Bill Gates is the wealthiest man on the planet earth and he’s a first rate scavenger. He’s preparing to release the new Xbox. Longhorn comes out next year and he’s currently taking pot shots at IPod. Bill Gates is a scavenger, but for that matter, all the great powers are.
Like all great imperial powers, Microsoft has stolen from the best and brightest and then figured out a way to make it their own. MS-DOS was the best example. They borrowed heavily from UNIX for this one. Then worked out one of the greatest deal ever when IBM first started their personal computer. That was brilliant.
Then came Windows. Xerox really started the move towards an image-based system. The folks at Apple picked up on it and did well. Then Gates and crew grabbed it and ran with it. They packaged it better, got it put on all the PCs and the rest is cash. Apple never has caught up. They’ve certainly got their fan base, but Microsoft and the PC market dominate. You don’t see too many MAC clones running OS X do you?
Then they found this thing called the Internet. Netscape had this sharp looking format to work through the worldwide web. This Internet browser, as they called it, was sharp and gave users a nice format to look through the Internet. But then Microsoft began working on something similar they called Internet Explorer. It was also sharp and proved pretty decent in its ability to maneuver. A few years later, Netscape was bought up by AOL and is essentially a nonentity.
Microsoft continues its wily ways. They’ve got to battle with many companies including Sun Microsystems and various others over many things. They squashed many competitors along the way by either weakening them heavily or wiping them out altogether. MS Office was good, trashed Lotus nicely. There’s the Media Player. Real has had a real hard time catching up and there are others.
Right now Bill is selling the Xbox360 hard. They’ve never been able to catch up to the Sony Playstation but they try. With its debut on MTV and the little bits of info leaked out, this HD game console has real promise and unlike the Sony, it will be out this year. What happens though when Sony release the new PS3? What if it has the new Blu-Ray technology? I’d say Bill will have to rethink things a bit with regard to game consoles.
But that brings us back to Windows. Longhorn is due out next year and he’s got a lot of promise with this one; better security, 64-bit capacity, and many other features. Should be cool. He’s come a long way since scavenging from Apple. OS X came out and there was some hype but it won’t outsell Windows unless some drops an atomic bomb on Washington state or something.
Right now Billy boy is slamming IPods. He’s saying Apple will blow it with them they way they did with their personal computer systems (which while quite good are terribly expensive). The IPod is cool and a lot of people have picked them up and will continue to do so. Others are quickly coming out with competitors that show promise as well. But Bill has an OS for those other competitors to use and that will improve his grip.
One final thought: In all fairness to Microsoft, they do an EXCELLENT job of listening to consumers, contrary to some beliefs. They have focus groups and do studies all over the place. So they do have a care about the consumer, just not anyone else.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
