Journal: Bill Gates talks about Apple and the iPod

Bill Gates has been the hot topic of the Google news as of late, and I ran into an interesting article posted on The Mac Observer regarding a interview on News.com Thursday, Jan. 5, 2005. According to the article written by Bryan Chaffin, Bill Gates regards Apple as a has-been company with only three hits including the iPod, AppleII and the Macintosh. Quoting from the article,

"They had a hit with the Apple II, they had a hit with the Macintosh, and they have a hit with the iPod, so this is a company that's had three hits, and that's very impressive," he said in the interview. "There are a lot of companies that don't have three hits. And in the same way that Macintosh helped get people exposed to the graphical user interface, the iPod is doing a great job getting people to think about digital music."

OSX and Macintosh in general is a nice system (used them in school), but you never see them in mainstream stores such as Wal-Mart or your local rinky-dink computer store. If there were more applications/games and other things as readily available as the PC counterpart, I am sure sales would be just as good. However, Apple's proprietary philosophy has stifled itself in the realm of computer sales even though it is a very nice get up.As for the iPod, those not only work for Macs, but also for PCs which in my opinion why it sells so well, and will do so for quite a while.

Naturally, if somebody asks Bill Gates what he thinks of a competitor, he will start spouting how his products are better or should be seriously looked at:

"He brought his message home, by saying, "other than Apple, all those player makers are signing up to work inside the Windows PlaysForSure ecosystem."

The PlaysForSure marketing campaign is Microsoft's effort to brand the many, many competing music players on the market that don't work with the iTunes Music Store, but instead rely on Microsoft's Windows Media format."

That's all fair and good, but most people would be put off ona Windows Media only player format. Bill Gates is trying really hard to find a way to find something in the media world, and has tried to do so for many years. This iPod phenomenon was probably the type of success he was aiming for, but did not make it. As for reaching that audience, we all know what happened on his Keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show...