Bill Gates Is Not Impressed by the iPad
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Dear Steve Jobs: Bill Gates is apparently not impressed by your latest wonder toy, the iPad. That comes from Brent Schlender of Bnet, who quotes the former Microsoft CEO in a Feb. 10 article about Apple's newest device. "You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard--in other words, a netbook--will be the mainstream of that," Gates supposedly told Schlender. "So, it's not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with the iPhone where I say, 'Oh my God, Microsoft didn't aim high enough.' It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'" The last time I checked, though, it seemed that Microsoft was already working with its hardware partners on several tablet PCs similar to the iPad in form factor, and which don't involve either a pen or a real keyboard: Specifically, I'm thinking of the tablet PC from Hewlett-Packard that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer debuted during his Jan. 6 keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas (Microsoft has kept tight-lipped about the device's exact specs, but you can view my photos of it here on eWEEK).
Microsoft software will also run on tablet PCs from Pegatron and Archos, and I'm sure that other manufacturers have their own designs ready for announcement and manufacture if the tablet market should explode over the next few months. The question is: Will it explode? Before the iPad made its Jan. 27 debut in San Francisco, the sheer amount of buzz building around the latest Apple product made it seem as if tablets would become the ultimate Next Big Thing. In the wake of that announcement, and the revelation that the iPad was incapable of curing cancer and solving the global warming problem, there's been a bit of a letdown. People seem to be asking, Is that it? The iPad will likely see a flock of early adopters (I'm predicting long lines at Apple Stores the night before its release), but if its sales numbers flag in the stretch, then a) the previous thinking that tablet PCs are ultimately a niche product for professionals will once again be validated, as will be b) the primacy of mechanical input--in other words, a real keyboard--for devices larger than a smartphone. And in that case, Gates' comments will be validated; but those products introduced to take advantage of a supposed Apple popularization of tablet PCs, such as HP's upcoming device, could very well crash and burn. What do you think? |
Comments (1)
Bill Gates may be the world's richest man and now a philanthropist, but relying on his ability to predict the future is laughable.
This is the guy who infamously said in the 1980s that no one would ever need more than 640KB of RAM.
This is the guy who waxed enthusiastically in his book, "The Road Ahead" in the 1990s that the future of information was based on CD-ROMs while almost completely overlooking the Internet.
Bill Gates was the one who predicted the iMac was a gimmick in 1998 because "I think we can do color." Funny how more than 12 years later, most PC companies still haven't figured out how to build a top selling all-in-one computer.
On the iPod introduction in 2001, Bill Gates said, "There’s nothing that the iPod does that I say, ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that,’” he said. Funny how his long-term memory seems to have suffered over the years.
And let's not forget Bill G made the bold prediction that Tablet PCs would become the dominant form of computers sold by....5 years ago.
So Nicholas, why do you think it's such a great idea to trust Bill's judgement about the iPad? Almost every prediction he's made about the future of technology has turned out not only wrong, but dead wrong.
In fact, I'd say that if Bill Gates says an Apple product is not so special, it practically guarantees it will become a best seller!
Posted by Lava | February 12, 2010 4:19 AM