Bill Gates said Steve Jobs caught Microsoft 'flat-footed' with launch of iTunes Store

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 44
    qwerty52qwerty52 Posts: 367member
    mpantone said:
    Beats 
    You also say Apple didn’t invent the smart watch. Who would you give that title to? I would say either Apple with the iPod Watch or Casio with their calculator watches. Still a funny different standard.
    Nah, of the big companies Sony, LG, Samsung and Qualcomm all released smartwatches before Apple.

    I would argue that the first smartwatch distributed more widely than as an oddity would be the Pebble which shipped to Kickstarter backers in early 2013.
    All those companies just rushed to be first, because of the already ten years long going on rumors, about 
    Apple working on a smartwatch.
    All those watches were premature and underdeveloped.
    So they were first but with kind of unusable toy-watches.
    And that is the difference with Apple
    Alex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Reply 22 of 44
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    Microsoft just aren’t good at products, they’ve always lacked the cohesive design capability good products require. They’re the IT equivalent of meccano (we can’t make it do something useful but maybe you can).
    Alex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 44
    Like Jobs once said, Gate had no taste.  Jobs had taste but lacked execution and follow through until he came back to Apple.

    Apple focused on design, marketing, and a few features that people could not live without with every iteration. 

    By the time Zune was good enough, Apple already introduced iPhone in 2007 and the world had already focused its attention on smartphones.

    What Gates and Microsoft were good at was play politics and kept partners happy.  Microsoft did not want to change the status quo because it was benefiting from it.
    Alex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Reply 24 of 44
    mpantonempantone Posts: 2,033member
    Not just that but Apple has consistently focused on the most profitable part of the market.

    More than that, Apple has often relied on the software and content that drives sales rather than just obsessing on hardware margins.

    Basically since the debut of Android smartphones, Android developers have routinely admitted that iOS generates far more revenue from app sales than Android -- despite the fact that Android handset marketshare is far larger.
    Alex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Reply 25 of 44
    danoxdanox Posts: 2,804member
    mcdave said:
    Microsoft just aren’t good at products, they’ve always lacked the cohesive design capability good products require. They’re the IT equivalent of meccano (we can’t make it do something useful but maybe you can).
    Which why Apple can disrupt Microsoft in the server market, now that they have a in house cpu at anytime they choose to.
    Alex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Reply 26 of 44
    mpantonempantone Posts: 2,033member
    mcdave said:
    Microsoft just aren’t good at products, they’ve always lacked the cohesive design capability good products require. They’re the IT equivalent of meccano (we can’t make it do something useful but maybe you can).
    The folks in the Xbox division would tell you that you are wrong. So would Sony Interactive Entertainment. So would Nintendo.
  • Reply 27 of 44
    mpantonempantone Posts: 2,033member
    danox said:
    mcdave said:
    Microsoft just aren’t good at products, they’ve always lacked the cohesive design capability good products require. They’re the IT equivalent of meccano (we can’t make it do something useful but maybe you can).
    Which why Apple can disrupt Microsoft in the server market, now that they have a in house cpu at anytime they choose to.
    Apple abandoned the server hardware business long ago. We know that Apple has run Oracle applications on big servers (presumably UNIX and Linux boxes) for 20+ years. For the foreseeable future, there are likely certain parts of their business that will require non-Apple software running on non-Apple hardware.

    However, it is my belief that Apple can move a substantial portion of its data center operations away from x64 architecture hardware and to their own custom silicon which is vastly superior in terms of performance-per-watt. This may include custom in-house SoCs that are largely CPU and machine learning cores (no graphics cores) and are optimized for specific tasks compared to a general purpose CPU from Intel or AMD.

    Not marketing this special silicon gives Apple a competitive advantage in terms of operational efficiency.

    If Apple could disrupt Microsoft in the server market, it would be by reducing their reliance on Microsoft server software (which I do not believe they have widely implemented) or Microsoft cloud services (also not believed to be widely used by Apple).
    Alex_VDogpersonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 28 of 44
    9secondkox29secondkox2 Posts: 2,666member
    lkrupp said:
    ericesque said:
     to make way for the ill-fated Zune Marketplace and other similarly abysmal content delivery products. 
    Whoa whoa whoa! Hold on a minute.  Zune Marketplace was absolutely ill-fated.  But “abysmal content delivery product” is a gross mischaracterization.  By Gen 3 Microsoft, in 2008, had competitive hardware for the day and in most respects better software and services than Apple has in Apple Music today.  

    Sure, Zune had long since been panned by consumer electronics blogs, but gen 3 hardware was legit.  The desktop software would still hold up against Spotify and Apple Music in terms of usability and vastly outclasses either in style.  The music exploration and recommendations were excellent.  I still miss the playback visualizations.  They had social features baked in and had a web music player that was a first class citizen in their ecosystem. You could cast music between devices before the word “casting” had been coined.  Zune Pass gave you access to unlimited streaming of 14 million tracks and let you keep 10 each month.  While Apple was raising digital downloads to $1.29/track, Microsoft was offering discounted annual subscriptions at $149.  It was the equivalent of buying 10 songs on iTunes each month plus $1.75/mo for unlimited streaming.

    Zune lost the battle of mind share, but 13 years later I’m still waiting for someone to step up and revive the golden age of streaming music.




    "By Gen 3 Microsoft, in 2008, had competitive hardware for the day and in most respects better software and services than Apple has in Apple Music today. “

    Give us a fricken break will you. You sound like a disgruntled Amiga user. This crapaganda that the only reason Apple succeeds is because of marketing is as much bullshit today as it was back then. 
    LOL. Love the revisionist history. The Zune and associated marketplace along with the “plays for sure” crap that stopped playing two years after launch were all a bunch of jokes. It’s comical that some rando would use the obscuring cloak of history along with the unpopularity of the “squirting” Zune to manufacture some greatness to it. 

    Not only did MS launch a failed product along with a pathetic service, but then they didn’t even support their loyal customers who bought in with their hard earned money. Where was marketplace 2.0? Zune 2.0? They failed so hard they didn’t even try again. 

    And that but them for a long time. Why trust a company with your money that so easily sees you as worthless? Even with aggressive hardware push, ms has no cohesive vision and no legacy to its products. The only true sacred things at Microsoft are office and windows. Office is pretty great. Windows is a mess. 

    OS X has caught me flat footed with every release for around 10 years plus. 

    Even cook caught them flat footed with the watch. 

    At least ms has a video game console that Apple doesn’t have. They did at least beat “Apple Arcade.” So I guess that’s…something…
    Alex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Reply 29 of 44
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member

    Interestingly, it appears that Microsoft was at one point considering a subscription service rather than the content licensing scheme adopted by iTunes.

    Er…Zune HAD a subscription service. You had to be a subscriber to "squirt" songs from one Zune to another, or to have someone "squirt" all over yours. 

    (I really wish I were making this up, including the names…but I'm not.)
    sagan_studentwatto_cobra
  • Reply 30 of 44
    rundhvidrundhvid Posts: 122member
    mpantone said:
    It wasn't predictable. That's why Microsoft was caught flat footed. Remember that Apple's market valuation was decidedly small compared to Microsoft, really a David vs. Goliath situation at the time.

    Time and time again Jobs surprised. The iPod itself was widely doubted when it debuted (2002 I think); just do an Internet search for "cmdrtaco ipod" to see what a popular technologist thought.

    Apple stunned again with the iPhone in 2007 and many predicted failure due to the lack of a physical keyboard. Remember that the RIM BlackBerry was the smartphone gold standard at the time and Windows mobile phones were still a significant player.

    Apple again caught the industry off guard when it released its own silicon in the form of the A-series SoCs and a few years later left the entire semiconductor industry speechless when the A-series jumped to 64-bit architecture, years before it was expected to show up in a mainstream product.

    Apple crushed it again with the iPad and then killed it with Apple Watch, the latter despite long-standing rumors that Apple had been testing "wearables" on its corporate campus for years. Remember that each time, Apple was not first to market MP3 players, online media stores, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, custom ARM silicon.

    About the only thing predictable from Apple in the past five years was the Apple Silicon Mac. Savvy industry watchers presumed that Apple had been running macOS on prototype ARM-powered Macs in their labs for years, maybe as early as that first 64-bit A7 SoC. There were hints all along: the deprecation of OpenGL, the end of support for 32-bit apps. The inclusion of specialized chips like the T2 Security Chip which was clearly an interim solution to be paired with Intel CPUs until Apple could ship their own SoC with that functionality built in.

    One can see where this is headed for the Macs. macOS Monterey is leveraging the Neural Engine in the M1 SoC, the machine learning silicon. My guess is that the M2 and future designs will vastly improve on the Neural Engine's capabilities which will take on tasks that it is better suited for than the CPU cores: image recognition, text recognition, voice recognition, signal processing (both audio and video). As mentioned in the WWDC keynote, more machine learning tasks will be handled on device rather than being sent to Apple's servers.

    Nvidia's GeForce RTX GPUs do audio and video processing with their Tensor cores (machine learning); if you have an GeForce 20 or 30 series graphics card, you can use the Nvidia Broadcast software to clean up audiocasting and videocasting.
    Excellent written recap of the highlights in ’s history—on which I agree, except for what aspect is (most) predictable about :



    —how about that for predictability! 😎
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 31 of 44
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,243member
    qwerty52 said:
    Yes, Steve Jobs was a genius!
    It’s a peaty he left us so early.
    He could give so much more to the world…….
    I wonder if Steve’s managerial style would even be tolerated in today’s hyper-sensitive, hyper-wokeness world. I think maybe not now that employees need to be coddled instead of pushed.  
    edited July 2021 watto_cobra
  • Reply 32 of 44
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,335member
    mpantone said:
    danox said:
    mcdave said:
    Microsoft just aren’t good at products, they’ve always lacked the cohesive design capability good products require. They’re the IT equivalent of meccano (we can’t make it do something useful but maybe you can).
    Which why Apple can disrupt Microsoft in the server market, now that they have a in house cpu at anytime they choose to.
    Apple abandoned the server hardware business long ago. We know that Apple has run Oracle applications on big servers (presumably UNIX and Linux boxes) for 20+ years. For the foreseeable future, there are likely certain parts of their business that will require non-Apple software running on non-Apple hardware.

    However, it is my belief that Apple can move a substantial portion of its data center operations away from x64 architecture hardware and to their own custom silicon which is vastly superior in terms of performance-per-watt. This may include custom in-house SoCs that are largely CPU and machine learning cores (no graphics cores) and are optimized for specific tasks compared to a general purpose CPU from Intel or AMD.

    Not marketing this special silicon gives Apple a competitive advantage in terms of operational efficiency.

    If Apple could disrupt Microsoft in the server market, it would be by reducing their reliance on Microsoft server software (which I do not believe they have widely implemented) or Microsoft cloud services (also not believed to be widely used by Apple).
    Totally legitimate to poke Apple in the eye for their pathetic server offerings, which are not too far north of being a total whiff. I also think that Apple’s remote access offering is hard to justify paying for (especially for what they charge) compared to what Microsoft’s Remote Desktop provides for free.

    I’m still a fan of a lot of Microsoft’s later generations of developer tools, various frameworks, and the C# language. These have all been very good for me. The biggest issues with Microsoft imho are all tied to the extremely long and burdensome legacy tail that they still drag along like a massive boat anchor in order to support so many system configurations and backward compatibility. If Microsoft was able to limit its deployment targets and compatibility matrix along the same lines as what Apple is able to do, they would be perceived much more equal to Apple on the desktop rather than a step or two behind. But the ghosts of Microsoft’s grisly past like Windows Me, Windows Vista, Internet Explorer, BSOD, weak in the knees security, and DLL Hell still haunt them to this day. Windows 10 is as good as Microsoft Windows has ever been and they really have very little to be apologetic about with respect to Windows 10 (and now Windows 11) and XBox as their consumer facing profile.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 33 of 44
    cornchipcornchip Posts: 1,945member
    mpantone said:
    It wasn't predictable. 


    I meant Gates’ response was predictable, bro. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 34 of 44
    Other than coming up smart strategies, Steve paid incredible amount of attention to the contents, because content matters. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 35 of 44
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member
    Beats said:
    You also say Apple didn’t invent the smart watch. Who would you give that title to? I would say either Apple with the iPod Watch or Casio with their calculator watches. Still a funny different standard.
    Gee, if there were only somewhere you could look this sort of thing up.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 36 of 44
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member
    Tim Cook could have caught the entire industry flat footed with the release of a $300 M1 powered Mac Nano but didn't. There was absolutely no technical reason why he could not have done that. Tim simply doesn't have Steve's vision and desire to disrupt first, dominate later.
    You're literally the only person I hear repeatedly asking for this device. 
    tmaywatto_cobra
  • Reply 37 of 44
    anomeanome Posts: 1,533member
    spheric said:

    Interestingly, it appears that Microsoft was at one point considering a subscription service rather than the content licensing scheme adopted by iTunes.

    Er…Zune HAD a subscription service. You had to be a subscriber to "squirt" songs from one Zune to another, or to have someone "squirt" all over yours. 

    (I really wish I were making this up, including the names…but I'm not.)
    Remember when Ballmer made wireless file sharing sound dirty, and Jobs made sharing earwax sound endearing? Seriously, the Zune had "squirt" all over it, and Jobs's idea about sharing music was to give your beloved one of the earpieces of your iPod headset.

    Somehow neither of these seemed to quite meet the needs specified.

    The main problem with the Zune was bad marketing. "Squirt", "Squircle", that sort of shit-brown they came in, the lame logo,... The backend services weren't all that good, either.

    Meanwhile, Apple just kept doing new things with the iPod, until they got to the iPhone release. (Some of them more successful than others, but at least they did stuff.)
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 38 of 44
    fallenjtfallenjt Posts: 4,053member
    I'm sure there's a Ballmer quote somewhere along the lines of: "What? An online store where you can just buy any song you want for 99 cents? Haha yeah right, like that'd work!"
    And the phone “doesn’t have a keyboard “😂
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 39 of 44
    anomeanome Posts: 1,533member
    fallenjt said:
    I'm sure there's a Ballmer quote somewhere along the lines of: "What? An online store where you can just buy any song you want for 99 cents? Haha yeah right, like that'd work!"
    And the phone “doesn’t have a keyboard “ߘ⦬t;/div>
    The World Wide Web is "just a passing fad"*.

    * He later claimed that the real reason they missed the boat on the web was "we were trying to get Windows 95 out at the time". So I guess he's at least admitting he's a liar. It's just not clear which statement is the lie.
    edited July 2021 watto_cobra
  • Reply 40 of 44
    JWSCJWSC Posts: 1,203member
    Beats said:
    mpantone said:
    It wasn't predictable. That's why Microsoft was caught flat footed. Remember that Apple's market valuation was decidedly small compared to Microsoft, really a David vs. Goliath situation at the time.

    Time and time again Jobs surprised. The iPod itself was widely doubted when it debuted (2002 I think); just do an Internet search for "cmdrtaco ipod" to see what a popular technologist thought.

    Apple stunned again with the iPhone in 2007 and many predicted failure due to the lack of a physical keyboard. Remember that the RIM BlackBerry was the smartphone gold standard at the time and Windows mobile phones were still a significant player.

    Apple again caught the industry off guard when it released its own silicon in the form of the A-series SoCs and a few years later left the entire semiconductor industry speechless when the A-series jumped to 64-bit architecture, years before it was expected to show up in a mainstream product.

    Apple crushed it again with the iPad and then killed it with Apple Watch, the latter despite long-standing rumors that Apple had been testing "wearables" on its corporate campus for years. Remember that each time, Apple was not first to market MP3 players, online media stores, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, custom ARM silicon.

    About the only thing predictable from Apple in the past five years was the Apple Silicon Mac. Savvy industry watchers presumed that Apple had been running macOS on prototype ARM-powered Macs in their labs for years, maybe as early as that first 64-bit A7 SoC. There were hints all along: the deprecation of OpenGL, the end of support for 32-bit apps. The inclusion of specialized chips like the T2 Security Chip which was clearly an interim solution to be paired with Intel CPUs until Apple could ship their own SoC with that functionality built in.

    One can see where this is headed for the Macs. macOS Monterey is leveraging the Neural Engine in the M1 SoC, the machine learning silicon. My guess is that the M2 and future designs will vastly improve on the Neural Engine's capabilities which will take on tasks that it is better suited for than the CPU cores: image recognition, text recognition, voice recognition, signal processing (both audio and video). As mentioned in the WWDC keynote, more machine learning tasks will be handled on device rather than being sent to Apple's servers.

    Nvidia's GeForce RTX GPUs do audio and video processing with their Tensor cores (machine learning); if you have an GeForce 20 or 30 series graphics card, you can use the Nvidia Broadcast software to clean up audiocasting and videocasting.

    I think he meant “predictable” as in Bill copying Apple too late predictable. He even admits if he had make knockoff iPhones faster than Google that they would own market share.

    I also find it funny how people hold Apple to a far different standard when it comes to inventing things. There was no iTunes before iTunes. There was no iPod before iPod but of course “Apple invented nothing” as if Google or MS invented anything.

    You also say Apple didn’t invent the smart watch. Who would you give that title to? I would say either Apple with the iPod Watch or Casio with their calculator watches. Still a funny different standard.
    Before iTunes was iTunes it was SoundJam MP.  

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