RoR: Forum

As noted, this is purely fictional; Bill Gates never made this comparison. But if he were stupid enough to do so...man, would he be asking for this response.

Erica

Post 1

Sunday, February 4, 2007 - 4:22am

Ahhhhh - but what if ...... we put the two of them together.....;-)

Post 2

Sunday, February 4, 2007 - 4:40am

Ahhhhh - but what if ...... we put the two of them together.....;-) (The One and Only Rev)

Okay...that's an interesting concept...

NO! Wait! Cars have too many damn computerized systems as it is right now!

Used to be, a fella could take apart his own car, give it a tune up, rebuild the engine...now any little thing that goes wrong, he has no choice but to take it into a shop where some tech/mech attaches a little computer to it to see diagnostic codes and tell you what's wrong. I had a boss who once confided, "It hurts me that I can't fix my own car anymore." I hated that particular boss most days, but damned if I didn't know how he felt.

I like Bill Gates, and I like Windows (mostly) and I like my car and I like changing my own tires and checking my own oil and looking at my own spark plugs, and...

Nah...let's not put these two together just yet, okay?

:-)

Erica

Post 3

Sunday, February 4, 2007 - 7:53am

Hmmm - yeah, have to agree there - only car loved was old VW Bug, because was only car could fix by myself......

Post 4

Sunday, February 4, 2007 - 2:24pm

I always found my '96 Camry and my wife's '94 Civic (both now history) fairly easy to work on.

Post 5

Sunday, February 4, 2007 - 3:41pm

Let's take it from the top... You can work on your own car, if you want to. The computerized stuff is still "backyard" if you want to invest in the technology -- and there are work-arounds if you do not... and, honestly, if you cannot stand to let the car just go 100,000 or life without getting a tune-up, well, face it, you are a car guy and deserve the electronic readers.

At my community college, we have an award-winning car program. You cannot do your own brakes in their shop with their facilities until you get to Brakes 102. If you enroll in the program and stick with it, you can build your own car to your own specifications from the ground up. What's that worth?

Point Three: Like the automobile the Intel 80xx(x)-based computer is exactly what "most" people said they wanted. So the successful provider met the market demands. However, better solutions exist. In fact, no one ever asked for any of the wonders that make our lives so comfortable. No one asked for television. The personal computer had to be sold against resistance. Space travel, air conditioning, elevators, you name it, everything came from someone who perceived a need and then had to convince other people against their own resistance.

The Mac is better than the PC because the creators of the Mac built the machine they wanted, whereas the PC was built for other people who did not know what they wanted or why they would.

The automobile is another example of the same thing but even worse. The roads require constant maintenance because they are public pork projects. Cars were built for roads and roads were built for cars. Absent the government, we would probably have ground-effect vehicles and a host of personal flyers if not transporters.

It all comes back to Soviet agriculture. Anything the government does delivers the product or service by the same mode as collectivized farming. But government is just the highest stage of collectivism. The PC did not come from government, per se, but from govern-mentality, the mindset of the secondhander, the IBM corporation mentality of the pyramidic organization addressing the needs of other pyramids and denying power to individuals -- denying even that a demand for such power existed.

Bill Gates and GM were made for each other.

Post 6

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 9:26am

Let's take it from the top... You can work on your own car, if you want to. The computerized stuff is still "backyard" if you want to invest in the technology -- and there are work-arounds if you do not... and, honestly, if you cannot stand to let the car just go 100,000 or life without getting a tune-up, well, face it, you are a car guy and deserve the electronic readers. (Michael Marotta)

This is an excellent point, Michael. I hadn't realized how much what I'd said sounded so much like the whinings of laborers who only knew how to do one thing, one way, and then fought relentlessly against technological change in their industry (advancement, in other words.) If you truly want to work on your computerized car, you can acquire the tools necessary to do it. As you pointed out so well,

What's that worth? (M. Marotta)

Indeed, the question that defines us all.

Of course, it also works well to adress (what appears to be your criticism of Bill Gates and Microsoft...)

The Mac is better than the PC because the creators of the Mac built the machine they wanted, whereas the PC was built for other people who did not know what they wanted or why they would. (Michael Marotta)

Which, of course, is why the Mac is only used by the 5% of the world's population who actually knows enough to know what they want, assuming, of course, that what they want is what the Mac builders want as well.)

I don't believe anyone (save maybe Bill Gates himself, for obvious reasons) has ever argued against the advantages the Mac may have over the PC...but Bill Gates wins the very capitalist, "How can I provide a product that MOST people can/will use?" competition here. As you said,

Like the automobile the Intel 80xx(x)-based computer is exactly what "most" people said they wanted. So the successful provider met the market demands. (M. Marotta)

I have to respect people who can, and do, provide a fairly easy to use product for all the busy CEOs, doctors, lawyers, etc. who haven't the time to devote to learning so much about the computer that they specifically 1) "know what they want" and 2) "know (through ESP, I guess) that what they want is what the Mac builders want, too" (just reading your quote literally.)

Psst...here's a secret Bill Gates doesn't want...no, I mean CARE, that you know...the Linux operating systems are AWESOME (not to mention free, or very low cost)...the advantages of using open source software are amazing...and boundless...if you're a COMPUTER GEEK. (Or like me, a budding one.)
Open source IS ALL ABOUT building what YOU WANT. If you have the aptitude, knowledge and time, you can build whatever you want to suit the Linux system you are using. (Frankly, if I required such specific programming, I wouldn't have any interest in the machine that Mac creators wanted, I would only want the machine that reflected what I wanted. Linux all the way!)

I have never had a problem recognizing the value of both open source, and Gates' (highly propietary) Windows software. I don't even have any particular issue with the Mac, either...(except for the "we're so special; if you buy our computers, you'll be special, too!" attitude; just look at their obnoxious commercials.)
There is truly room for everyone; Bill Gates was just smart enough to realize (first, apparently) that to make the most money, as a capitalist, he should provide software any computer illiterate person can use and enjoy.
(Oh, and yes, I understand that Macs are user-friendly, too...but clearly Bill Gates got the SERIOUS jump on Steve Jobs in impressing the world. Sorry, I just can't disrespect him for that.)

I have two computers; one runs a Linux operating system (Mandriva), and the other, Windows XP. I love them both. For different reasons. End of story.

The PC did not come from government, per se, but from govern-mentality, the mindset of the secondhander, the IBM corporation mentality of the pyramidic organization addressing the needs of other pyramids and denying power to individuals -- denying even that a demand for such power existed. (M. Marotta)

I like to think that the PC came from a capitalistic mind who understood how to develop a product most would prefer to use. Of course, wonderful world that we live in, we can choose to not use PCs or any software Bill Gates produces, and still get by just fine...and get the added bonus of feeling special about it too, if that is what our psychology requires.

I just LOVE capitalism and the freedom to choose. Don't you?

Erica

Post 7

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 9:35am

Interesting that one of the things about windows and dos - as clunky as they can be - is that they are easier to tweak and fix than Mac is. I have not had one for awhile, but when my Mac gave me the bomb symbol, I had no idea how to fix it. When my DOS/WIN did, I could mess with the configurations until I fixed it.

Post 8

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 10:04am

If avionics manufacturers had "kept up with technology like the computer industry has", ...

90%

Post 9

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 10:10am

Is that plane using windows 98, with the blue screen of death on all screens?

Post 10

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 10:13am

Is that plane using windows 98, with the blue screen of death on all screens?

A'yep.

Post 11

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 10:31am

The "Windows 98 Blue screen of death?"

I'll have you both of you know that the blue screen of death is alive and well on XP, too!

Don't know about Vista yet.

Erica

Post 12

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 10:34am

I'll have you both of you know that the blue screen of death is alive and well on XP, too!

I know. I'm running XP Pro on this crummy Dell I'm stuck with at work.

Post 13

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 12:10pm

Michael said, "The Mac is better than the PC because the creators of the Mac built the machine they wanted, whereas the PC was built for other people who did not know what they wanted or why they would" and "The PC did not come from government, per se, but from govern-mentality, the mindset of the secondhander, the IBM corporation mentality of the pyramidic organization addressing the needs of other pyramids and denying power to individuals -- denying even that a demand for such power existed."

I won�t address the issue of �better� because it only applies where you can compare apples to apples. You have to have a context � then you can compare. With open-standards hardware and software there are many things that can be done from a Windows/Intel platform that aren�t done on Mac. In those cases Mac isn�t better. But there are areas the Mac does come out ahead � although less and less every year and always less than the overblown image portrayed by die-hard fans. There is a reason why Mac started out so far ahead, yet fell so far behind in sales. There is a reason why Mac�s quality is faltering while Windows/Intel quality is catching up and a reason why Windows/Intel hold almost the entire market while Mac may well be gone if a few years. (I'm not against Macs. I like them. I want them to continue if for no other reason than to bring out the best in Microsoft who responds best to competition).

Michael and I see it very differently. The Mac comes from an elitist view point - "we know best" - they are tightly controlled on both the software and the hardware and very proprietary. It is difficult to create any third-party hardware add-on or to write third-party software compared to the open-architecture adopted by Intel for hardware and Gates for software. This tight control gave Mac very high quality, comparatively, in the beginning.

Gates and Intel both recognized a truth about the market-place and about technological evolution ahead of Jobs (who still doesn't fully get it).

1) No one can know what the future uses of complex new technology will be until they are actually in use. The fact that someone might come up with a new use for an electric toothbrush is not very important. But a computer is a very general purpose tool - like one we've never had before.
2) An Open ended approach lets anyone that wants to design the next technology. The market place can decide if they were right.
3) Given the rapid rate of technology advances, it is critical to use open ended approaches for speed of adoption. It is a kind of evolutionary approach that ends up building in some awkward artifacts left from previous versions (like us with our appendix or less than robust knees and lower backs). Same with software (DOS kernel). This evolution answers first to demand for new things and second to the higher levels of quality (that's the marketplace speaking). It doesn't mean you don't get the high levels of quality, it means that it takes much longer.

Jobs is really good at recognizing excellence and controlling design and production to achieve it - ahead of the rest of the marketplace. He saw and recognized the excellence of the PARC team's work and created the MAC. But the Macs staying power is like the Romans living on the great ideas they inherited from the Greeks. If it weren't for 3 things they would have been in bankruptcy long ago: Quality control, brand loyalty, and the iPod that has saved their butts.

There were over a hundred different computer hardware and operating systems in the early years - all with their own proprietary and locked down systems (Atari, Amigo, etc.) They are all gone now.

IBM is no longer a major player in the PC market because they only had a very limited grasp of those principles. They used them to get into the market (years after the pioneers were there), but then tried to force a proprietary lock after getting a large market share - and it killed them. Part of their early success was advertising to the business world (where they already held an important place with their mainframes and office equipment). Apple and the others were touting the home computer, and this was when there was very little you could do with a personal computer. It is not very attractive to see them whine about market share when they didn�t recognize that selling to businesses made more sense at that time, or they had a counter-culture dislike of business.

Jobs has been copying what is successful in the Windows/Intel world just like they have been copying what is successful in the Mac. That's just competition.

So, Michael, I have no idea how your "govern-mentality", or "second-hander" judgments apply to Gates or Intel.

Post 14

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 12:59pm

Bill Gates' main value was standardization and economy. In the proprietary marketplace, it was a huge advantage to consumers to have a dominant market player for many software applications and it didn't really matter which one. Gates offered good enough products on a platform that people could afford.

Steve Jobs was only with Apple until 1985 when the graysuits including John Sculley pushed him out of the company. Without Jobs, Apple lost its innovative core.He did not rejoin the company until 1997 when NexT was bought out by Apple in 1997. Jobs has been a phenomenal force with Apple. I loved when Jobs was able to claim that Apple's market capitalization had exceeded Dell. Michael Dell had earlier made a comment that Apple was better off being bought out or something to that effect.

Jim

Post 15

Friday, February 8, 2008 - 2:15am