He and I always enjoyed talking. He would throw some things out, you know, some stimulating things. We’d talk about the other companies that have come along. We talked about our families and how lucky we’d both been in terms of the women we married. It was great relaxed conversation.

Gates also commented on how Steve Jobs' death impacted him.

Well, it’s very strange to have somebody who’s so vibrant and made such a huge difference and been … kind of a constant presence, to have him die. It makes you feel like, ‘Wow, we’re getting old.’ I hope I still have quite a bit of time for the focus I have now, which is the philanthropic work. And there’s drugs we’re investing in now that won’t be out for 15 years — malaria eradication, I need a couple of decades here to fulfill that opportunity. But, you know, it reminds you that you gotta pick important stuff, because you only have a limited time.

Indeed.



Source: ABC News

Melinda Gates has once again re-affirmed that no Apple product, no iPod, iPhone, or iPad, is welcome in her and husband Bill Gates' house. Last time she said she wouldn't mind an iPhone, of course, but this time she stuck to sterner stuff:

Do you own an iPod, which is made by Apple?

No, I have a Zune.

What if one of your children says, “Mom, I have to have an iPod?”

I have gotten that argument — “You may have a Zune.”

Do you have an iPad?

Of course not.

Is it true that Bill works on an Apple laptop?

False. Nothing crosses the threshold of our doorstep.

Isn’t there room in this world for both Apple and Microsoft?

Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh. Go talk to Bill.

And fair enough. How many Microsoft products do you think make it into Steve Jobs' house?

[NYT Magazine via Fortune]

Of course if BNET asks Bill Gates about rival Steve Jobs' latest creation, the iPad, he'll have to dismiss it in public -- to do otherwise wouldn't be in service of Microsoft. What's more telling is his confession about the iPhone (infamously banned at his house) some three years later:

“You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that,” he said. “So, it’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’”

On the heels of those emails we linked to yesterday, detailing his and Jim Allchin's concerns that Apple had caught Microsoft "flat footed" and "smoked" them, it also brings context to the iPad dismissal, especially considering the eerily similar dismissal of the iPod to BusinessWeek many years ago, as pointed out by Digital Daily:

“There’s nothing that the iPod does that I say, ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that.’”

And we all know how that turned out.

As to BNET, the introduction to Gates' interview reads as rather one-sided and Apple/iPad-hostile:

With the sudden ridicule of Steve Jobs’ new do-everything media player, Apple has abruptly become a ripe target for those who would like to take it down a notch.

Ridicule? While some haven't been thrilled with the iPad, much as they weren't with the iPod when it was announced, almost no one has used it yet, and many have been downright effusive about it. Really, wasn't the Gates quote link-baity enough?

Former Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates, and Windows Vista honcho, Bill Allchin, had an email exchange back in 2003 when Apple launched iTunes and were rather candid about how well Steve Jobs put it together, and how badly Microsoft was caught off guard.

Gates says Microsoft was caught "flat footed". He also praises Jobs and doubts the subscription model Microsoft now uses for the Zune HD:

Steve Jobs ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.

[...] With the subscription who can promise you that the cool new stuff you want (or old stuff) will be there?

Allchin was much briefer:

1. How did they get the music companies to go along?

2. We were smoked.

Gizmodo, via Groklaw have the full emails online. The question now becomes, is Apple still catching the competition flat-footed, or is Apple the one who now needs to be careful, lest they be smoked?

[Image via WikiMedia Commons]

Pulling from a Melinda Gates interview with Vogue (via Geeksugar), being married to Bill, who loves the power of software, isn't without its limitations:

There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household. But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids [...] Every now and then I look at my friends and say 'Ooh, I wouldn't mind having that iPhone'

Gizmodo imagines all sorts of iPhones secretly hidden beneath the mattresses at Casa Gates, but we imagine some fancy Minority Report-like future security that just scans people for Apple-tech coming and going. And, hey, seriously, who can blame Gates? Can we really see Steve Jobs giving his kids Zunes... or Xbox's?