Bill Gates Gets Nervous

In Newsweek, Bill Gates shows he can have a reality distortion field of his own as he goes off on Apple, Steve Jobs, and the John Hodgman "Get a Mac" ads. A few choice quotes, shown completely without context:

I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.

And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it?

I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.

What's most interesting about this article to me is not the tired old platform debates that inevitably ensue, but how it shows Gates' current state of mind...Major chip on his shoulder. It's clear to me that Gates is nervous about what has been happening with the Mac over the last couple of years. He's mentioning Apple and Steve Jobs by name a lot more. But Microsoft actually innovates when they have a persecution complex like this, so maybe everyone will benefit - as long as they don't drop Office Mac as a retaliatory move.

I also like how he perceives the Hodgman commercials to be putting down Windows users, rather than putting down the OS itself. It's pretty clear either he completely misses the humor of the ads or that he's in denial about the kernels of truth in them. Either way, I don't buy that he hasn't seen them.

Finally, in response to the "major surgery" ad, he says "Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade on the hardware than our competitors have done." And then just a bit later says that Windows will continue to have big releases. It seems that the point of these big releases - especially Vista - is to push the hardware envelope to the point where users have no choice but to buy new hardware that will support eye candy that doesn't really improve productivity.

Gates brings up Apple before the interviewer does, and the tone of Gates' responses about Apple reveals that he's scared. Microsoft goes for five years without releasing a consumer OS, and for their big coming-out party, everyone's asking about Apple.

Even Jon Stewart asked if Vista has flying toasters.