Sometimes I can't help but wonder if Gates saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to preserve his legacy.
Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
21–30 of 91 posts
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because of the extra value of the system just working?
no, they just plain don't. they all come with isights and firewire and DVD burners and such. comparisons i've seen with equivalent PCs are roughly equal. if you want lots of RAM or a larger harddrive, you probably have to buy that separately to not get overcharged, though.
OK -- I spec'd a Dell XPS M150 just now to be equivalent to the $2500 Macbook Pro. I got a better than equivalent config for $1678 -- it has 4GB of RAM, would be $1578 with 2GB of RAM.
It comes with a built-in 2MP webcam and bluetooth and N-wireless. It has HDMI rather than DVI out. A bluray burner is an option, as is a 1920x1080 screen. The only thing it is missing is firewire and I don't think anyone can argue that Firefire is worth $900, except people that need Firewire. The backlit keyboard is nice and generally indicative of the Apple touch, I guess, but that adds $900.
At one point, it was definitely true that you couldn't get a laptop with all the extras in a Mac. But this Dell Computer really seems equivalent. Perhaps not in build quality.
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
no, they just plain don't. they all come with isights and firewire and DVD burners and such. comparisons i've seen with equivalent PCs are roughly equal. if you want lots of RAM or a larger harddrive, you probably have to buy that separately to not get overcharged, though.
OK -- I spec'd a Dell XPS M150 just now to be equivalent to the $2500 Macbook Pro. I got a better than equivalent config for $1678 -- it has 4GB of RAM, would be $1578 with 2GB of RAM. It comes with a built-in 2MP webcam and bluetooth and N-wireless. It has HDMI rather than DVI out. A bluray burner is an option, as is a 1920x1080 screen. The only thing it is missing is firewire and I don't think anyone can argue that…
I guess it varies by when and what you compare. e.g.
http://www.macworld.com/article/49403/2006/02/pricecompariso...
has the macbook pro doing well.
or this
http://kb.wisc.edu/showroom/page.php?id=3045
has 150 more for macbook (not pro). they seem to have firewire and isight missing on the pc, and a modem missing on the mac.
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i just did a comparison of imac vs dell all-in-one.
imac = 1300 (add 1gig of ram)
the dell is 1300, but i need to change stuff like including a video card, which it doesn't look like i can do (dell's customization page sucks). anyway, apple seems to win.
the macbook pro isn't really for price-sensitive people, anyway. it's the imac, macbook, or maybe mini that i'd expect to price compare OK or well.
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#24Looks like Bill Gates knows how to communicate his thoughts easily for the reader. Neither I nor the recipient of the email would have read that entire thing if it was in a large paragraph block.
I agree, it was a nice user story.
But, I'm damn sure that all the recipients would have carefully read every word of that email, even if it had been written in one large leetspeek paragraph.
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of these problems are still prevalent in Microsoft. Confusing processes and the like. So, it's not Gates. Gates is a good guy and he sounds like he gets it. Is it the corporate structure then?
> Is it the corporate structure then? Yeah, probably. However, it's hard to keep a big company like Microsoft under one person's control. Look at Apple's success; they have a tiny product line (compared to Microsoft), and so Jobs can make sure everything is good.
Really? I've got no interest in counting them all up, but I thought Apple would have more products than Microsoft.
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's surprising because you might think Bill Gates would have some pull at his own company. Most of these issues he raises have been problems for years, and have gotten even worse in some cases!
Many of these problems are still prevalent in Microsoft. Confusing processes and the like. So, it's not Gates. Gates is a good guy and he sounds like he gets it. Is it the corporate structure then?
It comes down to the priorities.
Microsoft enjoys near monopoly hold on the end-user market (give or take) and they didn't arrive at this position by providing great end-user experience. So there's basically no need for them to improve it -> low priority.
Don't fix what's ain't broken (what's sort of working) approach.
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#27"""Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?""" Haha % uname -a Darwin Galactica.local 9.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.3.0: Fri May 23 00:49:16 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.5.18~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 % uptime 19:08 up 23 days, 6 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.87 1.02 1.07
I had the same thought when I read this. I used to turn off my computer every night, until I switched from Windows (98) to Linux. In grad school, my roommate and I had uptime contests with our Linux boxes, which he won with something like 6 months of uptime. The most common causes of lost uptime were electrical power outages and moving apartments.
Now, like you, I mainly run OS X, but it's on a laptop, which wreaks havoc with my uptime. Ah, well. I guess you can't have it all.
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
no, they just plain don't. they all come with isights and firewire and DVD burners and such. comparisons i've seen with equivalent PCs are roughly equal. if you want lots of RAM or a larger harddrive, you probably have to buy that separately to not get overcharged, though.
OK -- I spec'd a Dell XPS M150 just now to be equivalent to the $2500 Macbook Pro. I got a better than equivalent config for $1678 -- it has 4GB of RAM, would be $1578 with 2GB of RAM. It comes with a built-in 2MP webcam and bluetooth and N-wireless. It has HDMI rather than DVI out. A bluray burner is an option, as is a 1920x1080 screen. The only thing it is missing is firewire and I don't think anyone can argue that…
Here we go again. Idiots that are downmodding because they don't agree, while the parent has taken time to present useful information.
I use a Mac, I love my Mac, but I get that some people dig Windows. Woot! It's just a damn operating system, be glad you didn't lose an arm today.
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#29It makes me nervous that I didn't see it as a rant as all. Am I that callous?
To me, it looks like something constructive that every CEO should do -- spend time dealing with their product like their customers do, and make sure the troops know when it isn't up to standards.
Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant
#30It is kind of suprising how much disconnected he is with the flagship product of his company.
He should have been able to be a lot more specific and detalied about what was going on, and not complain in generic terms "downloaded more stuff, this popup here, that thing there".
It seems that back then he was not involved at all with the development of windows. It feels like comming from somebody that just started using it, and not somebody that build it (or gave guidance on building it). And this was in 2003, so Windows XP had been out for about two years.