software titles than the Mac. If the one I need, won’t run on the PC, it’s game over.
The PC people have a hard time believing that there are applications that truly run only on the Mac.
Final Cut, notwithstanding, there are: GarageBand, BBEdit, GraphicConverter, OmniWeb and iChatAV just to name a few.
Games aside, the applications available on the Mac seem far superior to those on the PC. Many of the best applications like Final Cut and BBEdit simply have no equal on the PC.
Apple then goes out and releases Tiger with Spotlight and blows Windows completely out of the water.
The PC apologists had better get used to such as Apple is on a roll and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
As for me, I use OS X personally. I’ve been forced to use Win 98, NT, 2000, and XP as part of my job. I so despise using Windows that I purchased my own IBM Xeon workstation and installed Linux running Win98 using Win4Lin to operate the Windows applications I am forced to use as part of my job. I use Mozilla for email and the Web and run the Win98 environment as little as possible.
Gates can be as petty as he wants, but it doesn’t change the fact that Windows is woefully behind Tiger. Longhorn won’t be available until 2006 either. It also gives the Linux people an awfully long time to surpass XP in the meantime.
“You can always tell whether you’re on a Mac or on a PC…Just stick your applications in there and see whether they’ll run.’’ Bill Gates in a chat with Dawn Chmieleski, of San Jose Mercury News.
If they don’t, you’re using a PC…
Microsoft is the EPITOMY OF SHIT!!! Anyone who argues against that fact or refuses to believe it is either:
1) someone who unfortunately cannot afford to use anything else (poor soul) or
2) a fucking idiot!
Bill Gates has always eaten Apple’s dust..ALWAYS! and always will. Winblows is just that…a piece of crap that needs to flushed down the toilet, over and over and over game. Hopefully, one day Microcrap would shut down and and go away. Trust me, NO ONE would miss that bullshit of a company!
Why has nobody commented on the phrasing BG uses? “stick your applications in there?” WTF? And this guy runs the world’s largest software company? We should all be scared, very scared!
“Just stick your applications in there” !? If he has to ‘stick an application’ on a computer to tell whether it’s a Mac or Windows box, he’s more clueless than I thought.
How about, “look at the UI” or “evaluate the user experience” or type “uname -a” in the terminal…
I use a PC with WindowsXP at work, and a Mac running OSX at home. The Mac is awesome, and Garage Band rules my life.
However, the Finder application leaves much to be desired. One thing Gates did right was Windows Explorer. The Mac would be a much better machine with a better navigation system.